A comparison of self-report, systematic observation and third-party judgments of church attendance in a rural Fijian Village

Shaver, John H.; White, Thomas Arthur John; Vakaoti, Patrick; Lang, Martin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257160

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The latter is exemplified mostly in the work of human behavioral ecologists, whose work repeatedly called for careful analysis of adaptiveness (Sosis, 2009(Sosis, , 2016Sosis & Bulbulia, 2011). 6 After more than a decade of systematic labor, human behavioral ecology is deeply rooted in CESR research topics and methods (Ge et al, 2024;Micheletti et al, 2022), and this change is highlighted, for example, by the fact that the past president of the IACESR-John Shaver-has a background in behavioral ecology (Shaver, 2014;Shaver et al, 2020Shaver et al, , 2021. Importantly, the label CSR does not capture such developments, especially given that human behavioral ecology is purposefully agnostic about cognition (Sosis & Bulbulia, 2011).…”

Section: Examples Of Prominent Cesr Approaches Omitted In the Target ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting themes in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion

Cigán,

Krátký,

Kundt

et al. 2024

Preprint

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In their target article, White et al. celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), looking back on what has been done as well as into the possible futures that await this academic discipline. We are joyous to join this celebration as we consider ourselves ardent members of this discipline and wish to see the discipline flourish. Indeed, most of us academically grew up on the works of the CSR founding figures—many of whom are the authors of the present target article—and when founding our lab, we were much inspired by their call for more empirical evidence that would test the proposed theoretical models. Yet, as the inevitable law of inter-generational disagreement dictates, we see the recent developments of CESR (where the additional 'E' stands for evolution) and its near future fairly differently than White et al. In this spirit, our commentary offers several critical reflections on the target article, its scope as well as the proposed future directions for CESR.

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Section: Examples Of Prominent Cesr Approaches Omitted In the Target ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting themes in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion

Cigán,

Krátký,

Kundt

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…They plan to obtain measures of covariates 𝐿 sufficient to control for confounding. Suppose the investigators observe religious attendance so that it is not measured with error (as didShaver et al 2021), yet there is heterogeneity in the measurement of covariates 𝐿 and the outcome 𝑌 . For example, if charitable giving measures are included as baseline covariates in 𝐿, measurement errors at baseline will be correlated with outcome measures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods in Causal Inference Part 3: Measurement Error and External Validity Threats

Bulbulia

2024

Preprint

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The human sciences, like all sciences, should seek generalisation where generalisations may be found. For this reason, and for ethical reasons, it is desirable to sample more broadly than 'Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic' (WEIRD) societies. However, restriction of the target population is sometimes necessary. For example, we would not recruit young children into studies on elderly care. Under which conditions is unrestricted sampling desirable and undesirable? Here, we use causal directed acyclic graphs (causal DAGs) to clarify structural features of bias that recur in measurement error bias, target population restriction bias at the start of a study, and target population restriction bias at the end of a study. We define any study that exhibits any one of these biases, or standard confounding bias, as **weird** (**w**rongly **e**stimated inferences due to **i**nappropriate **r**estriction and **d**istortion), clarifying why the first step in comparative study design is to mitigate 'weirdness.' We discuss the challenges in avoiding weirdness and explain how workflows for causal inference provide the preflight checklists needed for ambitious, effective, and safe comparative cultural research.

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Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers

Shaver,

Chvaja,

Spake

et al. 2024

American J Hum Biol

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ObjectivesHuman childrearing is cooperative, with women often able to achieve relatively high fertility through help from many individuals. Previous work has documented tremendous socioecological variation in who supports women in childrearing, but less is known about the intracultural correlates of variation in allomaternal support. In the highly religious, high‐fertility setting of The Gambia, we studied whether religious mothers have more children and receive more support with their children.MethodsWe randomly sampled 395 mothers and 745 focal children enrolled in the Kiang West (The Gambia) Longitudinal Population Study cohort. Structured interviews asked mothers who and how often people invest in their children, and about their religious practices. Data were collected at participants' homes on electronic tablet‐based long‐form surveys and analyzed using the Bayesian hierarchical models.ResultsReligiosity was weakly associated with women's higher age‐adjusted fertility. Maternal religiosity was negatively related to maternal investment in focal children, but positively associated with total allomaternal support. Specifically, a woman's religiosity was positively associated with allomaternal support from matrilineal kin, other offspring, and affinal kin, but unrelated to paternal, patrilineal, and non‐kin investment.ConclusionsThese results suggest that higher fertility among religious mothers may be supported by high levels of investment from biological and affinal kin. Matrilineal kin, other siblings, and affinal kin seem to be the most responsive to a woman's religiosity. Our findings cast doubt on interpretations of women's religious behaviors as signals of fidelity, and instead suggest they may be part of strategies to enable collective allomaternal resources and higher relative fertility.

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A comparison of self-report, systematic observation and third-party judgments of church attendance in a rural Fijian Village

Cited by 5 publications

References 40 publications

Shifting themes in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion

Shifting themes in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion

Methods in Causal Inference Part 3: Measurement Error and External Validity Threats

Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers

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