Adam Baimel
Biographic Data
| ID | 4152406 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Baimel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Baimel |
| SIGNATURE | BAIMEL A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oxford Brookes University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2629-7952 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Ecospirituality Predicts Pro-Environmental Outcomes Across Cultures
The idea that nature has spiritual qualities is common across cultures. In North American samples, evidence supports a link between ecospirituality and pro-environmental outcomes. The generalizability of this claim, however, remains untested. A cross-cultural sample of religious individuals from 15 countries spanning 5 world religions ( N = 11,186) is used to (1) estimate the association between ecospirituality and three pro-environmental outcome…
Conceptualising God in Nature
Christian theology has been critiqued from an ecological perspective for desacralising the natural world. This desacralisation, it is proposed, leads to a conceptual separation between God and nature, which ultimately devalues the natural world, leading to exploitative environmental attitudes. In response, some Christian ecotheologians have advocated for the notion that God permeates the natural world. In keeping with the ‘Greening of Religion’ h…
Offloading punishment to karma
Punishment and the threat thereof can help enforce social norms, but enacting punishment is often costly. To avoid these costs, individuals may prefer to offload the responsibility of punishment to others or to cultural institutions. We propose that shared beliefs about supernatural punishment contribute to minimizing the costs of interpersonal punishment by allowing people to offload punishment to supernatural entities. In a Third Party Punishme…
Examining the relationship between metacognitive trust in thinking styles and supernatural beliefs
Conflicting findings have emerged from research on the relationship between thinking styles and supernatural beliefs. In two studies, we examined this relationship through meta‐cognitive trust and developed a new: (1) experimental manipulation, a short scientific article describing the benefits of thinking styles: (2) trust in thinking styles measure, the Ambiguous Decisions task; and (3) supernatural belief measure, the Belief in Psychic Ability…
Political Common Ground on Preserving Nature
Environmental issues are becoming increasingly politically polarized, making common ground essential. This research investigated the political common ground of environmental motives—the reasons why nature is worth preserving. Natural language processing of liberals’ and conservatives’ open text responses (Study 1: N = 1,544) identified 12 central motives. Political common ground was shared on the most cited motives: Human survival, moral obligati…
Religiosity, spirituality, and mental health in eight countries
Meta-analyses suggest that religiosity has a positive relationship with mental health. However, methodological concerns limit findings. The purpose of the study was to analyze linear and curvilinear relationships among religiosity, spirituality, and mental health using open science practices and a multinational sample. Relationships among self-reported religiosity, spirituality, depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction were assessed usi…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Material insecurity predicts greater commitment to moralistic and less commitment to local deities
The existential security hypothesis predicts that in the absence of more successful secular institutions, people will be attracted to religion when they are materially insecure. Most assessments, however, employ data sampled at a state-level with a focus on world religions. Using individual-level data collected in societies of varied community sizes with diverse religious traditions including animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, we con…
How is analytical thinking related to religious belief? A test of three theoretical models
The replicability and importance of the correlation between cognitive style and religious belief have been debated. Moreover, the literature has not examined distinct psychological accounts of this relationship. We tested the replicability of the correlation (N = 5284; students and broader samples of Canadians, Americans, and Indians); while testing three accounts of how cognitive style comes to be related to belief in God, karma, witchcraft, and…
Machiavellian strategist or cultural learner? Mentalizing and learning over development in a resource-sharing game
Rewarding the good and punishing the bad
Religiosity and resource allocation in Marajó, Brazil
Current research suggests that certain features of religion can harness our sociality in important ways, curbing selfish behavior and/or boosting prosocial behavior. If this is the case, embodied symbols of religious devotion should induce these effects. To test the claim that religious symbolism has an effect on sociality, we conducted the Random Allocation Game with a symbolic prime in Pesqueiro, on the island of Marajó, Brazil, among Christian…
The evolution of religion and morality
Understanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes including institutions, norms, and practices that contributes to this phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests that one such process involves certain components of religious systems that may have fostered the expansion of human cooperation in a variety of ways, including both cer…
What are the causes and consequences of belief in karma
The scientific study of religion has thus far overlooked the study of beliefs and practices that are centered on the notion of karma: ethical causation across one or different lifetimes. Here, we outline a set of pertinent questions about karmic beliefs and practices ripe for research, namely (1) their cultural distribution around the world, (2) their structure and content, and (3) their psychological and cultural antecedents and consequences
Coordinating bodies and minds
No prominent works on this page.
What are the causes and consequences of belief in karma
The scientific study of religion has thus far overlooked the study of beliefs and practices that are centered on the notion of karma: ethical causation across one or different lifetimes. Here, we outline a set of pertinent questions about karmic beliefs and practices ripe for research, namely (1) their cultural distribution around the world, (2) their structure and content, and (3) their psychological and cultural antecedents and consequences
Coordinating bodies and minds
Religiosity and resource allocation in Marajó, Brazil
Current research suggests that certain features of religion can harness our sociality in important ways, curbing selfish behavior and/or boosting prosocial behavior. If this is the case, embodied symbols of religious devotion should induce these effects. To test the claim that religious symbolism has an effect on sociality, we conducted the Random Allocation Game with a symbolic prime in Pesqueiro, on the island of Marajó, Brazil, among Christian…
The evolution of religion and morality
Understanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes including institutions, norms, and practices that contributes to this phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests that one such process involves certain components of religious systems that may have fostered the expansion of human cooperation in a variety of ways, including both cer…
Rewarding the good and punishing the bad
How is analytical thinking related to religious belief? A test of three theoretical models
The replicability and importance of the correlation between cognitive style and religious belief have been debated. Moreover, the literature has not examined distinct psychological accounts of this relationship. We tested the replicability of the correlation (N = 5284; students and broader samples of Canadians, Americans, and Indians); while testing three accounts of how cognitive style comes to be related to belief in God, karma, witchcraft, and…
Machiavellian strategist or cultural learner? Mentalizing and learning over development in a resource-sharing game
Material insecurity predicts greater commitment to moralistic and less commitment to local deities
The existential security hypothesis predicts that in the absence of more successful secular institutions, people will be attracted to religion when they are materially insecure. Most assessments, however, employ data sampled at a state-level with a focus on world religions. Using individual-level data collected in societies of varied community sizes with diverse religious traditions including animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, we con…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Examining the relationship between metacognitive trust in thinking styles and supernatural beliefs
Conflicting findings have emerged from research on the relationship between thinking styles and supernatural beliefs. In two studies, we examined this relationship through meta‐cognitive trust and developed a new: (1) experimental manipulation, a short scientific article describing the benefits of thinking styles: (2) trust in thinking styles measure, the Ambiguous Decisions task; and (3) supernatural belief measure, the Belief in Psychic Ability…
Political Common Ground on Preserving Nature
Environmental issues are becoming increasingly politically polarized, making common ground essential. This research investigated the political common ground of environmental motives—the reasons why nature is worth preserving. Natural language processing of liberals’ and conservatives’ open text responses (Study 1: N = 1,544) identified 12 central motives. Political common ground was shared on the most cited motives: Human survival, moral obligati…
Religiosity, spirituality, and mental health in eight countries
Meta-analyses suggest that religiosity has a positive relationship with mental health. However, methodological concerns limit findings. The purpose of the study was to analyze linear and curvilinear relationships among religiosity, spirituality, and mental health using open science practices and a multinational sample. Relationships among self-reported religiosity, spirituality, depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction were assessed usi…
Offloading punishment to karma
Punishment and the threat thereof can help enforce social norms, but enacting punishment is often costly. To avoid these costs, individuals may prefer to offload the responsibility of punishment to others or to cultural institutions. We propose that shared beliefs about supernatural punishment contribute to minimizing the costs of interpersonal punishment by allowing people to offload punishment to supernatural entities. In a Third Party Punishme…
Ecospirituality Predicts Pro-Environmental Outcomes Across Cultures
The idea that nature has spiritual qualities is common across cultures. In North American samples, evidence supports a link between ecospirituality and pro-environmental outcomes. The generalizability of this claim, however, remains untested. A cross-cultural sample of religious individuals from 15 countries spanning 5 world religions ( N = 11,186) is used to (1) estimate the association between ecospirituality and three pro-environmental outcome…
Conceptualising God in Nature
Christian theology has been critiqued from an ecological perspective for desacralising the natural world. This desacralisation, it is proposed, leads to a conceptual separation between God and nature, which ultimately devalues the natural world, leading to exploitative environmental attitudes. In response, some Christian ecotheologians have advocated for the notion that God permeates the natural world. In keeping with the ‘Greening of Religion’ h…
Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (9 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (6 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Cognition (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (3 works)