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Research Project
EXPERIÊNCIA COGNITIVA E EMOCIONAL IMPLICADA NA ANTECIPAÇÃO DA PRÓPRIA MORTE
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Immortality of the soul as an intuitive idea: towards a psychological explanation of the origins of afterlife beliefs
Publication . Pereira, Vera; Faísca, Luís; Sá-Saraiva, Rodrigo
This study tried to investigate if intuitive ideas about the continuation of the Self after death
determine the way people represent the state of being dead, and, in this way, investigate possible
psychological origins of afterlife beliefs, which constitute a recurrent cultural phenomenon.
A semi-structured interview and a self-report questionnaire were used to obtain information on
the experience of imagining oneself as dead and the representation of the dead-I of young adults.
he results suggest that (1) there is a tendency to imagine the state of being dead as a continuation
of the I, even in the absence of explicit afterlife beliefs; (2) perceptual, emotional, epistemic and
desire experiences are associated to the dead-I; (3) the representation of the dead-I seems to be
determined by an interaction between cognitive processes related to self-awareness and theory of
mind, and the cultural afterlife beliefs explicitly learned. A previous alternative hypothesis,
suggesting that simulation constraints were responsible for the emergence of non-reflective
afterlife concepts (Bering, 2002, 2006) is not completely supported by our results. he data
presented here suggest that immortality of the soul might be an intuitive religious concept,
connected to the experience of the Self and to the implicit theorization that the experienced Self
is independent from the body. Future studies should focus on the collection of cross-cultural and
developmental data.
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Funding agency
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Funding programme
PIDDAC
Funding Award Number
SFRH/BD/27307/2006