Travis Research Institute - Is Religion Natural? The Chinese Challenge

Is Religion Natural? The Chinese Challenge

Project Leader: Justin L. Barrett

Research in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) has converged on the thesis that tendencies toward religious and spiritual thought, feelings, and actions may be part of largely invariable human nature. The fact that the worlds largest nation—China—is officially secular, allegedly has a long history of dominant non-religious philosophies, and reportedly has a large proportion of atheists challenges the naturalness of religion thesis, doesn’t it? The proposed project and its collection of selected sub-projects will address this big question empirically using state-of-the-art techniques.

The proposed project has been designed with two aims in mind: (1) scientifically address one of humanity’s big questions, and (2) create a blue print for a new and growing body of scholars to continue asking and answering such questions in the world’s largest nation. The project is comprised of ten coordinated work-packages (WPs) involving 11 relevant experts, including collaborations between scholars from Fuller, University of Oxford, Boston University, Calvin College, Cal State Fullerton, Wuhan University and the Chinese Academy of Science.

WP1: Teleological and Intentional Reasoning about the Natural World
- Dr. Deb Kelemen & Dr. Liqi Zhu

Research has found that 3-to-9-year-old American and British children, scientifically unschooled Romanian Roma adults, American adults with Alzheimer's disease, and American undergraduates making explanatory judgments at speed, display a broad tendency to teleologically explain both living and non-living natural phenomena by reference to a putative purpose. Indeed, recent research suggests that even American-based professional scientists, who are predominantly non-religious, show a greater orientation to teleological explanations of nature when cognitive processing is taxed. Taken together, these findings suggest that purpose-based explanation - a universal feature of religious cognition - represents a natural mode of reasoning that operates as a default throughout development even among non-religious adults who habitually think in causal, mechanistic terms.

However, all studies to date have taken place in Western, historically Judeo-Christian countries where religious representations suggestive of divine design can be salient features of the environmental landscape, where some level of religious affiliation and religious educational exposure is typical, and where religious "ways of knowing" are generally respected, and certainly tolerated as valid. The current proposed work therefore seeks to explore whether the developmental patterns of teleological endorsement found in these Western cultural environments extend to china - an actively non-religious cultural climate in which such generalizations do not hold. In collaboration with our colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we will develop and administer culturally-appropriate measures of teleological and intentional reasoning to Chinese elementary school children and undergraduates. Our findings will bear on questions concerning the universal underpinnings of religious cognition.

WP2: What Constitutes a Person
- Dr. Melanie Nyhof

The proposed program of research examines intuitive conceptions of personhood in China as compared to other cultures. Recent research has examined possible components of personhood such as mind, soul and spirit in contrast to body. This research has begun to explore how these intuitive conceptions of personhood manifest in various cultures in countries such as Brazil, the US, and Indonesia. However, this examination of personhood concepts has yet to be extended to China. China provides a unique context in which to study the cultural recruitment and elaboration of personhood concepts due to its emphasis on vital energy and spirit. The proposed research program seeks to extend previous research on mind, soul, and spirit concepts to examine these concepts in China among adults.

The goal of this research is to determine whether Chinese adults reflect intuitive ideas of personhood that relate the mind, soul, and spirit to the body similar to those found elsewhere, or whether a cultural emphasis on vital energy or spirit results in a distinct conception of personhood, especially where spirit is concerned. In addition, the proposed research aims to chart the development, in Chinese children, of conceptions of vital energy or spirit in relation to ideas of personhood, building on preliminary research in this area that is currently in progress.

WP3: Afterlife and Pre-life Beliefs
- Dr. Liqi Zhu

Do Chinese children naturally assume that other agents are mortal, immortal, or have no bias in either direction? What is the developmental course of such thinking? Could such biases provide cultural support for ancestor - and - spirit based practices even in the face of institutional opposition?

Research to date concerning afterlife and pre-life beliefs (that a person has existence before conception) has produced conflicting results based on the methodology used and population examined and remains, perhaps the hottest area of study in relation to religious thought. Bering and collaborators have found that even adults who regard themselves as believing that there is no life after death still find themselves reluctant to say that some epistemic and desire states cease upon death. A first study examining this reasoning in China found similar results, but raised the possibility that how long someone has been dead changes observers' intuitions. Astuti and Harris (2008) found that answers to such questions are influenced by the discourse context: medical primes lead to more extinctivist, dis-continuity responses. Bek and Lock's (forthcoming) replication of Astuti and Harris' work raised the possibility that afterlife thinking is the default mode and adults have to be primed to think in terms of death being the end. Research with children is just as mixed with Bering and collaborators finding that afterlife (and pre-life) beliefs decrease with age, suggesting people must be enculturated out of such beliefs rather than into them. Harris and colleagues have reported just the opposite pattern?

WP4: Revisiting the Preparedness Hypothesis
- Dr. Justin Barrett

Are Chinese children naturally ready to adopt belief in a super-knowing, -perceiving, -powerful, -good, -immortal creator? Evidence to date has supported the 'preparedness hypothesis' - that natural cognitive defaults enable children to reason effectively about a super-God even earlier than humans on many dimensions. This hypothesis is not without its critics and more cross-cultural data is needed - particularly in contexts in which God is not part of common discourse. Research to date has been in moderately religious cultural contexts. Understudied, too, are the developments of such reasoning in cultural contexts in which various supernatural agents with varying attributes are part of the common discourse. Some attributes such as super power and goodness have not yet been explored. China presents an excellent location for such studies as children are either introduced to no deities (as actually believed in) or introduced to various deities, fairies, powerful saints, and ancestors, all with varying power, knowledge, perception, goodness, mortality, and creative powers. If even in such cultural contexts children find it easier to learn about super attributes and some (or all) of them are default assumptions from early in development, this would be a powerful demonstration of the preparedness hypothesis.

WP5: Religious Practices in Contemporary China
- Dr. Justin Barrett & Dr. Ryan Hornbeck

Do folk ideas about the efficacy of magical and religious rituals follow the same dimensions (nature of items, nature of causation, connections to superhuman agents, etc.) as is being discovered by Souza & Legare in Brazil? Similarly, do traditional Chinese rituals map on to McCauley & Lawsons ritual form hypothesis predictions? Can traditional Chinese prayer practices be better illuminated by conceptual biases?

WP6: Religion and moral development: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
- Dr. Ryan Nichols & Dr. Liqi Zhu

Does the secular dominant cultural context in some parts of China (in comparison with others or with non-Chinese cultures) impact the acquisition of moral thought into childhood and the exercise of moral judgments in adulthood? How do cognitive evolutionary theories that connect religion and morality bear upon ancestor veneration practices or are such practices problematic for some existing theories?

WP7: Ancient Chinese Conceptions of Divinity
- Dr. Kelly Clark & Dr. Ted Slingerland

China is often alleged to be the outlier in terms of various metaphysical beliefs. In particular, China is alleged to be both non-theistic and non-dualistic. If true, China would constitute empirical disconfirmation of the Naturalness Thesis and intuitive-dualism thesis, both of which have been supported almost exclusively in the West. China would, therefore, call into question an entire host of results in the cognitive science of religion as mere cultural atricfacts. Claims about the Chinese stem from a conception of the ancient Chinese as immanental, holistic,and pragmatic. We reject both "the ancient Chinese" and consequently "the Chinese mind" as social constructs with no grounding in reality. We propose a thorough, quantitative textual study of the earlier available extant texts to dismiss once and for all the view that Chinese is some sort of remarkable exception to religious and dualistic beliefs. Our approach will be guided by claims in cognitive science concerning both religion and intuititive dualism.

WP8: Counterintuitiveness in Communication and Oral Tradition
- Dr. Justin Gregory

The 'cognitive optimum' or 'MCI theory' of religious transmission has enjoyed mixed, yet substantial empirical support from participant recall of presented stimuli. No study has however studied the transmission of MCI ideas as the product of an ecologically valid act of communication -- the prior assumption has been that better remembered ideas are therefore more likely to be communicated (and transmitted). Until such a study has been done, the assumed importance of hypothesized transmission dynamics is under-supported. This study aims to investigate the generation of religious-type narratives, the communication of such narratives in ecologically-natural group settings, and the resulting mnemonic characteristics and attention biases at thes levels. Results could help explain the successful spread of and belief in religious ideas that we see worldwide.

WP9: Spiritual Expression in the Wake of Forced Secularization
- Dr. Ryan Hornbeck

Recent research shows that residents in largely secularized countries often use immersive, virtual reality worlds as a source of so-called 'spiritual' experiences. Though this appropriation may seem curious at first glance, if religious / spiritual susceptibilities are part of human nature, we might expect that even in the absence of religious traditions (or, per China, in the face of systematic indoctrination toward naturalism / materialism), such drives will still find expression - albeit sometimes in novel, unorthodox ways. This seems especially the case in China, wherein preliminary work conducted by Hornbeck reveals that 'spiritual experiences' or 'spiritual transformation' are common (24% of interviewees) reasons given for playing the online video game World of Warcraft. These findings suggest that human minds may predispose a striving for 'spiritual' experiences - a predisposition strong enough, apparently, that people will create these experiences from secular materials where religious traditions are largely absent.

The proposed study will use the 'coding and quantifying emotional experiences' (CQEE) diagnostic scheme in conjunction with 'Q' sensor (a biofeedback device recently developed at MIT) wristbands and ethnographic fieldwork to map self-reports of 'spiritual' experiences (1) in rigorous terms meaningful to CSR (with respect to cognitive systems involved in religious behavior, what are these 'spiritual' experiences?) and (2) in the daily rhythms of those who pursue such experiences (in the context of each participants life, what needs or desires do these experiences satisfy?). The final objective is a greater understanding through quantitative and qualitative methods of why and how human minds in secular environments precipate 'spiritual' experiences from ordinary materials.

WP10: On-line research hub for Chinese CSR
- Dr. Ryan Hornbeck

We seek to build upon the Cognition, Religion, & Theology Project (Oxford) successes in developing web-resources that facilitate new research at low-entry cost by developing a research hub especially suited to Chinese CSR. The hub will be located in Second Life (SL), an immersive, virtual world inhabited by millions of residents hailing from over 180 different 'real world' countries and wherein Hornbeck has previously managed a laboratory dedicated to CSR research. The hub will include an English and a Chinese face and will feature: (1) A museum that outlines key CSR concepts using colorful, interactive displays, (2) A lecture hall that will host monthly lectures, discussion groups and/or virtual poster sessions (as importing traditional academic resourcs into China can be quite complicated), (1) and (2) would be especially convenient and cost-effective means of interacting with interested Chinese scholars; (3) Access to Hornbeck's existing laboratory and (4) A headquarters for an attached simulation project - the Chinese Spiritual Spaces Project (CSSP).

The CSSP is a competition / experiment inspired by modeling and simulation techniques common to epidemiology and economics, wherein researchers comprehend highly complex processes by observing them as they grow from more basic, input conditions. In the CSSP, members of the Chinese SL community will be invited to submit designs for 'spiritual' environments that might attract other SL residents. Submissions will include detailed outlines for architecture / grounds & weekly activities as well as an exegesis unto why a proposed space is, in fact, 'spiritual.'

Designs must not be associated (nominally at least) with extant religious traditions, and the four most popular designs will be constructed in SL and given two-month leases (spread out over eight months so they don't overlap). Following construction, CSSP winners will be given a small stipend to host events and activities aimed at generating a community and will supervise (with Hornbeck) the space's daily affairs. This project, revolutionary (within CSR) in method and scope, extends from two primary objectives: (1) Create 'spiritual' environments for Chinese (the spaces will be open for everyone, but the complexities of the Chinese language might be prohibitive for most non-Chinese) who may lack them in 'real' life; (2) enable CSR researchers to carefully document the natural growth of modern, quasi-religious communities/phenomena from secular materials.

Major outputs of the project will include an on-line hub, resources, and virtual laboratory for cross-cultural studies in the cognitive and evolutionary scientific study of religion; numerous academic journal articles in religious studies, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and Chinese studies; at least three books; and a major multi-site conference.