Functional Origins of Religious Concepts: Ontological and Strategic Selection in Evolved Minds Author(s): Pascal Boyer Source: The

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jun., 2000), pp. 195-214 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2660892 . Accessed: 30/03/2013 10:03
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FUNCTIONAL ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS: ONTOLOGICAL AND STRATEGIC SELECTION IN EVOLVED MINDS*
PASCAL BOYER

Scientifique, Lyons Centre Nationalde la Recherche

Culturally successfulreligious concepts are the outcome of selective processes that make Among some concepts more likelythan othersto be easily acquired,storedand transmitted. the constructsof human imagination,some connect to intuitiveontological principlesin consuccessfulsupernatural such a way that they constitutea small catalogue of culturally cepts. Experimental and anthropological evidence confirm the salience and transmission concepts,cognitivecapacitiesforsocial potentialof thiscatalogue.Among these supernatural agents some concepts of supernatural selection.As a result, interactionintroduce a further are connected to morality, group identity, ritualand emotion.These typical'religious'supernatural agents are tacitlypresumed to have access to informationthat is crucial to social interaction, an assumptionthatboosts theirspread in human groups.

What is the origin of religiousconcepts?How come we can find concepts recurrent of supernatural agency more or less the world over,with important This lectureis a 'progress features? an account of how thesepreviously report', intractablequestions are now a matterof empirical,indeed experimental in progress What broughtabout thisremarkable change is substantial enquiry. of how human minds work. This allows a naturalistic our understanding account of culturalrepresentations1 that describes how evolved conceptual make humanslikelyto acquire certainconceptsmore easilythan dispositions others. does not like otherformsof human communication, Culturaltransmission, It requiresinferconsistin 'downloading'conceptsfromone mind to another. ential processes, wherebypeople attendto cues in other people's behaviour, infer theircommunicative intentions and build concepts on the basis of what theyinferred (Sperber 1996; Tomasello,Kruger & Ratner 1993). As a result, To call some of otherpeople's representations. createvariants people constantly between repre'cultural' is to point to a relativesimilarity representations that held by membersof a particular suggests group.The similarity sentations in the transmission some conceptsare selected process,againsta whole variety thatare forgotten, discardedand modified. of variants and varietyof factorscontributeto the stability Obviously,an indefinite in a historicalcontext. recurrenceof any particularset of representations
* Malinowski Lecture, 1999

Inst. (N.S.) 6, 195-214 j Roy.anthrop.

? RoyalAnthropological 2000. Institute

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However,the aggregation of manyindividualacquisitionprocesses 'washesout' such local factors. In the long run and in the comparisonof many different human groups,local factors cancel each otherout.What we findas recurrent features, over time and between groups,are conceptsthat, all else being equal, tend to resistdistortion betterthan others. The aggregatedresultof individual acquisitionand communicationepisodes channelsculturesalong particular paths,with the resultthatsome concepts are both relatively stablewithin a group and recurrent among different groups. In the domain of religiousconcepts, two different selectionprocessesreduce fitconcepts. the domain of culturally First, not all productsof human imaginationare equally fitforwidespread transmission. Althoughthereare no obvious limitsto human imagination, we findthatin mosthuman groupssupernatural notions(includingreligiousconceptsbut also folklore, superstition, fictionand fantasy) tend to centrearound a small catalogue with recurrent This is because human minds are features. equipped with an intuitive ontology, a set of expectationsabout the kinds of things to be found in the world. Among the indefinitely many concepts individualscan imagine and combine,some connect with this ontologyin a particular way.As a result, they stand betterchances than other concepts of spreadingin a relatively preserved form. fitsupernatural Second, not all culturally conceptsare of equal social importance.Some of themare connectedto representations of group identity, ritual, moralityand social interaction, corresponding to what we usually call 'religion', while othersare not.This difference stemsfromanotherset of cognitive capacities. Humans are greatly dependent upon cooperation and informationabout potential cooperators,which creates specific cognitive problems.Humans have a set of strategic capacities thathandle these problems. in such a way thattheyactiNow some supernatural conceptsare represented As a result, vate strategic capacities. theyare more likelythan othersto generate high commitment and other psychologicaland social effects typicalof 'religion'.

and intuitive Religious concepts ontology2 The presentaccount is about mentallyrepresented concepts that are spread in human groups. These conceptsdo not alwaysmatchofficial descriptions of what people are supposed to think,in this case commonly sanctionedtheaccessible ologies. Perhapsmore important, people's concepts are not entirely to conscious inspection. This is why we need and use experimental protocols to uncovertheircontentsand organization. Three features are generallypresentin the mental representation of such concepts. a setofontological thatwe know First, supernatural conceptsactivate categories are present in normal minds from an early stage of cognitive development. Objects in the environmentare identifiedas belonging to kindbut also to ontological categories(PERSON, concepts ('telephone','giraffe') ARTEFACT, ANIMAL, etc.). We now have much betterevidence concerning intuitiveontological categories and associated theories, coming from

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fromexperimental developmental studieswith adults,fromneupsychology, roscienceand fromthe studyof cognitivepathologies.3Concepts of imaginary objects and beings are intuitively associatedwith particular ontological categoriestoo.The concept of 'spirit'activates the categoryPERSON. If you prayto a particular statueof theVirgin,you are standingor kneelingin front of an ARTEFACT. If you thinkthatsome antelopescan disappearat will,you must activateyourANIMAL categoryto represent these special beings. thatviolates Second, supernatural conceptsinvariably intuinformation specfy itive expectations associatedwith the relevant ontologicalcategory. Ontological categoriesare associatedwith'intuitive the motion and theories'.For instance, interaction of solid physicalobjects is the object of an 'intuitive physics'that monthsafter develops fromthe first birth.Principlesof intuitive physicsstipulate that objects have continuous trajectories in space and time,that they collide but do not merge on contact,that unsupportedobjects fall and so forth. The factthatsome objects are identified as membersof the categories ANIMAL or PERSON triggers 'intuitive biology' principles. These stipulate thatlive beings have 'essential'qualitiesinside them thatmake them members of one particular species,that they are propelledby internalforce,that they belong to mutually exclusive classes in a taxonomic hierarchy. The most importantdomain of intuitivetheoreticalprinciplesis 'intuitivetheory of mind',a domain of expectations and principlesthatallow us to represent the behaviourof animalsand people as guided by internalrepresentations: beliefs, emotions.Supernatural intentions, concepts describe membersof ontological categoriesthat violate intuitiveexpectationsfor these categories.Spiritsare persons that are mostly invisible and go throughphysical obstacles.Some statuesand other artefacts are special because you can talk to them and they will listen and understand.Some mountains are special because they eat in Boyer 1994). These violationsare food and digestit (see more illustrations generally explicitand are transmitted by culturalinput. the intuitive that Third, a supernaturalconcept also activates expectations are not violated, among those associated with the relevantontological catewith the features tacitand need gory. By contrast above,thisremains generally not be acquired via social transmission. For instance,people tacitlyrepreas havingminds. sent spirits That is, spirits are assumed to perceiveevents, to rememberwhat they perceived,to have beliefsand form intentions on the basisof theirbeliefs, and so on. Intuitive is spontaneously extended psychology to spiritsbecause they are identifiedas a special kind of PERSON. Note that our intuitivetheory of mind works very well without us ever reprefrombehaviours, sentingwhat its principlesare,how it computes intentions and so on. diverse. Mentallyrepresented supernatural conceptsare extremely They vary not just fromgroup to group but also froma memberof a group to another and even withinthe same individual, dependingon the cognitivetaskat hand. But diversity and similarity, are a matterof explanatory obviously, viewpoint. If we focus,not just on the concepts themselves but also on the cognitive and communicatethem,we processesthatallow people to acquire,represent can see that a great varietyof supernatural are informedby a small concepts numberof templates. Templatesare just principledways of handlinginformation fromintuitive with the followingstructure: ontology,

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(0) lexical label; (1) pointerto an ontological category; (2) violation of expectations, either: (a) breach of expectations for thatparticular category, or of expectations fromanothercategory; (b) transfer for the category; (3) activationof non-violatedexpectations (4) additionalencyclopaedicdetails,thatvaryfromplace to place. Many different religious concepts may correspond to one template.For instance,this is the templatefor the concepts of 'spirit'that we find in so many cultures: (1) an ontological category: PERSON; (2) a violation of intuitive physics, e.g. spirits are invisible; have a (3) activationof non-violated expectations:being persons,spirits, mind,theycan perceiveevents, formbeliefs, have intentions, etc.; (4) place-holderfor additional(local) detail. Templatesare not 'archetypes' or 'ideal types'or a 'familyresemblance' for religiousconcepts.In facttemplates are not concepts at all.They are just procedures forthe use of information The cultural providedby intuitive ontology. success of concepts seems to depend, not on theirspecificfeatures, but on what intuitive which is used and how; in otherwords, ontologicalinformation templateis used. This account predictsthat there are not that many different templates, simplybecause thereare not thatmanyontologicalcategoriesand setsof associated intuitiveprinciples.In other words,there are not that many ways of 'tweaking'intuitive ontologyso as to produce supernatural concepts,so that a general'catalogue of the supernatural' should be rathershort.If one sticks with the description of intuitive ontologygiven above (which may of course on better change depending psychologicalevidence forcategoriesand intuitive principles),five categoriesare involved:PERSON, ANIMAL, PLANT, ARTEFACT, NATURAL OBJECT (i.e. non-man-made, non-livingpartsof the environment like rivers, rocksand mountains)and threemain domains of inference: intuitive intuitive physical expectations, biologyand intuitive 'theory A breach of mind'. Violations are produced either by breach or by transfer. contradicts intuitive associatedwith the ontologicalcategory(e.g. expectations a table that suddenlydisappears, thereby violatingintuitive physicsactivated extends to a category informaby the ARTEFACT category).A transfer tion that is intuitively associated with another category (e.g. a table that associatedwith theANIMAL category). breathes, usingbiological information and possible violationsproduce only a small Categories,typesof inferences list of templates: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Person + breach of physicalexpectations; Person + breach of biological expectations; Person + breach of psychologicalexpectations; Animal + breach of physicalexpectations; Animal + breach of biological expectations;

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(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

Animal + breach of psychologicalexpectations; Plant + breach of physicalexpectations; Plant + breach of biological expectations; Plant + transfer of psychologicalexpectations; Natural object + breach of physicalexpectations; Natural object + transfer of biological expectations; Natural object + transfer of psychologicalexpectations; Artefact + breach of physicalexpectations; + transfer Artefact of biological expectations; + transfer Artefact of psychologicalexpectations.

The templateaccount is, on the whole, compatiblewith the anthropological record.It is no simpletaskto evaluatethe relative frequency of templates. is thatthe kind of evidence providedby anthropologOne serious difficulty ical reports, precious though it is, covers only one aspect of religiousconcepts,the overt, sociallytransmitted violationsthatmake such conceptssalient. A cognitive description of the templates also requires the tacitside,thosebackground expectationsthat are used in producing inferencesabout religious objects and agents.Moreover,we have littleor no reliablestatistical information about the distribution of different types. However, we can be fairly confident about both ends of the distribution: conceptsthatwe findvirtually everywhere and concepts that are not reportedso farin the anthropological record. This evidence confirms thatmost religiousconcepts are indeed based in thiscatalogue, on one of the templates given the ontologicalcategoriesand principlesnormallydeveloped by human minds.The evidence also suggests that the features are invariably essential to that correspondto these templates the representation of the religiousconcepts.In psychologicalterms, theyare the core that make such imagined objects and agents what they are. features Religious and other supernatural concepts may or may not include other but they invariably kinds of odd or unfamiliar or surprisinginformation, include a violationof ontologicalexpectations. To explainwhy thisis the case, such processesin indiwe mustturnto experimental evidence thathighlights vidual acquisitionand memory.

evidence: recall and inference Experimental

We now have some experimental evidence that individualprocessestend to favoursupernatural concepts of the formatdescribedabove. In a number of studieswe used artificial controlled conceptsthatcorrespondto the templates described above, yet are not culturally familiar(see Barrett1996; Barrett& Keil 1996; Boyer 1999; Boyer & Ramble n.d.). These studiesmeasuredrecall Recall is particularly for such concepts in the context of short narratives. All else because it is a necessary conditionforculturaltransmission. important being equal, conceptsthatare recalledbetterthanothershave a higherpotenI will not describe here the specificprotocols,materials tial for transmission. or statistics of such studiesbut summarizetheirmain findings. free recall tasksand in serial transmission straightforward studies,where the

This occursbothin arerecalled better than standard associations. (1) Violations

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recall of a storyis used as materialfor a second 'generation'of participants' participants, and so on.4 notjust on 'oddity'. The previous (2) Recall depends on ontological violations, resultscould be interpreted as the fact that violations are simply strange studiesincludeditemsthatare simply because theyare unexpected. But further odd, unexpected but without ontological violations.Violations are better cannot So strangeness recalledand bettertransmitted thansuch 'odd' material. be the only explanationfor recall of violations. are do notcontaminate intuitions. Supernatural templates (3) Violations people's proceduresfor handling information from intuitiveontology that produce ontologyitselfis not affected by salientconcepts.This requiresthatintuitive the presenceof such salientviolations(otherwisetheywould not be salient). in which people (i) A good testof thiswould be whetherwe findsituations in the limitedcontextof some represent a violation of intuitive expectations An illusreligious notion and (ii) refuse similar violationsin all othercontexts. is Walker's(1992) studyof transformations of naturalkinds (an animal tration changes species) in both ritual and non-ritualcontextsamong the Yoruba of Nigeria. This showed that people who were willing to accept counteras ritual occurrenceswere equally confidentthat intuitivetransformations theycould not happen in other contexts. default expectations. Those intuitive (4) Inferences are governed by background about expectationsthat are not violated are the main source of inferences This is confirmedby Barrett and Keil's ingenious supernaturalsituations. on God concepts (Barrett & Keil 1996). They elicited fromthe experiments features thatmake God special.Subjects generally mentionviolaparticipants tions of theory-of-mind expectations, forexample thatGod attendsto everything at once. They then tested recall for storiesthat used these violations. were generallyreplaced They found that in the subjects'recall such features with more intuitive takenfromintuitive of cognitivefunctioning, descriptions 'theoryof mind'. arenotrecalled. with no inferential Recall decreaseswhen (5) Violations potential for but do not allow defaultinferences conceptsviolate intuitive expectations the category(e.g. a god thatexistssporadically, a statuethatis nowhere). to violationsis cross-culturally stable. The God concept (6) Sensitivity studies (see above, (4)) were replicatedin India with similarresults(Barrett 'odd' and 1998). Also, Boyer and Ramble (n.d.) tested recall for ordinary, in Gabon and in Nepal. In the violation concepts in two contrasted settings same way as in France and the United States, violations were recalled much better than either common associations or 'odd' material.Massive in culturalsettings in differences did not resultin any significant differences recall performance. All this goes some way towardsexplainingwhy the supernatural concepts people are likelyto entertain, acquire and storebelong to the same'catalogue' the world over.Whatspecific 'choices' were made by the previousgenerations affects one's sensitivity to these concepts only marginally. There is a crosscultural sensitivity to violations of intuitive expectations for ontological which is not affected concepts used categories, by the range of supernatural in the culture, or by people's comby theirvarietyor mode of transmission,

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mitment to them.This may account forthe first type of selectionmentioned at the beginning,thatwhich selectssome productsof human imaginationto constitute the domain of culturally successful supernatural concepts.

Further selection in thesupernatural imagination

Most supernatural concepts are found in popular fiction:folk tales,myths, But some of these concepts are treatedquite difanecdotes or urban myths. Also, ferently. They are construedas possiblydescribingreal statesof affairs. they often triggerhigh emotional arousal or come to be linked to special kinds of experience. People may perform rituals about the entities described by these concepts.The notions are often associated with morality. with importantsocial They are connected to concepts of group identity, consequences. Such concepts (God, gods, ancestors, witches,spirits)are taken fromthe and each of them belongs to one of the tem'catalogue of the supernatural', plates describedabove. But theyare not just that. They seem to have importantsocial implications. Indeed, thisdifference may well be the main basis for our intuitive understanding of the term'religion'. That is,we tend to use that termwhen ontologicalassumptions about supernatural entitiesare combined with one or several of these features: commitment, moral understandings, group identity, ritual, special experience. Considerable energyhas been spent (or wasted) trying to turn this'polythetic'characterization of religioninto a more properdefinition with necesIt is perhapsmore usefulto accept thatthese conditions.5 saryand sufficient features are not always found togetherand to turn to questions of greater Are all supernatural actuality. conceptsequallylikelyto be associatedwith such If not, why not?What gives a particular sociallyimportant effects? range of to ritual,group identity, supernatural concepts a greaterconceptual affinity moral understandings or privateexperience? In termsof our list of templates, it seems clear that such associationsare with a of made only specificsubset the supernatural templates, namelythose This is true for instance of that activateour 'theory of mind' expectations. which correspondto: concepts of gods, ancestorsand spirits, (1) Person with breach of physicalexpectations; (2) Person with breach of biological expectations. backIn these cases 'intuitivetheoryof mind' is activatedas the intuitive In other cases, such as concepts of lisground associatedwith the category. of 'intuitive the violation activation teningstatues, theoryof mind' constitutes part of the template: (15) Artefact with transfer of psychologicalexpectations. It seemsclearfrom the anthropological recordthatsociallysignificant supernatural concepts are largelyabout agents spontaneously(and in large part

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tacitly) represented as havingpsychological processes(perception, belief, intention) thatagree with our intuitive theoryof mind.6 The idea that socially significant supernatural imaginationis principally about imagined intentional agentsis not altogether new,to say the least.But than othersbecome associatedwith imporwhy should these conceptsrather in termsof conceptantsocial effects? Now nothingin what we said so far, tual structure, would make it especiallydifficult to establish such associations with other templatesfor supernatural concepts. Stories that connect ritual, to zombie-like animals or plantswith moral prescriptions or group identity and the strange physicswould be equally salient, counter-intuitive, intriguing like.The privilegeof intentional agencyseems so obvious thatwe oftenforget that it requiresan explanationthat should be general (the phenomenon is foundthe world over) and psychological, of some concepts as thisis a matter being easier to acquire and represent than others (Guthrie 1993). Classical answersare of littlehelp here. In anthropology we used to think, following Piaget, that projecting intentionalagency onto non-intentional in early domainswas a pervasive formof cognitive activity, especially prevalent childhood (Piaget 1954). This is not entirely plausible in the light of recent evidence concerningcognitive development. It seems thatchildren in factstart with a strictdemarcationbetween intentionalagents and the rest (Bullock, Gelman & Baillargeon 1982; Rochat, Morgan & Carpenter 1997). Another is thatwe generally tend to projecthumanfeatures onto unknown explanation because human features are most familiar. This is misleadingon two entities, counts. First, what is projectedis not specifically human. Intuitivetheoryof mind is spontaneously activatedby the presencenot just of humans,but also are projected,only of most animals. Second, not all human characteristics intuitive theoryof mind. In many religiousconcepts thereis a projectionof intentionalagency but not of other human characteristics, such as having legs and arms,livingin kin-basedgroups,eating cooked food.7 Even if we could explain why concepts of supernatural intentional agents are generally more salientthanothersupernatural concepts,thiswould not be enough. In any culturalgroup we findmanyconcepts of supernatural agents, but only a small subset of these is associatedwith high commitment, emotional tenor or a connection to morality, ritualand group identity. There are more Mickey Mouse concepts than God concepts.The question is, what between the 'serious' notions and the rest of the produces the difference We often treat this difference as a straightforward, supernatural repertoire? assumethatthe main unproblematic consequence of people's comrnitment.We difference between Mickey Mouse and God, say forChristians, is thatChristianstreatGod as a real agent and Mickey Mouse as a fiction. True, but this not take for granted.Over time,people are is somethingwe should explain, faced with many different versionsof a particular religiousconcept and they themselves variants of thatconcept.That produce by inference manydifferent some of these imagined agentsare takenas more probablyreal than othersis a functionof these inferences, of the type of information that is associated with these different concepts. So there must be some other featurethat makes somepsychology-based what thatis,we mustturnto anotherdomain conceptsspecial.To understand of evolved mentalmachinery, thatof cooperation and information.

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Mentalmechanisms forsocialinteraction witha fewcommonplace remarks aboutgeneral aspects of our Let me start evolutionary heritage: about (1) Humansdependmorethanany otherspeciesupon information is based on a rich and flexible theirenvironment. Most humanbehaviour human little behaviour can be data-base that gives parameters foraction.Very acquior evendescribed without taking intoaccountthe massive explained The properecological sitionof information about surrounding situations. nicheof humans is a 'cognitive niche'(Tooby& Cosmides1990). tuned cooperation withother human beings. (2) Humans depend uponfinely in evoluHumanshavefora long time(longenoughto makea difference This social interaction. tionary terms) lived in smallgroupsand in intense stereotyped actionsequences and in interaction is not accomplished through factcould not be. It requires between different people's subtlecoordination actions. humans dependto an enormous degreeon (3) Becauseof thesetwo facts, about in particular, they states, whatinformation information other people's mental expedition, warraidor haveand whattheir intentions are.No joint hunting without precise monitoring of what marriage negotiation can be organized other peoplewantand believe. of specific That humans all sorts creates problems. dependon cooperation are strategic wherethe value (the expected problems, Cooperation problems of a particular someoneelse makesa benefit) move dependson whether 1960).This creates particular move (not necessarily the sameone) (Schelling thatis, it becomescrucialto be able to estimate 'commitment problems', or defect. A whole rangeof one'spotential to cooperate partner's willingness humancharacteristics factors, typically is explainedby these evolutionary including: is characterThe humanmind-design (1) A hypertrophy ofsocial intelligence. The set of intuitive psychology. principles ized by a hypertrophy of intuitive - perceptions, - fromobserved and desires thatinfer mentalstates beliefs behaviouris vastlymore complex than in any other species.Also, it brain structures. These conand seemsto engagededicated appears very early and how they whatinformation to otheragents monitor is available stantly treat it. and to detect to evaluate cooperators potential defectors. (2) A capacity potential in others on oftrustworthiness Fororganisms that signals depend cooperation, for fakedsignals mechanisms as well as detection are crucially important, havepointed & Gambetta As evolutionary forthcoming). biologists (Bacharach thatallow (i) a of cooperation mental structures requires out,the evolution and reliofpastinteraction of individuals, (ii) memories precise identification or likelihood of theseindividuals, cheating ability (iii) somewayof detecting or excludecheaters of cheating, and (iv) some motivation to punish (Trivers in humans. For that we find suchcapacities 1985).Controlled studies confirm a demonstration is Cosmides's oftheimportance ofcheater-detection instance, on logicalproblem-solving. The subjects' per(1989) seriesof experiments when theseare formuin simple is greatly increased formance logicaltasks of cooperation and socialcontracts. latedas problems

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(3) A repertoire ofmoralfeelings. Complex cooperationproblemsare to some extent solved by such feelingsas an unmotivateddispositionto honesty, an emotional preference forfairdealings, a dispositionto feel deep anger at the mere suggestionof cheating,a dispositionto punish defectors, a disposition to punishpeople who do not punishdefectors. These feelings are not directly opportunistic. That is,in manysituations theylead people to forgothe immediate benefits of relatively safecheatingor of profitable dealingswith cheaters. However, such emotional dispositionshelp solve commitmentproblems in cooperation (Frank 1988). They createemotionalstatesthatare not voluntarily controlledand whose siglnals are difficult to fake.So emotional dispositions advertise and deter defectors. reliability (4) The stability ofsomeun-fakeable (ordfficult tofake) signals. In humansand otherspecies we findthatevolutionfavoursthe developmentof some signals that are eitherimpossibleor at least difficult and costlyto fake.In the case of humans,thereis now good evidence thatsome clues concerningpeople's indeed sincerity (tone of voice,facialexpressions, gestures) are difficult to fake, to a large degree outside voluntarycontrol (Ekman 1985). People are often sensitive to theseclues,even thoughtheygenerally have littleconscious access to the processeswherebya person'ssincerity is gauged. (5) Easily produced The difficulty of efficienttrickery(see seWf-deception. above) is somewhatoffset by anothermechanismthatis pervasiveand extenand perhaps misleadsively documented in experimentalsocial psychology, inglylabelled 'self-deception' (Trivers1985). When it would be advantageous for agentA if agent B perceiveda situationin a particular way,we find that A oftentendsto feel committed to thisway of perceiving Conthe situation. trolledexperiments show thatpeople tend to adapt theirway of seeing situations to the construalthat it would be in theirinterest that others adopt. in a hypocritical This is not self-deception or manipulative sense,since such of situations are spontaneousand genuine.However,theyconstiperceptions mechanismthat allows sincerecommunicationof a desirable tute a strategic perception. rewards (6) Emotional for gossip.Humans spend a greatdeal of time acquiron other people. The ubiquity and importance of gossip ing information to informasuggestthatthereis an evolutionary dispositionto pay attention tion concerningothers, in particular in domains of greatadaptivevalue such as sex, resourcesand status.8 Because we live in groups and depend crucially on information, and because most of the crucial information is information about otherpeople's actionsand intentions, we are predisposedto enjoy comactionsand intentions, about third-party municating althoughthe information This also explainswhy gossip is as conveyedmay be of no immediatebenefit. at impresour greatefforts universally despisedas it is enjoyed.It undermines our controlover the information we want to sion management and threatens transmit about our own actions and intentions. This description of specializedmentalmachinery explainshow people assess situations and use evolved dispositions to help them make roughly particular have observed Social psychologists adequate choices given the circumstances. in manydifferent theseeffects domainsof social interaction. Controlledstudies show thatintuitions about people's attractiveness, friendliness, trustworthiness, honestyand the like,are the outcome of exceedinglycomplex computations

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on the basis of subtlesignals(Bacharach& Gambettaforthcoming). But these computational processesremainlargelyinaccessibleto conscious access.What is accessible to consciousnessis typically a feeling that a certain person is attractive, reliableand so forth. We trackinformation about otheragents'moves and about the information theyhave access to, but all thisis pursued effortlessly, without conscious deliberation. The cognitive devices that handle such computations are informationprocessing devices, whose input consists in informationthat is potentially relevantto interaction: facial cues for emotions,reputationof the potential cooperator, past episodes of interaction with him or her,social categoriesto which he or she belongs, contingentsigns of trustworthiness and the like. This information is then handled differently according to the situationat hand as different contexts(e.g. kinshiprelations, social exchange,mate-choice) probablyrequire different principles. The output is a set of particularintuitions about people, about situations, about the emotional tenor of situations,as well as preferences between possible outcomes or between plans for future action. and varieties Strategic information of agents Let us call strategic the domain of information thatfeedsinto inforinformation In many mation-processing devices geared to regulatingsocial interaction. fromother infordifferentiate information species,objectivefeatures strategic mation:special signals, special contextsand the like.9In humans,by contrast, it anyaspect of a situation potentially containsstrategic information.Whether does or not depends on a representation of the particular situationat hand. the situation,that you have meat in your Depending on how I represent to me (in most cases) or strategic refrigerator may be non-strategic (if meat was stolen frommy pantry, or if I am hungry, or if you alwaysdeclaredyou were a vegetarian). That you went to the next village yesterday may be nonall I infer that I is strategic (if you were away) or strategic (if suspectthatyou went thereto meet a potentialsexual partner). That you talkedwith So-andif I suspectthatthe two of you are involvedin some so may become strategic between plot against me or a potential coalition with me. The distinction and non-strategic of the particular sitstrategic depends on a representation uation and can be expressedin functional terms:
is the subset of all the information available(to a information Strategic currently thatactivates mental thatregulate about a particular particular agent, situation) capacities cooperation.

is Note that this does not in any way entail that strategicinformation sexual more important thanotherinformation. To know about our coworkers' peccadilloes (strategic)is in most circumstancesof negligible import; to know how to flee frompredators(non-strategic) is much more useful. Also, thisdefinition does not implythatone is rightto considersome information informaThe distinctionbetween strategicand non-strategic as strategic. tion relativeto a situation, is all in the eye of the beholder,who may well be wrong.

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Humans not only represent strategic information, they also represent the extentto which other people have strategic For instance, information. given a particular situationwhere you have somethingthat I want,I automatically not just of the fact thatyou have that which I want, forma representation, but also thatyou may be aware of the fact that I want it, and thatthis may have some influenceon your intentions. are supSuch complex inferences other people's mentalstates ported by our theoryof mind,which represents and theiraccess to information. Now one fundamental principle of our intuitivetheory of mind is that access to information is imperfect. Given a situation, and given some information about thatsituation, we do not automatically presumethatthisinformation is equally accessibleto everyone.For instance, if I removeyour keys from yourpocket while you leftthe room,I expect thatyou will not be aware of what I did. I expect thatyou will be surprised when you cannot findyour keys. Normal children from the age of four routinelysolve experimental tasks that require evaluatingsuch obstacles to information transfer (Perner, Leekam & Wimmer 1987; Wimmer & Perner 1983). This principleof imperfectinformation is so fundamental thatnot havingit in one's cognitiveequipment resultsin pathologies like autism (Baron-Cohen 1995; Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith 1985; Leslie & Frith 1987). The principleapplies to information in general and therefore to the subset of information that is strategic information:
is informed are mere Social interaction by thetacit assumption that people (ego and others) is neither thatis, agents whose accessto strategic information nor strategic agents, perfect 10 automatic.

That is, given a particular situationand some information about it thatis to you (thatis, activates strategic your mentalcapacitiesforsocial interaction), thatotherpeople, in particular otherpeople you cannot automatically presume involved in the situation, also have access to that information. You went to the othervillage last nightfora secretrendezvous.It is clear to you thatthe of the person you met is strategic identity information; but it is not clear to what extent that information is available to other people. Indeed, you may hope thatit is not (forfearof scandal) or wish thatit were (so you can brag about the episode). Humans generally spend a greatdeal of time and energy that is wondering whether other people have access to some information in our view, wondering what inferences, intentionsor plans these strategic other people draw fromthat information, tryingto control their access to such information and trying to monitorand influencetheirinferences on the basis of such information. All these complex calculationsare based on the is complex and information assumptionthat other agents'access to strategic generally imperfect.

kind Supernatural agents ofa special

The point of all thisis thatwe can now describein simpleyet preciseterms a possiblekind of agent that is oftenimagined by human beings:

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Full-access strategic agents are (imagined) agentswho we presume have access to any piece of information that is strategic.

thatone That is, given a particular situation, and given some information represents as strategicabout that situation, one assumes that the 'full-access We do not need to encounter strategic agent' has access to thatinformation. requiresis thatin some such agentsto represent them.Indeed, all thisfantasy circumstances thereare no obstaclesbetween the imaginedagent and relevant information. strategic of supernatural conThis is of great consequence for our understanding cepts. So far,I have described supernatural agents in termsof theirgeneral featuresand powers, in particularin terms of what violations of intuitive But one should also ask,What expectations are included in theirdescription. of the thoughts attributed to imaginedagents? are the contents and intentions and gods thinkabout?1" In other words,what do people assume spirits Imagined religious agencies are in general creditedwith good access to information. That they appear at severalplaces at the same time or become thatreal agentshave more invisible givesthem the means to hold information difficulty acquiring.I do not want to suggestthatsuch agentsare alwaysconsideredto be wiserthanmere mortals. we know of manycases where Actually, theyare represented as intrinsically stupid.So the point is not thattheyknow Indeed,in the manynarbetter but simplythattheyoftenseem to know more. ratives thatinclude such agentsas well as human ones, the scenariosin which a religiousagent has information thata human agent does not possessgreatly of the conversesituation. outnumberdescriptions God knows more than we know,the ancestorsare watchingus.This can be summed up in more precise termsas follows:
Some supernatural featuresas defined above) are agents (i.e. agents with counter-intuitive as full-accessstrategic tacitlyrepresented agents.

That is, people tacitlyconstruethem as alwayshaving access to whatever as relevantto social interaction. Coninformation they themselves represent sider this:In most local descriptions of spirits and other such agents,we find that is not available to the assumptionthat they have access to information about people's folk.But this,in general, turnsout to be information ordinary about theirintentions to harm or help otherpeople, about their motivations, actions and so on. An interesting limitingcase is the concept of gods who know everything. that the god has The theological,literateversionof such concepts stipulates access to all information about the world fromall possible angles. But we know that people's actual concepts often diverge from theological underso we maywonderwhether and Keil (1996) demonstrated, as Barrett standings, people actuallyrepresent omniscient gods in thisway.If theydid, theywould about all aspectsof the world are equally assumethatall pieces of information Does God know likelyto be represented by God. In this case the questions, in the world? Does God perceivethe state the contentsof everyrefrigerator of everymachine in operation?Does God know what everysingle insectin the world is up to? would be every bit as naturalas, Does God know that

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But thatis not the case. you are lying?Does God know that I misbehaved? The firstset of questions seem strange;answering them requires more deliberation thananswering the second set.In people's representation, it seems thatGod is assumedto know primarily of morallyrelevant aspectsof human the contents situations. That is why God may in factbe thoughtto represent of your refrigerator (if that includes itemsyou stole fromyour neighbours), the stateof some machines (if you use them to harm people) and of insects (if they are a plague we wished upon the enemy). In such situationsthat informationis strategic.Intuitively, people who representsuch situations immediately assume that God represents the information to that is strategic them. More generally, religiousagentsare explicitly describedas havingaccess to a lot of information and tacitly inforpresumedto have fullaccess to strategic mation.Obviously, such imaginedagentsmay be represented as havingaccess to other,non-strategic information as well but, I would claim,it is difficult to find concepts of religiousagents without access to strategic information. In general,what religiousagents know is what mattersto social interaction in a human group.Note that this is a matterof spontaneousinference. This qualityof imagined agents does not need to be explicitany more than the assumption'solid objects fall downwards'needs to be entertained explicitly. But the presumptionof full access to strategicinformationdoes inform people's inferences about certainparticular typesof supernatural agents.

Implications offull-access agent concepts

The questionof why some conceptsof supernatural agentsare associatedwith important social effects (the God vs. Mickey Mouse question) may be much easier to approach if we accept that:
Concepts of supernaturalagents tacitlyconstrued as full-accessstrategicagents are more likely than other concepts of supernatural agents to be associated with special experience or moralityor group identityor ritual.

In a given situation, if a subsetof information about thatsituationis releand if people imagine supernatural vant to strategic mechanisms, agents,we will oftenfind that someof these agentsare tacitlypresumedto have access to the strategic are what I called full-access This information, strategic agents. could make sense of the varietyof features that make up the familyresemblance of 'religious'concepts. In this article I cannot do more than outline these connections. connection between a straightforward First,the tacit assumptionaffords We find this connection in supernatural agents and moral understandings. many human groups,although the way in which it is construedis highly variable.In some places it is a theological connection (the gods laid down the rules we live by). In most human groups there is no such theology, but itjust goes withoutsayingthatancestors and spirits and othersuch agentsare concerned with the way people behave and use theirpowers againstthose who violate moral prescriptions.We oftenassume thatthisconnection results fromculturalaxioms or that morallyrelevantsupernatural agents are some-

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how usefulfor social cohesion. But there is a simpleraccount. Moral rules are easily acquired by human minds because of a host of computational predispositions, as a consequence of our dependence upon others'cooperation.Thisalso makesthe tracking of strategic information held by otherpeople cultural a constant cognitive activity. So what seem to be two different superdomains- moralprescriptions on the one hand,conceptsof full-access geared to naturalagentson the other- activatethe same inferential processes, establishing cooperation and evaluatingthe information that motivatesother people's moves. Second, the connection between religious agency and group identity, though it is fartoo complex to examine here,may be betterunderstoodin the light of the presentdescriptionof strategicagents.Mental mechanisms that regulatecooperation are involvedin evaluatinga realistic level of trust, If given (among other cues) genetic and ethnic distance between partners. conceptsof strategic agentsare (in part)signalsof reliability, we should predict, not necessarilythat people will trust potential partnerswho share their religiouscommitments, but thattheyshould distrust people who do not. Third,at least some of the emotional arousal thatis sometimesconnected to religiousagentsmakes more sense in the contextof strategic agency connected to moral understandings and cooperation.For instance, we observethat attention people oftenpay considerable to (and sometimesresent)the factthat othersare not committedto particular This may be less surprising if beliefs. we recall that adaptationsfor cooperation are themselves emotional mechaand that clues (however indirect) of non-cooperation have notable nisims, emotional effects. The particular may be emotional tenor of religiousactivity diverse and variouslyglossed as trustor misgivings or hope. These diverse emotionsmake sense when directedat (or putatively caused by) agentswho to hold information Emotions connect directly essentialto decision-making. The assumptionthat strategic is information planningand social interaction. actuallyrepresented by some agentwith fullaccess changesthe tenorof interaction, makes certain moves more or less possible or beneficial,and this is in emotional states. reflected We anthropologists oftenimply that people first have concepts of powerful supernatural agentsand then connect such concepts to sociallyimportant ritual and group identitybecause of that alleged phenomena like morality, describetheirreligiousnotions. power.Thisis also how manypeople explicitly But cognitivescientists know thatsuch explicitaccounts of one's own inferences are oftenbased on post hoc rationalization. Indeed, in this case things seem more likely to go the other way around.We have evidence that speinforcialized mental mechanismstrackcues for cooperation,and highlight We also have mation that is relevantto cooperation (strategic information). connected to moral feelevidence that these mental mechanismsare tightly of superingsand to groupidentity.The present proposalis thatsome products and naturalimaginationare particularly relevant to these mentalmechanisms, thisis consistent with anthropological evidence concerningwhat people think gods and spiritsknow. So imagined agents may not be connected to social as powerful interaction because they are powerful; they may be represented because theywere tacitly in a way thatconnectsthem to crucial represented dimensionsof social interaction.

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Relevance offull-access agency concepts

Assumingthatall thesefeatures of religiousagencymaybe consequences of postulatingfull-accessstrategic agents,it remainsto explain why people representsuch agents.Whywould people assumethatsomething in the world,over and above the real agentsthey deal with,has strategic information? But the question is misguided,at least in this formulation. The fact that some kinds of notions are selected in culturaltransmission does not depend on people's inclinations but rather on the aggregation of acquisitionand memoryprocesses over which theyhave no control.So a betterformulation would be,Why are accounts of such strategically informed more likelyto imaginary 'somethings' be acquired and transmitted than other possible accounts? This,as in the first selectionprocessdescribedin the first partof thislecture, a matterof differential is primarily cognitiveeffects. Some culturalrepresentationsare more relevant in the cognitivesense of producingmore than others, with lesser cognitiveeffort. inferences So a concept of full-accessstrategic agent would be relevant to the extentthat (1) it is couched in a formatthat can be handledby some mentalmechanism; (2) it allows more inferences than other concepts,when combined with storedinformation in thatmechanism, or requireslessprocessingto generateinferences.'2 Concepts of full-access strategic agentsare not costlyin termsof processing.What distinguishes full-access frommere strategic agentsis that, when we the former, represent we do not represent what obstacleslie between them and strategic as we do when we estimateother people's access information, to information. So religiousagentsare ordinary a crucial feature. agentsminus To represent them,people run routinetheoryof mind inferences, but in a simplerway.The cognitiveeffort of representing ancestorsfullyapprised of our misdemeanours mayactually be less thanthatof representing actualpeople who are only partlyinformed. These concepts are also rich in inferential potential;that is, richer than equivalent supernatural That a concepts without the full-accessassumption. full-accessagent is imagined to be around changes the value and possible outcome of possible courses of eventsand of intended courses of action. In most situations of social interaction, we need access to other people's actions and intentions, but we also need to protectourselvesby broadcasting only a certain descriptionof our own intentionsand actions. A strategicagent sees throughall this and has access to real actions and intentions, typically rather thanthe public version.So imagining such agentscreatesa distinct representationof any situation.Note that this descriptionfrom an imagined agent'sviewpointmay be completelywrong.What matters here is not thatit is true but thatit is richer in inferences than the description yielded by other supernatural concepts. These somewhatspeculative considerations could be summedup as the following principleof selection:
Cultural material that includes concepts of imagined agents is made more relevantby the tacit assumptionthat these agents have full access to strategic information.

Producing more effects at a lesser cost would ensure thatsuch materialis more likely to be easily acquired and easily connected to other cognitive

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domains.This, obviously, would also explain why we findsuch an advantage for supernatural concepts that activateintuitivepsychology. The least costly in the world thathas (and inferentially richest)way of representing something access to any information is to apply to it our intuitive psychology. If there is somethingthathas strategic information, the storythatthissomethinghas a mindis the simplestone available.

Functional origins of religion

What is the origin of religion? We find a plethoraof functional answersin and the philosophyof religion:to explain the naturalworld,to anthropology justify a social order,to account for our mortality, to make the world meaningfuland the like.As we teach our students, none of these answersis really satisfactory. They are all untestable,as they generally refer to historical scenarios for which there is no conceivable evidence. Also, they are often ethnocentric, describingcognitiveand emotional aspects of religionthat are not reallygeneralof human societies.Finally, theypredicta whole varietyof possible concepts that could fulfil the functions described.But we only find a small subsetof those in the anthropological record. Progressin our knowledge of evolved human capacitiesprovidesa better account thatis testable, based on what we findin the anthropological record ratherthan in familiarsettings, and that predictsonly the narrow range of concepts observedratherthan a varietyof otherpossible concepts.Religious concepts are not around because theyare good for people or for societyor because of an inherent need or desireto have them.They are around because A benefitof thisfunctheyare more likelyto be acquired thanothervariants. tional account is to explain why we find thesereligious concepts and not others. There is a cost, too, since we have to provide independentevidence We have some such for the cognitiveprocessesinvolvedin culturalselection. in our understandevidence already. Much remainsto be done, but progress of cultureinto mere ing of the mind is gradually transforming manymysteries problems, includingthatof the originsof religion.

NOTES I am grateful to the Anthropology Department, London School of Economics, for the invitation to give the Malinowski Lecture, and to Emma Tarlo and Denis Vidal for their hospitality. Thanksto Justin Barrett, Leda Cosmides, Stewart Guthrie, Michael Houseman, ThomasLawson, Lenclud, RobertMcCauley, BrianMalley, Carlo Severn, Dan Sperber, Gerard comments on Whitehouse formany and fortheir John Toobyand Harvey suggestions helpful from earlier versions. The experimental research summarized herewasfunded bya special grant the CentreNationalde la Recherche Scientifique ('Aide 'a projets nouveaux' Programme). thislectureI assumethatsuch a naturalistic accountis both possibleand 'Throughout desirable. The research on religion presented herewas initially inspired and strongly influenced to thateffect to specific by general arguments (Sperber 1985; 1996) and by their application cultural domains(Atran1990; Atran& Medin 1999; Hirschfeld 1996). The evolutionary in Tooby& Cosmides(1992),some anthropological to thisapproach is outlined background in Bloch (1998) and Boyer(1998). consequences 2This section summarizes arguments presented in greater detailin Boyer(1994; 1998).

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'I cannot here give detailed references for all these aspects of intuitiveontology.A good presentationof the relevantpsychological research can be found in Hirschfeld& Gelman (1994) and Sperber,Premack & James-Premack (1995). For general consequences on cultural transmission, see Boyer (1998). is a more tighdycontrolledversion of Bardett's (1932) classic experiments 4This in effect on memory for folk-tales. 'See Needham (1975) on the fact that most anthropologicalconcepts are 'polythetic'and of tryingto turn them into proper analyticcategories. on the futility 6A good illustration of this preference for templateswith activationof intuitivepsychology in frequencybetween concepts of 'spirits'and of 'zombies'. These constitute is the difference violations.A spiritis a person with standardpsychologicalpropertiesand special symmetrical but special psychological physicalones. A zombie is a person with standardphysicalproperties ones. Now the spirittype of religiousconcepts is much more frequentthan the zombie type. whereverpeople have a concept of zombie, theyinvariably complementthatwith the Further, notion of some spiritor witch or god who 'remote-controls' the zombie (Boyer 1996). of human life, 7Whenever we encounter concepts that actuallyinclude these other features they invariablyinclude mental processes as well. The reverseis not true (Boyer 1996). So it reallyis the projection of psychologicalprocessesthat mattershere. there is very litde anthropologicalevidence and theory on this fundamental 'Surprisingly, I am inspired here by two remarkableexceptions, Haviland (1977) and Gambetta activity. (1994). in most other species, even in closely related ones. 9The situation is very different Among chimpanzees,for instance,specificsignalsindicate a willingnessto engage in peaceful cooperation (grooming) or to challenge some other individual'sstatus(shakingbranches and alarm cries are not just segregatedfromother voicingsbut emittingspecial cries). In monkeys, kinds of hazards. specialized for different l Note that we also sometimes interactwith agents that are not really presumed to have much access to strategicinformationat all, like infantsor animals.These could be called but we do 'infra-strategic' agents.They are agents and they have access to some information, not spontaneouslyassume that they representthe strategicaspects of a situationor produce inferences on the basis of that strategic information. 11 People may have Remember that we are talkinghere about people's tacit presumptions. such presumptions withoutbeing aware of them.Also, such tacitpresumptions may or may not be officially expressedin or sanctionedby a theology. 2This refers to a technical descriptionof relevancein termsof relativeprocessingcost and which can be operationalized(see Sperber& Wilson 1995). To illustrate thiswith relative effects between people, not low-level process: Faces are more relevant than legs in distinguishing more distinctive, but because (1) perceptual routinesspecialized because they are intrinsically in face-recognition translate faces into distinctive patterns, (2) this allows a comparison with stored patterns,which (3) quickly delivers recognition decisions. Information that is not in giraffes) couched in a formataccessible by a mental mechanism(e.g. for humans,facial traits is not relevant.

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H. & J.Perner1983. Beliefs aboutbeliefs: Wimmer, representation and constraining function in youngchildren's of wrong beliefs of deception. understanding Cognition 13, 103-28.

des concepts religieux:selection Origines fonctionnelies ontologique et religieusepar les esprits evolu6es
Resume Les concepts reigieux qui ont du succes culturellement resultent de selectionsqui accroissent la probabiliteque certainsconcepts,plus que d'autres,solent acquis, conserves et transParmi les constructions mis facilement. de l'imaginationhumaine,certainessont reliees'a des principesontologiques intuitifs de telle sorte qu'elles constituent un petit catalogue de concepts surnaturels qui ont du succes culturellement. Des preuves experimentaleset anthropologiques apportent confirmationde la salience et du potentiel de transmission de ce catalogue.Parmi ces concepts surnaturels, les aptitudescognitives'a l'interaction sociale introEn consequence, certainsconcepts d'agents surnaturels duisentune selection supplementaire. sont associes a la moralite,a l'identite de groupe, au rituel et a l'emotion. Ces agents surnaturels 'religieux'typiquessont tacitement presumesavoir acces 'a l'information qui est cruciale pour l'interactionsociale, une suppositionqui renforce leur diffusion dans les groupes humains.

Institut desSciences de l'Homme, 14 avenue 69363 Lyons, Berthelot, France. pboyer@ish-lyon.cnrsfr

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