Evolutionary psychology of religion | Wikipedia Easy Search

Spirituality
Part of a series on
Outline
Religion History Timeline
Traditional Elite religion Jewish Merkabah Kabbalah Hasidism Christian Catholic Mysticism Sufism Folk religion
Modern Buddhist modernism New religious movement Secular spirituality "Spiritual but not religious" Syncretism
Spiritual experience Lived religion Mystical experience Oceanic feeling Religious experience Religious ecstasy Spiritual practice
Spiritual development Ego death Individuation Self-actualization Spiritual activism Spiritual development
Influences
Western General Divine illumination Pantheism Panentheism Antiquity Gnosticism Hermeticism Neoplatonism Western esotericism Medieval Mysticism Early modern Perennial philosophy Jakob Böhme Emanuel Swedenborg Pietism Modern Romanticism Transcendentalism Universalism New Thought Theosophy Anthroposophy Occultism Spiritualism Esoteric Christianity New Age
Orientalist Comparative religion Neo-Advaita Nonduality Orientalism Theosophical Society
Asian Pre-historic Proto-Indo-Iranian religion Iran Zoroastrianism India Advaita Vedanta Buddha-nature Enlightenment Kevala jnana Madhyamaka Moksha Neo-Vedanta Tantra Yoga Yogachara East-Asia Taoism
Other non-Western Animism Shamanism Totemism
Psychological Humanistic psychology Mindfulness Positive psychology Self-help Self-realization True self and false self
Research
Neurological Mystical psychosis Cognitive science of religion Neuroscience of religion Geschwind syndrome Evolutionary psychology of religion
Category
v t e

The evolutionary psychology of religion is the study of religious belief using evolutionary psychology principles. It is one approach to the psychology of religion. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain's functional structure is argued to have a genetic basis, and is therefore subject to the effects of natural selection and evolution. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes, religion in this case, by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.^[1]

^ Steadman, L.; Palmer, C. (2008). The Supernatural and Natural Selection: Religion and Evolutionary Success. Paradigm.