Richard Sosis

Professor

PhD

Anthropology

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Research Interests

My research is focused on the evolution of religion with particular interests in life history theory and reproductive decision making. As an inCHIP Affiliate, I will be working on a project that examines women’s fertility and child health outcomes in religious communities.

Education

PhD, University of New Mexico, 1997

Recent Publications

2019 J. Shaver, C. Sibley, R. Sosis, D. Galbraith, and J. Bulbulia. Alloparenting and Religious Fertility: A Test of the Religious Alloparenting Hypothesis. Evolution and Human Behavior 40: 315-324.

2019 Sosis, R. Can Rituals Reduce Stress During War? The Magic of Psalms, in The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies, eds. Jason Slone and William McCorkle, pp. 193-202. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press.

2018 Dunbar, R. and R. Sosis. Optimising Human Community Sizes. Evolution and Human Behavior 39: 106-11.

2016 Kiper, J. and R. Sosis Shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe: An evolutionary perspective on ethnoreligious violence. Politics and the Life Sciences 35: 27-47.

2015 Bulbulia, J., J. Shaver, L. Greaves, R. Sosis, and C. Sibley Religion and parental cooperation: an empirical test of Slone’s sexual signaling model, in The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion, eds. J. Slone and J. Van Slyke, pp. 29-62. London: Bloomsbury Press.

2014 Scott, IM, SC Josephson, A Boyette, AP Clark, R Fried, M Gibson, B Hewlett, M Jamieson, W Jankowiak, PL Honey, Z Huang, MA Liebert, BG Purzycki, J Shaver, JJ Snodgrass, R Sosis, LS Sugiyama, V Swami, DW Yu, Y Zhao, & IS Penton-Voak Human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces may be evolutionarily novel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(40): 14388-14393.

2011 Sosis, R. and W.P. Handwerker Psalms and Coping with Uncertainty: Israeli Women’s Responses to the 2006 Lebanon War. American Anthropologist 113: 40-55.

2010 Bulled, N. and R. Sosis Examining the influence of life expectancy on reproductive timing, total fertility, and educational attainment. Human Nature 21: 269-289.