Signaling Theory and the Evolution of Religion
Richard Sosis, director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut
Monday, February 8
From Richard: The performance of costly religious behaviors poses a genuine challenge
for those who employ egoistic-based models to explain human behavioral
variation. Researchers from diverse disciplines have suggested that
rituals and other religious behaviors serve as signals of an
individual's commitment to a religious group, and some have argued that
increased levels of commitment facilitate intra-group cooperation and
trust. Here I present results from recent studies that aim to test this
claim and I will discuss the relevance of these results for resolving
current adaptationist-byproduct debates on the evolution of religion.
Links
- About Richard
- The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program (PDF)
- Scars for war: evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs (PDF)
- Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred: The Evolution of Religious Behavior (PDF)
About Richard
Richard Sosis is an associate professor of anthropology and director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. To explore these issues, he has conducted fieldwork with remote cooperative fishers in the Federated States of Micronesia and with various communities throughout Israel, including Ultra-Orthodox Jews and members of secular and religious kibbutzim.
