Journal articles by Claire White
Scientific Reports , 2024
The Journal of Cognition and Culture , 2022
There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested b... more There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested behavior and increase cooperation amongst group members. To date, research has largely focused on beliefs concerning omniscient moralistic gods in large-scale societies. While there is an abundance of ethnographic accounts documenting fear of supernatural punishment, there is a dearth of systematic cross-cultural comparative quantitative evidence as to whether belief in supernatural agents with limited powers in small-scale societies also exert these effects. Here, we examine information extracted from the Human Relations Area Files on cultural discourse about the recently deceased, local ancestor spirits, and mortuary practices across 57 representative cultures. We find evidence that in traditional small-scale societies ancestor spirits are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, with many attendant practices aimed at mitigating this danger. However, such beliefs do not appear to promote cooperation, as ancestor spirits seem to be concerned with interactions between themselves and the living, and to prioritize their own welfare. Many attendant practices are inconsistent even with bipartite cooperation with ancestors that could be viewed as a model for other relationships. The broader implications of this research for the cultural evolution of religion are discussed.
Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Wh... more Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Why do these ideas enjoy persistent and widespread success in contemporary Western culture? Adopting a cognitive approach to the study of afterlife accounts and drawing upon our own research, we argue that mainstream survival narratives are popular because they provide convincing evidence that one has journeyed to another realm. Such accounts are convincing, in part, because they meet default cognitive assumptions about what human survival would look like if it were possible. We support this claim by highlighting recurring common themes in recounted episodes of near-death experiences and past life accounts and outlining how key findings in the cognitive science of religion, in conjunction with culturally situated accounts, can help scholars concerned with ideas about anomalous experiences to better understand their appeal.
Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Wh... more Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Why do these ideas enjoy persistent and widespread success in contemporary Western culture? Adopting a cognitive approach to the study of afterlife accounts and drawing upon our own research, we argue that mainstream survival narratives are popular because they provide convincing evidence that one has journeyed to another realm. Such accounts are convincing, in part, because they meet default cognitive assumptions about what human survival would look like if it were possible. We support this claim by highlighting recurring common themes in recounted episodes of near-death experiences and past life accounts and outlining how key findings in the cognitive science of religion, in conjunction with culturally situated accounts, can help scholars concerned with ideas about anomalous experiences to better understand their appeal.
Journal of Cognition and Culture , 2017
Around 30% of world cultures endorse reincarnation and 20% of contemporary Americans think that r... more Around 30% of world cultures endorse reincarnation and 20% of contemporary Americans think that reincarnation is plausible. This paper addresses the question of why belief in reincarnation is so pervasive across geographically disparate contexts. While social scientists have provided compelling explanations of the particularistic aspects of reincarnation, less is known about the psychological foundations of such beliefs. In this paper, I review research in the cognitive science of religion to propose that selected panhuman cognitive tendencies contribute to the cross-cultural success of basic ideas in reincarnation. Together, this research suggests that extraordinary convictions, including those associated with postmortem survival, are underpinned by some of the same processes that govern mundane social cognition.
Over the past decade or so there has been an exponential growth in research in the Cognitive Scie... more Over the past decade or so there has been an exponential growth in research in the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). Yet despite this, there continues to be a lack of understanding, and sometimes blatant misunderstanding, about what characterizes the field. This state of affairs is due, in part, to the reluctance of those within the field to commit to a precise definition. CSR is broad in scope. It is also a relatively young academic approach to the study of religion and consequentially, is ever-expanding and often in a state of flux. Scholars have often characterized CSR by what it is not rather than what it is. In this paper, I argue that at heart of CSR is a theory that human cognition is necessary (but not sufficient) to explain the persistence and prevalence of human ideas and behaviors deemed "religious". It is thus distinguished from its often atheoretical academic counterparts in the study of religion by the attempt to explain, rather than describe, religion and because of the centrality of the role of the human mind in this explanation. The fruitfulness of this approach is demonstrated by what it has explained since its inception. CSR (these exist elsewhere, see for example . Rather, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, to outline what-in 2015minimally constitutes CSR (what it is) and second, to discuss how and why common misunderstandings of CSR still exist (what it is not).
Comparing mortuary rituals across 57 representative cultures extracted from the Human Relations A... more Comparing mortuary rituals across 57 representative cultures extracted from the Human Relations Area Files, this paper demonstrates that kin of the deceased engage in behaviors to prepare the deceased for disposal that entail close and often prolonged contact with the contaminating corpse. At first glance, such practices are costly and lack obvious payoffs.
Anthropological records and psychological studies demonstrate the recurrence of ideas about how t... more Anthropological records and psychological studies demonstrate the recurrence of ideas about how to determine the identity of reincarnated persons. These ideas are often incoherent with corresponding theological dogma about the process of reincarnation. Specifically, even though reincarnation is represented as a process of change, people often seek out and interpret particular similarities between the deceased and reincarnated agent as evidence that the two are one and the same person. This paper argues that panhuman cognitive tendencies explain, in part, the spread and recurrence of ideas about what provides evidence of reincarnation: specifically, representations of reincarnated agents are informed and constrained by everyday cognitive intuitions that govern representations of continued identity for intentional agents generally. The paper concludes that these constraints go some way towards explaining the recurrent features of reincarnation concepts and behaviors cross-culturally.
Ethnographic reports suggest the cross-cultural recurrence of practices designed to determine who... more Ethnographic reports suggest the cross-cultural recurrence of practices designed to determine who has returned to the human world through the process of reincarnation. This paper attempts to explain these trends through the cross-cultural replication of experiments with participants from mixed-religious affiliations in the U.S. to Jains in South India. In a series of imaginative perspective-taking tasks, Jain adults reasoned about the likelihood of different people to be the reincarnation of a deceased person based on similar features between the two. Participants endorsed a concept of reincarnation as entailing a bodily change from death to rebirth.
In this paper, I report a series of studies designed to refine our understanding of when, and why... more In this paper, I report a series of studies designed to refine our understanding of when, and why, people evoke mind-body properties to establish personal identity in reincarnation. In three studies, participants decided which individual, out of multiple contenders, was most likely to be the reincarnation of a deceased person, based upon a single matching feature between the deceased and each of the candidates.
Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2013
We propose a cognitive-evolutionary model of grief where the function of grief is to reunite a pe... more We propose a cognitive-evolutionary model of grief where the function of grief is to reunite a person with an absent partner where this is possible, and where it is not, to disengage and reorientate the individual from the lost agent. The present study investigates the potential factors that affect reunion-promoting symptoms by focusing on the misattribution of external stimuli to the deceased by the bereaved--which we term 'false recognitions'. We propose three factors that relate to false recognitions: First, we propose that strong attachment to the deceased predisposes one to false recognitions; second, we predict that viewing photographs of the deceased (that were taken when the individual was alive) perpetuates false recognitions; and third, we propose that time elapsing since the death diminishes the frequency of false recognitions. In a survey of 164 recently bereaved (<25 months) pet owners in the U.S. and U.K., predictions concerning the association of the predic...
The aim of this review is to evaluate what is known about the impact on children of parental depl... more The aim of this review is to evaluate what is known about the impact on children of parental deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. We searched for relevant studies with a minimum sample size of 50 which were published between 2003 and 2010 using Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Bibliographies of retrieved articles were also searched. Nine US-based studies were identifi ed for inclusion in the review, fi ve were cross-sectional, two were longitudinal and two were analyses of routinely collected data. Researchers found an increase in emotional and behavioral problems in children when a parent was deployed. Several mediating factors were identifi ed, such as the family demographics and the number and duration of parental deployments. Parental psychopathology was most consistently identifi ed as a risk factor for childhood emotional and behavioral disorders in the research. Limitations of the current research and subsequent recommendations for future research are also outlined.
Deployment has well documented psychological consequences for military personnel. To fully unders... more Deployment has well documented psychological consequences for military personnel. To fully understand the human cost of war, the psychosocial impact of separation and homecoming of military personnel on their families must also be considered. Recent arduous confl icts in Iraq and Afghanistan make understanding the impact of war on spouses topical and pertinent. Widespread psychological morbidity and social dysfunction have been reported in spouses of military personnel who have been deployed to combat zones such as Vietnam, with diffi culties most acute for spouses of military personnel with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A review of the literature published between 2001 and 2010 assessing the impact of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on spouses of military personnel was conducted. A total of 14 US-based studies were identifi ed which examined psychological morbidity, help seeking, marital dysfunction and stress in spouses. Longer deployments, deployment extensions and PTSD in military personnel were found to be associated with psychological problems for the spouse. Methodological differences in the studies limit direct comparisons. Recommendations for future research are outlined. The needs of spouses of military personnel remain an important issue with implications for service provision and occupational capability of both partners.
Book Chapters by Claire White
Draft of a book chapter on the philosophical implications of CSR.
In contemporary Western contexts, and beyond, many adults have deep-seated convictions that they ... more In contemporary Western contexts, and beyond, many adults have deep-seated convictions that they have lived before (e.g. Bender 2007; Gallup 2005; Haraldsson 2006). If people really do have previous lives, that’s astonishing; but even if they don’t, the belief in past lives is still a striking phenomenon. What leads people to think that they existed before their birth?
One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.'s article is that supernatural monitoring and inte... more One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.'s article is that supernatural monitoring and inter-group competition have facilitated the rise of large-sale prosocial religions. While the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, the authors need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.
put forward a new cognitive model of religious interactions, which we depict in Figure one. The m... more put forward a new cognitive model of religious interactions, which we depict in Figure one. The model stresses three common features of such interactions: the requirement to suppress emotion expression, the exposure to ritualized behavior and the presence of a charismatic authority (1). 1 These features have different cognitive effects involving different sorts of cognitive-resource depletion (2). The regulation of emotion expression drives one's attention to inward phenomena, compromising one's ability to form episodic memories of the external, observable aspects of rituals. Ritualized behavior precludes the ordinary, means-end analysis of action and demands low-level action parsing. These two effects impede the interpretation of ritualized behavior or other observable aspects of rituals , which makes one susceptible to authoritative interpretive discourses (4), which in turn promote collective religious-symbolic interpretations (5). The presence of a charismatic authority has a third cognitive effect involving cognitive-resource depletion-lack of error monitoring concerning the evidence disconfirming an authoritative interpretation. Since a charismatic authority is an authority, it can play two roles: a conjoint one, by adding another force for the establishment of collective religious-symbolic interpretations (4-1→2→5); an independent one, by persuading individuals to align their interpretations of a ritual with the authoritative one (1→2→5). Thus, via cognitive-resource depletion, the three features contribute to the same effect, which constitutes their social function-to
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Journal articles by Claire White
Book Chapters by Claire White
Commentaries by Claire White