What happens when you test the predictions of identity fusion theory on a cross-cultural data set?
Ben Purzycki (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Lipsko) and Martin Lang answered this question in a new paper that is out in Cognition. They used freely available cross-cultural data set (goo.gl/qvYzX7) focused on economic games between co-religionists and tested whether people who report their identities to be fused with their religious group are willing to sacrifice more coins to benefit their co-religionists. While identity fusion theory predicts willingness to make extreme sacrifices for the group, Ben and Martin found that it is also predictive in terms of more subtle sacrifices in economic games using money. Data, code, and a preprint are freely available on GitHub (goo.gl/4mg6k2). Stay tuned for another paper using cross-cultural data to test some of the crucial claims in the cultural evolutionary theory of religion!
In a paper published in Religion, Brain & Behavior, J. Nenadalová & D. Řezníček demonstrated that some study participants in a sensory-deprived laboratory environment sensed the presence of another person. This feeling was mostly associated with perceived uncertainty and only somewhat associated with psychological dispositions.
In a cross-national investigation published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, F. M. Saxler with LEVYNA’s E. Kundtová Klocová and other colleagues show that the COVID-19 pandemic affected young people’s normative beliefs about unpaid domestic work; and that this effect is stronger in countries with greater gender inequality.
