Thursdays: 9 AM in EA407 (Semester 1, 2021)
Course coordinator & Lecturer: Prof. Joseph Bulbulia Email: joseph.bulbulia@vuw.ac.nz
Course admin support: Dr. Jiun Youn (Extension, technical issues and other housekeeping matters) Email: jiun.youn@vuw.ac.nz
This course examines social psychology from a cross-cultural perspective. To what extent is social behaviour different or the same across the world? What theories can we use to understand the thoughts, feelings, actions, and beliefs of people across cultures? Emphasis is on such basic social processes as construction of identity and personality, dimensions of cultural variation, and intergroup harmony and conflict. Issues towards developing cross-cultural competence are considered, with an eye towards establishing better practices for the evolving population of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
See: Assessments
This year, we will use religion as a window through which to view patterns of cultural variation and similarity.
From the healing rituals of the Kung people in southern Africa, to the human sacrificial rituals of the Aztecs, to the liberating speeches of Martin Luther King, human spirituality is both diverse and powerful. What explains the near universality of religion? What explains its diversity of forms? Are religions like typewriters, once useful but now obsolete? Or will religions remain vital for humanity’s future. Here, we investigate these questions from the perspective of cultural evolution.
Lectures will be posted to: https://go-bayes.github.io/psych-423/
Course-Related notices will appear on VUW Blackboard
Any information relating to Psyc 423 or any last-minute changes to the course will be posted on Blackboard.
Students must submit all written work to VUW Blackboard.
Trimester dates: 22 February to 20 June Teaching dates: 22 February to 28 May
Mid-trimester break: 5 April to 18 April
Last assessment item due: Final assessment (research proposal) will need to be submitted on 31st May see: Assessments
Study Examination/Assessment Period: Note: students who enrol in courses with examinations must be able to attend an examination at the University at any time during the scheduled examination period. Withdrawal dates: Refer to Withdrawing If you cannot complete an assignment or sit a test or examination (aegrotats), refer to Aegrotats
Psyc423 is a 15pt course which represents approx. 150 hours of total work for an average student.
In-class time involves (approx. 22hrs):
Lectures by academic staff (typically Bulbulia): Lectures will introducing basic areas of knowledge, and will supplement the readings.
Class discussions. I expect students to read the assigned articles for the relevant week. To receive participation credit, students must attent seminar and submit a brief (~100 word) account of a thought, question, or insight that occurred to them during the class discussion.
The reports and “grant” assessments are described in Assessments)
Note: this course has no tests or examinations.
Out-of-class time involves (approx. 128hrs):
There are no Mandatory course requirements.
Given that Psyc 423 is a 15 point course, the expected workload is no less than 150 hours in total. This would mean roughly 15 hours per week. This should be viewed as a minimum - how much you get out of this course will depend on the work you put in.
Students must turn in all assignments on time by due dates. If students do not turn in an essay or assignment at a designated time, they will receive a zero for assignment this will be counted toward the final grade.
You will not be needing any additional equipment or materials.
Most of the material students will be expected to read is published in journals and to some extent in books. Students will need to read between two and five articles per week. Set readings will mostly be supplied throughout the course (please check relevant week in BlackBoard). However, students will also be required to conduct their own independent reviews of the literature for assignment purposes.
The information above is specific to this course. There is other important information that students must familiarise themselves with, including:
Special passes Refer to the Assessment Handbook
Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby. “Evolutionary psychology: A primer.” (1997). Website:
Steven Mithen’s very brief review from an archaeological perspective (3 pages): Mithen, S. (1997). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture.PDF
Guthrie, Stewart. “Spiritual beings: A Darwinian, cognitive account.” Bulbulia et al., eds., Evolution of Religion (2008): 239-245. PDF
Kelemen, Deborah. “Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature.” Psychological Science 15, no. 5 (2004): 295-301. PDF
Harris, Paul L., and Melissa A. Koenig. “Trust in testimony: How children learn about science and religion.” Child development 77, no. 3 (2006): 505-524. PDF
Bloom, P. (2007). Religion is natural. Developmental science, 10(1), 147-151. PDF
Bulbulia, Joseph. “Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention.” Evolution and Cognition 10, no. 1 (2004): 19-38. PDF
Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signalling theory of religion. Cross-cultural research, 37(2), 211-239. PDF
Sosis, R., Kress, H. C., & Boster, J. S. (2007). Scars for war: Evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(4), 234-247. PDF
Sosis, R. (2009). The adaptationist-byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 9(3-4), 315-332. PDF
Konvalinka, I., Xygalatas, D., Bulbulia, J., Schjødt, U., Jegindø, E. M., Wallot, S., … & Roepstorff, A. (2011). Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(20), 8514-8519. PDF
Xygalatas, P. Mitkidis, R. Fischer, P. Reddish, J. Skewes, A. W. Geertz, A. Roepstorff, and J. Bulbulia. Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychological Science, 2013 PDF
Power, E. A. (2018). Collective ritual and social support networks in rural South India. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1879), 20180023.PDF
Bulbulia, J., Geertz, A., Atkinson, Q., Cohen, E., Evans, N., Francois, P., … & Wilson, D. (2013). The cultural evolution of religion. Cultural evolution: Society, technology, language, and religion. Vol. 12. MIT Press, 2013. PDF
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Bulbulia, J., Gray, R. D., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2018). Christianity spread faster in small, politically structured societies. Nature human behaviour, 2(8), 559-564.link
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2016). Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature, 532(7598), 228. link
Weeden, J., Cohen, A. B., & Kenrick, D. T. (2008). Religious attendance as reproductive support. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(5), 327-334. PDF
Blume, Michael. “The reproductive benefits of religious affiliation.” In The biological evolution of religious mind and behavior, pp. 117-126. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009. PDF
Shaver, J. H., Power, E. A., Purzycki, B. G., Watts, J., Sear, R., Shenk, M. K., … & Bulbulia, J. A. (2020). Church attendance and alloparenting: an analysis of fertility, social support and child development among English mothers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1805), 20190428.PDF
Willard, A. K., & McNamara, R. A. (2019). The minds of god (s) and humans: Differences in mind perception in Fiji and North America. Cognitive science, 43(1), e12703.PDF
Purzycki, B. G., Finkel, D. N., Shaver, J., Wales, N., Cohen, A. B., & Sosis, R. (2012). What does God know? Supernatural agents’ access to socially strategic and non‐strategic information. Cognitive Science, 36(5), 846-869. PDF
Norenzayan, Ara, and Will M. Gervais. “The origins of religious disbelief.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17, no. 1 (2013): 20-25. PDF
Gervais, Will M. 2017. “Global Evidence of Extreme Intuitive Moral Prejudice Against Atheists”Link
Sibley, Chris G., and Joseph Bulbulia. “Faith after an earthquake: A longitudinal study of religion and perceived health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand earthquake.” PloS one 7, no. 12 (2012): e49648 link
Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., Kirby, K. R., Bulbulia, J., Gavin, M. C., & Gray, R. D. (2014). The ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(47), 16784-16789.link
Wilson, J. Bulbulia, and C. G. Sibley. Differences and similarities in religious and paranormal beliefs: a typology of distinct faith signatures. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 1–23, 2015 link
Bulbulia, J. A., Troughton, G., Highland, B. R., & Sibley, C. G. (2020). A national-scale typology of orientations to religion poses new challenges for the cultural evolutionary study of religious groups. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 10(3), 239-251.link
Mesoudi, A. (2009). How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology and vice versa. Psychological review, 116(4), 929. PDF
If you see mistakes or want to suggest changes, please create an issue on the source repository.
Text and figures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Source code is available at https://github.com/go-bayes/github.io-423-culture, unless otherwise noted. The figures that have been reused from other sources don't fall under this license and can be recognized by a note in their caption: "Figure from ...".