Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2006 - Volume 29, Issue 05  


Open Peer Commentary

Folk psychology meets folk Darwinism

Jay Hegdé a1 and Norman A. Johnson a2
a1 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 hegde@umn.edu http://www.hegde.us
a2 Department of Plant, Soil, and Insect Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 njohnson@ent.umass.edu http://www.umass.edu/psis/personnel/johnson.html

Article author query
hegdé j   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 
johnson na   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 

Abstract

The fact that beliefs in the supernatural are useful to people who hold them does not necessarily mean that these beliefs confer an evolutionary advantage to those who hold them. An evolutionary explanation for any biological phenomenon must meet rigorous criteria, but the facts in this case, even when taken at their face value, fall well short of these criteria.