Methoden vergleichen

	Agency Detection Task	Ritual Density Coding
Fachgebiet	Religious Studies	Religious Studies
Familie	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Entstehungsjahr	2000	2004
Urheber	Justin L. Barrett (building on Stewart Guthrie)	Harvey Whitehouse
Typ	Signal-detection experiment for agency attribution	Coding scheme for ritual transmission dynamics
Wegweisende Quelle	Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29-34.	Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. ISBN: 9780759106147
Aliasnamen	HADD Experiment, Agency Detection Bias Task, Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device Test, Agency Attribution Paradigm	Modes of Religiosity Coding, Frequency-Arousal Ritual Analysis, Imagistic vs Doctrinal Ritual Coding, Ritual Mode Classification
Verwandt	3	3
Zusammenfassung	The agency detection task is an experimental method in the cognitive science of religion that measures the human tendency to attribute ambiguous events to intentional agents - a tendency Justin Barrett named the Hyperactive (or Hypersensitive) Agency Detection Device, or HADD. Building on Stewart Guthrie's argument that people anthropomorphize the world, Barrett proposed in 2000 that an evolved bias to err on the side of detecting agents (better to mistake the wind for a predator than the reverse) provides a natural cognitive foundation for belief in gods, spirits, and ghosts. The task presents participants with ambiguous motion, sounds, or images and uses signal-detection theory to separate genuine sensitivity to agents from a liberal response criterion, then relates the resulting over-detection bias to supernatural belief.	Ritual density coding is a method for analyzing religious rituals by coding them on two key dimensions - how often they are performed (frequency) and how emotionally intense or dysphoric they are (arousal) - in order to locate a tradition along Harvey Whitehouse's imagistic-doctrinal continuum. In his 2004 book Modes of Religiosity, Whitehouse argued that rituals tend to cluster at two attractor poles: high-frequency, low-arousal 'doctrinal' practices that build large, hierarchically organized, semantically rich traditions, and rare but emotionally searing 'imagistic' practices that forge small, intensely cohesive communities through vivid episodic memories. The coding scheme operationalizes this theory, testing the predicted inverse relationship between ritual frequency and arousal and linking the resulting modes to distinctive forms of social organization and memory.