Matt J Rossano
Biographic Data
| ID | 164150 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matt J Rossano |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matt J |
| FAMILY NAME | Rossano |
| SIGNATURE | ROSSANO M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Southeastern Louisiana University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1484-1105 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources
Civilized Rituals
Supernatural beliefs and “functional psychosis”
An important theme running throughout Flannelly’s (2017) Religious Beliefs, Evolutionary Psychiatry, and Mental Health in America is that psychotic symptoms can serve an adaptive function. They for
Making a case for Göbekli Tepe in evolutionary psychology: Comment on Henley (2020)
Göbekli Tepe holds great significance for psychology. However, we think its place in the history of psychology is still very unclear. More clarity may come by giving evolutionary psychology priority over Göbekli Tepe for the time being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology: Psychology in Prehistory
Why add the supernatural
A theme common to many of the essays is that of identifying the unique contribution that religion (specifially, supernatural thinking) adds to human social life. We argue that the contribution may have been efficiency. Supernatural thinking may have made cooperation easier to implement in human social groups. We explore this possiiblity in two areas: partner choice and parenting
Cognitive Fluidity and Acheulean Over-imitation
This paper analyses recently discussed evidence of over-imitation in Acheulean biface construction. First, it evaluates the argument for over-imitation using the available archaeological and cognitive science evidence. Next, it applies the four major theories of over-imitation, (1) Copy and Correct (C&C), (2) Automatic Causal Encoding (ACE), (3) social affiliation and (4) normative theory, as potential explanations for Acheulean over-imitation. A…
Mortal Rituals: What the Story of the Andes Survivors Tells Us About Human Evolution
On December 21, 1972, sixteen young survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 were rescued after spending ten weeks stranded at the crash site of their plane, high in the remote Andes Mountains. The incident made international headlines and spawned several best-selling books, fueled partly by the fact that the young men had resorted to cannibalism to survive. Matt Rossano examines this story from an evolutionary perspective, weaving together fi…
Ritually faking belief
The essential role of ritual in the transmission and reinforcement of social norms
Social norms are communally agreed upon, morally significant behavioral standards that are, at least in part, responsible for uniquely human forms of cooperation and social organization. This article summarizes evidence demonstrating that ritual and ritualized behaviors are essential to the transmission and reinforcement of social norms. Ritualized behaviors reliably signal an intentional mental state giving credibility to verbal expressions whil…
Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved
Drawing together evidence from a wide range of scientific disciplines, this book presents an evolutionary history of religion. That history begins with the social lives and rituals of our primate ancestors. As our ancestors’ social world grew increasingly complex, their mental powers grew in concert. Among these mental powers was an increasingly sophisticated imagination. A supernatural world filled with gods, spirits, and ancestors was an outgro…
Making Friends, Making Tools, and Making Symbols
Using Peircian semiotics as an interpretive framework, I evaluate the archaeological evidence for the emergence of symbolism in hominin evolution. While this framework would predict a progression from icons to indexes to symbols, the archaeological record is unclear as to whether icons or indexes are primary. Symbols, however, do appear to be late arriving, confirming the prediction that symbol learning is cognitively demanding. I argue that deve…
Ritual Behaviour and the Origins of Modern Cognition
This article argues that ritual behaviour was a critical selective force in the emergence of modern cognition. The argument is based on the following observations: (1) Upper Palaeolithic Cro-Magnons exhibited unprecedented levels of social complexity and there is evidence to suggest that this complexity may have begun even earlier in Africa, possibly connected with the Toba eruption. (2) Creating larger, more complex social arrangements, especial…
The Moral Faculty: Does Religion Promote “Moral Expertise”
Research on the moral faculty indicates that morality emerges naturally over the course of normal human development, similar to other competencies such as face perception, language, numerical reasoning, and some motor skills (running, jumping, etc.). One implication of this is that there should be a roughly normal distribution of moral skills. Thus, while most people develop competent moral skills, a few fail to develop these skills and a few dev…
Did Meditating Make Us Human
Campfire rituals of focused attention created Baldwinian selection for enhanced working memory among our Homo sapiens ancestors. This model is grounded in five propositions: the emergence of symbolism occurred late in the archaeological record; this emergence was caused by a fortuitous genetic mutation that enhanced working memory capacity; a Baldwinian process where genetic adaptation follows somatic adaptation was the mechanism for this emergen…
Supernaturalizing Social Life: Religion and the Evolution of Human Cooperation
Spatial representations acquired from computer models: Cognitive load, orientation specificity and the acquisition of survey knowledge
Past research has shown that spatial knowledge acquired from maps is orientation specific while that acquired from direct experience is not. Research using computer model exposure to an environment has sometimes succeeded in eliminating orientation specificity but usually at a cost of generally poor spatial judgment performance on the part of participants. Typically, orientation specificity has been assessed using simulated orientation tests wher…
Perception of Map-Environment Correspondence: The Roles of Features and Alignment
Subjects viewed slide-projected photographs of a building and indicated the location from which each photograph was taken by marking a perimeter floor-plan map of the building. Evidence for alignment effects was found; Performance was better when the orientation of the floor-plan map to the subject matched the subject's orientation to the view of the building. Performance was also evaluated with respect to a hypothesized algorithm for decision ma…
Making Friends, Making Tools, and Making Symbols
Using Peircian semiotics as an interpretive framework, I evaluate the archaeological evidence for the emergence of symbolism in hominin evolution. While this framework would predict a progression from icons to indexes to symbols, the archaeological record is unclear as to whether icons or indexes are primary. Symbols, however, do appear to be late arriving, confirming the prediction that symbol learning is cognitively demanding. I argue that deve…
The essential role of ritual in the transmission and reinforcement of social norms
Social norms are communally agreed upon, morally significant behavioral standards that are, at least in part, responsible for uniquely human forms of cooperation and social organization. This article summarizes evidence demonstrating that ritual and ritualized behaviors are essential to the transmission and reinforcement of social norms. Ritualized behaviors reliably signal an intentional mental state giving credibility to verbal expressions whil…
Ritual Behaviour and the Origins of Modern Cognition
This article argues that ritual behaviour was a critical selective force in the emergence of modern cognition. The argument is based on the following observations: (1) Upper Palaeolithic Cro-Magnons exhibited unprecedented levels of social complexity and there is evidence to suggest that this complexity may have begun even earlier in Africa, possibly connected with the Toba eruption. (2) Creating larger, more complex social arrangements, especial…
Supernaturalizing Social Life: Religion and the Evolution of Human Cooperation
The Moral Faculty: Does Religion Promote “Moral Expertise”
Research on the moral faculty indicates that morality emerges naturally over the course of normal human development, similar to other competencies such as face perception, language, numerical reasoning, and some motor skills (running, jumping, etc.). One implication of this is that there should be a roughly normal distribution of moral skills. Thus, while most people develop competent moral skills, a few fail to develop these skills and a few dev…
Did Meditating Make Us Human
Campfire rituals of focused attention created Baldwinian selection for enhanced working memory among our Homo sapiens ancestors. This model is grounded in five propositions: the emergence of symbolism occurred late in the archaeological record; this emergence was caused by a fortuitous genetic mutation that enhanced working memory capacity; a Baldwinian process where genetic adaptation follows somatic adaptation was the mechanism for this emergen…
Cognitive Fluidity and Acheulean Over-imitation
This paper analyses recently discussed evidence of over-imitation in Acheulean biface construction. First, it evaluates the argument for over-imitation using the available archaeological and cognitive science evidence. Next, it applies the four major theories of over-imitation, (1) Copy and Correct (C&C), (2) Automatic Causal Encoding (ACE), (3) social affiliation and (4) normative theory, as potential explanations for Acheulean over-imitation. A…
Spatial representations acquired from computer models: Cognitive load, orientation specificity and the acquisition of survey knowledge
Past research has shown that spatial knowledge acquired from maps is orientation specific while that acquired from direct experience is not. Research using computer model exposure to an environment has sometimes succeeded in eliminating orientation specificity but usually at a cost of generally poor spatial judgment performance on the part of participants. Typically, orientation specificity has been assessed using simulated orientation tests wher…
Perception of Map-Environment Correspondence: The Roles of Features and Alignment
Subjects viewed slide-projected photographs of a building and indicated the location from which each photograph was taken by marking a perimeter floor-plan map of the building. Evidence for alignment effects was found; Performance was better when the orientation of the floor-plan map to the subject matched the subject's orientation to the view of the building. Performance was also evaluated with respect to a hypothesized algorithm for decision ma…
Spatial representations acquired from computer models: Cognitive load, orientation specificity and the acquisition of survey knowledge
Past research has shown that spatial knowledge acquired from maps is orientation specific while that acquired from direct experience is not. Research using computer model exposure to an environment has sometimes succeeded in eliminating orientation specificity but usually at a cost of generally poor spatial judgment performance on the part of participants. Typically, orientation specificity has been assessed using simulated orientation tests wher…
Did Meditating Make Us Human
Campfire rituals of focused attention created Baldwinian selection for enhanced working memory among our Homo sapiens ancestors. This model is grounded in five propositions: the emergence of symbolism occurred late in the archaeological record; this emergence was caused by a fortuitous genetic mutation that enhanced working memory capacity; a Baldwinian process where genetic adaptation follows somatic adaptation was the mechanism for this emergen…
Supernaturalizing Social Life: Religion and the Evolution of Human Cooperation
The Moral Faculty: Does Religion Promote “Moral Expertise”
Research on the moral faculty indicates that morality emerges naturally over the course of normal human development, similar to other competencies such as face perception, language, numerical reasoning, and some motor skills (running, jumping, etc.). One implication of this is that there should be a roughly normal distribution of moral skills. Thus, while most people develop competent moral skills, a few fail to develop these skills and a few dev…
Ritual Behaviour and the Origins of Modern Cognition
This article argues that ritual behaviour was a critical selective force in the emergence of modern cognition. The argument is based on the following observations: (1) Upper Palaeolithic Cro-Magnons exhibited unprecedented levels of social complexity and there is evidence to suggest that this complexity may have begun even earlier in Africa, possibly connected with the Toba eruption. (2) Creating larger, more complex social arrangements, especial…
Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved
Drawing together evidence from a wide range of scientific disciplines, this book presents an evolutionary history of religion. That history begins with the social lives and rituals of our primate ancestors. As our ancestors’ social world grew increasingly complex, their mental powers grew in concert. Among these mental powers was an increasingly sophisticated imagination. A supernatural world filled with gods, spirits, and ancestors was an outgro…
Making Friends, Making Tools, and Making Symbols
Using Peircian semiotics as an interpretive framework, I evaluate the archaeological evidence for the emergence of symbolism in hominin evolution. While this framework would predict a progression from icons to indexes to symbols, the archaeological record is unclear as to whether icons or indexes are primary. Symbols, however, do appear to be late arriving, confirming the prediction that symbol learning is cognitively demanding. I argue that deve…
Ritually faking belief
The essential role of ritual in the transmission and reinforcement of social norms
Social norms are communally agreed upon, morally significant behavioral standards that are, at least in part, responsible for uniquely human forms of cooperation and social organization. This article summarizes evidence demonstrating that ritual and ritualized behaviors are essential to the transmission and reinforcement of social norms. Ritualized behaviors reliably signal an intentional mental state giving credibility to verbal expressions whil…
Mortal Rituals: What the Story of the Andes Survivors Tells Us About Human Evolution
On December 21, 1972, sixteen young survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 were rescued after spending ten weeks stranded at the crash site of their plane, high in the remote Andes Mountains. The incident made international headlines and spawned several best-selling books, fueled partly by the fact that the young men had resorted to cannibalism to survive. Matt Rossano examines this story from an evolutionary perspective, weaving together fi…
Why add the supernatural
A theme common to many of the essays is that of identifying the unique contribution that religion (specifially, supernatural thinking) adds to human social life. We argue that the contribution may have been efficiency. Supernatural thinking may have made cooperation easier to implement in human social groups. We explore this possiiblity in two areas: partner choice and parenting
Cognitive Fluidity and Acheulean Over-imitation
This paper analyses recently discussed evidence of over-imitation in Acheulean biface construction. First, it evaluates the argument for over-imitation using the available archaeological and cognitive science evidence. Next, it applies the four major theories of over-imitation, (1) Copy and Correct (C&C), (2) Automatic Causal Encoding (ACE), (3) social affiliation and (4) normative theory, as potential explanations for Acheulean over-imitation. A…
Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology: Psychology in Prehistory
Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources
Civilized Rituals
Supernatural beliefs and “functional psychosis”
An important theme running throughout Flannelly’s (2017) Religious Beliefs, Evolutionary Psychiatry, and Mental Health in America is that psychotic symptoms can serve an adaptive function. They for
Making a case for Göbekli Tepe in evolutionary psychology: Comment on Henley (2020)
Göbekli Tepe holds great significance for psychology. However, we think its place in the history of psychology is still very unclear. More clarity may come by giving evolutionary psychology priority over Göbekli Tepe for the time being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychology (14 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · History (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Cognition (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works)