Peter Maňo was awarded for his presentation "Socio-Economic Factors Involved in Participation in Extreme Rituals," which he gave at the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion conference, Boston in August.
The talk focused on the impact of various demographic and behavioral indicators on the intensity of ritual participation, where social status and participation in collective rituals proved to be the strongest predictors of extreme forms of participation. Here you can learn more about the conference as described by Connor Wood, here.
Recent article in journal Evolutionary Human Sciences, where LEVYNA members contributed data, asks whether religious denominations accumulate gradually or are generated in rapid bursts associated with specific historical events.
A recently published qualitative study by Jana Nenadalová explores Dark therapy, an alternative spiritual practice combining prolonged sensory deprivation with guidance from an authority figure, to understand how religious and spiritual experiences are induced. Drawing on predictive processing theory, the research shows that complete darkness can trigger intense psychological and perceptual phenomena, especially when participants feel a sense of control and bring expectations or prior beliefs into the experience.
