The propensity for religious belief and behavior is a universal feature of human societies, but religious practice often imposes substantial costs upon its practitioners. This suggests that during human cultural evolution, the costs associated with religiosity might have been traded off for psychological or social benefits that redounded to fitness on average. One possible benefit of religious ...

Little research has focused on the relationship between religion and climate change attitudes and behavior. Further, while there have been some studies examining the relationship between environmental attitudes and religion, most are focused on Christian denominations and secularism, and few have examined other religions such as Buddhism. Using an online survey of 1,927 Australians we examined ...

How does belief in free will affect altruistic behavior? In an online experiment we undermine subjects' belief in free will through a priming task. Subjects subsequently conduct a series of binary dictator games in which they can distribute money between themselves and a charity that supports low-income people in developing countries. In each decision task, subjects choose between two different...

AIM To evaluate the impact on smokers' behavior of public health activity related to a religious event such as Lent in a predominantly Roman Catholic country. METHODS "Smoke out day" was organized on the first day of Lent, a period of self-denial for Roman Catholics, combining cultural and religious significance for Croatian people. The day was covered by a massive media campaign. Smoking beh...

Some individuals when they come close to death report having experiences that they interpret as spiritual or religious. These so-called near-death experiences (NDEs) often include a sense of separation from the physical body and encounters with religious figures and a mystical or divine presence. They share with mystical experiences a sense of cosmic unity or oneness, transcendence of time and ...

This study investigates the effect of religious identity on U.S. Presidential voter choice in order to determine whether this relationship changed over time. The research literature is divided on this question with several investigators finding a positive trend in religious-political polarization since 1980, and others finding no polarization. The study further addresses a putative link between...

Although religious concerns are generally not clients' primary presenting problems in secular therapists' practices, religious beliefs and values can have a strong influence on clients' behavior and clinical progress. For this reason, knowledge about religion and its impact can be useful in intervention work. Three case studies illustrate how sociology of religion can be a substantive resource ...

Schoejdt, Sørensen, Nielbo, Xygalatas, Mitkidis and Bulbulia put forward a new cognitive model of religious interactions, which we depict in Figure one. The model stresses three common features of such interactions: the requirement to suppress emotion expression, the exposure to ritualized behavior and the presence of a charismatic authority (1). These features have different cognitive effects ...

Religion is a collection of behavior that is only unified in our Western conception of it. It need not have a natural unity. There is no reason to assume, and good reason not to assume, that all religious behavior evolved together at the same time in response to a single shift in the environment. This article does not look at the religion as a unified entity and seek a definition of its essence...