Religion, Brain, & Behavior

CMAC houses the flagship journal for the biocultural study of religion, Religion, Brain, & Behavior. As an academic journal deeply invested in approaches to understanding religion that combine biological and cultural modes of analysis, RBB is a source of scholarship from and for a variety of fields. The aim of Religion, Brain & Behavior is to provide a vehicle for the advancement of current biological approaches to understanding religion at every level from brain to behavior. RBB unites multiple disciplinary perspectives that share these interests. The journal seeks empirical and theoretical studies that reflect rigorous scientific standards and a sophisticated appreciation of the academic study of religion.

In April 2011, the first issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior was published by Taylor & Francis, adorned then as today with William Blake’s “Web of Religion”. The journal provides “a vehicle for the advancement of current biological approaches to understanding religion at every level from brain to behavior,” welcoming contributions from fields such as cognitive neuroscience, genetics, and physiology to evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, and epidemiology. Today, out of 594 religious studies journals, RBB has the second highest CiteScore, a metric that ranks journals by the number of citations articles receive on average each year. This is a big accomplishment for RBB and its editors.

In the 10 years since RBB was born, there’ve been quite a few efforts to try to join scientific and humanities approaches within religious studies. That’s sometimes produced hardening of positions with scientific people blowing off the humanities people as not worth talking to and humanities people blowing off the scientific people as reductionistic and ignorant. And the end result is that things have gotten worse, I think. But fortunately there are a few places where the humanities and the sciences combine readily and RBB is one of those places. And we’re proud of that and it’s important to us. We hope that that way of thinking and working is going to extend its reach over time

Dr. Wesley J. Wildman, editor of Religion, Brain, & Behavior
Subscription information

Individuals can purchase up to 4 titles per volume year through Taylor & Francis, or by becoming a member at the Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion. These subscriptions are for personal, non-commercial use only.

Current Editors

Richard Sosis
Founding Editor
University of Connecticut

Wesley J. Wildman
Founding Editor
Boston University

Joseph Bulbulia in front of a beige wall

Joseph Bulbulia
Editor
Victoria University, Wellington

Irene Cristofori
Editor
Claude Bernard University Lyon 1

Eric Weisel

Suzanne Hoogeveen
Editor
University of Amsterdam

John Shaver
Editor

University of Otago

Dave Rohr
Assistant Editor for Management
Boston University

Chris Kavanagh
Assistant Editor for Social Media
University of Oxford

Editorial Board

Candace AlcortaUniversity of Connecticut
Nancy AmmermanBoston University
Quentin AtkinsonUniversity of Auckland
Scott AtranUniversity of Michigan
Jesse Bering, University of Otago
Justin BarrettFuller Theological Seminary
Paul BloomYale University
Pascal BoyerWashington University in St. Louis
Warren BrownFuller Theological Seminary
Philip Clayton, Claremont Graduate University
Adam B. CohenArizona State University
Emma CohenUniversity of Oxford
Lee CronkRutgers University
Daniel DennettTufts University
Robin DunbarUniversity of Oxford
Robert EmmonsUniversity of California, Davis
Ernst FehrUniversity of Zurich
Daniel FesslerUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Armin GeertzAarhus University
William Scott GreenUniversity of Miami
Joseph HenrichHarvard University
William IronsNorthwestern University
Dominic JohnsonUniversity of Oxford
Eric KaufmannUniversity of London
Deborah KelemenBoston University
Lee KirkpatrickCollege of William and Mary
Pierre LiénardUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas
Tanya Luhrmann, Stanford University
Mike McCulloughUniversity of California, San Diego
Ryan McKayRoyal Holloway, University of London
Andrew NewbergThomas Jefferson University
Ara NorenzayanUniversity of British Columbia
Kenneth PargamentBowling Green State University
Benjamin PurzyckiAarhus University
Ilkka PyysiäinenUniversity of Helsinki
Peter RichersonUniversity of California, Davis
Steven SchachterHarvard University
Todd ShackelfordOakland University
Steven SchachteHarvard University
Uffe SchjoedtAarhus University
Jeffrey SchlossWestmont College
Todd ShackelfordOakland University
Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia
Michael Spezio, Scripps College, Claremont
Ann Taves, University of California, Santa Barbara
Robert Trivers, Rutgers University
Michiel van ElkUniversity of Amsterdam
Fraser WattsCambridge University
Claire WhiteUniversity of California, Northridge
Harvey WhitehouseUniversity of Oxford
David Sloan WilsonBinghamton University
Paul J. ZakClaremont Graduate University