Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1999). Toward an evolutionary psychology of religion
and personality. Journal of Personality, 67,
921-952.
Abstract
Evolutionary psychology is an emerging paradigm for the social sciences
that offers a powerful metatheoretical framework for personality psychology
and, as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, for the psychology of
religion as well. I argue that religion is not an evolved adaptation;
rather, the diverse range of beliefs, behavior, and experience that we
collectively refer to as religion emerge as byproducts of numerous, domain-specific
psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve other (mundane) adaptive
problems. These include mechanisms for reasoning about the natural
world (naive physics and biology), about other people's minds (naive psychology),
and about specific kinds of interpersonal relationships (attachment, kinship,
social exchange, coalitions, status hierarchies).
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