714 vII. APPLICATIONS  AND  IMPLICATIONS
sified in a latent class representing high and 
increasing spirituality had higher prosocial -
ity at times 2 and 3 than participants in a 
class characterized by low and stable spiritu -
ality (Kor, Pirutinsky, Mijulincer, Shoshani, 
& Miller, 2019). Moreover, experimental 
studies of the effects of religious priming 
on prosocial behavior in the laboratory 
have been helpful in disentangling effects. 
A meta-  analysis of 25 studies revealed that 
religious priming does increase prosocial 
behaviors, but effects were only reliable for 
religious participants (bias correct effect size 
for believers = 0.27), indicating that prim -
ing effects are dependent on the activation 
of preexisting religious beliefs (Shariff, Wil -
lard, Andersen, & Norenzayan, 2016). Un -
derstanding the role of religion in evolution 
and prosociality continues to be a vigorous 
area of inquiry with a diversity of perspec -
tives represented (see target article and com -
mentaries; Norenzayan et al., 2016).
Cognitive Science of Religion . The most 
developed field identified with evolutionary 
accounts of religion has come to be called 
the cognitive science of religion (CSR; Bar -
rett, 2000; Boyer, 2001; Whitehouse, 2004). 
Cognitive scientists argue that religion is a 
constellation of human phenomena that is 
represented and communicated by natural -
ly occurring cognitive processes. The CSR 
maintains that widespread belief in God 
arises from the operation of natural process -
es of the human mind, and that human men -
tal architecture renders such belief “nearly 
inevitable. . . . Why would anyone believe 
in God? The design of our minds leads us to 
believe” (Barrett, 2004, pp. 122, 124).
Numerous research programs in cognitive 
and developmental psychology have con -
verged on the view that religious concepts 
heavily rely on implicit, essentially universal 
causal reasoning. This perspective, known 
as the “naturalness of religion thesis,” pos -
its that religious concepts, such as belief in 
god(s), the successful interpersonal trans -
mission of these concepts, and the develop -
ment of practices based on these concepts, 
rely on the use of mental tools operating in 
cross-  culturally recurrent conditions (Bar -
rett, 2000). In other words, ordinary cogni -
tion plus exposure to ordinary environments 
accounts for religion. No special domain for religious thought need be postulated. In -
stead, the contours of human minds inform 
and constrain recurrent patterns of human 
thought and action, including religious (and 
other cultural) thought and action, so recur -
rent features of religious thought and action 
(e.g., belief in gods) can be explained by ap -
pealing to requisite conceptual structures.
For example, a number of cognitive sci -
entists have noted that the counterintuitive  
concepts (ones that violate expectations) 
that characterize religious beliefs are both 
attention arresting and memorable (Barrett, 
2000; Boyer, 2001). Experimental tests on 
four continents validate these observations 
(Barrett & Nyhof, 2001; Boyer & Ramble, 
2001). Furthermore, people have a built-in 
bias to detect human-like agency in their 
environment, which might lead people to 
posit supernatural agents or gods to account 
for unexplained events such as miraculous 
healings or signs (Guthrie, 1993). Super -
natural agents, or gods, are then likely to be 
ascribed not only with unusual powers that 
might enable them to perform acts result -
ing in great fortune or misfortune but also, 
perhaps more importantly, invisibility or 
superknowledge that gives them “strategic 
information” about what people do in pri -
vate (Bering, 2006; Boyer, 2001). Morally 
sensitive gods may reward or punish them 
based on this information that is outside the 
perceptual boundaries of everyday human 
agents. Moral reasoning and the notion of 
gods with strategic information mutually re -
inforce each other’s plausibility and cultural 
transmission.
Accumulating research indicates that hu -
mans exhibit a developmental predisposition 
to believe in such socially infallible super -
natural agents, appearing in early childhood 
(Barrett & Richert, 2003). Cross-  cultural 
studies conducted with children between 
ages 3 and 12 indicate that young children 
may possess an “intuitive theism” that 
prompts them to see intentional purpose in 
the natural world that cannot be attributed to 
people but only to specially powerful super -
natural agents (Kelemen, 2005). Therefore, 
mental tools predispose people to hold reli -
gious beliefs. In this sense, widespread belief 
in gods arises from the operation of natural 
processes of the human mind, such that be -
lief is nearly inevitable (Barrett, 2000).