Ritualization reduces anxiety
Martin Lang and Radim Chvaja published a chapter discussing the relationship between ritual and anxiety in The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion.
Jana Nenadalová received IGA grant
Why and how people perceive special anthropomorphic agents? How do gods and spirits become real for them? In her research, Jana will focus on the role of culture, which contextually specifies the forms that the special anthropomorphic agents can take in a given environment.
Relying on experimental manipulation, Jana plans to investigate how situational context and priming transform the anthropomorphic agents’ forms and the intensity of the encounter’s experience for people in a state of sensory deprivation. She expects that genetically inherited intuitions on the presence of predators and fear of them in combination with the sensory deprivation and semantic priming will lead to more frequent and more culturally specific experiences of special anthropomorphic agents.
