Increasing evidence suggests that religious practice induces systematic biases in attentional control. We used Navon's global-local task to compare attentional bias in Taiwanese Zen Buddhists and Taiwanese atheists; two groups brought up in the same country and culture and matched with respect to race, intelligence, sex, and age. Given the Buddhist emphasis on compassion for the physical and so...

The recent interest in the psychopharmacological underpinnings of religious experiences has led to both the laboratory characterizations of drug-induced mystical events and psychobiological models of religious experiences rooted in evolution and fitness. Our examination of this literature suggests that these theories may be congruent only within more modern religious and cultural settings and a...

Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of religious background on attention. Here we show that Dutch Calvinists and atheists, brought up in the same country and culture and controlled for race, intelligence, sex, and age, differ with respect to the way they attend to...

Background Islamic doctrine and related teachings play a seminal role in constructing the sexual performance of followers, women in particular. Objective The aim was to explore women's understandings of Islamic Shiite principles related to their sexuality. Materials and Methods In a qualitative content analysis approach, four individual interviews and seven focus groups conducted in Rafsanj...

Culturally counterintuitive concepts are ideas that violate a small number of justifiable expectations raised by shared beliefs of a group of people. Previous studies have shown that ideas that violate a small number of expectations are better remembered by people than ideas that conform to their expectations or ideas that violate a large number of people’s expectations. However, as counterintu...

The notion that religion and modemity ate mutuaUy exclusive has been a leading theme oŸ the sociology of religion in France and has been amply confirmed by empirical studies of religious practice, clerical vocations, and parish culture. But recent work on popular religion, post-1968 ideological communities, and new religious movements has caUed the presumption of secularization into question. I...

Two hundred and sixty-three alcohol using college students completed a questionnaire on their levels of alcohol use, problems with alcohol use, reasons for drinking, perceptions of control over drinking, impulsivity, venturesomeness, irrational beliefs, neuroticism, expectations of alcohol effects, depression, social norms, religious affiliation and intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Analyses...

If religious beliefs matter, how should we expect those beliefs to affect the behavior of religious terrorists? The religious motivation for terrorism often is assumed to be pursuit of bene ts in the afterlife. Though Berman (2009) and others do not nd much empirical support for theology as an motivator for terrorism, few economic models of terrorism attempt to incorporate religious beliefs. We...

theoretical expectations. The assumption is that along with modernization and economic development, adherence to religious world views (seen to be a relic of the past) gradually dissipate, as they have in other advanced societies. But they haven’t in the United States. In fact, the importance of religious commitments and religious organizations to American society increased over the last severa...