Many psychologists and philosophers have suggested that religious ideas emerge because they are motivationally attractive. This paper attempts to support a version of the motivational thesis by relying on religious creeds as a source of historical evidence. This simple source of evidence indicates that the cultural evolution of religious ideas is partly a function of the motivational attractive...

Research in cultural evolution has focused on the spread of intuitive or minimally counterintuitive beliefs. However, some very counterintuitive beliefs can also spread successfully, at least in some communities-scientific theories being the most prominent example. We suggest that argumentation could be an important factor in the spread of some very counterintuitive beliefs. A first experiment ...

Article history: Received 17 September 2009 Received in revised form 22 April 2010 Accepted 8 June 2010

In an attempt to explain the lack of consensus that emerged from a review of the extant literature on the performance implications of cultural differences in mergers and acquisitions [M&A], meta-analyses were conducted for three categories of performance measures: stock market-based measures, accounting-based measures, and socio-cultural integration outcomes. As hypothesized, meta-analytic find...