Religion and cognitive control: An event-coding approach

Religion is playing an important role in our lives, be it from a personal perspective as member of a particular congregation or as an agnostic living among believers. What impact has religion on our decision-making and action? Two kinds of impact have been considered: religious goals are likely to constrain and color our behavior, but religion may also strengthen cognitive control in a more generic sense. While evidence supports both considerations, it remains a mystery how that works, that is, which mechanisms underlie the impact of religion on our decisions and action control. Here I suggest a preliminary mechanistic model accounting for this impact. It is based on the Theory of Event Coding (TEC), a general theory of human perception, attention, and action control, and the assumptions that goals are represented in a distributed fashion (as selection criteria) and that their impact is moderated by metacontrol, the current control style that varies between persistence and flexibility. The model is parsimonious (i.e., not religion-specific) and mechanistically transparent, and thus provides a solid basis for more systematic experi-mentation and theorizing.

Automated summary

Religion plays a significant role in people's lives, either as a member of a specific religious group or as an agnostic living among believers. It has impacts on decision-making and action, with implications that religious goals can influence behavior, and religion can enhance cognitive control. However, the mechanisms underlying these impacts remain unknown. A preliminary mechanistic model based on the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) suggests that distributed representation of goals and metacontrol can moderate their impact. This model provides a basis for further experimentation and theorizing.