The International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR) seeks to advance the naturalistic study of religion. The IACSR recognizes that the cognitive sciences encompass a wide array of disciplines and methods, including, among others, experimental research in psychology and neuroscience, computational modeling, ethnographic, historical, archaeological, and comparative studies...

OBJECTIVE Many Americans use religious activity to cope with stressful life events. Our goal was to review systematically the recent medical literature to assess the role of religion in health outcomes. DATA SOURCES We conducted a comprehensive literature search using MEDLINE to identify studies published in the English language between January 1999 and June 2003 describing the effect of reli...

Our paper analyzes the impact of culture and religion on tax evasions in the Czech Republic, which represents one of the most atheistic countries in Europe, and a very interesting example of attitudes to the church and religion, as well as the influence of religion on the social and economic aspects of everyday life. Our results suggest that, in the Czech Republic, religion plays the role of ta...

This paper quantifies the association between religions, religiosity and educational attainment of new lawful immigrants to the U.S. This paper considers a broad set of religions that includes most of the major religions of the world. Using data from the New Immigrant Survey (2003), we show that affiliation with religion is not necessarily associated with an increase in educational attainment. ...

Religion in Korea has been shaped by its followers to a degree, but the role of religion in Korea has been largely unexamined. This study examines the role of religion and the incorporation of religious beliefs and institutions in the field of disaster management. In doing so, the study examines how three religions—Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism—operate in Korea, in particular in term...

Building on gene–environment interaction (G E) research, this study examines how the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene interacts with a situational prime of religion to influence prosocial behavior. Some DRD4 variants tend to be more susceptible to environmental influences, whereas other variants are less susceptible. Thus, certain life environments may be associated with acts of prosociality fo...

IBCSR Research Review (IRR) is published by the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, a non-profit research institute dedicated to the scientific study of the biocultural aspects of religion. IRR briefly annotates and furnishes online information about scientific research articles related to brain, behavior, culture, and religion published in English in leading journals. It also list...

The authors review findings from the psychology of religion showing that believers’ perceived relationships with God meet the definitional criteria for attachment relationships. They also review evidence for associations between aspects of religion and individual differences in interpersonal attachment security and insecurity. They focus on two developmental pathways to religion. The first is a...

In this paper, we seek to map out the key coordinates in debates in Human Geography about the secularization and postsecularization of western modern societies. In particular, we spell out the specific geographies through which geographies of religion have been imagined. These commonly involve such spatial metaphors as islands, networks, spheres, and the like. Less attention has been given to s...

Until the early 19th century, psychiatry and religion were closely connected. Religious institutions were responsible for the care of the mentally ill. A major change occurred when Charcot1 and his pupil Freud2 associated religion with hysteria and neurosis. This created a divide between religion and mental health care, which has continued until recently. Psychiatry has a long tradition of dism...