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Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols

The evolution of religion as an adaptive complex

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Abstract

This paper considers religion in relation to four recurrent traits: belief systems incorporating supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, communal ritual, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as a preferred developmental period for religious transmission. These co-occurring traits are viewed as an adaptive complex that offers clues to the evolution of religion from its nonhuman ritual roots. We consider the critical element differentiating religious from non-human ritual to be the conditioned association of emotion and abstract symbols. We propose neurophysiological mechanisms underlying such associations and argue that the brain plasticity of human adolescence constitutes an “experience expectant” developmental period for ritual conditioning of sacred symbols. We suggest that such symbols evolved to solve an ecological problem by extending communication and coordination of social relations across time and space.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology U-2176, University of Connecticut, 06269-2176, Storrs, CT

    Candace S. Alcorta & Richard Sosis

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  1. Candace S. Alcorta
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  2. Richard Sosis
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Correspondence to Candace S. Alcorta.

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Candace Alcorta is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include the behavioral ecology and evolution of religion, and the interrelationship between cultural and neurophysiological systems. She is currently conducting research on adolescent religious participation, stress, and health.

Richard Sosis is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. He has conducted fieldwork on Ifaluk Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia and is currently pursuing various projects in Israel aimed at understanding the benefits and costs associated with religious behavior.

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Alcorta, C.S., Sosis, R. Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols. Hum Nat 16, 323–359 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1014-3

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