Cognitive science of new religious movements

Short description: Religious studies

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Cognitive science of new religious movements is the study of new religious movements (NRMs) from the perspective of cognitive science.[1][2][3] The field employs methods and theories from a variety of disciplines, including cognitive science of religion, sociology of religion, scientific study of religion, anthropology, and artificial life. Scholars in the field seek to explain the origin and evolution of new religious movements in terms of ordinary universal cognitive processes.

## History

The field traces its roots to the beginnings of the field of cognitive science of religion in the 1990s, especially in Harvey Whitehouse's work on 'cargo cults' in Papua New Guinea[3] and cognitivist work by sociologists of religion William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark.[1]

In a 2005 article titled "Towards a Cognitive Science of New Religious Movements", Afzal Upal conceptualized the field and proposed agent-based social simulation as a good complement for Whitehouse's anthropological approach to investigate the origin of new religious movements.[1] Upal developed an information entrepreneurship model-based social simulation to study the origin and evolution of new religious movements.[4][5][6]

In 2008, Kimmo Ketola used an anthropological case study of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda (1896–1977), the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, the Hare Krishna movement) to identify the cognitive processes that underlie religious charisma.[7] In 2013, building on Whitehouse's work, Olav Hammer studied the transmission of new age religious ideas in the West and identifies the contexts that allow them to flourish.[8]

In a series of publications,[9][10][11][12][13][14] Upal revised the classic cognitive science of religion account of counterintuitiveness to emphasize the role of context and developed the context-based model of minimal counterintuitiveness. Using this generalized model, Upal argued that novelty of a new religious movement's doctrine gives it memorability advantages over more traditional religious ideas and thus explain constant religious innovation. He carried out an in-depth case study of the origin of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at to highlight how such a cognitive approach can help explain the origin and evolution of new religious movements.[2]

In a 2009 article, Justin Lane applied Todd Tremlin’s account of an "Agency Detection Device" mental mechanism to the study of small and innovating religious groups.[3][15]

In a psychological study of members of a variety of new religious movements in Belgium, Coralie Buxant, Vassilis Saroglou, Stefania Casalfiore, and Louis-Léon Christians from the Centre for Psychology of Religion at the Université Catholique de Louvain found that "the pattern of results fit well with what we know from psychology of conversion in general."[16]

Alistair Lockhart (2020) carried out the first extensive overview of the field of cognitive science of new religious movements, concluding that the study of cognitive science of religion as applied to new religious movements and quasi-religions shows more common themes than is typically assumed.[3]

## See also

* Academic study of new religious movements
* Cognitive science of religion
* Cognitive science

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Upal, Muhammad Afzal (2005). "Towards a Cognitive Science of New Religious Movements". Journal of Cognition and Culture 5 (1–2): 214–239. doi:10.1163/1568537054068598. https://brill.com/view/journals/jocc/5/1-2/article-p214_9.xml?language=en.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Upal, Muhammad Afzal (2017). Moderate Fundamentalists: Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at in the Lens of Cognitive Science of Religion. Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter. ISBN 9783110556643.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Lockhart, Alastair (2020). "New religious movements and quasi-religion: Cognitive science of religion at the margins". Archive for the Psychology of Religion 42: 101–122. doi:10.1177/0084672420910809.
4. ↑ Upal, Muhammad Afzal (2005). "Simulating the emergence of new religious movements". Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 8 (1). https://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/1/6.html.
5. ↑ Upal, Muhammad Afzal; Erfani, Rashid (2005). "Cognitive Capacity and Ideological Group Formation". Proceedings of the 13th Annual Meeting of the North American Association for Computational Social & Organizational Sciences. https://www.academia.edu/12803526.
6. ↑ Upal, Muhammad Afzal; Erfani, Rashid (2005). "Emergence of Ideological Groups". Proceedings of the 13th Annual Meeting of the North American Association for Computational Social & Organizational Sciences. https://www.academia.edu/12803143.
7. ↑ Ketola, Kimmo (2008). The Founder of the Hare Krishnas as seen by devotees: A cognitive study of religious charisma. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-90-474-3326-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=2j-wCQAAQBAJ&q=Ketola, Kimmo (2008). The Founder of the Hare Krishnas as seen by devotees: A cognitive study of religious charisma..
8. ↑ Hammer, Olav (2013). "Cognitively optimal religiosity: New Age as a case study". New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion: 265–298. ISBN 978-1-84465-713-1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/new-age-spirituality/cognitively-optimal-religiosity-new-age-as-a-case-study/5083F48A30F24796FF6111B7D5EE56B2.
9. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal (2009). "An alternative account of the minimal counterintuitiveness effect". Cognitive Systems Research 11 (2): 194–203. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2009.08.003. ISSN 1389-0417. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2009.08.003.
10. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal (2005-01-01). "Role of Context in Memorability of Intuitive and Counterintuitive Concepts". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (eScholarship, University of California) 27 (27). OCLC 1114707311. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14f2x90d.
11. ↑ Upala, M. Afzal; Gonce, Lauren O.; Tweney, Ryan D.; Slone, D. Jason (2007-05-06). "Contextualizing Counterintuitiveness: How Context Affects Comprehension and Memorability of Counterintuitive Concepts". Cognitive Science 31 (3): 415–439. doi:10.1080/15326900701326568. ISSN 0364-0213. PMID 21635303.
12. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal (2010-01-01). On Attractiveness of Surprising Ideas: How Memory for Counterintuitive Ideas Drives Cultural Dynamics. eScholarship, University of California. OCLC 1114702232. https://worldcat.org/oclc/1114702232.
13. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal (2011-02-03). "From individual to social counterintuitiveness: how layers of innovation weave together to form multilayered tapestries of human cultures". Mind & Society 10 (1): 79–96. doi:10.1007/s11299-011-0083-8. ISSN 1593-7879. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11299-011-0083-8.
14. ↑ Upal, M. Afzal (2014). A Cognitive Framework for Understanding Counterintuitive Stories. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik. OCLC 892943402. https://drops.dagstuhl.de/storage/01oasics/oasics-vol041-cmn2014/OASIcs.CMN.2014.222/OASIcs.CMN.2014.222.pdf.
15. ↑ Lane, Justin (2009). Potential causes of ritual instability in doctrinal new religious movements: A cognitive hypothesis. Sacra, 2, 82–92.
16. ↑ Buxant, Coralie; Saroglou, Vassilis; Casalfiore, Stefania; Christians, Louis-Léon (May 2007). "Cognitive and emotional characteristics of New Religious Movement members: New questions and data on the mental health issue" (in en). Mental Health, Religion & Culture 10 (3): 219–238. doi:10.1080/13694670600621506. ISSN 1367-4676. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13694670600621506.

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