Project information
Computing Religious Devotion: How Reinforcing Supernatural Beliefs Affects Normative Models in the Mind (CREDO)

Religions permeate the lives of billions and are hypothesised to play an essential role in normative behaviour. Yet, little is known about how religious devotion penetrates cognitive computations during decision-making. I fill this lacuna by proposing a computational model of religious decision-making. In this model, religious belief, forged through religious practice, forms strong priors in the mind. When the mind simulates possible actions during decision-making, religious actions become readily available and likely selected due to their high value. To empirically develop the model, I will determine how religious belief affects the strength of religious priors during normative decision-making in various laboratory and field studies. Moreover, in a large-scale cross-cultural study, I will establish how beliefs and practices of different religious traditions affect cognitive computations during normative decisions. The project will producing one of a kind, comprehensive model of how religions shape the mind.