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Beliefs in afterlife as a by-product of persistence judgments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2006

George E. Newman ,
Sergey V. Blok  and
Lance J. Rips
George E. Newman*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT06520
Sergey V. Blok*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX78712
Lance J. Rips*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL60208
*
george.newman@yale.edu
blok@psy.utexas.edu
rips@northwestern.edu
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Abstract:

We agree that supernatural beliefs are pervasive. However, we propose a more general account rooted in how people trace ordinary objects over time. Tracking identity involves attending to the causal history of an object, a process that may implicate hidden mechanisms. We discuss experiments in which participants exhibit the same “supernatural” beliefs when reasoning about the fates of cups and automobiles as those exhibited by Bering's participants when reasoning about spirits.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 480 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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