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Virtual reality (VR) is often described as a gateway to a religious or spiritual experience but why? In this article we hypothesize, using theories and evidence taken from the cognitive science of religion (CSOR), that human minds may interact with VR-hosted phenomena in a manner highly similar to that in which they interact with supernatural concepts.

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Is reasoning about religious ritual tethered to ordinary, nonreligious human reasoning about actions? E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley’s ritual form hypothesis (rfh) constitutes a cognitive approach to religious ritual – an explanatory theory that suggests people use ordinary human cognition to make specific predictions about ritual properties, relatively independent of cultural or religious particulars. Few studies assess the credibility ofrfhand further evidence is needed to generalize its predictions across cultures. Towards this end, we assessed culturally Chinese “special patient” rituals in Singapore. Our findings strongly supportrfhpredictions for special patient ritual repeatability, reversibility, sensory pageantry and emotionality.

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