Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Jacob A Fiala, Frederick L. Coolidge
Singh's cultural evolutionary theory of shamanism provides a valuable framework for understanding shamanism. We argue, however, that a full understanding of shamanism should incorporate the psychological predilections and genetic predispositions commonly found in individual shamans. In other words, only a small subset of individuals in a culture is prone or attracted to shamanistic practices,...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Joseph Polimeni
The target article advances several original concepts about shamanism, including prospective explanations for how shamanism could express itself in different cultural settings. Although the potential for "innate psychological tendencies" is acknowledged, the target article prematurely dismisses one such hard-wired feature of shamanism: psychosis.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Manvir Singh
The commentators endorse the conceptual and ethnographic synthesis presented in the target article, suggest extensions and elaborations of the theory, and generalize its logic to explain apparently similar specializations. They also demand clarity about psychological mechanisms, argue against conclusions drawn about empirical phenomena, and propose alternative accounts for why shamanism...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Etzel Cardeña, Stanley Krippner
The target article's use of core concepts is confused and excessively broad. Two main types of experiences have been described in relation to shamanism: magical flight and mediumship/possession. The first refers to visual and remembered experiences of events in other realms, the second to embodied experiences of ceding mental control and personality to a preternatural entity. These experiences...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Singh places the understanding of shamanism within the cognitive/evolutionary psychology of religion but is then sidetracked by presenting unhelpful analogies. The concepts of "superstition" as a general term for religious rituals and of "superstitious learning" as a mechanism accounting for the creation of rituals in humans reflect an underestimation of the human imagination, which is guided...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Nicolas Baumard
I applaud Singh's proposition to use evolutionary psychology to explain the recurrence of shamanistic beliefs. Here, I suggest that evolutionary mechanisms (i.e., life history theory) also can explain the variability of the distribution of shamanism. When resources are abundant, individuals become more patient and more open minded to the point that science becomes cognitively attractive and may...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Stefan Linquist
The proposed explanation for the evolution of shamanism is not the only viable option. I sketch an alternative commitment hypothesis that views shamanism as an adaptation at the level of biological individuals or cultural groups. To the extent that these hypotheses make overlapping predictions about the culturally shared features of shamanism, we lack adequate evidence to discriminate among them.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
January 2018
Robert M Ross, Ryan Mckay
Singh's cultural evolutionary theory of shamanism is impressive, but it does not explain why some people become shamans while others do not. We propose that individual differences in where people lie on a "psychosis continuum" could play an important causal role.
Advances in Anthropology
2018
H. Tributsch
9 citations
Since palaeolithic times, shamans involved animal depictions in cave ceremonies and adopted animals as helping spirits during their trance journeys. This study aims at explaining the rituals with new evidence: the shamans were acting rationally to deal with an inverted otherworld, still rooted in many traditional beliefs, and seen as an impressive natural phenomenon in superior mirages. After...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2018
Aaron D Blackwell, Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Shamans can have efficacy at healing through botanical remedies and in observational and advisory functions through cognitive strengths, while shamanic acts of strangeness are likely honest signals of these qualities. Given this potential for shamanic practices to have true efficacy and the capacity for honest signaling, we expect efficacy will influence the spread, persistence, and loss of...