Martin Lang is this year’s recipient of the IAPR’s Early Career Award

The purpose of the Early Career Award is to praise young researchers working in the field of psychology of religion.

10 Sep 2019

Martin was selected based on his research of ritualized behavior. He accepted the award during the IAPR conference in Gdaňsk and on this occasion, he also delivered the lecture „Religions as complex adaptive systems: The evolutionary paths of religious beliefs and behaviors.“

Link: https://poland2019.iaprweb.org/iapr-2019-award-and-grants/?fbclid=IwAR3QkN_t3t9jJ9WARAsJ41sUdoEKP2w8L_a7026wm6RyphYutkCZDW1l6Ds

13 Aug

Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi

In a pop-science article published in Dingir, E. Kundtová Klocová discusses the various socio-cultural aspects of the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual as practiced in Mauritius.
2 Aug

Jana Nenadalová defended her dissertation thesis

Religious experiences can be found across many cultures in various forms. Nevertheless, we can trace their underlying and potentially universal factors. In her thesis, Jana asks whether these factors include sensory deprivation, social seclusion, and the influence of authority. She further explores how these factors manifest in the context of experience. Her research is based on the predictive processing theory, assuming that our bodies and minds constantly predict ongoing events and that under the influence of studied factors, these predictions – including those learned from religion – can dominate over sensory perceptions.
2 Aug

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual – a study by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a field-study conducted among Hindu-Mauritians published in the American Journal of Human Biology, D. Xygalatas, M. Lang, P. Maňo, J. Krátký and R. Fischer discovered that individuals dynamically attune their affective states to one another in a collective religious ritual, implying that they adjust their emotional states to align with the group.
25 Jun

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a single-group observational study published in the Journal of Religion and Health, S. Kotherová with J. Cigán and colleagues showed that one-fifth of their Samadhi meditation participants (first timers) got post-meditation nausea symptoms – this result indicates that meditation can cause adverse effects in some practitioners.

All articles

Martin Lang is this year’s recipient of the IAPR’s Early Career Award

More articles

Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi

Jana Nenadalová defended her dissertation thesis

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual – a study by LEVYNA & colleagues

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues