Wesley J Wildman
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3702060 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Wesley J Wildman |
| NOMBRES | Wesley J |
| APELLIDO | Wildman |
| FIRMA | WILDMAN W J |
| AFILIACIONES | Boston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7571-1259 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 90 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 5 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 89 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2002 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 1 |
Do People Think Abstractly Inside Cathedrals? The Role of Place Size and Religiosity on Construal Level
This registered report (N = 2,466; >90% power to detect d ≥ 0.13) tested whether imagining oneself in large and religious places, such as cathedrals, promotes abstract thinking. Participants imagined themselves in one of the four experimental scenarios varying in size (large vs. small) and type (religious vs. secular), wrote about their imagined experience there, and completed validated measures assessing abstraction (neutral vs. religious conten…
Woke/anti-woke dynamics in Norway, 2014–2023
We present a system dynamics model (SDM) of woke/anti-woke (WAW) dynamics in Norway, calibrated against Norwegian Citizen Panel data from 2014 to 2023. The SDM synthesizes theories related to WAW dynamics, including Moral Foundations Theory and two contrasting types of sensitivity to injustice (focusing on injustice to self and injustice to others). The simulation's two dependent variables measure the total amount of radicalism (left-wing and rig…
Uncoordinated, contradictory, yet cumulatively effective
Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R). Harmonization of religiosity data from selected international multiwave surveys
This article presents the Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R), explains how it was constructed, and outlines its potential for helping to address long-standing research questions in the social scientific study of religion. DIM-R integrates four variables often used to measure religious commitment: self-declared religiosity, religious attendance, prayer, and affiliation/denominational affiliation. These variables are harmonized in f…
Religion’s Hilbert problems, ten years later
Spirituality is older than religion
The prevalence of axiologically intense experiences among non-religious people raises a question about the developmental importance and phylogenetic primacy of intensity versus religiosity in the evolutionary development of the capacity for cognitively and emotionally rich experiences. If intensity is the more primitive characteristic of experience, then religion arises later and coopts intensity, perhaps to enhance social bonding and confer upon…
Modeling Religion
What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates. The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many discipl…
Four Majestic Philosophical Thoroughbreds and a Deranged Donkey
For me, this special issue is miraculous fun. I'm so grateful in an undirected way that the universe affords such possibilities. To think, the human project might have ended already had any one of a litany of disasters occurred, from asteroid collisions to our dalliance with self-destructive technologies. No more friends. No more wonderful and silly philosophical arguments. But the human project hasn't ended, not this week anyway, and here we are…
Replacing the irreplaceable
International audience
Religion, Brain & Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards
International audience
The Role of Values in Pandemic Management
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made abundantly evident that human behavior is a critical factor in determining whether interventions intended to manage infection spread are effective. Human behavior is driven by decision processes about whether to comply with advice from public-health experts and instructions from officials charged with managing pandemic response within organizations and governmental regions. And guiding those decisions are personal…
Methodological Naturalism and Methodological Secularism Scale
Scholars within and across fields such as the psychology of religion, sociology of religion, cognitive science of religion, religious studies, and theology often argue about the values and norms that ought to guide “academic” research in religion. Is it appropriate in the academy to explain religious phenomena by referring to supernatural forces (such as spirits or gods) as causal agents or to defend one’s scholarly arguments by appealing to the …
Cosmopolitan Nomads and Intensive Farmers
[Figure: see text] This article looks at the contrasting senses of home in comparative theological engagement that launches from a home tradition, with norm-driven accountability, and transreligious theology that creates home on the fly as a shifting matrix of meaningful touch points in conversation with endless others, with a more dynamic and transactional form of accountability
Some Surprising Long‐Term Effects of Religious Moralizing of Alcohol
Introducing our new editors
International audience
Interpreting the rapidly changing landscape of spirit tech
The Dimensions of Spirituality Inventory
The Dimensions of Spirituality Inventory (DSI) is a 50-item quantitative assessment of spirituality. Whereas “spirituality” has seemed to some to be too vague for research purposes, the DSI follows earlier qualitative research in showing that usage of the word points to an intelligible conceptual structure. Instead of defining spirituality and then operationalizing it, as most extant instruments do, the DSI defines and operationalizes 21 relative…
The Academic Study of Religion in Bibliometric Perspective
Academic conferences are among the most energizing gatherings of scholars and scholarship. When the North American Association for the Study of Religion pivoted to an online format for their 2020 Annual Meeting, a broader audience was able to enjoy the sophisticated social analysis for which NAASR is known. In this issue, NAASR joins the Bulletin as a content-partner in publishing some of the research featured during the meeting. Wesley J. Wildma…
Introducing a special issue on phase two of the Evolution of Religion and Morality project
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
It’s Weird how much Joseph Henrich needs computational simulation
A changing of the guard
Scholarly Values, Methods, and Evidence in the Academic Study of Religion
The Values in Scholarship on Religion ( VISOR ) project collected data on the preferred methods and values of scholars in the academic study of religion. This dataset supports comparisons between members of the American Academy of Religion ( AAR ) and partner organizations, such as the North American Association for the Study of Religion ( NAASR ), as well as members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion ( SSSR ). The AAR -partner s…
Paying the Piper
Here we respond to a recent article in this journal by Leonardo Ambasciano, in which he offers a high-level critique of “big data,” artificial intelligence, and computational approaches in the study of religion. The main thrust of his argument is that these approaches are fundamentally problematic both because of their negative effect on the humanities and because they inappropriately rely on “neoliberal philanthrocapitalist” funding. In our resp…
Adapting Cohort-Component Methods to a Microsimulation
Social scientists generally take United Nations (UN) population projections as the baseline when considering the potential impact of any changes that could affect fertility, mortality or migration, and the UN typically does projections using the cohort-component method (CCM). The CCM technique is computationally simple and familiar to demographers. However, in order to avoid the exponential expansion of complexity as new dimensions of individual …
Minding morality
Public policies are designed to have an impact on particular societies, yet policy-oriented computer models and simulations often focus more on articulating the policies to be applied than on realistically rendering the cultural dynamics of the target society. This approach can lead to policy assessments that ignore crucial social contextual factors. For example, by leaving out distinctive moral and normative dimensions of cultural contexts in ar…
What Do Religion Scholars Really Want? Scholarly Values in the Scientific Study of Religion
This article presents selected findings of the Values in Scholarship on Religion (VISOR) project. Conversations about the values and norms that ought to shape the academic study of religion are quite common but typically based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. The goal of VISOR was to gather data that could ground debates about the values that scholars of religion prize. Here, we present statistical analyses of VISOR data that shed l…
Multiple Axialities
Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often tr…
Virtual reality-enabled treatment of nightmares
Evaluating Reliance on Narratives in the Psychological Study of Religious Experiences
In studying religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs), psychologists of religion have relied heavily on narratives. How sound is this practice? Using the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), we diagnosed basic features of RSEs as narrated by 39 participants. This information permitted comparison with third-party ratings of narratives of the same experiences using the PCI's phenomenological categories. Analyzing participant ratings aga…
Challenges Facing the Neurological Study of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience
The neurological study of religious behavior, belief, and experience faces many challenges related to research conception, experimental design, and interpretation of results. Some of these problems are common to other types of neurological study of behavioral and cognitive phenomena. Others are distinctive to the specifically religious domain of behavior, belief, and experience. This paper discusses eight of these problems and three key strategic…
A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy . Robert S. Corrington
Basic Christological Distinctions
This essay surveys major distinctions used to classify and gain insight into contemporary christologies, clarifying some confusions about them. The focus is on distinctions pertaining to christological starting points (from above, from below), schemas (cosmological, anthropological, eschatological, dialectical), styles (historical versus ideal, ontological versus functional), and results (high versus low, literally and figuratively incarnational,…
Hardwired Behavior
Laurence Tancredi is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, a psychiatrist in private practice, and a lawyer who consults on criminal cases involving psychiatric issues. This extraordinary combination of expertise and experience puts him in a position to write this book on the contemporary status of the classic nature–nurture debate. Hardwired Behavior suffers from two connected rhetorical problems that shou…
Challenges Facing the Neurological Study of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience
The neurological study of religious behavior, belief, and experience faces many challenges related to research conception, experimental design, and interpretation of results. Some of these problems are common to other types of neurological study of behavioral and cognitive phenomena. Others are distinctive to the specifically religious domain of behavior, belief, and experience. This paper discusses eight of these problems and three key strategic…
Science and Religious Anthropology
Science and Religious Anthropology explores the convergence of the biological sciences, human sciences, and humanities around a spiritually evocative, naturalistic vision of human life. The disciplinary contributions are at different levels of complexity, from evolution of brains to existential longings, and from embodied sociality to ecosystem habitat. The resulting interpretation of the human condition supports some aspects of traditional theol…
Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry
Evaluating Reliance on Narratives in the Psychological Study of Religious Experiences
In studying religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs), psychologists of religion have relied heavily on narratives. How sound is this practice? Using the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), we diagnosed basic features of RSEs as narrated by 39 participants. This information permitted comparison with third-party ratings of narratives of the same experiences using the PCI's phenomenological categories. Analyzing participant ratings aga…
Reductionism in the scientific study of religion
Reductionism is a complicated idea with several meanings and usages. It also carries a variety of implications, often more hinted at than clearly stated. When academic discourse crosses disciplines
The scientific study of religion and the humanities
The tremendous growth in the scientific study of religion during the last two decades has meant that scientists have finally begun to engage seriously with works on religion produced by humanities
Announcing a new journal
Religions have been venues for philosophical, theological, moral, and literary reflection for millennia. On occasion in the Medieval West, and decisively since the Renaissance, the cultural idea of
Stability of Groups with Costly Beliefs and Practices
Costly signaling theory has been employed to explain the persistence of costly displays in a wide array of species, including humans. Henrich (2009) builds on earlier signaling models to develop a cultural evolutionary model of costly displays. Significantly, Henrich's model shows that there can be a stable equilibrium for an entire population committed to costly displays, persisting alongside a no-cost stable equilibrium for the entire populatio…
The politics of field names
The scientific study of atheism
A New Format
Spiritual Experiences
This essay concerns the specific benefits for empirical theology of hybrid quantitative-phenomenological approaches to the scientific study of spiritual experiences. These benefits are conveyed through the consideration of several quantitative techniques newly emerging at the current time. One such technique is the generation of multi-dimensional profiles of individual spirituality, which helps manage the semantic vagueness surrounding the word “…
The Scientific Study of Religion
Cultural inheritance or cultural diffusion of religious violence? A quantitative case study of the Radical Reformation
Religion throughout the historical record is consistently associated with large-scale cooperative activities. These cooperative activities sometimes involve coordinated acts of violence, particularly against religious out-groups. Using phylogenetic and social network analyses, we investigated whether religious violence is inherited from parent congregations or is acquired from contemporaneous purveyors of violent ideologies. We examined these que…
Bio-Cultural Approaches to Social Forms
On the Naturalness of Religion
Some scholars of religion argue that human cognitive systems inevitably yield religious beliefs and commitments. This view, known as the naturalness of religion thesis, is based on recent advances
Religious Naturalism
For some people, religion concerns actualities and possibilities beyond or in addition to the world of natural processes, while naturalism confines possibilities and actualities in such a way as to rule out supernatural events and realms and beings. Thus, for such people, the phrase »religious naturalism« sounds oxymoronic. Construed in this way, religious naturalism is indeed an incoherent concept. But religious naturalism need not be thought of…
Ethnography and Experiments in the Scientific Study of Religion
Social scientists and religious studies scholars have long recognized religion's ability to strengthen bonds between adherents and create a sense of cohesiveness, or communitas, as Turner notably d
Theoretical Neuroscience
At the Beginning of Year Five
Religion, Brain & Behavior begins its fifth year of publication with several significant changes.First, we regretfully bid farewell to Patrick McNamara as a co-editor. Patrick is one of the co-foun
The Emerging Psychology of Religion
This issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior features a book symposium on the new edition of the Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Edited by Ray Paloutzian and Crystal Park, the
What are “The Hilbert Problems” in the Study of Religion
David Hilbert lived from 1862–1943 and is regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of the late 19th/early 20th century. Among his pioneering contributions was the concept of a Hilbert Space
Philosophy (47 obras) · Psychology (39 obras) · Sociology (39 obras) · Epistemology (37 obras) · Religion and Society Interactions (33 obras) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (33 obras) · Computer Science (32 obras) · Social Psychology (22 obras) · Political science (21 obras) · Law (15 obras)