Christopher M Kavanagh
Biographic Data
| ID | 9327596 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher M Kavanagh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher M |
| FAMILY NAME | Kavanagh |
| SIGNATURE | KAVANAGH C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9952-9147 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 5 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
What Is the Role of Ritual in Binding Communities Together?
It has long been recognized that participation in collective rituals strengthens group cohesion. In recent decades, researchers have begun to disambiguate the psychological mechanisms involved, including social synchrony, causal opacity, shared memory, and the transmission of group-identity markers. The focus here is on the ways in which the performance frequency and emotional intensity of collective rituals influence the way these mechanisms ope…
Outgroup threat and the emergence of cohesive groups: A cross-cultural examination
Evolutionary models and empirical evidence suggest that outgroup threat is one of the strongest factors inducing group cohesion; however, little is known about the process of forming such cohesive groups. We investigated how outgroup threat galvanizes individuals to affiliate with others to form engaged units that are willing to act on behalf of their in-group. A total of 864 participants from six countries were randomly assigned to an outgroup t…
Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat
Significance Biologists and social scientists have long tried to understand why some societies have more fluid and open interpersonal relationships—differences in relational mobility—and how those differences influence individual behaviors. We measure relational mobility in 39 societies and find that relationships are more stable and hard to form in east Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, while they are more fluid in the West and Latin Amer…
Too Much, Too Little, or the Wrong Kind of ‘Theory’ in the Study of Religions
In response to the recent publication of Theory In a Time of Excess this article offers an outsider perspective on the theoretical issues raised and why they are ultimately unlikely to be resolved. The article argues that there is a widespread problematic tendency to equate theory with a specific category of critical theory that tautologically restricts the theoretical boundaries of the study of religion field and neglects the contributions of mo…
The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences
Willingness to lay down one’s life for a group of non-kin, well documented historically and ethnographically, represents an evolutionary puzzle. Building on research in social psychology, we develop a mathematical model showing how conditioning cooperation on previous shared experience can allow individually costly pro-group behavior to evolve. The model generates a series of predictions that we then test empirically in a range of special sample …
Outgroup threat and the emergence of cohesive groups: A cross-cultural examination
Evolutionary models and empirical evidence suggest that outgroup threat is one of the strongest factors inducing group cohesion; however, little is known about the process of forming such cohesive groups. We investigated how outgroup threat galvanizes individuals to affiliate with others to form engaged units that are willing to act on behalf of their in-group. A total of 864 participants from six countries were randomly assigned to an outgroup t…
The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences
Willingness to lay down one’s life for a group of non-kin, well documented historically and ethnographically, represents an evolutionary puzzle. Building on research in social psychology, we develop a mathematical model showing how conditioning cooperation on previous shared experience can allow individually costly pro-group behavior to evolve. The model generates a series of predictions that we then test empirically in a range of special sample …
Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat
Significance Biologists and social scientists have long tried to understand why some societies have more fluid and open interpersonal relationships—differences in relational mobility—and how those differences influence individual behaviors. We measure relational mobility in 39 societies and find that relationships are more stable and hard to form in east Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, while they are more fluid in the West and Latin Amer…
Too Much, Too Little, or the Wrong Kind of ‘Theory’ in the Study of Religions
In response to the recent publication of Theory In a Time of Excess this article offers an outsider perspective on the theoretical issues raised and why they are ultimately unlikely to be resolved. The article argues that there is a widespread problematic tendency to equate theory with a specific category of critical theory that tautologically restricts the theoretical boundaries of the study of religion field and neglects the contributions of mo…
Outgroup threat and the emergence of cohesive groups: A cross-cultural examination
Evolutionary models and empirical evidence suggest that outgroup threat is one of the strongest factors inducing group cohesion; however, little is known about the process of forming such cohesive groups. We investigated how outgroup threat galvanizes individuals to affiliate with others to form engaged units that are willing to act on behalf of their in-group. A total of 864 participants from six countries were randomly assigned to an outgroup t…
What Is the Role of Ritual in Binding Communities Together?
It has long been recognized that participation in collective rituals strengthens group cohesion. In recent decades, researchers have begun to disambiguate the psychological mechanisms involved, including social synchrony, causal opacity, shared memory, and the transmission of group-identity markers. The focus here is on the ways in which the performance frequency and emotional intensity of collective rituals influence the way these mechanisms ope…
Psychology (4 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Prosocial behavior (3 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · Collective identity (2 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (2 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (2 works) · Economics (2 works)