D. Jason Slone

I specialize in the comparative social scientific study of religion. I’m interested in explaining the patterns of religious belief and behavior that have been identified across cultures and eras in terms of the evolutionary and cognitive mechanisms involved in their production and transmission (e.g., how memory biases the spread of “theologically incorrect” folk concepts over orthodox theological concepts). I am also broadly interested in theoretical and methodological issues in the study of religion, including bridging the sciences and the humanities by, for example, using experimental methods to test humanistic claims. Finally, I’m interested in applying insights from the cognitive sciences and cultural studies to the science of teaching and learning (SoTL).