I am currently a Research Fellow at Coventry University, and Deputy Director of the Brain, Belief and Behaviour group there. I am also the Research Coordinator of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Prior to this, I completed my undergraduate and doctoral degrees in psychology at the University of Otago, while also dabbling in religious studies and philosophy. I started off working on philosophy of mind on one hand and the cognitive and motivational processes involved in facial attractiveness judgements on the other. These days, most of my work is on the psychology of religion and the philosophical issues associated with the scientific study of religion. In particular, I am interested in what motivates religious belief: what psychological needs—and especially what unconscious needs—might religious beliefs fulfill. On top of this, I am also an avid listener of podcasts, a user and collector of headphones and fountain pens, and an appreciator of all things dinosaur-related.
This roundtable recorded at the annual BASR conference at the University of Chester 2017 brought together a group of scholars interested in different perspectives on the legacy of Tylor. Topics discussed included his impact on indigenous societies, the debates over animism,
In this longer-than-usual episode, Chris and David provide an interlinking narrative between Grace Davie, Joe Webster, Carole Cusack, Jonathan Jong, Paul-Francois Tremlett, Linda Woodhead and Kim Knott, reflecting on current or future developments in the sociology of religion which challenge the ubiquity of the secularization thesis, ...
Psychologist Dr. Jonathan Jong draws on experimental research utilizing terror management theory to discuss the role of religious and other worldviews in assuaging the fear of the inevitable—DEATH. One year before his own death in 1790, Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to the French scientist Jean-Baptiste,
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