Caitlyn D Placek
Biographic Data
| ID | 86915 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Caitlyn D Placek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Caitlyn D |
| FAMILY NAME | Placek |
| SIGNATURE | PLACEK C D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ball State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5315-5431 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Are Rituals Causally Opaque
Xygalatas (2022) states that rituals are causally opaque, meaning they have symbolic value and lack a practical outcome in the external world. In this commentary, I address my concerns with Xygalatas’ definition of ritual, which are framed as follows: first, are rituals causally opaque, or does the way researchers think and ask about rituals create a response bias? Second, if rituals consist of transparent outcomes, does this negate their classif…
The sociocultural ecology of resilience
Resilience is often framed as an internal, individual process. However, this perspective overlooks the complex relationship between individuals and their social and ecological contexts. Drawing on insights from evolutionary anthropology, psychology, and public health, this paper explores how women who use drugs from two regions in the United Kingdom perceive resilience and navigate intricate sociocultural environments of recovery. It also conside…
Reconstructing Cross-Cultural Meanings of Addiction Among Women from Three Countries
The gender gap in drug use is narrowing in regions where access to criminalized substances, such as opioids, is increasing. While research shows that substance use is gendered, less is known about the cultural norms and values shaping women's drug use, as most studies focus on men. Cross-national comparisons of cultural models of addiction are needed to better understand how addiction is perceived and to inform culturally responsive treatment app…
Cultural competence for drug addiction and recovery
Anthropology in Evaluation
Free-listing is a quick, semi-quantitative methodology commonly used by anthropologists to uncover information within a cultural domain. In this method note, we review how anthropologists have used free-listing in a variety of research settings. We then apply the social-ecological framework to describe how free-listing can be used for formative, process, outcome, and impact stages of program evaluation. Each type of evaluation includes a set of e…
Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures
Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses t…
Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures
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…
The moralization bias of gods’ minds
There are compelling reasons to expect that cognitively representing any active, powerful deity motivates cooperative behavior. One mechanism underlying this association could be a cognitive bias toward generally attributing moral concern to anthropomorphic agents. If humans cognitively represent the minds of deities and humans in the same way, and if human agents are generally conceptualized as having moral concern, a broad tendency to attribute…
Moralizing gods, local gods, and complexity in Hindu god concepts
Cultural evolutionary approaches to religion have found that in small-scale societies, “local gods” (LGs) usually care about ritual, in-group cooperation, and ecological challenges, whereas in large-scale societies, “moralizing gods” (MGs) are more concerned with prosociality. In contrast, Hindu deities are considered aspects of one god, and urban regions include LGs, complicating the prevailing distinction. The current study investigated percept…
The religiosity gender gap in 14 diverse societies
Scholars of religion have long sought to explain the persistent finding that women tend to report greater religiosity than men. However, the size of this "gender gap" may depend on the measure of religiosity employed, the religious tradition being sampled, and socio-demographic factors. Here, we conduct a systematic cross-cultural investigation into the prevalence of, and explanations for, the religiosity gender gap in 2,002 individuals from 14 d…
Religion, Fetal Protection, and Fasting during Pregnancy in Three Subcultures
Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures
Reflections and Challenges of Pregnant and Postpartum Participant Recruitment in the Context of the Opioid Epidemic
Pregnancy Fasting in Ramadan
Pregnancy fasting poses a paradox: why would a woman restrict her diet during a period of increased nutritional need? This qualitative, cross-sectional study applied biological and cultural evolutionary theories of pregnancy diet to emic models of fasting with the aim of establishing a testable biocultural framework of pregnancy fasting. The research took place with Muslim women residing in Mysore, India. In-depth interviews were conducted with p…
Cross-cultural research must prioritize equitable collaboration
Research centres in low- and middle-income countries are routinely circumvented in the production of cross-cultural research on human behaviour. Where local contributions are made, collaboration is rarely equitable and often uncredited in co-authorship. Efforts to decolonize the social sciences will remain inadequate until these norms are overturned
Margie Profet
Environmental stress and human life history strategy development in rural and peri-urban South India
The impact of information about tobacco-related reproductive vs. general health risks on South Indian women's tobacco use decisions
Exploring biocultural models of chewing tobacco and paan among reproductive‐aged women
OBJECTIVES: Tobacco and areca nut are two of the most widely used psychoactive plant substances worldwide, yet the biocultural factors that account for variation in use patterns are not well understood. Here we attempt to understand the high prevalence of, and variation in, tobacco and areca nut use among reproductive-aged women. METHODS: Research was carried out in Mysore, Karnataka, India. First, we conducted a qualitative investigation where p…
Reframing HIV Stigma and Fear
Tobacco Cessation Among Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients in Kerala, India
Tobacco cessation is an important intervention to reduce mortality from ischemic heart disease, the leading cause of death in India. In this study, we explored facilitators, barriers, and cultural context to tobacco cessation among acute coronary syndrome (ACS, or heart attack) patients and providers in a tertiary care institution in the south Indian state of Kerala, with a focus on patient trajectories. Patients who quit tobacco after ACS expres…
Mixed-methods and Repeated Measures in Substance Use Research
Informant accuracy is a pervasive issue in the social sciences and persists through the ongoing use of self-report measures of behaviors that are subject to recall errors. The current study reports findings from methods we used to measure substance use among adolescents in South India. We used a repeated-measures, mixed-methods design that began with semistructured interviews ( N = 60) to determine the substances used by adolescents. Next, adoles…
Food Aversions and Cravings
Innate food aversions and culturally transmitted food taboos in pregnant women in rural southwest India
Cross-cultural research must prioritize equitable collaboration
Research centres in low- and middle-income countries are routinely circumvented in the production of cross-cultural research on human behaviour. Where local contributions are made, collaboration is rarely equitable and often uncredited in co-authorship. Efforts to decolonize the social sciences will remain inadequate until these norms are overturned
Fetal Protection
The religiosity gender gap in 14 diverse societies
Scholars of religion have long sought to explain the persistent finding that women tend to report greater religiosity than men. However, the size of this "gender gap" may depend on the measure of religiosity employed, the religious tradition being sampled, and socio-demographic factors. Here, we conduct a systematic cross-cultural investigation into the prevalence of, and explanations for, the religiosity gender gap in 2,002 individuals from 14 d…
Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures
Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures
Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses t…
A test of three hypotheses of pica and amylophagy among pregnant women in Tamil Nadu, India
OBJECTIVES: Pica has been studied in India and elsewhere for more than 100 years, yet no compelling and empirically well-supported explanation for it has emerged. Amylophagy, sometimes considered a type of pica and sometimes studied separately, is less frequently investigated and also lacks a convincing explanation. This study used a biocultural approach to test three hypotheses of pica and amylophagy: protection, hunger/nutrition, and psychologi…
Fetal Protection
Innate food aversions and culturally transmitted food taboos in pregnant women in rural southwest India
Ethnomedical and Sociocultural Factors of Pica Substances in Rural South India
Pica, the intentional ingestion of culturally determined "nonfood" substances, occurs cross-culturally and most commonly during pregnancy. The current study describes women's perceptions of ethnomedical and sociocultural aspects of pica along with familial acquisition and transmission of knowledge and behaviors in a South Indian population. Findings showed that in contrast to Western models of pica, nonfood consumption is not entirely taboo; cons…
Food Aversions and Cravings
Exploring biocultural models of chewing tobacco and paan among reproductive‐aged women
OBJECTIVES: Tobacco and areca nut are two of the most widely used psychoactive plant substances worldwide, yet the biocultural factors that account for variation in use patterns are not well understood. Here we attempt to understand the high prevalence of, and variation in, tobacco and areca nut use among reproductive-aged women. METHODS: Research was carried out in Mysore, Karnataka, India. First, we conducted a qualitative investigation where p…
Reframing HIV Stigma and Fear
Tobacco Cessation Among Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients in Kerala, India
Tobacco cessation is an important intervention to reduce mortality from ischemic heart disease, the leading cause of death in India. In this study, we explored facilitators, barriers, and cultural context to tobacco cessation among acute coronary syndrome (ACS, or heart attack) patients and providers in a tertiary care institution in the south Indian state of Kerala, with a focus on patient trajectories. Patients who quit tobacco after ACS expres…
Mixed-methods and Repeated Measures in Substance Use Research
Informant accuracy is a pervasive issue in the social sciences and persists through the ongoing use of self-report measures of behaviors that are subject to recall errors. The current study reports findings from methods we used to measure substance use among adolescents in South India. We used a repeated-measures, mixed-methods design that began with semistructured interviews ( N = 60) to determine the substances used by adolescents. Next, adoles…
Margie Profet
Environmental stress and human life history strategy development in rural and peri-urban South India
The impact of information about tobacco-related reproductive vs. general health risks on South Indian women's tobacco use decisions
Reflections and Challenges of Pregnant and Postpartum Participant Recruitment in the Context of the Opioid Epidemic
Pregnancy Fasting in Ramadan
Pregnancy fasting poses a paradox: why would a woman restrict her diet during a period of increased nutritional need? This qualitative, cross-sectional study applied biological and cultural evolutionary theories of pregnancy diet to emic models of fasting with the aim of establishing a testable biocultural framework of pregnancy fasting. The research took place with Muslim women residing in Mysore, India. In-depth interviews were conducted with p…
Cross-cultural research must prioritize equitable collaboration
Research centres in low- and middle-income countries are routinely circumvented in the production of cross-cultural research on human behaviour. Where local contributions are made, collaboration is rarely equitable and often uncredited in co-authorship. Efforts to decolonize the social sciences will remain inadequate until these norms are overturned
Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures
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…
The moralization bias of gods’ minds
There are compelling reasons to expect that cognitively representing any active, powerful deity motivates cooperative behavior. One mechanism underlying this association could be a cognitive bias toward generally attributing moral concern to anthropomorphic agents. If humans cognitively represent the minds of deities and humans in the same way, and if human agents are generally conceptualized as having moral concern, a broad tendency to attribute…
Moralizing gods, local gods, and complexity in Hindu god concepts
Cultural evolutionary approaches to religion have found that in small-scale societies, “local gods” (LGs) usually care about ritual, in-group cooperation, and ecological challenges, whereas in large-scale societies, “moralizing gods” (MGs) are more concerned with prosociality. In contrast, Hindu deities are considered aspects of one god, and urban regions include LGs, complicating the prevailing distinction. The current study investigated percept…
The religiosity gender gap in 14 diverse societies
Scholars of religion have long sought to explain the persistent finding that women tend to report greater religiosity than men. However, the size of this "gender gap" may depend on the measure of religiosity employed, the religious tradition being sampled, and socio-demographic factors. Here, we conduct a systematic cross-cultural investigation into the prevalence of, and explanations for, the religiosity gender gap in 2,002 individuals from 14 d…
Religion, Fetal Protection, and Fasting during Pregnancy in Three Subcultures
Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures
Anthropology in Evaluation
Free-listing is a quick, semi-quantitative methodology commonly used by anthropologists to uncover information within a cultural domain. In this method note, we review how anthropologists have used free-listing in a variety of research settings. We then apply the social-ecological framework to describe how free-listing can be used for formative, process, outcome, and impact stages of program evaluation. Each type of evaluation includes a set of e…
Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures
Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses t…
Are Rituals Causally Opaque
Xygalatas (2022) states that rituals are causally opaque, meaning they have symbolic value and lack a practical outcome in the external world. In this commentary, I address my concerns with Xygalatas’ definition of ritual, which are framed as follows: first, are rituals causally opaque, or does the way researchers think and ask about rituals create a response bias? Second, if rituals consist of transparent outcomes, does this negate their classif…
Psychology (16 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Psychiatry (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Biology (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Environmental health (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Clinical Psychology (5 works) · Community Health and Development (5 works)