A Cognitive Typology of Religious Actions

Authors: Barrett, Justin L.¹; Malley, Brian²

Source: Journal of Cognition and Culture, Volume 7, Numbers 3-4, 2007 , pp. 201-211(11)

Publisher: BRILL

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Abstract:

The rapid but disproportionate growth of the cognitive science of religion in some areas, coupled with the desire to meaningfully connect with more traditional, function-inspired classifications, has left the field with an incomplete and sometimes inconsistent typology of religious and related actions. We address this shortcoming by proposing a systematic typology of counterintuitive actions based on their cognitive representational structures. This typology may serve as the framework of a research program that seeks to establish (1) psychologically, whether each class of events receives different cognitive treatment within a given context and similar representation across contexts; and (2) anthropologically, whether the different classes are characterized by different performance frequencies, social functions, and kinds of interpretations, making them useful explanatory and predictive distinctions.

Keywords: AGENTS; COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION; COUNTERINTUITIVE; MAGIC; RITUAL

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853707X208486

Affiliations: 1: Centre for Anthropology and Mind, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6QS, UK 2: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA

Publication date: 2007-09-01