Project summary: This project is aimed at uncovering the cognitive biases that facilitate the development, maintenance, and transmission of religious beliefs and behaviors.

Funding: John Templeton Foundation, European Science Research Council, and Center of Theological Inquiry

Publications:

2022	Purzycki, Benjamin Grant and Richard Sosis. Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics. Equinox Publishers.
2022	Sosis, Richard, John Shaver, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, and Jordan Kiper. Soul Mates? Conflicts and Complementarities in the Evolutionary and Cognitive Sciences of Religion, in Oxford Handbook for the Cognitive Science of Religion, ed. Justin Barrett, pp. 349-374. Oxford University Press.
2021	Purzycki, Benjamin and Richard Sosis. Traditional Societies [Resistance, Subversion, and the Absence of Religion in Traditional Societies], in The Cambridge History of Atheism, eds. Michael Ruse and Stephen Bullivant, Cambridge University Press.
2019	Purzycki, Benjamin and Richard Sosis. What do People Think Omniscient Agents Know?, in The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies, eds. Jason Slone and William McCorkle, pp. 25-32. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press.
2017	Sosis, Richard. The road not taken: possible paths for the cognitive science of religion, in Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after 25 years, eds. L. Martin and D. Wiebe, pp. 155–167. London: Bloomsbury Press.
2015	Purzycki, Benjamin G., Jordan Kiper, John Shaver, Daniel Finkel, and Richard Sosis. Religion, in Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, eds. R.A. Scott and S.M. Kosslyn, pp. 1–16. New York: Wiley.
2013	Sosis, Richard, Wesley Wildman, and Patrick McNamara. On the Naturalness of Religion. Religion, Brain & Behavior 3: 89-90.
2012	Purzycki, Benjamin, Daniel Finkel, John Shaver, Nathan Wales, Adam B. Cohen, and Richard Sosis. What does God Know? Supernatural Agents’ Perceived Access to Socially Strategic and Nonstrategic Information. Cognitive Science 36:846–869.
2011	Purzycki, Benjamin and Richard Sosis. Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds, in Essential Building Blocks of Human Nature, eds. Ulrich Frey, C. Stormer, K.P. Willfuhr, pp. 77–93, New York: Springer.
2010	Finkel, Daniel, Paul Swartwout, and Richard Sosis. The Socio-Religious Brain: A Developmental Model, Eds. R. Dunbar, C. Gamble, J. Gowlett. Proceedings of the British Academy 158: 287–312.
2009	Sosis, Richard. The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program. Journal of Cognition and Culture 9: 315–332.
2009	Purzycki, Benjamin and Richard Sosis. The Religious System as Adaptive: Cognitive Flexibility, Public Displays, and Acceptance, in The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, eds. Eckart Voland and Wulf Schiefenhovel, pp. 243–256, New York: Springer-Verlag Publishers.
2005	Alcorta, Candace and Richard Sosis. Ritual, Emotion, and Sacred Symbols: The Evolution of Religion as an Adaptive Complex. Human Nature 16:323–359.