TY - JOUR
T1 - What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents' Access to Socially Strategic and Non-Strategic Information
AU - Purzycki, Benjamin G.
AU - Finkel, Daniel N.
AU - Shaver, John
AU - Wales, Nathan
AU - Cohen, Adam B.
AU - Sosis, Richard
PY - 2012/7
Y1 - 2012/7
N2 - Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents' socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents' knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents-God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens-that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents' socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish.
AB - Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents' socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents' knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents-God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens-that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents' socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish.
KW - Cognitive science of religion
KW - Socially strategic information
KW - Supernatural agents
KW - Supernatural punishment
KW - Theory of mind
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84863455417&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01242.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01242.x
M3 - Article
C2 - 22462490
AN - SCOPUS:84863455417
SN - 0364-0213
VL - 36
SP - 846
EP - 869
JO - COGNITIVE SCIENCE
JF - COGNITIVE SCIENCE
IS - 5
ER -