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Contact between people from different groups triggers specific individual- and group-level responses, ranging from attitudes and emotions to welfare and health outcomes. Standard social psychological perspectives do not yet provide an integrated, causal model of these phenomena. As an alternative, we describe a coalitional perspective. Human psychology includes evolved cognitive systems designed to garner support from other individuals, organize and maintain alliances, and measure potential support from group members. Relations between alliances are strongly influenced by threat detection mechanisms, which are sensitive to cues that express that one’s own group will provide less support or that other groups are dangerous. Repeated perceptions of such threat cues can lead to chronic stress. The model provides a parsimonious explanation for many individual-level effects of intergroup relations and group-level disparities in health and well-being. This perspective suggests new research directions aimed at understanding the psychological processes involved in intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious beliefs apparently challenge our view of human cognition as an evolved system that provides reliable information about environments. We propose that properties of religious beliefs are best understood in terms of a dual-processing model, in which a variety of evolved domain-specific systems provide stable intuitions, whereas other systems produce explicit, often deliberate comments on those intuitions. This perspective accounts for the fact that religious beliefs are apparently diverse but thematically similar and that they are immune to refutation and more attractive to imaginative individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is part of a special issue on History and Human Nature, comprising an essay by G.E.R. Lloyd and fifteen invited responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ritualized behavior is characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but it is also observed in other, nonclinical contexts such as children's routines and cultural ceremonies. Such behaviors are best understood with reference to a set of human vigilance–precaution systems in charge of monitoring potential danger and motivating the organism toward appropriate precautions. Ritualized behavior focuses attention on low-level representations of actions, probably leading to some measure of intrusion suppression. Cultural rituals too may be understood in this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an evaluation of how evolutionary psychology can contribute to the description and explanation of cultural material as a continuation of other research frameworks that connected genetic inheritance and cultural evolution. Evolutionary psychology provides a proximate explanation of cultural transmission in that it is based on a description of the cognitive mechanisms involved in acquisition of cultural representations. To illustrate this point, the author uses the example of religious concepts. A better understanding of cultural acquisition processes will probably require new descriptive models for anthropological data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses issues pertaining to the evolutionary interpretations of psychology. Contribution of evolutionary psychology to classical issues in psychology, anthropology and sociology; Discussion on the potential and limits of a Darwinian framework; Key conceptual problems involved in research about gene-culture interaction.

The study of causal inferences is an essential part of the study of other cultures. It is therefore crucial to describe the cognitive mechanisms whereby subjects are led to find specific causal explanations plausible and "natural." In the anthropological literature, specific causal connections are described as the result produced by applying a general "conception of causation" or some general "theories" to specific events; the essay aims to show that these answers are either trivial or false. The "naturalness" of explanations must be examined in the context of concept acquisition and belief-fixation. On the basis of an ethnographic example, it is possible to show how certain presuraptions (e.g., about the use of certain categories as natural kind terms) can be involved in the processes whereby certain explanations are made cognitively salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses ethnographers' categorization of certain cultural phenomena as 'traditional.' Common definitions of tradition which are bound to lead to conceptual problems; Ethnographers' definite empirical criteria for traditionality, irrespective of the definition of tradition; Lack of anthropological definitions of tradition; Irrelevance of definitions of tradition to ordinary ethnographic investigation.

Homophobia encompasses a variety of attitudes and behaviors with distinct causal paths. We focus on aggressive homophobia, a propensity to feel anger and express aggression toward gay men. We investigated the conjecture that homosexual males might be seen, in recent Western cultures, as defectors from collective group defense. We predicted that consistent with a functional motive to punish and deter free riding, the perception of gay men as defectors would motivate aggression toward gay men. We also predicted that individuals with greater commitment to group defense might show more aggressive homophobia (as these individuals have more to lose from the defection than individuals who are not committed to group defense). Study 1 showed that aggressive homophobia correlated positively with the tendency to implicitly associate gay men with defection from group defense. Study 2 showed that a tendency to punish homosexual males for a theft correlated positively with commitment to group defense. The findings suggest that coalitional psychology might contribute to explaining the existence and quality of certain kinds of social stigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]