1075285

research-article2022
CDPXXX10.1177/09637214221075285Luhrmann, WeismanCurrent Directions in Psychological Science 31(3)

ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Current Directions in Psychological
Science
Porosity Is the Heart of Religion 2022, Vol. 31(3) 247–253
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09637214221075285
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221075285
www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS
Tanya Marie Luhrmann1 and Kara Weisman2
1
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, and 2Department of Psychology,
University of California, Riverside

Abstract
When scholars and scientists set out to understand religious commitment, the sensation that gods and spirits are real
may be at least as important a target of inquiry as the belief that they are real. The sensory and quasisensory events
that people take to be the presence of spirit—the voice of an invisible being, a feeling that a person who is dead is
nonetheless in the room—are found both in the foundational stories of faith and surprisingly often in the lives of the
faithful. These events become evidence that gods and spirits are there. We argue that at the heart of such spiritual
experiences is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world, and that people in all human societies
have conflicting intuitions about this boundary. We have found that spiritual experiences are facilitated when people
engage their more porous modes of understanding and that such experiences are easier for individuals who cultivate
an immersive orientation toward experience (absorption) and engage in practices that enhance inner experience (e.g.,
prayer, meditation). To understand religion, one needs to explore not just how people come to believe in gods and
spirits, but how they come to understand and relate to the mind.

Keywords
absorption, belief, mind, porosity, religion, spiritual experience

Despite the phenomenological orientation of William After all, focusing first and foremost on belief encour-
James, a tower in the landscape of psychology, many ages the researcher to ask why someone believes in
modern psychologists do not study experience. Cogni- something that in many cases the researcher takes not
tive psychologists largely study cognition per se, not the to be true. The research problem becomes one about
feel of thought. A developmental psychologist is more cognitive mistakes: How could someone believe in
likely to study the mechanisms that drive changes in something as irrational as the existence of a being who
children’s thinking and imagining than how the sensation is invisible but supremely powerful, or a being who
of thought changes over time. Similarly, as interest in knows everything, even one’s innermost thoughts and
religion has exploded in recent years, psychologists who desires? (And do people really believe this?) Yet people
study religion have focused almost entirely on belief, who pray often see the apparent foolishness of belief
rather than experience. There have been exceptions in gods and spirits as clearly as the skeptic does. Many
(e.g., Hood, 2001; Pekala, 2013; Taves, 2009; Wildman, passages in the Gospels presume that it is absurd to
2011), but the issues that have gripped most researchers believe in Christ, and the psalms are full of laments at
have been about the social implications of belief in cer- prayer’s failure.1 Many ethnographies describe doubt
tain kinds of gods (A. B. Cohen et al., 2003; Henrich, and uncertainty about spirits among the people who
2020; Norenzayan et al., 2016), about what people are being described; people say that spirits are inher-
believe that gods know (McNamara et al., 2021; Willard ently unknowable and cannot really be understood
& McNamara, 2019), and about the evolutionary under- (e.g., Graeber, 2015). Even those who are committed
pinnings of beliefs about spirits (Barrett, 2004; Boyer,
2001). To be clear, these are important questions. But it
Corresponding Author:
is also important to pay attention to experience, particu- Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Department of Anthropology, Stanford
larly in the case of religion, which James (1902/1935) University
observed was “bathed in sentiment” (p. 486). Email: [email protected]
248 Luhrmann, Weisman

to the reality of gods and spirits do not speak or behave feel guilty and responsible. When they are suddenly
as if they hold their religious beliefs in the same way filled with inspiration, they might feel that the spark
that they hold matter-of-fact beliefs about the world came from outside. People seek out others who exude
(Luhrmann, 2020; Van Leeuwen et al., 2021). Christians, “positive energy,” avoid places with “bad vibes,” make
for example, may say that their god can do anything, wishes they hope will come true, and stare at a golf
but they never ask him to feed the dog. ball on a television screen to make it roll into a hole.
To begin with phenomenology shifts attention away The very independence of human thought might
from the somewhat misleading emphasis on irrational suggest to people that not all their thoughts are their
belief toward events that are often deeply important in own. After all, thoughts often behave like wayward
the lives of religious people: a sense of being spoken teenagers. People cannot stop their grief or joy or anger
to, a spiritual vision, a feeling of presence. at will, nor can they control their anxious, tormenting,
or obsessive worries, at least not without a great deal
Everyone Has Conflicting Intuitions of work. The seeming independence of thought lies not
only with the emotions, as anyone who has been told
About the Mind not to think of a pink elephant can attest. Thought may
All humans distinguish mind from world. This distinc- have what James (1890) called a quality of “myness,”
tion takes on different forms and different meanings but it certainly does not behave like something one
across cultural settings (Lillard, 1998, Luhrmann, 2011), owns or that follows one’s intention, the way one can
but at a basic level, human societies accept that intend to raise an arm and then do it. In fact, many
thoughts, feelings, and awareness are different from human experiences involve some sense of mental cau-
bodies and the material stuff of the world (Bloom, sation, as if thought could act on its own in the world
2004). In a recent study across field sites in the United of its own volition, as if thought had the power to alter
States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, we docu- the world directly without any actions on the thinker’s
mented differences in the way people carve up the part (Legare & Gelman, 2008).
world of mental life—but there was one striking com- Inspired by Taylor (2007), we call this intuition
monality: Children and adults in all settings distin- porosity: the idea that the boundary between mind and
guished cognition (reasoning, thinking) from the more world is at least somewhat permeable, and that thoughts
mundane aspects of bodily existence (hunger, pain, and can cross over the boundary in ways that go beyond
the like; Weisman et al., 2021). We take this as adding ordinary perception and action. Sometimes that cross-
to a long tradition of evidence that the experience of ing feels as if it carries information: When people talk
conscious awareness—the experience of having a mind, about individuals who are “psychic,” they mean that
distinct from one’s body and the rest of the material those people know things that they could not perceive
world—is phenomenologically basic for humans. directly. Sometimes that crossing feels as if it carries
And yet, the nature of the relationship between mind power: When people talk about “cursing,” they can
and world is complicated. Most humans develop an mean that one human’s bad intention leaves that per-
understanding of ordinary perception in which, broadly son’s own mind and does harm upon another. Both
speaking, people have openings in their body through information and power can be imagined to flow out-
which they gain an inner representation of an outer ward, as when someone sends a mental message or a
world—they see, they hear, they smell, and so forth. curse out into the world; or the information or power
However, that basic model of the mind-world relation- can be imagined to flow inward from world to mind,
ship does not make sense of firsthand experiences in as when the psychic receives a message, or when the
which mindlike stuff—thoughts, insights, emotions, cursed person is overcome with confusion, fear, or ill-
plans—seems to cross the mind-world boundary in ness. In many cases, cultural ideas related to porosity
other ways. A powerful dream can give one the sense might involve both inward and outward flow, such that
of somehow having been visited by another person, mindlike stuff (information, power) is believed to pass
perhaps a dead person, or a sense of having left one’s out of one mind and into another, as when two people
body to go somewhere else. The anthropologist Edward with an especially intimate connection—mother and
Burnett Tylor (1871) thought that these experiences daughter, twins—are understood to communicate
were so powerful that they were the basis for the entirely with their minds, or when one person is thought
human belief in spirits. Even when people are fully to curse another by inserting malevolent thoughts into
awake, if a mental image of someone comes to mind, the other person’s mind.
they may feel as if that person wants something from We suggest that porous models of the mind-world
them, even if that person is far away. When people feel boundary make more sense of certain aspects of the
deeply angry at someone who then gets hurt, they can experience of thought—the feeling of traveling in a
Current Directions in Psychological Science 31(3) 249

Table 1. The Structure of Porosity, With Illustrative Examples and Questions Raised

Content crossing the mind-world boundary

Direction of flow Information Power

Outward Examples: A person sends a mental Examples: A person’s thoughts, feelings, or
message out into the world without intentions affect the world directly without
taking any material actions (e.g., a the person taking any material actions
daughter sends a distress signal to her (e.g., a witch curses someone with her
mother from a distance, a dying person stare, a person’s prayer heals an ailing
speaks to his loved ones in a dream). loved one).
Question raised: Could my thoughts and Question raised: Could my emotions affect
plans leak out into the world? the world without any action on my part?
Inward Examples: A person receives information Examples: A person’s mind is influenced,
he or she could not have perceived positively or negatively, by immaterial
directly (e.g., a spirit medium receives forces (e.g., the recipient of a curse is
a message from the dead, a prophet overcome with confusion, fear, or illness;
receives a command from God, a an artist is inspired; a person is possessed).
psychic has a vision of the future). Question raised: Could someone change my
Question raised: Are my ideas and feelings intentions and make me do something I
my own? would not otherwise do?

dream, the spark of inspiration—than more mundane experienced them had left (Savani et al., 2011). At the
models of ordinary perception and action. In doing so, same time, porosity is hardly obvious. All humans—not
they also open up possibilities and raise questions that just secular Westerners—have intuitions that their
more mundane models leave closed (see Table 1). Can thoughts and feelings are their own, that their minds
thoughts affect the world directly? According to the are private, and that thoughts cannot affect the world
mundane model, they cannot—but if the mind-world unless they are put into action. In other words, the idea
boundary is porous, perhaps what one thinks has real that the mind-world boundary is porous is at the same
consequences in the world no matter what one does. time both intuitive and counterintuitive.
To whom do one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, and inten- Indeed, we argue that all humans have conflicting
tions belong? According a mundane model, they are intuitions about the relationship between inner experi-
obviously one’s own—but if the mind-world boundary ence and outer world (see Table 2). These conflicting
is porous, some of them might have been placed in intuitions occur in diverse cultural settings. The privacy
one’s mind by someone else (a loved one, an enemy, of the mind is a hallmark of post-Enlightenment Euro-
a witch, a muse). Are thoughts and feelings private? American societies (Taylor, 2007), but many readers will
According to a mundane model, they are—but if the relate to the intuition that individuals who are closely
mind-world boundary is porous, someone might be connected might somehow know each other’s thoughts
able to gain access to one’s mind and see one’s inner- in times of trouble. Humans across diverse cultural set-
most desires, plans, or fears; or perhaps one’s thoughts tings appear to have deep intuitions that the mind is
might leak out into the world. Can one’s mind exist located in the body, and that when the body dies, so
outside of the body? According to a mundane model, too does the mind (Astuti & Harris, 2008)—and yet
it cannot—but if the mind-world boundary is porous, many readers will have had the feeling that something
perhaps one’s mind might become untethered from the of the mind of the dead person lives on. People might
body and travel through the world independently when believe that they generate their own thoughts, and at
one is asleep, or after one dies. the same time speak casually of thoughts “popping”
Porosity is not exotic. Notions of a porous mind- into their minds, as if of their own accord. And although
world boundary are documented not only in ethno- people might believe that thoughts are immaterial and
graphic work by anthropologists but also in psychological ephemeral, and do nothing unless acted upon, when a
studies, even those limited to secular Westerners. For friend faces difficulty, they might say, “My thoughts are
example, many American college students say they with you,” as if those thoughts have power.
would hesitate to get on a plane after dreaming that a We suggest that different local social worlds offer
plane has crashed (Morewedge & Norton, 2009), or that people different invitations to attend to, interpret, and
they would be able to sense and be affected by strong resolve these conflicting intuitions, so that people in
emotions lingering in a room long after the person who some settings, compared with others, more confidently
250 Luhrmann, Weisman

Table 2. Some Conflicting Intuitions About the Porosity of the Mind-World Boundary

Dimension Nonporous intuitions Porous intuitions

Causation My thoughts do not affect anyone else My thoughts cause consequences outside my body, either
but me, and then they have effect by providing knowledge to another mind directly or by
only because I act because of them. affecting another mind or body directly.
Ownership The contents of my mind are my own: The contents of my mind are not always my own:
All of my thoughts and feelings Thoughts and feelings can be placed into my mind by
originate in me. others.
Privacy The mind is private: Only I know what The mind is not always private: Special people, under
I am thinking and feeling unless I special circumstances, can gain direct, unmediated
express it through my speech and access to my thoughts and feelings, or my thoughts
actions. and feelings might leak out into the world.
Location My mind is always located in my body. My mind can leave to enter another body or to travel to
When my body dies, my mind dies. another place. When my body sleeps or dies, my mind
can leave the body and be somewhere else.

assert that the mind can exist outside the body (e.g., thinking and can punish them (Norenzayan, 2013). An
as a soul), that the mind is not entirely private (e.g., amulet becomes powerful because the magician acts
that spirits can read thoughts), that not all thoughts are and speaks with an intention that becomes somehow
self-generated (e.g., that dreams can convey knowledge embedded in the object. A prayer becomes powerful
of the future), and that thoughts can heal, curse, harm, because a human speaks words with intentions that
and so forth, given the right conditions. We use the move an invisible being to act. In both of these latter
term “cultural invitations” to acknowledge that individu- cases, the human actor might attribute the agency of
als are not required to hold these beliefs, but rather, the action to a god, or expect that special words and
these ideas are offered as ways of drawing inferences actions are necessary, but the human intention is always
about how thought works. In some cultural and reli- crucial. This has long been a puzzle to the secular
gious settings, people encounter strong and frequent perspective: A god may be understood to be omnipo-
cultural invitations to conceptualize the mind-world tent and omniscient, but the faithful understand that
boundary as porous; these ideas facilitate the kinds of they need to pray with focused intention for the prayer
extraordinary sensory experiences that become so to take effect.
important to people of faith. We have found that porosity beliefs are directly
related to the sensory and quasisensory experience of
Porosity Is at the Heart of Magic gods and spirits. In a large comparative project with
adults in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China and
and Religion Vanuatu (Luhrmann et al., 2021), we operationalized
Porosity is at the heart of many spiritual experiences. porosity in two ways. Sometimes, we asked participants
Possession events occur when another mind is felt to to respond to brief vignettes designed to elicit intuitions
replace a person’s own and take control of the body, about porosity, including whether one person’s thoughts
so that the possessed person talks and behaves as and feelings might have effects on other people (e.g.,
another being (E. Cohen, 2007). People who report “Suppose that in a distant community, very much like
Holy Spirit experiences often report that they feel a this one, there’s a man named Charles; one day Charles
great force, even a current, that comes from an external realizes that his neighbor, Michael, is really, really angry
god and moves through their body (Taves, 2009). Those at him. . . . Suppose Charles got sick after Michael got
who hear a spirit speak often do not hear the voice angry with him. Do you think Michael’s anger could be
speaking out loud but instead hear it in their own the cause?”). Other times, participants assessed whether
minds, as if another mind has placed words within certain porosity-related events do or do not happen,
them; even when the voice feels audible, they say that responding to belief statements that emerged directly
no one else can hear (Luhrmann, 2020). out of fieldwork (e.g., “Spirits can use human thoughts
Cultural invitations to porosity are central to most and feelings to hurt people”; “Some people use special
systems of magic and religion. People fear sorcerers powers to put thoughts in other people’s minds and
because sorcerers can put thoughts into their minds— make them do something, like fall in love”). Both mea-
thoughts to give up, or to fall in love with the wrong sures of porosity were highly reliable in each of the
person. They worry that “big” gods know what they are five countries and statistically differentiable from our
Current Directions in Psychological Science 31(3) 251

measures of spiritual experience overall; in addition, one should tie up one’s camel or leave the camel untied
we observed robust patterns of group differences con- and trust in Allah. Trust in Allah, the hadith says, but
sistent with the idea that people in certain cultural and do not forget to tie up your camel (Tirmidhi, 1900,
religious settings are exposed to and endorse more Hadith 2517).
porous models of the mind-world boundary. In our work, at least two other factors beyond beliefs
We found that the more an individual endorsed the about porosity seem to affect whether someone experi-
idea of porosity, the more that individual also reported ences gods and spirits because, we believe, they help
having felt the presence of a spirit, heard a voice, seen the porous interpretation of mind to feel more plausi-
a vision, or experienced a range of other events people ble. They allow people to switch more readily into a
usually judge to be supernatural (Luhrmann et al., religious model of thinking.
2021). This was true no matter how we assessed poros- The first factor is absorption, an immersive orienta-
ity; no matter whether we spoke with religious adults tion toward experience. The capacity for absorption is
or secular adults; no matter whether we conducted usually measured by responses to a 34-item scale that
in-depth, probing interviews, short face-to-face inter- explores whether people can “lose themselves” in their
views, or pen-and-paper surveys; and no matter whether sensory experiences, whether they capable of conjuring
we spoke with Christians or with practitioners of tradi- up vivid events in their imagination, whether they ever
tional local religions. The more porosity people experience the world the way they did as a child, and
affirmed, the more they said that they had had vivid so on (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). In the five-country
spiritual experiences. In some fundamental way, gods study described earlier, absorption was independently
and spirits felt more real to them. associated with reports of spiritual-presence events
We argue that an understanding of the mind-world even after we statistically controlled for people’s
boundary as porous facilitates experiences in which that endorsement of porosity beliefs, and this relationship
boundary appears to be crossed. A skeptic might reason- held true both across all field sites and within each of
ably ask whether the causal relationship should be these diverse cultural and religious settings considered
reversed: whether spiritual experience might lead some- alone (Luhrmann et al., 2021; see also Lifshitz et al.,
one to infer that the mind-world boundary is porous. To 2019; Luhrmann et al., 2010). We think that the absorp-
this skeptic, we would reply that, in most people’s lives, tion scale captures two kinds of capacities: (a) an ability
cultural beliefs precede spiritual events. People are to temporarily suspend reality testing and to experience
socialized from an early age into a social world in which without any immediate judgment about whether what
people have various expectations about how thoughts is experienced is real and (b) an ability for vivid mental
work and about whether some people, in some circum- imagery and a sensorially rich inner world. Together,
stances, have thoughts that enter other people’s bodies, they would have the effect of allowing people to engage
or are able to know what others are thinking even if deeply, vividly, and without skepticism with the more
those others do not tell them. Many of the striking spiri- porous side of their conflicting intuitions about the
tual experiences that motivated our work on this topic mind and world.
have been reported by adults ( James, 1902/1935; The second factor is practice in prayer and ritual,
Luhrmann, 2020; Taves, 2009). Although the arrow of which we have found to increase the frequency of
causality is almost certainly bidirectional, it seems likely spiritual-presence events and the sense of the realness
that culturally supported beliefs about thoughts play an of gods and spirits (Luhrmann et al., 2013). Many prayer
important causal role for many people. practices involve cultivation of an inner sense through
repeated use of inner-sensory imagery. Sometimes such
Absorption and Practice Allow People cultivation is implicit, as in many evangelical prayers in
which people talk to God, stand in God’s throne room,
to Engage With Porous Possibilities invite Jesus into the room, and so forth. Sometimes—as
Yet culturally supported beliefs about the mind do not in shamanic practice, Buddhist meditation, and Ignatian
fully determine the way people think about thinking. prayer—this cultivation is explicit. In Tibetan Buddhism,
People switch between modes of thought when they for example, practitioners are given specific mental
go to school and to church. Deeply religious people images to hold and transform in their minds (Beyer,
function perfectly well with secular colleagues at work. 1978). Practitioners report that with practice, their mental
In fact, most people live with a cognitive flexibility imagery feels sharper. (Indeed, experimental work has
around the relationship of their faith to the everyday. found that these practices do result in more vivid mental
They do not allow their faith commitment to the world imagery; e.g., Lutz et al., 2009). Practice also likely allows
as it should be to violate the reality constraints of the people to overcome their own hesitations about whether
world as it is. A famous Islamic hadith asks whether gods and spirits, even if they exist, actually respond to
252 Luhrmann, Weisman

their prayers and invocations. All-night drumming cer- Transparency

emonies, elaborate initiations, and playful engagements Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone
such as having coffee with Jesus likely lead participants Editor: Robert L. Goldstone
to more willingly sidestep their expectations about an Declaration of Conflicting Interests
ordinary world and to feel that the gods are there (Boyer, The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of
2013). In this sense, prayer and ritual may train the interest with respect to the authorship or the publication
capacity for absorption, although more work is needed of this article.
to establish the relationship between the two.
Both the trait of absorption and the practice of prayer ORCID iD
and ritual may allow people to navigate their conflicting Tanya Marie Luhrmann https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9923-
intuitions about porosity, to engage with their more 4234
porous intuitions, and to experience in the moment
without assessing strictly whether what they have expe- Acknowledgments
rienced is real. We are deeply grateful to Paul Harris, who read an early draft
of this essay; to two anonymous reviewers; and to the Mind
and Spirit crew of Felicity Aulino, Josh Brahinsky, John Dulin,
Conclusions Vivian Dzokoto, Cristine Legare, Michael Lifshitz, Emily Ng,
This, then, is our theory, grounded in the phenomenol- Nikki Ross-Zehnder, and Rachel Smith.
ogy of spiritual experience. All humans distinguish
between inner experience and the outer world, and yet Note
they have conflicting intuitions about the relationship 1. Examples include Mark 3–5 and Psalms 22 and 88 (for illus-
between the two. Different social worlds offer different tration, see King James Bible, 1611/2022).
cultural invitations for resolving these conflicts, and
people are able to engage more deeply, more vividly, References
and less skeptically with the more porous side of these Astuti, R., & Harris, P. L. (2008). Understanding mortality and
intuitions when they have a greater personal capacity the life of the ancestors in rural Madagascar. Cognitive
for absorption and a sustained practice of prayer and Science, 32(4), 713–740. https://doi.org/10.1080/03640
ritual. The more deeply and vividly people engage with 210802066907
a porous model of the mind, the more likely they are Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God?
to have the kinds of remarkable sensory experiences AltaMira Press.
that are often deemed spiritual and the more they feel Beyer, S. (1978). The cult of Ta-ra-: Magic and ritual in Tibet.
that gods and spirits are truly present. University of California Press.
Bloom, P. (2004). Descartes’ baby: How the science of child
development explains what makes us human. Basic Books.
Recommended Reading Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins
Harris, P. L. (2015). Trusting what you’re told. Harvard of religious thought. Basic Books.
University Press. A comprehensive argument that chil- Boyer, P. (2013). Why “belief” is hard work: Implications of
dren have a realist orientation to their world and that Tanya Luhrmann’s When God talks back. HAU: Journal of
they acquire supernaturalist ideas from listening to the Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), 349–357.
talk of adults. Cohen, A. B., Siegel, J. I., & Rozin, P. (2003). Faith versus
James, W. (1935). (See References). The classic text on the practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews
phenomenology of spiritual experience. and Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology,
Lillard, A. (1998). (See References). The first psychological 33(2), 287–295. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.148
text to document the range of models of mind across Cohen, E. (2007). The mind possessed: The cognition of spirit
cultures. possession in the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition. Oxford
Luhrmann, T. M. (2020). (See References). The book that pro- University Press.
vides the broader background for this article’s discussion Graeber, D. (2015). Radical alterity is just another way of
of absorption and training in spiritual practice. saying “reality”: A reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.
Luhrmann, T. M. (Ed.). (2020). Mind and spirit: A comparative HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(2), 1–41. https://
theory [Special issue]. Journal of the Royal Anthropological doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.003
Institute, 26(S1). A collection of articles that presents Henrich, J. (2020). The WEIRDest people in the world. Farrar
the broader background for this article, including the Straus and Giroux.
scholarly context and an in-depth ethnographic summary Hood, R. W., Jr. (2001). Dimensions of mystical experiences:
of spiritual experience and models of mind in different Empirical studies and psychological links. Rodopi.
settings. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. Dover.
Current Directions in Psychological Science 31(3) 253

James, W. (1935). The varieties of religious experience. Morewedge, C. K., & Norton, M. I. (2009). When dreaming
Longmans. (Original work published 1902) is believing: The (motivated) interpretation of dreams.
King James Bible. (2022). King James Bible Online. https:// Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(2), 249–
www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/ (Original 264. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013264
work published 1611) Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big Gods: How religion transformed
Legare, C. H., & Gelman, S.A. (2008). Bewitchment, biology, cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press.
or both: The co-existence of natural and supernatural Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K.,
explanatory frameworks across development. Cognitive McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016). The
Science, 32(4), 607–642. https://doi.org/10.1080/036402 cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and
10802066766 Brain Sciences, 39, Article e1. https://doi.org/10.1017/
Lifshitz, M., van Elk, M., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2019). Absorption S0140525X14001356
and spiritual experience: A review of evidence and poten- Pekala, R. (2013). Quantifying consciousness: An empirical
tial mechanisms. Consciousness and Cognition, 73, Article approach. Springer.
102760. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.05.008 Savani, K., Kumar, S., Naidu, N. V. R., & Dweck, C. S. (2011).
Lillard, A. (1998). Ethnopsychologies: Cultural variations in Beliefs about emotional residue: The idea that emotions
theories of mind. Psychological Bulletin, 123(1), 3–32. leave a trace in the physical environment. Journal of
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.123.1.3 Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 684–701.
Luhrmann, T. M. (Ed.). (2011). Toward an anthropological https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024102
theory of mind [Special section]. Suomen Antropologi: Taves, A. (2009). Religious experience reconsidered. Princeton
Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Association, 36(4), University Press.
5–69. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.
Luhrmann, T. M. (2020). How God becomes real: Kindling the Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorb-
presence of invisible others. Princeton University Press. ing and self-altering experiences (“absorption”), a trait
Luhrmann, T. M., Nusbaum, H., & Thisted, R. (2010). The related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal
absorption hypothesis: Learning to hear God in evangeli- Psychology, 83(3), 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/
cal Christianity. American Anthropologist, 112(1), 66–78. h0036681
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01197.x Tirmidhi, M. I. (1900). Jami’ al-Tirmidhi. Karkhana Tijarat
Luhrmann, T. M., Nusbaum, H., & Thisted, R. (2013). “Lord, Kutab.
teach us to pray”: Prayer practice affects cognitive pro- Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture. John Murray.
cessing. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 13(1–2), 159– Van Leeuwen, N., Weisman, K., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2021).
177. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342090 To believe is not to think: A cross-cultural finding. Open
Luhrmann, T. M., Weisman, K., Aulino, F., Brahinsky, J. D., Dulin, Mind, 5, 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00044
J. C., Dzokoto, V. A., Legare, C. H., Lifshitz, M., Ng, E., Ross- Weisman, K., Legare, C. H., Smith, R. E., Dzokoto, V. A.,
Zehnder, N., & Smith, R. E. (2021). Sensing the presence Aulino, F., Ng, E., Dulin, J. C., Ross-Zehnder, N.,
of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths. Proceedings Brahinsky, J. D., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2021). Similarities
of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 118(5), Article and differences in concepts of mental life among adults
e2016649118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016649118 and children in five cultures. Nature Human Behaviour,
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Rawlings, N. B., Francis, A. D., 5(10), 1358–1368. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-
Greischar, L. L., & Davidson, R. J. (2009). Mental train- 01184-8
ing enhances attentional stability: Neural and behavioral Wildman, W. J. (2011). Religious and spiritual experiences.
evidence. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(42), 13418–13427. Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1614-09.2009 Willard, A. K., & McNamara, R. A. (2019). The minds of god(s)
McNamara, R. A., Senanayake, R., Willard, A. K., & Henrich, and humans: Differences in mind perception in Fiji and
J. (2021). God’s mind on morality. Evolutionary Human North America. Cognitive Science, 43(1), Article e12703.
Sciences, 3, Article e6. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.1 https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12703