Connor Wood

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I’m a research associate at the Center for Mind and Culture in Boston, with a PhD from Boston University (2016). My research takes evolutionary and cognitive approaches to human culture and religion. I apply theories from moral psychology, religious studies, anthropology, and the philosophy of language to understand how individual differences and group-level effects influence political ideologies and institutional ontology, and vice-versa. Empirical studies, survey methods, reviews, and computational methods help me apply bio-cultural methods to these questions. In empirical work, I draw on theoretical wells such as life history theory, behavioral ecology, ritual theory, and cybernetic self-regulation to explore feedback between behavioral/psychological variables and group processes. These approaches inform my work on religion-science relations; religion, medicine, and health; and complex systems. I'm currently funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (# 61157), which supports me in conducting extensive, in-depth reviews of recent work in the scientific study of religion, in hopes of advancing the progressive and cumulative status of the field.
Supervisors: Wesley Wildman, Richard Sosis, and Catherine Caldwell-Harris

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Michael Loadenthal

University of Cincinnati

Andrei Coltea

European Scientific Journal ESJ

European Scientific Institute, ESI

Mehboob Ashraf

Risto Uro

University of Helsinki

Richley Crapo

Utah State University

Andreas Nordin

Manvir Singh

Danny Osborne

The University of Auckland

Prof. Joseph Bulbulia

Victoria University of Wellington

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Papers by Connor Wood

Simulating Religions as Adaptive Systems

New approaches to the scientific study of religion, 2019

Religious communities exhibit many features of complex adaptive systems (CASs). They are open sys... more Religious communities exhibit many features of complex adaptive systems (CASs). They are open systems whose global features nonlinearly emerge from the interactions of their components, are complexly internally structured, and must adaptively respond to continual perturbations in their environments. This chapter presents a system dynamics model (SDM) of a generic religious organization represented as a CAS. The simulated community extracts energy from an ecological resource base and expends energy on distinct, mutually exclusive goals: reproduction, energy-seeking, and ritual. Although energy that is spent on ritual cannot be spent on utilitarian objectives, ritual performance increases the perceived legitimacy of the religious system, thereby motivating higher levels of cooperation. Low levels of perceived legitimacy can trigger a switch to a charismatic version of authority. In experiments, we found that many simulated communities maximized their populations by outstripping their resource base shortly before collapsing, in a classic example of boom-and-bust ecological overshoot. However, certain communities showed greater longevity if the Charisma parameter was maximized. We interpret our results to suggest that increasing social flexibility in response to crises of legitimacy may contribute to the resilience of certain types of social, including religious, systems.

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Modes Theory does not subsume previous ritual typologies

Religion, brain and behavior, Jun 22, 2023

The rhythm that unites: an empirical investigation into synchrony, ritual, and hierarchy

Synchrony, or rhythmic bodily unison activities such as drumming or cadence marching, has attract... more Synchrony, or rhythmic bodily unison activities such as drumming or cadence marching, has attracted growing scholarly interest. Among laboratory subjects, synchrony elicits prosocial responses, including altruism and empathy. In light of such findings, researchers in social psychology and the bio-cultural study of religion have suggested that synchrony played a role in humanity's evolutionary history by engendering collectivistic commitments and social cohesion. These models propose that synchrony enhances cohesion by making people feel united. However, such models overlook the importance of differentiated social relations, such as hierarchies. This dissertation builds on this insight by drawing on neuroscience, coordination dynamics, social psychology, anthropology, and ritual studies to generate a complex model of synchrony, ritual, and social hierarchy, which is then tested in an experimental study.

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Religion and Prosociality

Routledge eBooks, Sep 28, 2022

Reﬂective thought, religious belief, and the social foundations hypothesis

The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology, 2018

Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this a... more Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this association have included the likelihood that analytical cognition interrupts the expression of innate cognition biases, such as teleology and anthropomorphism, that lead to religious beliefs; or that analytical thinkers are better at discriminating between unrealistic and realistic beliefs. This chapter marshals research from many subfields in cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and sociology to advance an alternative explanation, the &quot;social foundations hypothesis,&quot; which posits that analytical cognition is associated with both individualism and with strategic, opportunistic defection on cooperative arrangements. Honestly held religious beliefs serve as indices of heuristic cognition, which in turn telegraphs a strong likelihood that the agent will unreflectively abide by social conventions and norms. The association between holistic thinking and religiosity is thus a product of the need for predictable social coordination and cooperation in high-context social groups.

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology scale

by Connor Wood and Aimee Radom

Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 2021

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies cons... more The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies conservative versus liberal aspects of religious ideology. The MRI focuses on recurring features of ideology rooted in innate moral instincts while capturing salient differences in the ideological profiles of distinct groups and individuals. The MRI highlights how religious ideology differs from political ideology while maintaining a robust grounding in the social psychology of ideology generally. Featuring three major dimensions (religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious morality) and eight subdimensions, the MRI is sensitive enough to generate novel insights into religious ideology across demographic groups and individual differences. The MRI is also summative, yielding a single quantitative measurement of left–right religious ideology with good scale and test–retest reliability. Analysis of 839 respondents across two studies confirmed the widespread assumption that religious i...

Antistructure and the Roots of Religious Experience

Zygon®, 2020

The cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion offer a standard model of religious represent... more The cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion offer a standard model of religious representations, but no equivalent paradigm for investigating religiously interpreted altered states of consciousness (religious ASCs). Here, I describe a neo‐Durkheimian framework for studying religious ASCs that centralizes social predictive cognition. Within a processual model of ritual, ritual behaviors toggle between reinforcing normative social structures and downplaying them. Specifically, antistructural ritual shifts cognitive focus away from conventional affordances, collective intentionality, and social prediction, and toward physical affordances and behavioral motivations that make few references to others’ intentional states. Using synchrony and dance as paradigmatic examples of antistructural ritual that stimulate religious ASCs, I assemble literature from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of language to offer fruitful empirical predictions and opportunities for testing based on this framework. Among the empirical predictions is that antistructural ritual may provide for cultural change in religions when religions are construed as complex adaptive systems.

Trance, Dissociation, and Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Model

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2018

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North Afr... more Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar, are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, cross-cultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a m...

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The Rhythms of Discontent: Synchrony Impedes Performance and Group Functioning in an Interdependent Coordination Task

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2018

Synchrony — intentional, rhythmic motor entrainment in groups — is an important topic in social p... more Synchrony — intentional, rhythmic motor entrainment in groups — is an important topic in social psychology and the cognitive science of religion. Synchrony has been found to increase trust and prosociality, to index interpersonal attention, and to induce perceptions of similarity and group cohesion. Causal explanations suggest that synchrony induces neurocognitive self-other blurring, leading participants to process one another as identical. In light of such findings, researchers have highlighted synchrony as an important evolved tool for establishing and maintaining collective identity in human groups, particularly within ritual and religious contexts. However, many aspects of group life require coordination rather than mere prosocial cooperation. In coordinative contexts, interpersonal relations and motor sequences are often complementary rather than identical, and leadership hierarchies streamline group decisions. It is thus unclear whether synchrony would benefit or hamper group...

Religion, Evolution, and the Basis of Institutions: The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2018

Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated ... more Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural evolutionary processes integrated non-adaptive cognitive byproducts into coherent networks of supernatural beliefs and ritual that encouraged in-group cooperativeness, while adaptationist models assert that the cognitive and behavioral foundations of religion have been selected for at more basic levels. Here, we survey these differing approaches, noting their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then advance a novel model that centers on the ability of language to generate alternative worlds independent of immediate empirical facts, and thus highlight the similarities between religious belief and the modes of cognition that underlie institutions in general. The institutional cognition...

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Ritual and the logic of self-regulation: response to commentators

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

I would like to thank the commentators for their useful critiques and suggestions. There is a gre... more I would like to thank the commentators for their useful critiques and suggestions. There is a great deal of ground to cover in a short space, so I will plunge immediately into what I consider the main issues at stake, namely: (1) whether religion is actually costly; (2) whether formal demands of costly signaling theory are met; (3) whether religion is collectivistic; (4) whether the religion– mental health relationship is genuine; (5) what is unique to religion in the present model; (6) how social support and religion are related; and (7) whether self-control is primarily effortful or automatic. I will follow these discussions with a general model of self-regulation and social signaling that demonstrates isomorphism between religious and secular signaling regimes, and conclude with suggestions for future research.

Religion, Kognition, Evolution: eine religionswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Cognitive Science of Religion

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2012

Over the past decade, the various strands of the scientific study of religion have converged on a... more Over the past decade, the various strands of the scientific study of religion have converged on a number of methodological assumptions, including Pascal Boyer’s concept of the hyperactive agency detection device (HADD) and the model of the modular brain that informs evolutionary psychology. According to Sebastian Schüler, the field as it now stands is thus primarily concerned with the question of why humans believe in supernatural agents, and its answers depend on descriptions of cognitive processes. In Religion, Kognition, Evolution, Schüler provides an overview of what he terms this ‘‘cognitive science of religion,’’ leveling pointed but constructive criticisms of the field’s operating assumptions and presenting his alternative view of religion as primarily a social, embodied phenomenon. The book’s arguments hinge on the contrast between models of cognition that describe mental activity as information processing and those that see it as a holistic social phenomenon rooted in the somatic experience. The former is, according to Schüler, characterized by a ‘‘conceptual individualism’’ that reflects Darwinistic evolutionary models and is informed by Cartesian dualistic assumptions that separate mental from somatic experiences (p. 49; all translations from the German are by the reviewer). The latter attributes genuine ontological status to higher-order or emergent levels of human social organization and thus prioritizes interpersonal, somatically rooted interactions. Schüler, a religious studies scholar, argues for the social model. Schüler begins the introduction with a description of a Pentecostal church service featuring glossolalia. Using this example of ritual exuberance as a starting point, he then sets forth his major questions: is religion evolutionarily adaptive? Why do all religions feature rituals? What effects do rituals have on their partakers? Already in the introduction Schüler tips his hand, bemoaning the fact that ‘‘the social-collective aspects (of ritual behavior) . . . often receive but little to no attention in the cognitive scientific theories of religion’’ (p. 17). The qualm does not seem unreasonable, given its narrative context: how could cognitive theories of religion define religion exclusively as belief in supernatural agents therefore taking as their conceptual locus the individual brain and still have anything to offer for describing or explaining ecstatic, collective religious experiences? The remainder of the book is divided into three parts. The first, consisting of chapters 2, 3, and 4, tackles what Schüler calls the ‘‘cognitive shift’’ in psychological and social research and its implications for religious studies (p. 33). The second, comprising chapters 5 and 6, outlines the current cognitive scientific theories of Religion, Brain & Behavior Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2012, 177 179

Complexity and possession: Gender and social structure in the variability of shamanic traits

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2018

Singh deploys cultural evolution to explain recurrent features of shamanistic trance forms, but f... more Singh deploys cultural evolution to explain recurrent features of shamanistic trance forms, but fails to substantively address important distinctions between these forms. Possession trance (vs. trance without possession) is disproportionately female-dominated and found in complex societies. The effects of cultural conditions on shamanism thus extend beyond its presence or absence and are vital for modeling its professionalization and spread.

Musical bonds are orthogonal to symbolic language and norms

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2021

Both Mehr et al.'s credible signaling hypothesis and Savage et al.'s music and social bonding hyp... more Both Mehr et al.'s credible signaling hypothesis and Savage et al.'s music and social bonding hypothesis emphasize the role of multilevel social structures in the evolution of music. Although empirical evidence preferentially supports the social bonding hypothesis, rhythmic music may enable bonding in a way uniquely fitted to the normative and language-based character of multilevel human societies.

Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

Religion is positively correlated with subjective well-being across a variety of contexts, but co... more Religion is positively correlated with subjective well-being across a variety of contexts, but convincing causal models are lacking. Some researchers have suggested that religion may boost self-control, and thus well-being, by requiring effortful rituals. This article proposes that costly signaling theory provides a vital explanatory tool for understanding these relationships. Signaling theories posit that religious adherents signal their commitment to religious collectives through difficult or anhedonic activities and rituals, creating a cost barrier for entry which protects religious communities against free riders. Because costly signaling behaviors require the inhibition of prepotent responses and intentional exposure to aversive stimuli, committed adherents build self-control over time. Subjective well-being is thus modeled as a longitudinal product of subjective investment in a religious social collective and the self-regulation abilities that emerge from signaling that investment. This emphasis on a feedback cycle driven by social signaling represents a novel contribution to investigations of religion and well-being. New longitudinal research in social investment theory and self-control lends the model conceptual credibility.

Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology Scale

by Connor Wood and Aimee Radom

Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv für Religionspychologie, 2021

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies cons... more The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies conservative versus liberal aspects of religious ideology. The MRI focuses on recurring features of ideology rooted in innate moral instincts, while capturing salient differences in the ideological profiles of distinct groups and individuals. The MRI highlights how religious ideology differs from political ideology while maintaining a robust grounding in the social psychology of ideology generally. Featuring three major dimensions (religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious morality) and eight subdimensions, the MRI is sensitive enough to generate novel insights into religious ideology across demographic groups and individual differences. The MRI is also summative, yielding a single quantitative measurement of left-right religious ideology with good scale and test-retest reliability. Analysis of 839 respondents across two studies confirmed the widespread assumption that religious ideology is a parallel construct to political ideology, emerging from similar foundations but following a distinct set of rules. The MRI 1 THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY SCALE shows the importance of conceptualizing ideology in ways that access the full spectrum of realworld ideological convictions-an important reminder, given the salience of religious factors for influencing ideology generally.

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Antistructure and the Roots of Religious Experience

Zygon: The Journal of Religion and Science, 2020

Reflective Thought, Religious Belief and the Social Foundations Hypothesis

by Jonathan Morgan, Connor Wood, and Catherine Caldwell-Harris

The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology: Why Reason Matters, 2017

Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this a... more Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this association have included the likelihood that analytical cognition interrupts the expression of innate cognition biases, such as teleology and anthropomorphism, that lead to religious beliefs; or that analytical thinkers are better at discriminating between unrealistic and realistic beliefs. This chapter marshals research from many subfields in cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and sociology to advance an alternative explanation, the "social foundations hypothesis," which posits that analytical cognition is associated with both individualism and with strategic, opportunistic defection on cooperative arrangements. Honestly held religious beliefs serve as indices of heuristic cognition, which in turn telegraphs a strong likelihood that the agent will unreflectively abide by social conventions and norms. The association between holistic thinking and religiosity is thus a product of the need for predictable social coordination and cooperation in high-context social groups.

Download

Trance, Dissociation, and Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Model

by Connor Wood and Ross Gore

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North Afr... more Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar, are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, crosscultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a male religious trance role. The model reproduces these patterns under plausible parameter configurations.

Simulating Religions as Adaptive Systems

New approaches to the scientific study of religion, 2019

Download

Modes Theory does not subsume previous ritual typologies

Religion, brain and behavior, Jun 22, 2023

The rhythm that unites: an empirical investigation into synchrony, ritual, and hierarchy

Download

Religion and Prosociality

Routledge eBooks, Sep 28, 2022

Reﬂective thought, religious belief, and the social foundations hypothesis

The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology, 2018

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology scale

by Connor Wood and Aimee Radom

Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 2021

Antistructure and the Roots of Religious Experience

Zygon®, 2020

Trance, Dissociation, and Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Model

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2018

Download

The Rhythms of Discontent: Synchrony Impedes Performance and Group Functioning in an Interdependent Coordination Task

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2018

Religion, Evolution, and the Basis of Institutions: The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2018

Download

Ritual and the logic of self-regulation: response to commentators

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

Religion, Kognition, Evolution: eine religionswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Cognitive Science of Religion

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2012

Complexity and possession: Gender and social structure in the variability of shamanic traits

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2018

Musical bonds are orthogonal to symbolic language and norms

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2021

Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2016

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology Scale

by Connor Wood and Aimee Radom

Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv für Religionspychologie, 2021

The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies cons... more The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies conservative versus liberal aspects of religious ideology. The MRI focuses on recurring features of ideology rooted in innate moral instincts, while capturing salient differences in the ideological profiles of distinct groups and individuals. The MRI highlights how religious ideology differs from political ideology while maintaining a robust grounding in the social psychology of ideology generally. Featuring three major dimensions (religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious morality) and eight subdimensions, the MRI is sensitive enough to generate novel insights into religious ideology across demographic groups and individual differences. The MRI is also summative, yielding a single quantitative measurement of left-right religious ideology with good scale and test-retest reliability. Analysis of 839 respondents across two studies confirmed the widespread assumption that religious ideology is a parallel construct to political ideology, emerging from similar foundations but following a distinct set of rules. The MRI 1 THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY SCALE shows the importance of conceptualizing ideology in ways that access the full spectrum of realworld ideological convictions-an important reminder, given the salience of religious factors for influencing ideology generally.

Download

Antistructure and the Roots of Religious Experience

Zygon: The Journal of Religion and Science, 2020

Reflective Thought, Religious Belief and the Social Foundations Hypothesis

by Jonathan Morgan, Connor Wood, and Catherine Caldwell-Harris

The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology: Why Reason Matters, 2017

Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this a... more Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this association have included the likelihood that analytical cognition interrupts the expression of innate cognition biases, such as teleology and anthropomorphism, that lead to religious beliefs; or that analytical thinkers are better at discriminating between unrealistic and realistic beliefs. This chapter marshals research from many subfields in cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and sociology to advance an alternative explanation, the "social foundations hypothesis," which posits that analytical cognition is associated with both individualism and with strategic, opportunistic defection on cooperative arrangements. Honestly held religious beliefs serve as indices of heuristic cognition, which in turn telegraphs a strong likelihood that the agent will unreflectively abide by social conventions and norms. The association between holistic thinking and religiosity is thus a product of the need for predictable social coordination and cooperation in high-context social groups.

Download

Trance, Dissociation, and Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Model

by Connor Wood and Ross Gore

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North Afr... more Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar, are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, crosscultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a male religious trance role. The model reproduces these patterns under plausible parameter configurations.

Reflective Thought, Religious Belief, and the Social Foundations Hypothesis

by Jonathan Morgan, Connor Wood, and Catherine Caldwell-Harris

The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology: Why Reason Matters, 2018

Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this a... more Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this association have included the likelihood that analytical cognition interrupts the expression of innate cognition biases, such as teleology and anthropomorphism, that lead to religious beliefs; or that analytical thinkers are better at discriminating between unrealistic and realistic beliefs. This chapter marshals research from many subfields in cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and sociology to advance an alternative explanation, the "social foundations hypothesis," which posits that analytical cognition is associated with both individualism and with strategic, opportunistic defection on cooperative arrangements. Honestly held religious beliefs serve as indices of heuristic cognition, which in turn telegraphs a strong likelihood that the agent will unreflectively abide by social conventions and norms. The association between holistic thinking and religiosity is thus a product of the need for predictable social coordination and cooperation in high-context social groups.

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