The Social Consequences of Ritual

Collective rituals are ubiquitous, yet how they affect us remains fascinatingly unclear. We use experimental methods to investigate how collective rituals – both secular and religious, in New Zealand and abroad – affect social sensibilities, personal identities, and economic performance.

Cultural Evolution of Religion

Humans are the religious species: every society has some form of religious belief. A major challenge for evolutionary theory is therefore to explain the prevalence of religious beliefs. The ubiquity of religion suggests that it must play an essential functional role in human societies. This project will test three functional explanations for religious beliefs using the quantitative phylogenetic methods routinely used to test adaptive explanations in evolutionary biology: do high gods evolve in complex societies, does ecology constrain religion, and are religious texts functionally constrained? The answers will make a major contribution to the exciting new field of science - evolutionary religious studies.

10 March

Lecture on Religion

LT101, 1pm

23 March

Important birthday

5 April

Lecture on Religion

16 April

Lecture on Cognition

1 May

Another Lecture on Religion.

7 June

Lecture on Religion