Dr Joseph Watts of University of Oxford & Max Planck Institute for Science of Human History

Will speak on

The Cultural Evolution of Supernatural Beliefs and Practices

Abstract

Supernatural beliefs and practices vary across human groups, have the potential to rapidly change within generations, and be faithfully transmitted over generations. These properties of variation, change and inheritance make supernatural beliefs and practices ideal for building and testing theories of cultural evolution. Here I present two approaches I use to study the cultural evolution of supernatural beliefs and practices. The first approach uses phylogenetic comparative methods to identify broad cultural-patterns in historical social systems. I present studies testing theories about the functions of ritualised human sacrifice, the spread of Christianity, and the overlap between religious and secular leadership in early human societies. My second approach uses online experiments to study how individuals apply natural and supernatural explanations to the world. This research uses online studies to test how people explain different aspects of the world, the overlap between religious and non-religious belief systems, and how explanations evolve over time. Together this research shows how a cultural evolutionary framework can help understand the processes and patterns in the evolution of supernatural beliefs and practices.