White, C. (In press). Cross-cultural Similarities in Reasoning about Personal Continuity in...
Transcript of White, C. (In press). Cross-cultural Similarities in Reasoning about Personal Continuity in...
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DRAFT VERSION. FORTHCOMING IN RELIGION, BRAIN & BEHAVIOR
Cross-Cultural Similarities in Reasoning About Personal Continuity in
Reincarnation: Evidence from South India
Claire White
Department of Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge, USA
email: [email protected]
Abstract
Ethnographic reports suggest the cross-cultural recurrence of practices designed to determine who
has returned to the human world through the process of reincarnation. This paper attempts to
explain these trends through the cross-cultural replication of experiments with participants from
mixed-religious affiliations in the U.S. to Jains in South India. In a series of imaginative
perspective-taking tasks, Jain adults reasoned about the likelihood of different people to be the
reincarnation of a deceased person based on similar features between the two. Participants
endorsed a concept of reincarnation as entailing a bodily change from death to rebirth.
Nevertheless, in the tasks, they reasoned as though physical marks and episodic memories were
superior cues to identifying reincarnated people as compared to other similarities, including other
physical and mnemonic features. These decisions were heightened when the distinctiveness of the
features were increased and thus the probability of another living person sharing that feature
decreased. Together, these studies replicate and extend findings with U.S. adults to suggest that
such reasoning is not simply the product of cultural input and suggest a role for mundane processes
of person recognition in the recurrence of reincarnation concepts and associated practices cross-
culturally.
Keywords
Personal identity, reincarnation, Jainism, cross-cultural, social cognition
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1. Introduction
In many societies, biological birth does not mark a person’s entrance into the world, but rather,
their return to it from a previous life in another bodily form. Cross-cultural surveys that adopt this
conceptualization of reincarnation have documented the belief in around 30% of cultures (e.g., see
Matlock, 1993; Obeyesekere, 2002; Somersan, 1981; Swanson, 1960) including: Melanesia, South
Asia, North America, Australia and Europe; and especially: West Africa, India, and Northwestern
North America (Matlock, 1993; Obeyesekere, 1994). In such contexts, people often believe that a
particular person, such as a beloved kinsman, come back to live among them in the human world
through rebirth1. One pertinent question is how do people determine who has returned? This question
is important for many reasons. For one, in reincarnationist traditions, decisions about who has returned
to the human world have huge social consequences: they determine the distribution of names, titles,
property inheritance, wealth distribution, child-rearing practices and, in the case of Tibet, even
religious governance (see Gottlieb, 2004; Kaplan, 2000; White, Sousa & Berniunas, 2014).
Ethnographic reports documenting practices designed to determine who has returned to the
human world within and across cultures (e.g., for North America, see Matlock & Mills, 1994), suggest
that these practices are remarkably similar: people often seek out and interpret two types of similarities
between the person before death, and after rebirth, as evidence that they are one and the same person:
namely, physical marks and memories (e.g., Bastian, 2002; Bell, 1931; Creider, 1986; Gottlieb, 2004;
Gupta, 2002; Haraldsson & Samararatne, 1999; Mills & Slobodin, 1994; Obeyesekere, 2002; Oluwole,
1992; Orubu, 2001; for an overview of these reports, see White, 2014). Given ideas about
reincarnation in the surrounding cultural milieu, the popularity of these two similarities in particular is
also surprising. First, although there is cultural variance on what, exactly, remains constant in the
process of reincarnation, there is general cultural convergence that the physical body changes. In other
words, the person before death has a different body than the person after rebirth. Yet in many parts of
the world (especially cultures in India and Africa), newborn children are routinely examined for
1 This research concerns human-to-human reincarnation only, as opposed to the transformation of humans into other
ontological categories (e.g., human-to-animal). Here, the term person is a synonym for human being and the two terms are used interchangeably throughout. The question of what constitutes a person, and what qualifies for “personhood” has a long and controversial history across disciplines (e.g., see Cohen & Barrett, 2011; Macdonald, 2005) and such considerations are beyond the scope of this paper.
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physical marks that correspond to those on the deceased. These are often distinctive physical marks
(i.e., marks that are uncommon or unique), such as: skin abnormalities (e.g., discoloration, lesions,
spots, moles) thought to correspond to birthmarks on the deceased (i.e., marks present from the first
three months of birth) or wounds inflicted to the person at the time of death2. In other contexts
(especially cultures in West Africa and Northwestern North America), the corpses of children who die
in infancy are physically marked to make identification in the next life easier (e.g., Frazer, 1918;
Goody, 1962; Parkin, 1988).
Second, in other contexts, children are often tested for the recognition of places or people the
deceased knew, or items belonging to them, which assumes the continuity of episodic autobiographical
memory (i.e., memory of events that happened to the self, Tulving, 1972; hereafter “episodic
memory”). These ideas are predominant even in reincarnationist traditions where they contradict
corresponding dogma and discourse on the process of reincarnation. In many Buddhist traditions, for
example, the concept of anattā maintains that there is no permanent, unchanging self, yet people seek
out similarities in memory between the deceased, when alive, and living to establish the identity of
reincarnated Lamas and in Tibetan Buddhism, the selection of Dalai Lama partly depends upon it (see
Haraldsson & Samararatne, 1999; Nicholson, 2014; Tenzin, 1990; White, Sousa & Berniunas, 2014).
Together, these observations raise a number of questions. First, why do people, in very different
contexts, seek out, and interpret, similarities between the living and deceased as evidence that the two
people (before death and after rebirth) are numerically identical? In other words, despite the dramatic
physical changes associated with reincarnation, people assume that the individual before death and
after rebirth constitute one, rather than two, persons3. Second, why do people seek out evidence for the
2 Note that physical features that are taken as evidence of reincarnation are often marks present at birth. This may indicate that assumptions that temporal distance between people at two points in the rebirth process affect judgments about continued identity. Namely, that marks present from birth and at death are at the starting and end points of life and are thus stronger indicators of continued identity because they are temporally as close to the reincarnated agent as possible (see Blok, Newman & Rips, 2005, for a discussion of the principle of spatio-temporal continuity and identity). A fuller discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper. 3 To say that a person is numerically identical is to say that they are one and same thing: one person rather than two. For example, if you take count of how many of your students are in a lecture, and how many return after a short break, you are qualifying and counting each student that returns as numerically identical to a student who left the room previously. By contrast, to say that people are qualitatively identical is to say that they are exactly similar, though they may not necessarily be numerically identical. For instance, if identical twins return to your lecture after the break, but only one was present at the morning session, you have two people who are qualitatively identical to the person who left but only one is numerically identical. The questions in this research concern how people can change through reincarnation (and are no longer qualitatively identical), yet are attributed as being numerical identical to the person before death.
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continuity of episodic memory and distinctive physical marks in particular, especially given the
inherent contradictions in corresponding theological discourse on reincarnation? In what follows, we
propose some intuitive cognitive biases involved in decisions about personal continuity in
reincarnation.
1.1 A cognitive approach to reincarnation
This research is the first to consider reincarnation from a psychological perspective, often
referred to as the cognitive science of religion, which assumes that religious ideas are part and
parcel of ordinary cognition. It takes as a starting point the assumption that to explain the spread of
ideas about reincarnation – in addition to socio-historical factors – one needs to consider the role
of human cognition in constraining and facilitating their transmission (e.g., Barrett, 2000; Boyer,
2001, Sperber, 1996). On this account, reincarnated agents – like other supernatural agents; such as
gods, ghosts, and people possessed by spirits – are facilitated and constrained by the intuitive
representation of human agents generally (see Barrett, 1999; 1998; Bering, 2002; Boyer, 2003;
Cohen, 2007; Cohen & Barrett, 2008; Guthrie, 1993). One possibility, therefore, is that these
cross-culturally recurrent ideas – about how to identify reincarnated people – are readily generated,
remembered and communicated in part, because they meet cognitively optimal assumptions about
how to identify individual people from one time to the next: in short, they provide convenient and
reliable evidence of personal continuity4. In the context of rebirth, however, where people also
represent individuals as undergoing dramatic physical change, decisions about reliability may also
be informed by assumptions about what people think constitutes personal identity – and thus what
is likely to continue5.
Distinctive physical marks indicate bodily continuity
In everyday contexts, we ascribe continued identity automatically to people everyday based on
their physical appearances. I assume that the person I greet at the end of the day is the same
person I kissed goodbye at the start of the day because they look similar at both times. However, 4 Here, decisions about personal continuity concern how we attribute numerical identity to others (i.e., that they constitute one, rather than two persons) despite dramatic qualitative changes (e.g., occupying a new body). 5 Personal identity here refers to the property, set of properties or quality that the folk think makes a person who they are and enables them to continue over time (e.g., see Butler, 1819; Kaufman, 2004; Locke, 1690/1975; Nagel, 1986; Perry, 1978; Reid, 1785/1969; Shoemaker & Swinburne, 1984; Williams, 1973).
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decisions about how to recognize a person over time (personal continuity) are not the same as
decisions about what we think constitutes an individual’s identity6. For example, I assume that the
person that looks like my partner is him, especially if he is wearing a long green coat, even though
I don’t think that my partner’s personal identity overtime is constituted by his green coat: clothing,
like physical appearances, serves as a convenient recognition cue. The heuristic that “seeing is
believing” is, for the most part, convenient and reliable; and it is also automatic (Fiske & Taylor,
1991; Leveroni et al., 2000; Malle, 2004; Shah et al., 2001). Physical cues trigger a constellation of
unique psychological characteristics stored in memory for that person. These processes are so
robust that similar looking faces or voices can trigger them and they often occur despite explicit
knowledge that the person is not the target individual (e.g., Leveroni et al., 2000; Malle, Moses &
Baldwin, 2001; Melzoff & Moore, 1995; Gobbini, Leibenluft, Santiago & Haxby, 2004).
Physical marks, while they are also convenient to detect (i.e., are visible), are also highly
distinguishing (i.e., unique or uncommon). There are situations where the reliance on these types
of physical features is heightened, including where costs of erroneous identification are high, and
when there are multiple contenders for identity. One example of these circumstances is a victim’s
attempt to correctly identify a person who committed a crime among other innocent people;
another, proposed here, is a person’s attempt to identify the return of an ancestor amongst other
non-kin. Thus, we contend that people reason about reincarnation in much the same way they
reason about other people everyday by unconsciously reverting to habitual strategies that enhance
the reliability of their choice. In other words, people are reasoning as empiricists; they
unconsciously weigh up the likelihood of other living person having the same feature (e.g.,
birthmark on the right arm) as another person and the statistical probability that a person at one
time is the same person at another.
Yet why do people around the world seek out distinctive physical marks as evidence of
reincarnation (which assumes that the deceased and living have the same physical properties),
when reincarnation involves a bodily change? Research suggests that these low-level aspects of
perception are not easy to override despite explicit knowledge to the contrary. For example, in
clinical settings, people tend to transfer the psychological characteristics of one individual to
6 Philosophical discussions about the relationship between diachronic and personal identity are relevant but in-depth treatment of them is beyond the scope of this paper (e.g., see Penelhum, 1970 & Shoemaker, 1963).
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another on the basis of similar physical characteristics (Addis & Tippet, 2004; Andersen & Cole,
1990; Andersen, Glassman, & Chen, 1995). Conversely, people have difficulty accepting the
dramatic psychological change to individuals who look similar than before the change in cases of
quick-onset of Alzheimer’s disease or an acquired brain injury (Orona, 1999; Ronch, 1996).
These inconsistencies also feature in religious cognition and have been dubbed “theological
incorrectness” (Slone, 2004). Such discrepancies have been observed in people’s reasoning about
other supernatural agent concepts, such as gods (Barrett 1999, Barrett & Keil, 1996; Slone, 2004),
and are explained by the fact that humans are cognitive misers and in certain contexts will revert to
intuitive representations for agents generally (Barrett & Keil 1996; Fiske & Taylor, 1991;
Pyysiäinen, 2004). For instance, Cohen (2007) found that members of an Afro-Brazilian spirit
possession cult tended to attribute the responsibility of a possessed person’s behavior on the
possessed individual, rather than the possessing spirit. For example, if a person was drunk at a
street party and behaved in socially unacceptable ways, even though people said the person was
possessed by a spirit who had displaced the person’s mind, members showed contempt towards the
possessed person for the behavior, and the person would often be sanctioned accordingly. Thus,
people find it difficult to inhibit the association of physical appearances with underlying features
that they associate with underlying personal stability. In the context of reincarnation, people
intuitively revert to the strategies they use to establish the identity of people despite explicit
knowledge that contradicts them; these default intuitions do not simply “shut off” in the face of
explicit ideas about supernatural agents.
Episodic memories indicate underlying personal stability
People are also influenced in their decisions about personal identity by how distinctive a memory
is, especially when this is subject to external verification (for example, that a person remembers
the layout of a historical building). Other research suggests that the inherent qualities of memory
itself also explain why people so often rely upon it in different cultural contexts to establish
reincarnation. Studies have shown that children and adults tend to rely on the stability of
underlying psychological properties, especially memories, to attribute to others a continuous and
numerical identity throughout dramatic physical changes that occur during one’s lifetime and even
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in the afterlife (e.g., Astuti & Harris, 2008; Barrett, 1999; Bering, 2002; Bering & Bjorklund,
2004; Bloom, 2004; Boyer, 2001; Cohen & Barrett, 2008, Cohen, Burdett, Knight & Barrett, 2011;
Gutheil & Rosengren, 1996; Newman & Rips, 2005).
Research also suggests that people judge episodic memories (i.e., memories of events that
happened to oneself, such as remembering having dinner the previous night, Tulving, 1972) as
superior to preserving identity, as compared to other psychological features, including other
memory types (e.g., see Blok, Newman & Rips 2005; Klein, German, Cosmides & Gabriel, 2004;
Klein & Nichols 2012; Parfit, 1984; Perry, 1975; Reid, 1969/1785; Shoemaker & Swinburne,
1984). Specifically, in contrast to semantic memory (i.e., knowing that), episodic memory records
events as experienced by the self at a particular time/space (e.g., I remember celebrating my 16th
birthday at my Mother’s house). Like behaviors, they also indicate knowledge about one’s core
concept (i.e., self: e.g., "usually stubborn"), but they also infer properties and relations between the
person at the time of encoding and retrieval: including a self-referential quality of retrieval (i.e., a
sense of “mineness”), that may be the best proxy of underlying psychological stability that people
have access to (Conway, 2005; Klein & Nichols, 2012). Indeed, research on the basis of past life
convictions with contemporary U.S. “spiritual seekers” supports the claim that people regard
episodic memories as convincing evidence of their own past life existence because of the basic
relationship it indicates between them at the time of encoding and recall (White, Kelly & Nichols,
in press). Other research with U.S. adults suggests that these reasoning heuristics also guide
people’s decisions about how to establish continued identity of others following reincarnation. In
what follows, we outline the original studies before turning to the current studies with Jain
participants.
1.2 Previous research on the cognitive foundations of reincarnation
Previous research suggests that people are guided in their decisions about how to establish
continued identity in reincarnation by both the category to which the feature belongs and the
feature’s distinctiveness, and thus, the reliability of evidence. In a series of imaginative
perspective-taking studies conducted by White (in press), U.S. adults completed questionnaires
from the perspective of a village leader, whose job it was to decide, out of a number of potential
people (candidates), how likely it was that they were the reincarnation of the deceased, relative to
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others (using a scale, ranging from 1 - Very Unlikely to 5 - Very Likely) and under constrained
conditions (only one candidate could be ranked 5 - Very Likely, 4-Likely and so on). Participants
based their decisions on information about the deceased person’s features, when alive, and the
candidates’ features (each candidate had one similar feature to the deceased). Participants
consistently privileged candidates with a similar episodic memory (i.e., memory of an event) or
physical mark (i.e., a scar) to the deceased as more likely to be the reincarnation over candidates
with other similar features, including: other categorical features (e.g., personality trait, behaviors);
types of memories (e.g., procedural memory); and physical similarities (e.g., physique).
The results of these studies suggest that in addition to the category to which the feature
belonged (e.g., episodic memory or physical mark), the feature’s distinctiveness was also driving
participants’ decisions, especially for physical marks. In one study, for example, participants
ranked the likelihood of candidates with a similar generic and highly distinctive physical mark and
similar generic and highly distinctive episodic memory to the deceased. The examples of the
distinctive features were similar to the generic examples but with additional information that
would make them more distinguishing (e.g., exact size of the physical mark). In this study, more
than one candidate could be ranked in the same position (i.e., more than one candidate could be
ranked as 5 - Very Likely), and thus participants were not as restricted in their choices. The
candidate with a similar distinctive physical mark to the deceased was rated highest overall, and
higher than the candidate with the distinctive episodic memory. Further, the mean scores of the
highly distinctive features were significantly higher than their generic counterparts. Furthermore,
across all studies, these patterns held largely irrespective of whether or not participants believed in
reincarnation, and even though the vast majority explicitly endorsed reincarnation as involving a
bodily change, which suggests that these assumptions are not simply a product of belief or explicit
concepts of reincarnation.
Although the ethnographic research suggests that similar ideas underpin practices around
the world, little is known about whether, and how, these intuitions operate under different cultural
input. Thus, one important task is to establish, under controlled conditions, whether these ideas are
similar or different in another religious tradition, especially beyond western cultures because they
tend to be overrepresented in experimental research (Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010). These
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possibilities were investigated here by presenting Jain adults in Southern India with a modified
version of the imaginative perspective-taking task used in White’s (in press) study.
1.3 Current research with Jain adults in South India
Conducting the study with Jain adults affords a unique and theoretically relevant contrast to
the participants in White’s original study, who were adults in the U.S. with mixed beliefs about the
afterlife. The Jain tradition is reincarnationist and karma determines rebirth. Unlike Buddhism,
however, but like Hinduism (i.e., atman), Jainism endorses the existence of a permanent and
enduring self. The aspect of the self that endures is characterized as jiva, which is often translated
as “soul” but more accurately refers to a “life-monad”. The jiva can undergo constant
modifications and it can inhabit many physical forms (e.g., from an ant to an elephant and even a
plant), what remains the same is often described as pure consciousness, which includes knowledge.
Thus Jainism can be said to be mid-way between western concepts of the self as continuing as
individuals in the afterlife and the Buddhist rendering of the inexistence of the self in life and
rebirth (e.g., see Bering, 2002; Spiro, 1982).
Although Jains accept the existence of a permanent enduring self, what, precisely, the self
entails remains vague. This presents an opportunity to probe folk interpretation of ideas about
reincarnation. Further, like Buddhism, it is thought that with the right prompting, people and other
agents can remember their past life, but this is an exception rather than the norm (see Dundas,
2002). Unlike Buddhism, however, Jainism lacks cultural practices designed to establish the
identity of “special” people (e.g., Lamas) who have been reincarnated and although they accept as
fact that every living person has been, and will be, reborn, Jains are not concerned with
establishing the past life identity of the living (Dundas, 2002; Haraldsson & Samararatne, 1999).
Thus participants are not able to simply draw upon cultural information about how to establish
identity in reincarnation, they are thus more likely to depend upon other input. Since information
about how to identify reincarnated agents is lacking from Jain scriptures it allows for the
possibility that participants will also draw upon intuitive expectations about the stability of
personal identity overtime and how to establish it.
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The main aim of this research is to further refine, and test, the extent to which the
aforementioned cognitive biases concerning intuitive expectations of human agents shape such
ideas and corresponding practices in other cultural contexts beyond the western world. Three
questions are of particular interest in the current studies. First, will Jain participants also
distinguish between different types of physical and psychological features in terms of their
likelihood to indicate continued identity in reincarnation? Second, will they privilege physical
marks and episodic memories to the deceased as indicating reincarnation over other features?
Third, to what extent will increasing the distinctiveness of a physical mark and episodic memory
affect participants’ reasoning about how likely they are to indicate a person’s return to the human
world?
Several distinct possibilities follow from what is known about this population. First,
regarding physical features; in Jainism the body is regarded as a vehicle for the jiva but it leaves
the body during the process of rebirth (Dundas, 2002). Thus, one possibility is that participants
will reason according to the doctrine concerning reincarnation and correspondingly, will not regard
physical features – including similar physical marks or even distinctive physical marks – between
the deceased and living as evidence of continued identity in reincarnation. On the other hand, if
participants’ decisions are not governed exclusively by doctrine, then participants will regard
candidates with similar physical features, including distinctive physical marks, as most likely to be
the deceased’s reincarnation than other candidates. Second, regarding psychological features; one
possibility is that participants will not judge candidates with similar memories to the deceased as
more likely to the deceased’s reincarnation than candidates with other similar psychological
features because Jainism does not endorse the view that ordinary people can remember their past
lives. Another possibility is that Jain participants will privilege episodic memories, and especially
distinctive episodic memories, as evidence for continued identity.
A series of studies were conducted to explore these possibilities. Ethical approval for all
studies was obtained from the School Research Ethics Committee (History and Anthropology),
Queen’s University, Belfast. In the current research, participants were selected from the university of
Madras, Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the forth largest city in India – with
a population of around 5.9 million. Jains make up approximately and 13% of Tamil Nadu (and 4% of
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the population of India), where they are a minority religion (Bose, Singh, & Adhikary, 1991). The
participant sample included two sects of Jainism, both the Digambaras and Svetambaras. While both
have unique histories, development, and conflicts, they share many of the same basic principles of
Jainism, differing in terms of features and practicalities of the religion, such as whether women can
attain enlightenment and whether their ascetics are naked or dress in white robes (Dundas, 2002). The
university of Madras attracts many Jain students due to the Jainology department and active
recruitment and promotion of Jainism. In the study, demographic information was collected but all
surveys were anonymous. All participants were enrolled adult English-speaking students at the
university and identified as belonging to the Jain religious tradition. All volunteered, without
compensation, to participate in the study.
The studies took place on, or close to, the University of Madras. Paper questionnaires were
administered to participants either by the lead researcher or by a paid faculty member at the
university, who served as a research assistant. Participants completed the questionnaire, typically
individually or in small groups of around four students under the supervision of the researcher. For all
studies, participants were given written instructions; including that they would be asked to complete a
questionnaire from the perspective of another Jain and to answer the questions as quickly as possible,
without giving them too much thought. Participants gave informed written consent before proceeding
to the main study task and were given an opportunity to ask questions about the study. Given that
karma is the central organizing system of rebirth, all participants were verbally instructed that there
was no information on how good or bad the deceased or living candidates were. The study design
differed from the original study with U.S. participants (White, in press) because it was within-
subjects for studies one and two. This departure from the original design was pragmatic, given the
difficulty in obtaining adequate numbers of participants in a cross-cultural setting. Thus, the same
participants completed studies one and two; in the same questionnaire, and in the order they are
presented here. Study 3 was conducted after the first two studies and a new set of participants
completed the study.
In the main studies, like the U.S. version, participants were presented with a series of
perspective-taking tasks in which they played the role of a Jain village leader, whose job it was to
rank, out of a number of potential candidates, how likely it was that particular candidates were
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reincarnation of the deceased, relative to other candidates7. The aim of the first study was to
determine whether Jain participants in South India would select similar features to those used in
identification procedures in reincarnation contexts as documented by ethnographic reports, and in
particular, to U.S. adults with mixed afterlife beliefs as determined by White’s (in press) study. Like
the original study, in order to maximize differences between candidates, and to ensure participants
used the full spectrum of ranks, each candidate had to be placed in a different rank. For example, only
one candidate could be ranked 5 - Very Likely, 4-Likely and so on. If participants reasoned similarly
to U.S. participants, namely, that candidates with a similar episodic memory and physical mark were
most likely to the deceased’s reincarnation, then the mean rank scores for candidates with a similar
episodic memory or physical mark to the deceased would be significantly higher than all other
candidates.
2. Study 1
2.1 Method
Participants
Sixty-three adults participated in the study. Participants were students at the university of Madras
(mean age = 22 years, range 18 – 31 years). Of these, 64% were female and 36% male. The
majority of the participants belonged to the Svetambara sect (84%) and a minority belonged to the
Digambara sect (16%).
Materials and procedure
Participants were presented with the following information:
Imagine that you are the leader of a Jain village where they believe that everyone who dies
is reborn. As the leader, you must decide how likely five people are to be the reincarnation
of the deceased, based on information about the deceased, when he was alive, and these 7 The studies were designed as perspective-taking tasks to prevent U.S. participants, who did not believe in reincarnation, from misinterpreting the task as based upon their actual belief in the afterlife, rather than how they reason about scenarios concerning it.
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individuals. You must rank them in terms of the likelihood that they are the reincarnation
of the deceased. You will now read a description of the deceased person, when he was
alive, and decide how likely it is that each of individuals presented is the reincarnation.
There is no right or wrong answer. There are no tricks. You have to make an informed
judgment based on the information you have.
Participants then completed a perspective-taking task, where they read information about the
deceased person when he was alive8 and information about five living people who were potentially
the reincarnation of the deceased. In the study, participants had to rank the five candidates in order
of likelihood that they were the reincarnation of the deceased, using a forced-choice 5-point scale,
ranging from 1 – Very Unlikely to 5 – Very Likely. Like the U.S. version, the deceased was
described as having five features. The main question of interest was whether any of the five
candidates would be ranked consistently higher or lower than the others, especially candidates with
a similar PHYSICAL MARK and an EPISODIC MEMORY to the deceased. The other features
included were the same as those in the original U.S. study and were selected because they appear
in the ethnographic records as guiding people’s decisions in real world contexts. These features
were: a characteristic BEHAVIOR and PERSONALITY trait and again a fifth property, NAME,
was included to provide an example of a similarity that was not dependent upon physical or
psychological properties.
Participants were presented with similar examples of features as the original study. In the
original U.S. version, six research assistants, who were blind to the study hypotheses, selected the
examples for all studies from a longer list. Specifically, the examples in Study 1 and 2 were
selected on how “neutral” they were (e.g., did not give unnecessary additional information to the
participants other than the feature, such as a memory that would cause an emotional reaction). The
examples were also matched by the research assistants on how likely they would be for a “normal”
8 In order to control for the possible influence of gender on participants’ judgments, which is especially pertinent given the controversy over whether women can attain enlightenment in Jain sects (e.g., see Dundas, 2002, p.55), the deceased and the five living people were described as a male in both tasks.
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person to exhibit (i.e., did not indicate something extraordinary about the person), and most of
these examples were included in the current study. Some of the items in the examples were,
however, modified to make the vignettes convincing and standardize, to the extent possible, the
likelihood of Jains in South India possessing such features or sharing the experiences given.
Specifically, the item described in Study 1 (a tennis racquet) was modified to become a more
culturally familiar object (a ball) and the behavior was changed from the candidate nodding his
head a lot when he spoke (which is common in South India) to the candidate widened his eyes a lot
when he spoke9. The names of the candidates were also modified from those common in America
to those common in India. Further, the names of the candidates were selected so that they did not
indicate caste, economic status or have an association with Jain historical figures. Like the U.S.
version of the study, as a precaution against the possibility that something about the particular
example other than the type of feature given was determining participants’ judgments, participants
ranked candidates in two tasks with different examples of the features given in each task.
Perspective taking tasks
In Task 1, participants read that
The deceased was called Akash [NAME10]. He had a mole on his left arm [PHYSICAL
MARK]. He widened his eyes a lot when he spoke [BEHAVIOR]. He remembered the day he
found a ball [EPISODIC MEMORY]. He was shy when he met new people [PERSONALITY].
In Task 2, participants read that
The deceased was called Salil [NAME]. He had a scar on his right leg [PHYSICAL
MARK]. He used his hands a lot when he spoke [BEHAVIOR]. He remembered the day he found
a pair of shoes [EPISODIC MEMORY]. He was outgoing and liked to meet new people
9 Note that the western coders did not rate the examples used in this version of the study with Jain participants in terms of how likely they would be for a normal person to exhibit. The differences in this study, however, compared to the U.S. version are minor. 10 For all studies, parenthetical notes [i.e. EPISODIC MEMORY] were not included in the survey but are provided here for clarification.
Cross-Cultural Similarities
15
[PERSONALITY].
Participants then placed, in rank order, five candidates. Each candidate had one matching feature to
the deceased. For example, in Task 2, candidates were described as the following
Candidate 1: Was called Salil.
Candidate 2: Had a scar on his right leg.
Candidate 3: Used his hands a lot when he spoke.
Candidate 4: Remembered the day he found a pair of shoes.
Candidate 5: Was outgoing and liked to meet new people.
Participants then ranked each of the five candidates depending on how likely they were, in relation
to the other candidates, to be the reincarnation of the deceased.
2.2 Results
Mean and mode rank scores for Tasks 1 and 2
Mean scores for each feature type in Tasks 1 and 2 are presented in Table 111. Figure 1 also
displays the mode ranking across both tasks, which indicates the most frequent rank for each
feature. Of particular interest, the frequencies show that EPISODIC MEMORY and PHYSICAL
MARK categories are clearly privileged as cues to continued identity in reincarnation across both
tasks, which constituted 126 placements. First, the candidate with the similar EPISODIC
MEMORY to the deceased was most often ranked 5 – Very Likely in both tasks than any other
rank. Consider some selected frequencies in addition to those displayed in Table 1. Candidates
with a similar EPISODIC MEMORY were placed in the highest possible rank category 73% (n =
92) of the time, and the second highest rank category (4 – Likely) 19.8% (n= 25) of the time.
Second, participants ranked the candidate with the similar PHYSICAL MARK to the deceased as 4
– Likely in 61.9% (n = 78) of all decisions, and as 5 – Very Likely in 22.2% (n = 28). Overall, at
least 84% of all judgements for candidates with a similar EPISODIC MEMORY or PHYSICAL
11 Preliminary analyses showed no significant effect of gender or sect on mean scores and they were therefore were collapsed in all subsequent analyses and are not reported in participant demographics for Study 3.
Cross-cultural Similarities
16
MARK ranked them in the highest possible two categories. This demonstrates a consistent
privileging of these categories as indicators of continued identity. By comparison, the distribution
of rank scores across other categories was less homogeneous. For example, the candidate with the
similar PERSONALITY to the deceased was ranked 3 – Neither Likely nor Unlikely in 46% (n =
58) of all cases, but also 2 – Unlikely in 38.1% (n = 48) and 1 – Very Unlikely in 14.3% (n = 18).
Assessing Task Validity: Comparing Mean Rank Scores for Individual Categories in Tasks 1 and 2
To assess task validity, five paired-samples t-tests of the mean scores for five categories in Tasks 1
and 2 were conducted. There was no significant difference between the five category examples in
the two tasks [EPISODIC MEMORY, Task 1 (M = 4.86, SD = 0.66), Task 2 (M = 4.46, SD =
0.66), t(62) = 3.88, p = 0.69.; PHYSICAL MARK, Task 1 (M = 4.25, SD = 1.78), Task 2 (M =
3.87, SD = 1.75), t(62) = 3.38 , p = 0.72; PERSONALITY, Task 1 (M = 1.97, SD = 1.72), Task 2
(M = 2.76, SD = 1.74), t(62), = 5.08 , p = 0.59; BEHAVIOR, Task 1 (M = 1.84, SD = 1.52), Task 2
(M = 1.83, SD = 1.51), t(62), = 2.49, p = 0.15; NAME, Task 1 (M = 1.54, SD = 1.61), Task 2 (M =
1.68, SD = 1.58), t(62), = 6.46, p = 0.52]. Therefore, participants reasoned similarly about the type
of feature in Tasks 1 and 2.
Table 1: mean score and mode rank for features in Tasks 1 and 2
Task 1 Category and examples
Mean Score SD Mode Task 2
Category and examples Mean Score SD Mode
Episodic memory (finding a ball) 4.86 0.66 5 Episodic memory
(finding a pair of shoes) 4.46 0.66 5
Physical mark (mole on left arm) 4.25 1.78 4 Physical mark
(scar on right leg) 3.87 1.78 4
Personality (was shy) 4.25 1.72 2 Personality
(was outgoing) 2.76 1.72 2
Behavior (widened eyes when spoke)
1.84 1.52 3 Behavior (used hands when spoke) 1.83 1.52 3
Name (Akash) 1.54 1.61 1 Name
(Sali) 1.68 1.61 1
Cross-Cultural Similarities
17
Figure 1: mode rank for features in Tasks 1 and 2 combined
Table 2: mean and mode rank for features in Tasks 1 and 2 combined
Category Mean rank Mode rank
Episodic memory
4.73a 5
Physical mark
4.15a 4
Personality
2.54a 3
Behavior
1.95 2
Name
1.64 1
Note: Means with superscripts are significantly higher than means below them in the same column.
0
1
2
3
4
5
Mode Rank
Episodic memory
Physical Mark
Personality
Behavior
Name
Cross-cultural Similarities
18
Statistical analyses: comparing mean rank scores for all categories
As there were no significant differences between mean scores in the five category examples (e.g.,
EPISODIC MEMORY, PHYSICAL MARK, PERSONALITY etc.) across the two tasks, data for
Tasks 1 and 2 were combined and analyses were conducted on the mean rank scores for each
category (see Table 2). A Friedman’s test was conducted to determine whether there was a
difference in the mean rank scores for each of the five candidates, and thus, whether there was an
uneven distribution of ranks for each category type. There was a statistically significant difference
in mean rank score for the candidates depending on the category to which the similar feature
belonged, χ2(406.4) = 7.600, p = 0.01. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests showed that most of the
category features elicited a statistically significant increase in mean rank, namely, from
BEHAVIOR to PERSONALITY (Z = -5.116, p = 0.000), PERSONALITY to PHYSICAL MARK
(Z = -9.323, p = 0.00), and PHYSICAL MARK to EPISODIC MEMORY (Z = -6.808, p = 0.00),
but not between NAME and BEHAVIOR (Z = -2.656, p = 0.008). Therefore, PHYSICAL MARK
was ranked significantly higher than all other candidates including EPISODIC MEMORY, and
EPISODIC MEMORY was ranked significantly higher than all other candidates except
PHYISCAL MARK.
2.3 Discussion
Jain participants discriminated between the likelihood of living candidates to be the deceased’s
reincarnation based upon a single similar feature between the deceased and living. They
consistently ranked two features, episodic memory and especially physical marks, as the most
reliable cues to continued personal identity among other types. These two features were also
privileged as indicators of continued identity in reincarnation by participants in the U.S., who
received a modified version of this task, and to reports of how people establish reincarnation
around the world. These results are significant in two ways.
First, it is noteworthy that participants ranked physical marks so highly as indicating
continued identity, given that the body changes following rebirth in Jain theology. One
Cross-Cultural Similarities
19
interpretation of this finding is that the participants do not actually represent reincarnation as
entailing a bodily change and this concept has been erroneously superimposed upon them. To
investigate this, in Study 2, participants were asked about their idea of what reincarnation entails.
Another, more plausible interpretation of this finding is that Jain participants are also influenced in
their decisions about reincarnation by unconscious processes of person recognition used to identify
people on a daily basis everywhere. As discussed, these assumptions that “seeing is believing” are
not easily inhibited by explicit beliefs to the contrary. A further question of interest is whether Jain
participants, like their U.S. counterparts, would distinguish between the likelihood of different
types of physical features to indicate continued identity in reincarnation. This question was
investigated in Study 2 by asking participants to rank candidates with different types of physical
features, including basic facial similarities or bodily marks, to be the deceased’s reincarnation.
The second finding of interest is that the candidate with the similar episodic memory had a
significantly higher mean rank score than all other candidates, including the candidate with the
similar physical mark, although the frequencies indicate that both features are regarded as robust.
Thus, the question then becomes why do Jain participants regard memory as such a robust
indicator of continued identity after reincarnation? One possibility, as discussed in the
introduction, is that participants regard memory as something that provides evidence of continued
identity because of the unique psychological relationship it conveys between the encoder and
retriever. Although participants may be reasoning that memory provides evidence of jiva (i.e.,
consciousness), Jain doctrine does not discriminate between different types of memory. For
example, a memory of a fact (i.e., SEMANTIC) should provide equally robust evidence of
consciousness as a memory of an event. One way to investigate this is to assess whether
participants will, like U.S. participants, privilege episodic memories as identity markers over other
memory types. These questions were investigated in Study 2.
Cross-cultural Similarities
20
3. Study 2
3.1 Method
Materials and procedure
The same participants in Study 1 completed another two perspective-taking tasks in this study. In
Task 1, participants had to rank five candidates in terms of how likely they were to be the
reincarnation of the deceased, again, only one candidate could be placed in each rank. To
determine whether participants privileged physical marks over other physical features, candidates
had a different corresponding physical feature to the deceased when he was alive, namely: a
physical mark, facial feature, physique, physical abnormality and hair type (see Table 3). In Task
2, participants ranked five candidates with different types of memories in terms of their likelihood
to be the reincarnation of the deceased (see Table 3). Three sub-types of long-term memory (i.e.,
declarative, procedural, semantic) and one memory ability (i.e., aptitude) were included to
investigate whether episodic memories were perceived as more robust cues to continued identity
than other kinds of memory.
Perspective-taking tasks
In Task 1, participants read that
The deceased was called Ebi. He had a patch of skin discoloration on his leg [PHYSICAL
MARK12]. He had a long pointy hooked nose [FACIAL]. He was tall with a hunched back
[PHYSIQUE]. He limped due to a flat foot [ABNORMALITY]. He had thick, curly multicolored
hair [HAIR].
In Task 2, participants read that
The deceased was called Javad. He remembered seeing a shoe for the first time [EPISODIC
MEMORY]. He was good at remembering people’s names [APTITUDE]. He remembered the
names of shoe parts [SEMANTIC]. He remembered how to mend shoes [PROCEDURAL]. He
remembered recently learned facts about shoes [DECLARATIVE].
Cross-Cultural Similarities
21
Participants’ concept of reincarnation
Participants selected the statement that they thought most accurately characterized reincarnation
from a list of four options. The purpose of this question was to determine whether participants held
a concept of reincarnation as entailing bodily change. The expectation was that most participants
would select option three, the statement most closely corresponding to the Jain theological
characterization of reincarnation (Matlock & Mills, 1994; Obeyeskere, 2002). To reduce potential
bias in the study and afterlife questionnaire, participants were presented with this question at the
end of the study. The options below were:
1. …the body and the person permanently ceases to exist” [extinctivist13]
2. …the body and the person continue to exist forever” [immortalist]
3. …the body ceases to exist and the person continues to exist in a new body”
[reincarnationist]
4. …the body continues to exist and the person ceases to exist” [eclectic]
3.2 Results
Mean and Mode Rank Scores
As displayed by Table 3, candidates with a similar PHYSICAL MARK and EPISODIC
MEMORY to the deceased had a higher mean rank than other candidates in their respective
categories, and both were ranked most often as 5 – Very Likely. Additional frequencies confirm
that both were ranked consistently highly. For PHYSICAL MARK 60.3% (n = 38) of participants
ranked the candidate as 5 – Very Likely and 25.4% (n = 16) as 4 – Likely. The frequencies for
EPISODIC MEMORY likewise suggest that participants’ also ranked the candidate consistently
highly: 74.6% (n= 47) selected 5 – Very Likely and 14.3% (n = 9) selected 4 – Likely. Therefore,
Cross-cultural Similarities
22
for both categories, of all ranks (1-5) possible, at least 85% of all participants placed them in the
highest two ranks (4-5).
Statistical analyses: comparing mean rank scores for PHYSICAL features
A Friedman’s test was conducted to determine whether there was a difference in the mean rank
scores for each of the five candidates in the PHYSICAL category. Results revealed an uneven
distribution of ranks depending upon the feature type χ2(4) = 183.5, p = 0.00. A series of Wilcoxon
signed-rank tests were conducted to pinpoint where the significance lay. Results showed a
significant increase in most mean rankings. These were: from PHYSIQUE to FACIAL (Z = -
5.125, p = 0.00), FACIAL to ABNORMALITY (Z = -6.228, p = 0.00) and ABNORMALITY to
PHYSICAL MARK (Z = -4.384, p = 0.00), but not from HAIR to PHYSIQUE (Z = -1.135, p =
0.25). Of particular interest was the finding that the candidate with the similar PHYSICAL MARK
to the deceased was ranked significantly higher than all other candidates.
Statistical analyses: comparing mean rank scores for MEMORY features
Another Friedman’s test was conducted to determine whether any the mean rankings for the five
candidates in the MEMORY category differed significantly. There was a statistically significant
uneven distribution of ranks depending upon feature type, χ2(4) = 211.3, p = 0.00. A series of
Wilcoxon signed-rank tests demonstrated a significant increased in two mean rankings: from
PROCEDURAL to SEMANTIC (Z = -7.077, p = 0.00), SEMANTIC to EPISODIC (Z = -5.374, p
= 0.00), but not from APTITUDE to DECLARATIVE (Z = -2.285, p = 0.22) or from
DECLARATIVE to PROCEDURAL (Z = -1.026, p = 0.22). Of most importance, the candidate
with the similar EPISODIC MEMORY to the deceased was ranked significantly higher than all
other candidates.
Cross-Cultural Similarities
23
Table 3: mean and mode rank for features in Tasks 1 and 2
Task 1 Physical category: features and examples
Mean rank
Mode
Task 2 memory category: features and examples
Mean rank
Mode
Physical mark (patch of skin discoloration on leg)
4.63a
5
Episodic memory (seeing a shoe for the first time)
4.80b
5
Abnormality (limped due to a flat foot)
4.05a
4
Semantic (names of shoe parts)
4.19b
4
Facial feature (long pointy hooked nose)
2.83a
3
Procedural (how to mend shoes)
2.23
2
Physique (tall with a hunched back)
1.80
2
Declarative (recently learned facts about shoes)
2.06
2
Hair (thick, curly multi-colored hair)
1.68
1
Aptitude (good at remembering people’s names)
1.72
1
Note: Means with superscripts are significantly higher than means below them in the same column with the corresponding superscript.
3.3 Discussion
The results of Study 2 reinforce the results of Study 1 by showing that Jain participants
privileged particular types of physical and mnemonic cues to establish continued identity in
reincarnation, especially: physical marks and episodic memories. In addition, Study 2 also
demonstrated that Jain participants privileged physical marks and episodic memories over other
physical and mnemonic features. Again, these findings parallel findings from the U.S. version of
this task with participants who held mixed views about the fate of the body after death, and cross-
cultural reports, which suggest that these two types of features are frequently used to determine the
identity of reincarnated agents.
These results beg the question of why episodic memories and physical marks are privileged
over other, similar physical and mnemonic features. The consistent use of episodic memory by
Jain participants requires explanation. The one proposed here is that they implicitly represent
episodic memory as a robust indicator of continued identity because of the basic psychological
Cross-cultural Similarities
24
relationship it conveys between the encoder and retriever. Another finding that necessitates further
attention is the use of physical marks to establish identity in reincarnation. This is of particular
interest because Jain dogma presents the physical body as changed in reincarnation. This study
also confirmed that the vast majority of participants endorsed a concept of rebirth that aligned with
Jain doctrine, ruling out the possibility that we were superimposing a western concept of
reincarnation, which entailed bodily change, upon them. Thus, on the one hand, participants
claimed that the body changed in the process of rebirth but on the other, reasoned as though
physical cues, and especially physical marks, were robust indices to continued personal identity in
these contexts. This is commensurate with the theory proposed in the introduction; explicit beliefs
about personal identity do not inhibit mundane processes of person recognition where physical
similarities provide reliable evidence of continued identity.
It is of further interest, however, because other physical features (e.g., a peculiar shaped
nose) likewise depend upon convenient recognition cues. If participants do reason in terms of the
mundane processes of personal recognition, then why do they privilege physical marks in
particular? There are likely to be many factors that influence participants’ decisions in the tasks
that are not dependent on the type of feature alone. For instance, participants may be acutely aware
of any features that indicate an unusual occurrence, how unusual they are for a “normal” person to
exhibit, whether the features are present from birth and even the probability of surface features
being alike (e.g., similar name). Yet in most of the tasks, these individual factors do not appear to
sway participants’ judgments on their own, rather, certain types of features are consistently
privileged even though different examples of the features are given. It may be the case that some
features are regarded as stronger cues to continued identity when accompanied by some of these
additional factors.
One factor hypothesized to elicit this effect is the distinctiveness of the features. As
discussed, White (in press) demonstrated that U.S. participants were influenced in this task
according to how distinguishing the feature was. Thus, in situations requiring the identification of
persons, participants may unconsciously revert to habitual strategies they use to establish identity
everyday by seeking out physical similarities between people at two times. One possibility is that
in the current task Jain participants were reasoning about these features in terms of their
distinctiveness, in other words, how unique or uncommon they would be in the general population.
Cross-Cultural Similarities
25
Perhaps, for instance, people regard bodily marks as highly distinctive. Likewise, in addition to the
assumption that episodic memory entails personal ownership over the memory, perhaps
participants also implicitly represent episodic memories as containing more detailed and specific
information than other memories, and they are reasoning also according to the distinctiveness of
the memory. Furthermore, one limitation of the previous studies was that participants were forced
to rank each candidate in a different rank position, so that only one could be 5 - Very Likely, 4 -
Likely and so on, because this limited the freedom of participants to rank several candidates as
equally likely or unlikely. Therefore, in the final study, like the U.S. version, participants could
rank multiple candidates in the same rank order, which gives a more reliable indication of the
reliability assigned to different candidates, independent of others.
The aim of the third, and final study with a new set of participants was to investigate the
extent to which the distinctiveness of a feature (i.e., how distinguishing or unique), and/or the
category to which it belonged (i.e., PHYSICAL MARK or EPISODIC MEMORY), was driving
participants’ decisions. This was investigated by manipulating the distinctiveness of the
PHYSICAL MARK and EPISODIC MEMORY in the task, so that the task contained one generic
and distinctive PHYSICAL MARK, and one generic and distinctive EPISODIC MEMORY. There
were three main questions of particular interest guiding this study. First was whether participants
would rank one generic example higher than the other in the respective category (i.e., PHYSICAL
MARK or EPISODIC MEMORY), which would indicate that examples were privileged on the
basis of the category to which they belonged. There are two distinct possibilities. On the one hand,
participants could reason as though one of the candidates with a similar generic feature was more
likely to be the deceased’s reincarnation because that feature provides better evidence of it. On the
other hand, they may regard both generic examples highly and more-or-less equally likely to
indicate continued identity and, like their U.S. counterparts, rank both generic features similarly.
Second was the question of whether there would be a significant increase between the
mean rank score of the candidates within the categories (i.e., from generic to DISTINCTIVE
PHYSICAL MARK and generic to DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY), which would indicate
a role for distinctiveness instead of, or in addition to, the category to which the feature belonged.
Following the results of the U.S. version of the study, and based upon previous research, which
suggests that distinctiveness plays a role in both but especially in memory, again there are two
Cross-cultural Similarities
26
likely possibilities. One possibility is that there would be a significant increase in the rank from
generic to distinctiveness in both categories. Another possibility, which is based upon findings
with U.S. participants, is that this trend would be significant for the PHYSICAL MARK only.
The third, and final question explored in Study 3 was whether there would be a significant
difference between the mean rank score of the two distinctive features, namely, between
DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK and DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY. Although this
question was not statistically addressed in the U.S. version of the study, mean scores between the
two were remarkably similar (0.35 difference), which suggests that there would have been no
significant difference between the two. If Jain participants reason similarly to their U.S.
counterparts and judge the combination of feature and distinctiveness as equally compelling, then
there would be no significant difference between the mean rank score. If, on the other hand, Jain
participants regard the combination of one (e.g., EPISODIC MEMORY plus DISTINCTIVE) as
more compelling than another (e.g., PHYSICAL MARK plus DISTINCTIVE), then there would
be a significant difference between mean rank scores of the two distinctive features.
4. Study 3
4.1 Method
Participants
Thirty-four new participants completed the study. Participants were students at the university of
Madras (mean age = 19 years, range 18 – 32 years). Of these, 89% were female and 11% male.
They completed pencil-and-paper questionnaires administered by a research assistant.
Materials and procedure
In this study, participants had to rank four candidates in terms of the likelihood that they were the
deceased’s reincarnation on a scale from 1 - Very Unlikely to 5 - Very Likely. More than one
candidate could be ranked in the same position (i.e., more than one candidate could be ranked as 5
- Very Likely, 4 - Likely and so on). The deceased was described in the tasks as having four
characteristics when alive: two types of physical marks (a mole and a birthmark) and two
memories: one memory of receiving a pair of shoes and another memory of receiving a ball. For
Cross-Cultural Similarities
27
each of the categories (i.e., PHYSICAL MARK and EPISODIC MEMORY), one of the examples
was comparatively lower (i.e., generic) than the other in terms of distinctiveness. Again, six
volunteer assistants (prior to the original, U.S. version of the study), who were blind to the study
hypotheses, determined the features’ distinctiveness as high or generic.
The examples of the PHYSICAL and EPISODIC MEMORY in the task were similar, but
one of them contained additional information that would make them more distinctive (i.e., unique
or unusual and thus statistically improbable for other people to have). For example, a 2.5cm
birthmark on a person’s right arm is highly distinctive physical mark, whereas a mole on a
person’s left arm is less distinctive and thus, generic. More people have moles on their arms than
people have 2.5cm birthmarks. Therefore, in the task, there was one highly distinctive and generic
EPISODIC MEMORY one highly distinctive and generic PHYSICAL MARK. To avoid potential
effects of presentation order upon the participants’ decisions, the distinctive and generic examples
were randomized so that paper copies of the questionnaire contained examples in different order
(i.e., distinctive or generic example first).
Perspective taking tasks
Participants read the following information
The deceased was called Akash. He had a mole on his left arm from birth [PHYSICAL
MARK]. He had a 2.5cm birthmark on his right arm [DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK]. He
remembered the day he received a new pair of black shoes [EPISODIC MEMORY]. He
remembered the day he received a green sports ball with a 1.5cm hole in it [DISTINCTIVE
EPISODIC MEMORY].
4.2 Results
Mean and mode rank scores
Selected frequencies (including mean rank, mode data and a breakdown of percentages for the
highest rank) are displayed in Table 4. The candidate with a similar DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL
MARK to the deceased was ranked on average highest overall (M = 3.32). Three candidates
Cross-cultural Similarities
28
(DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK, PHYSICAL MARK and DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC
MEMORY) were most frequently assigned the highest possible rank (5 – Very Likely) and one
candidate, with a similar (EPISODIC MEMORY), was most often assigned the second highest
possible rank (4 – Likely). All four candidates were ranked consistently highly. For example, for
each of the four candidates, between 32.4% (n = 11) and 85.3% (n = 29) of participants assigned
them the highest possible rank (5 – Very Likely). More generally, participants tended to assign
candidates the higher ranks (4 and 5) and seldom assigned any candidates to the lower ranks (1, 2
and 3). For instance, for all four candidates, at least 73% (n = 99) of the total ranks assigned (n
=136) were 4 or 5. Finally, as expected, candidates with the highly distinctive version of the
features (i.e., DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK, DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY) were
ranked on average higher than their generic counterparts (i.e., PHYSICAL MARK, EPISODIC
MEMORY).
Statistical analyses: comparing mean rank scores
A Friedman’s test was conducted to determine whether the difference in mean rankings for the
candidates were significant. There was a statistically significant difference in mean rank score for
the candidates, χ2 (3) = 26.3, p = 0.00. A series of four Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted
to explore where the difference lay. Of particular interest was whether the candidates differed
significantly according to: the category to which they belonged (generic PHYSICAL MARK or
EPISODIC MEMORY); the distinctiveness of the feature across categories (i.e., from generic
PHYSICAL MARK to DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK and generic EPISODIC MEMORY to
DISTINCTIVE episodic memory) and within the categories (i.e., DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL
MARK or DISTINCTIVE EPSIODIC MEMORY).
The mean rank score for the generic EPISODIC MEMORY was not significantly higher
than the generic PHYSICAL MARK, (Z = -.738, p = 0.46). There was a significant increase in the
mean ranking within categories and by distinctiveness from PHYSICAL MARK to
DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK (Z = -3.898, p = 0.00), and from EPISODIC MEMORY to
DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY (Z = -2.133, p = 0.03). Further, there was no significant
increase in the mean rank scores for distinctive candidates across categories, from the
Cross-Cultural Similarities
29
DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK to the DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY (Z = -1.453, p =
0.06).
Table 4: Mean and mode rank for features
Features and examples
Mean rank
Mode
N ranked as 5 (Highly Likely)
% ranked as 5 (Highly Likely)
Distinctive episodic memory (receiving a pair of black shoes)
2.41 b
5
18
52.9
Distinctive physical mark (2.5cm birthmark on right arm)
3.32 a
5
29
85.3
Generic episodic memory (receiving a green sports ball with 1.5cm hole in it )
2.19 b
4
11
32.4
Generic physical mark (mole on left arm from birth)
2.07 a
5
11
32.4
Note: Means with superscripts are significantly higher than means below them in the same column with the corresponding superscript.
4.3 Discussion
In general, the results of Study 3 fit the theory that mundane processes of identification, especially
considerations about the statistical probability of a person sharing a particular feature with another
person, affect reasoning about personal continuity in reincarnation. The results also showcase the
cross-cultural similarities in reasoning about reincarnation between Jain participants in South Asia
and U.S. participants. Three findings are of particular interest.
First, the data suggest that Jain participants regard physical marks and episodic memories
as more-or-less equally robust cues to establish continued identity in reincarnation because the
candidates were not ranked differently according to the category to which the features belonged
(generic PHYSICAL MARK or EPISODIC MEMORY). This finding reinforces the findings of
Study 1 and 2. Even though Study 1 suggests that the candidate with a similar physical mark was
Cross-cultural Similarities
30
ranked significantly higher than the candidate with a similar episodic memory to the deceased, the
more general pattern of findings, and especially the frequencies across all studies, show that both
features are regarded as robust cues to continued identity. Thus, the findings should not be
interpreted as indicating that these categories are not important; on the contrary, there is a ceiling
effect reported in the frequencies across studies 1-3 (i.e., most participants ranked all candidates as
5 – Very Likely or 4 - Likely), which indicates that both physical marks and episodic memories are
consistently categorically privileged as cues to continued identity. These findings also parallel
those with U.S. participants who also regarded both generic examples of these features similar in
terms of their likelihood to indicate continued identity.
The second finding of interest is the significant increase in the mean rank score from
generic to DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK and generic to DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC
MEMORY. This suggests that in addition to the high baseline by virtue of candidates possessing a
similar physical mark or episodic memory to the deceased, the distinctiveness of these features
increased the strength of participants’ judgments that they indicate continued identity in
reincarnation. This result provides a clear confirmation that distinctiveness of features influence
participants’ judgments, even when this contradicts explicit ideas about reincarnation as involving
a bodily change. This finding can be contrasted to the U.S. version of the study, where the increase
from rank scores between generic and distinctive features were significant for the physical mark
only. It is important not to overestimate the extent of these differences however: both U.S. and Jain
participants’ rankings increased for both features as a product of distinctiveness, the difference lies
in the extent to which they increased for episodic memory.
The third, and final finding of interest is the similarity in mean rank score for both the
DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL MARK and the DISTINCTIVE EPISODIC MEMORY, and the
corresponding non-significance in magnitude between them (p = .06). This suggests, but does not
offer conclusive evidence for, the possibility that Jain participants, like their U.S. counterparts,
regard both feature combinations (i.e., physical marks plus distinctiveness and episodic memory
plus distinctiveness) as more or less equally robust cues to continued identity in reincarnation.
Cross-Cultural Similarities
31
5. General discussion
Cross-cultural reports and studies with U.S. participants suggest that people in different
contexts regard the perceived continuity of episodic memories and physical marks as providing
evidence of continued personal identity in reincarnation. The aim of this research was threefold:
first, to determine whether people in South Asia, from the reincarnationist tradition of Jainism,
differentiate between different types of physical and psychological features as cues to continued
identity; second, to establish whether they also show a preference for episodic memories and
physical marks and third; to understand the extent to which feature distinctiveness influences their
decisions. The findings suggest that in all three questions, they do. Jain participants, who explicitly
endorsed a concept of reincarnation where the physical body changes but where consciousness
continues, consistently privileged physical marks and episodic memories over other personal
characteristics and especially those that were highly distinctive.
Perhaps the most empirically robust findings concern the influence of feature
distinctiveness on physical marks and episodic memories, as reported in study 3. In this study,
unlike studies 1 and 2, participants were able to use any of the five rank options for all features. By
comparison, in studies 1 and 2, participants could only select one rank per candidate (e.g., only one
could be ranked as 5 - Very Likely) and one weakness of the study design in the first two studies is
that participants did not have the freedom to independently rank the utility of each of the features
as cues to identifying reincarnated agents. It may be the case, therefore, that if given freedom
participants may have ranked some other features (e.g., personality trait, semantic memory) as
higher than the current design permitted. Therefore, the current study may underestimate the extent
to which these other features provide evidence of continued identity in reincarnation.
Likewise, the findings concerning the role of physical marks in identity judgments are
more conclusive than those concerning episodic memories. We have identified some relevant
cognitive constraints to explain similarities in reasoning about physical marks as evidence of
reincarnation, especially heuristics concerning person recognition, such that “seeing is believing”
and the statistical probability that a feature occurs in two people, and thus an index of the feature’s
reliability. We have, however, also proposed, but not tested, the possibility that decisions
concerning episodic memory may also be underpinned by universal assumptions about what
Cross-cultural Similarities
32
indicates underlying personal stability. Determining which properties of episodic memories led
people to use them to establish personal identity in reincarnation is worthy of further investigation.
Despite these limitations, the results of this research are significant in several ways. First,
they complement the ethnographic literature by demonstrating, under controlled conditions, the
relative invariance of reasoning about how to identify reincarnated agents. Jain adults from South
Asia and U.S. adults who held mixed beliefs about the fate of the person after death, reasoned
similarly in the tasks. Namely, they reasoned as though similar physical marks and episodic
memories between the deceased and living indicated that they were one and the same person
through the process of reincarnation. These similarities held even when it contradicted theological
doctrine, such as the divergence between explicit beliefs about reincarnation as involving a bodily
change and yet regarding physical marks as a robust indicator of it. Thus, Jains, like people
everywhere who use physical marks to establish identity, reason about reincarnation in
theologically incorrect ways.
Second, these studies also demonstrate that ideas about reincarnation, like other “religious”
concepts, are grounded in ordinary cognition and subject to cognitive constraints (Barrett, 2000;
Boyer, 2001). This research is the first to offer a psychological explanation for the trends in
reincarnation practices documented around the world and especially in Eastern traditions. More
broadly, the research reported here serves as a case study for why scholars in the scientific study of
religion need to meaningfully engage with research on how humans think if they are to explain the
recurrence of religious ideas across cultures (see, for example, McCauley, 2012; Slingerland,
2012). Practices designed to establish who has returned to the human world are underpinned by
similar psychological assumptions about what constitutes evidence of this fact. These processes
do not concern the trivial details of parochial traditions; rather, they determine the features of
social systems of tribal and world religions: the distribution of names, titles, property inheritance,
wealth, and even political governance. If we want to explain religion, we need to understand the
influence of cognition as well as culture.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jesse Bering and Paulo Sousa for their guidance in the early stages of this project;
Shaun Nichols for reading and commenting upon an earlier version of this manuscript; the two
Cross-Cultural Similarities
33
anonymous reviewers and editor Richard Sosis for their thorough and constructive feedback; the
students at the Cognitive Science of Religion Lab Group at California State University,
Northridge, for their assistance with the preparation of this manuscript; and to the people of
Chennai for their participation and hospitality. This research was funded by a Department for
Employment and Learning Research Studentship (DEL) award at Queen’s University, Belfast and
written during release time financially supported by California State University, Northridge.
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