Hazing in Fraternities and Sororities
Hazing in U.S. university fraternal groups is a pernicious and sometimes even deadly practice that dates back to the founding of the first collegiate fraternities in the nineteenth century. In spite of growing antihazing sentiment, laws against hazing in 44 states and campus crackdowns, hazing persists as a rite of passage and tradition in colleges and universities across the United States and around the world. This article examines the roots and manifestations of hazing in university-based fraternities and sororities in the United States. It includes a discussion of university policies and practices to curtail it by national fraternal organizations and antihazing activists. Best practices include the encouragement of bystander intervention to halt hazing as it happens, along with the mandating of alcohol-free (dry) fraternity houses and an end to the pledge period.
Predictors of hazing motivation in a representative sample of the United States
Abstract Hazing – the abuse of new or prospective group members – remains a puzzling and persistent cross-cultural phenomenon. Aspects of hazing behavior may reflect the operation of psychological adaptations designed to lessen certain forms of ancestral coalitional exploitation. Using a representative sample of the United States, this paper replicates and extends prior findings on predictors of hazing motivation in a university population. Results suggest that probable vectors of ancestral exploitation by newcomers (e.g., freely available group benefits) predict desired hazing severity, and that these effects generalize to a larger and more diverse sample. Findings are discussed in light of hazing's evident complexity and cultural patterning.
Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity
How did religiosity and in its wake religion come into existence? How do religious systems manage to survive in spite of their many paradox issues, glaring inconsistencies, and dubious claims? To answer these questions the approach will be threefold. First, it is suggested that many of our intuitions about the world (about causality , living and non-living objects, and intentionality) are not only consistent with primitive religiosity, but in fact are actively advancing such a belief . In children , too, this is more than evident. As soon as a belief in one or more powerful beings is in place, quite a few cognitive mechanisms make sure that this belief will persist. Cognitive biases contribute to the belief’s perseverance by systematically biasing evidence for and against it. These mechanisms are spelled out in detail. A second point is made via a cultural perspective. It is often the case that religion mirrors the organization of the particular society by which it was created. Often simple biological or social models are at the foundations of religious beliefs. And third, there is evidence from evolutionary biology that religious behavior fosters cooperation as well as group coherence and helps solving free-rider problems.