Devotional Unity and Coalitional Division: How Religion plays both Jekyll and Hyde to Religious Tolerance Ian Hansen

With thanks to Ara Norenzayan Sheldon Solomon John Rector …and everyone else in the acknowledgements And, of course, y’all

Paraphrasings from the Intelligentsia Echo Chamber (1) Religion is the biggest cause of violence, war, oppression and intolerance in the world

Paraphrasings from the Intelligentsia Echo Chamber (2) The more religious a religion is, the more inclined it is to violence, war, oppression and intolerance

Paraphrasings from the Intelligentsia Echo Chamber (3) Religions can be rank ordered from non- religious to Buddhist to Hindu to Jewish to Christian to Muslim, in order of their inclination to violence, war, oppression and intolerance. Religions towards the bottom of this ranking are relatively good religions. Those towards the top are evil religions, and the most evil is one is Islam.

Paraphrasings from the Intelligentsia Echo Chamber (4) To achieve world peace, justice and religious tolerance, we must move everyone towards the secular end of the spectrum, by violent force if necessary. Otherwise the cancer of religious evil will destroy us all.

“Today we rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny.”

Can psychological science speak empirically to this war propaganda? Yes, but first some inoculation against erroneous habits of inference that can afflict psychological scientists

Understanding what we mean by “the same thing” In the realm of pure logic, if A is the “same thing” as B and B is “the same thing” as C, then A is “the same thing” as C. Principle of Transitivity BUT in pure logic, when A is the same thing as B, it is PERFECTLY the same, not approximately the same

In empirical social science… When we say A is “the same thing” as B, what we really mean is A is highly correlated with B. The principle of transitivity can malfunction if “same thing”-ness is defined this way

For instance Just for the sake of argument, imagine that A and B are empirically “the same thing”. If we find that A predicts C in one direction, e.g. pro-C, we might erroneously apply to pure logic principle of transitivity, and expect that B will predict pro-C also.

But check out this factor analysis

Two things or three things? Are religious devotion, coalitional rigidity and religious intolerance 3 things or 2? The factor analysis has two factors: a religious devotion- coalitional rigidity factor, and a distinct intolerance factor. However, the elements of the religious devotion- coalitional rigidity factor load in opposite directions on the intolerance factor Religious devotion elements load in the tolerant direction; coalitional rigidity elements loads in the intolerant direction Thus the religious intolerance factor can be considered one thing, and the religious devotion-coalitional rigidity factor can be considered “one thing with two opposing faces”

Empirically unified constructs can be Janus-faced in their predictions Religious devotion Coalitional rigidity Religious intolerance Religious Tolerance

Janus-faced on Scapegoating

Janus-faced on War and Oppression

Janus-faced on Anti-Pluralism

Janus-faced on intolerance generally

Janus-faced even among Mormons † p <.1 ** p <.01 Political intolerance for Multireligious people, Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, Jews and Atheists

Evidence too hot for the dissertation! Mormons are less intolerant of atheists under mortality and divinity salience!

Can religious devotion really cause violence-eschewing tolerance?

Other differences: Authoritarianism and Political Intolerance

This mirrors Ginges et al (2007)

Theoretical implications From black vs. white comprehensible triangles… to yin-yang incomprehensible triangles… to hexagonal color wheels

Comprehensible Triangles

Incomprehensibe Triangles

Hexagonal Color Wheel

Liberalism vs. Conservatism

Mother Theresa vs. Christopher Hitchens

Mohandas Gandhi vs. Winston Churchill

A more accurate picture

“I see the evidence but it hurts my head. The war propaganda version makes more sense and makes me less uneasy.” Perhaps this is because Westerners— perhaps especially those of us with critical philosophical or psychological training— generally prefer straightforwardness to paradox. Paradox stinks of mysticism and tyranny

An evolutionary explanation to calm your nerves In a nutshell, devotional processes may be (accidentally? adaptively?) linked to transcending self-not self boundaries (God over self, God over all) Transcending self-not self boundaries is great if you include in your extended “self” only trustworthy people who would altruistically help you, fight for you, and die for you However, without a shadow process, devotional processes might lead you to foolishly include The Other as self The Other might then exploit you as a sucker…

An evolutionary explanation to calm your nerves Enter coalitional rigidity, which helps set the boundary between coalitional self and the others outside one’s coalition While devotion is expansive and transcendent, rigidity is restrictive and here and now. For the devotional to survive in human psychology at all, it is necessarily shadowed by an inclination to practical, rational coalitional rigidity.

Alternatively… Coalitional rigidity is something generally selected for as an adaptive boon to a social species It is devotion that shadows coalitional rigidity, because religious devotion gives rigid people good content to be rigid about—memorable, emotionally arresting, arbitrary enough to necessitate unthinking conformity in order to maintain it. But religious devotion is a heavy stimulant to the imagination, and perhaps gives one greater ability to imagine moral equality between one’s coalition and others.

Beyond Darwinianism “Independent-minded flexibility” and “religious devotion” as openness to worldview revision by “rational-empirical” and “revelatory” knowledge respectively “Coalitional rigidity” and “rejection of devotion” as being closed to worldview revision with regard to these forms of knowledge. Perhaps the more open you are to ANY kind of revision in your knowledge—rational/empirical or revelatory—the more likely you are to conclude that the Other is your brother. But as you open your worldview to revision by one kind of knowledge, you tend to close it to revision by the other kind.