The Science of Morality

Socrates asked, “Is goodness loved by the gods because it is good, or is goodness good because it is loved by the gods?” Today, some of the best answers to this question come not from Greek philosophy but from scientific research.

16 October 2024

How Conformism, Religiosity, and Tribalism Have Shaped Our Past—and Can Save Our Future

Throughout human history and across cultures, we tend to follow others; we gravitate toward religion and are loyal to groups. One of the world’s leading anthropologists, Harvey Whitehouse, has spent his life studying the traits we share and the social glue that binds us together. In his latest book, Inheritance, Whitehouse explores the ancient inheritance that made us who we are—and is now driving us to ruin.

16 October 2024

Social bonds improve behaviour and wellbeing in prison: Twinning Project football results

Participating in the Twinning Project — a football-based prison intervention — notably improved behaviour in prison and desistance from crime after release. This research highlights the importance of fostering positive group bonds and community support to enhance reintegration efforts and reduce reoffending rates.

14 October 2024

Researcher Stories: Reducing reoffending

Find out how Martha Newson and Harvey Whitehouse work together with the UK’s Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and major British football clubs to investigate how football identities could be harnessed to improve behaviour in prison and reduce reoffending through the charity The Twinning Project.

09 October 2024

Using Research to Understand Drivers of Extremism | Winner's Words with Walr and the MRS

How can research help identify and prevent radicalization? Winners of the President's Medal, Professor Harvey Whitehouse and Dr. Julia Ebner from the University of Oxford join the latest episode of the Winner's Words podcast. Their research uncovered how we may be trying to prevent extremism and radicalization with the wrong methods, and that a simpler but perhaps less obvious tactic could prove more beneficial.

11 June 2024

Against Interpretive Exclusivism

Interpretive exclusivism is the claim that studying cultural systems is exclusively an interpretive exercise, ruling out reductive explanation and scientific methods. Following the lead of Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, I argue that the costs of interpretive exclusivism are heavy and the benefits illusory. By contrast, the benefits of combining interpretivist and scientific approaches are considerable, both intellectually and in a host of practical ways. 

14 October 2023

Henry Myers Lecture

Rituals provide a way of defining the boundaries of social groups and binding their members together. This Myers Lecture attempts to unravel the psychology behind these processes, to explain how ritual behaviour evolved and how different modes of ritual performance have shaped global history over many millennia.

7 June 2022

How rituals made our world – and how they could save it

Whitehouse’s theory of Divergent Modes of Religiosity has been tested, refined and extended using a wide variety of methods ranging from field research, large scale multi-country surveys, and controlled experiments through to mathematical modelling and quantitative analysis of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical datasets. The results of this research point to new ways of addressing cooperation problems in the twenty-first century: from preventing violent extremism and tackling crime to managing global pandemics and motivating action on the climate crisis.

2 March 2022

RAI Book Launch – The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity

The public lecture features Harvey Whitehouse (Chair of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion (CSSC)) with discussants: Scott Atran (Research Director Emeritus in Anthropology, Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institut Jean Nicod − Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris) Robert N. McCauley (William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture, Emory University) and David Shankland (Royal Anthropological Institute) as chair.

1 March 2022

Religions Can't Be Tamed: Pascal Boyer & Harvey Whitehouse discuss "wild" religions

Existing outside, and within, organized and “tamed” religions, the practices of wild religion are authentic expressions of spontaneous spirituality and, as such, they may hold secrets that can contribute to a much richer understanding of the psychology of religion as a whole: why, what and how people believe. Further project information.

15 April 2021
Project Information

Extraordinary Rituals

New BBC 2 series

Broadcast: 17 August 2018

If you are a member of a UK Higher Education Institution, you can access the 3 programmes via the Box of Broadcasts service:
Circle of Life
Great Gatherings
Changing World

Quelling radicalization through new understanding of ritual, fusion and identity

What drives people to take up arms for groups such as ISIS and how can this be prevented?
IdeasLab presentation at the World Economic Forum, in partnership with the European Research Council.

January 18, 2017

Why Facts Don't Unify Us

IF FACTS DON’T UNIFY US, WHAT DOES?

Betazone presentation at the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Nature Publishing Group.

January 17, 2017

What can the reaction to the death of Cecil the lion tell us about human co-operation?

The Oxford Martin Programme on Natural Governance is a new research initiative. Here, programme directors Dominic Johnson, David Macdonald and Harvey Whitehouse look at what the reaction to Cecil's death can tell us about human co-operation.

June 2016

Early Civilization and Belief

Excerpt from Episode 4 "Creation", The Story of God with Morgan Freeman.

April 24, 2016

Why Are Rituals Important?

A conversation with Dr. Daniel Mullins describing how Seshat: The Global History Databank can help researchers examine the role of rituals in binding communities together throughout human history.

September 17, 2015

Religion Past and Present (part of a panel at the Integrative Science Symposium)

International Convention of Psychological Science, Effectenbeurszaal, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

March 13, 2015

New Atheism, Ritual, and Identity Fusion: A Walk in the Park With Harvey Whitehouse

Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture, University of British Columbia.

August 20, 2013

An Interview with Harvey Whitehouse

Laboratory for Experimental Research on Religion (Levyna), Masaryk University.

February 25, 2013