Connor Wood is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Mind and Culture, focusing on the evolutionary study of religion, computer modeling of social processes, and religion-science issues. Connor writes a popular weekly blog, Science On Religion, at Patheos.com, and occasionally blogs for the Huffington Post. Connor’s interests include the evolutionary and cognitive roles of ritual, the influence of religion on health and self-regulation, and the conservative-liberal spectrum in psychology and religion. He also studies the relationship between cognitive style and spirituality at the survey website FaithInDepth.org.
Previously, Connor earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He then bummed around the world for a couple of years and had adventures, many of which turned out to be more fun to write about than they technically were to have. For example, he once was mugged in Mongolia. Today, Connor is working on a book that applies the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion to contemporary political quandaries. He likes climbing mountains in Colorado. Connor’s spirit animal is William James.
Connor was a Sinai and Synapses Fellow from 2013-2015.
Who benefits from the policies white progressives are advocating? Are we fighting for racial justice, or for someone else’s justice? Or for no one’s? Until I know, I will be slow to speak and quick to question orthodoxies.
There is a unique danger of data wonkishness: putting so much stock in scientific abstractions that reality itself becomes invisible.
One unique danger globalization poses is hypercoherence, or maladaptive syncing between independent parts of a complex system. With the rapid spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus around the world we’re seeing firsthand some of hypercoherence’s dangers.
Morality-as-cooperation is pushing researchers in moral psychology to think more rigorously about the evolutionary background and specific processes that might give rise to moral sentiments.
Jonathan Morgan and Connor Wood discuss their new research about religion, cognitive styles, and intuition.
Jonathan Morgan and Connor Wood discuss their new research about religion, cognitive styles, and intuition.
Jonathan Morgan and Connor Wood discuss their new research about religion, cognitive styles, and intuition.
Jonathan Morgan and Connor Wood discuss their new research about religion, cognitive styles, and intuition.
Jonathan Morgan and Connor Wood discuss their new research about religion, cognitive styles, and intuition.
Sinai and Synapses Fellowship alum Connor Wood discusses new research that complicates the idea that synchrony in action always leads to synchrony in thought and spirit.
