Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the
behavioural sciences have provided a number of explanations of human social, cooperative …

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion
make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge …

Melanesian initiation cults frequently incorporate rites that instil a profound and lasting terror
in the initiates. This article surveys several contemporary theories of these traumatic ordeals …

Religions--whatever else they may be--are configurations of cultural information reproduced
across space and time. Beginning with this seemingly obvious fact of religious transmission …

Identity fusion is a relatively unexplored form of alignment with groups that entails a visceral
feeling of oneness with the group. This feeling is associated with unusually porous, highly …

Why do initiations in Papua New Guinea often subject novices to violence and terror? Why
do some cargo cults lead to regional unity and others to regional divisions? How have …

What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of “morality-
as-cooperation” argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural …

Most social scientists endorse some version of the claim that participating in collective rituals
promotes social cohesion. The systematic testing and evaluation of this claim, however, has …

For the past thirty years, adherents of a millenarian cult in Papua New Guinea, known as the
Pomio Kivung, have been awaiting the establishment of a period of supernatural bliss …

What motivates ordinary civilians to sacrifice their lives for revolutionary causes? We
surveyed 179 Libyan revolutionaries during the 2011 conflict in Libya. These civilians-turned …