From 2017... Who Wants To Live Forever? Explaining the Cross-Cultural Recurrence of Reincarnation Beliefs

Who Wants To Live Forever? Explaining the Cross-Cultural Recurrence of Reincarnation Beliefs. Claire White. Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol 17, issue 5, pp 419–436. Nov 2017. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340016

Abstract: Around 30% of world cultures endorse reincarnation and 20% of contemporary Americans think that reincarnation is plausible. This paper addresses the question of why belief in reincarnation is so pervasive across geographically disparate contexts. While social scientists have provided compelling explanations of the particularistic aspects of reincarnation, less is known about the psychological foundations of such beliefs. In this paper, I review research in the cognitive science of religion to propose that selected panhuman cognitive tendencies contribute to the cross-cultural success of basic ideas in reincarnation. Together, this research suggests that extraordinary convictions, including those associated with postmortem survival, are underpinned by some of the same processes that govern mundane social cognition.

Keywords: Reincarnation, Cognitive Science of Religion, Social cognition, the afterlife.

Check also, from 2018... Contemporary Post-mortem Survival Narratives are popular & convincing, in part, because they meet default cognitive assumptions about what human survival would look like if it were possible:

How to Know You’ve Survived Death: A Cognitive Account of the Popularity of Contemporary Post-mortem Survival Narratives. Claire White, Michael Kinsella, Jesse Bering. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages 279–299. Jul 24 2018. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/03/contemporary-post-mortem-survival.html