Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model
Religion Brain & Behavior June 5, 2018 Neil Van Leeuwen, Michiel van Elk 91 citations
A new model, the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM), proposes that general religious beliefs (e.g., God exists) are mostly acquired from culture, while personal religious beliefs (e.g., God appeared to me last night) arise from agency-detection intuitions and other low-level experiences. IREM inverts the standard Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory: rather than agency-intuitions causing general religious belief, general belief in supernatural agents leads people to seek situations that trigger such intuitions, enabling personal beliefs. The model incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, addresses empirical and conceptual problems with earlier theories, and suggests future research directions.