Introduction Many church members would attest to the social and perhaps even emotional benefits of participation and belief. Could one of these benefits include prevention of a major depressive disorder (MDD)? This was the question asked by S. Kasen, P.…
Introduction Do liberals and conservatives really see the world differently? Maybe it’s more like they feel it differently. Recent research (e.g., Tomkins 1995) has suggested that conservatives and liberals experience different sorts of emotional responses. Specifically, some emotions, like joy…
Pleasure and Pain as Evolution’s Compass According to Darwinian theory, the point of life is simple: produce more life. But this vast agenda doesn’t always seem to motivate our countless humdrum, daily decisions. Instead, James A. Morris (Royal Lancaster Infirmary,…
Introduction It is examination time in many schools, colleges, and universities and students around the world are seriously stressed out. In the famous university town of Cambridge, England, for example one can almost feel the anxiety in the air as…
Introduction It’s a question many religious parents dread: “When Spot dies, will he go to heaven?” Countless children – and adults – have wondered whether their pets possess spirits, and the debate isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. Still,…
Introduction: A Chain of Religious Virtues Religiosity is correlated with many different psychological states and behaviors, such as empathy and generosity, or exclusivity and violence. However, the causal connections between belief, experience, and behavior are presently unclear. Psychologists Neal Krause…
Introduction “You’re not religious because you never go to church!” accuses one friend. “Well, you only go to church to socialize with your friends!” comes the retort. Is the person who goes to church in order to socialize more religious…
Lukasz Kiszkiel, Piotr Paweł Laskowski, David Voas, Rachel J. Bacon, Wesley J. Wildman, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, F. LeRon Shults & Konrad Talmont-Kaminski Religion, Brain & Behavior Abstract: This article presents the Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R), explains how it was…
The core goal of MRC is to build a theoretically integrated, data-validated, assumption-relative demographic forecasting system based on a big-theory understanding of (non)religious identity and change. To achieve this goal, our team has collected vast amounts of data in three countries: the…
Wesley Wildman, George Hodulik, and F. LeRon Shults Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation Abstract: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made abundantly evident that human behavior is a critical factor in determining whether interventions intended to manage infection spread are effective. Human behavior…