The cognitive science of religion Cristine Legare (legare@psy.utexas.edu ) Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station #A8000, Austin, Texas 78712 USA Andrew Shtulman (shtulman@oxy.edu ) Department of Psychology, Occidental College 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 91106 USA Jesse Bering (j.bering@qub.ac.uk ) Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen’s University, Belfast 2-4 Fitzwilliam Street, Belfast, Northern Ireland UK, BT24 7PL Harvey Whitehouse (harvey.whitehouse@anthro.ox.ac.uk ) School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography,University of Oxford 51 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, England Keywords: cognitive science of religion; supernatural explanations; religious cognition. The study of religious cognition The cognitive science of religion has recently emerged as an important topic of study by both cognitive psychologists (e.g. Rosengren, Johnson, & Harris, 2000; Legare & Gelman, 2008) and anthropologists (e.g. Boyer, 2001; Whitehouse, 2004). How can we explain a phenomenon as diverse and variable as religion in terms of the universality of the human mind? Recent research has demonstrated that the explanation for religious beliefs and behaviors can be found in basic features of human cognition (e.g. Bering, 2004; 2006; Shtulman, 2008). Although religion is increasingly recognized as a legitimate subject for study by cognitive scientists, this area of human experience remains somewhat neglected by experimental psychology. In this symposium we consider the emerging experimental literature on religious cognition from a psychological and an anthropological perspective, with the goal of advocating an interdisciplinary, developmental approach to the field. The symposium will focus on two themes. Legare and Shtulman will begin by considering the development of religious concepts, as well as the ways in which cognitive processes facilitate both scientific and supernatural thinking. Bering and Whitehouse will consider the cognitive and evolutionary underpinnings of religious thinking and the resilience of religious beliefs. The development of religious cognition Religious thinking is shaped by a host of cognitive processes and concepts (Bering & Bjorklund, 2004; Bering, 2006; Shtulman, 2008), many of which facilitate other kinds of thinking (Boyer, 2001; Legare & Gelman, 2008). These talks will consider the ways in which these processes and concepts undergird the development of religious cognition and the ways in which religious and scientific explanatory frameworks are reconciled. Legare: The co-existence of scientific and supernatural explanatory frameworks across development Access to scientific and supernatural explanatory frameworks is a universal psychological experience, and coordinating these distinct belief systems is a general cognitive problem. One approach to investigating the relationship between different explanatory frameworks is to study contexts where both scientific and supernatural explanations are used to interpret the same events (Legare & Gelman, 2008). Constructing explanations for existentially arousing topics such as biological origins, illness, and death provide just such an opportunity (Evans, Legare, & Rosengren, in press). Legare will discuss new findings of how intuitive and “scientific” explanatory systems co-exist with religious or supernatural explanatory systems across development in diverse cultural contexts. Cristine Legare is an assistant professor of psychology at UT Austin. Her interests include mechanisms of knowledge acquisition, culture and cognition, and the development of scientific and supernatural reasoning. Her work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Child Development . Shtulman: Developmental differences in the interpretation of religious claims Religious claims, like claims about the nature of the deities one’s culture endorses, are transmitted not only from adult to adult but also from adults to children. How children understand such claims undoubtedly influences the course of their transmission. In this talk, Shtulman will present data suggesting that children do not interpret religious claims in the same manner as adults. Rather, they interpret them on the basis of untutored, highly anthropomorphic 2081