Ritual, social cohesion and (religious) authority in contemporary religious systems in Denmark. A game theoretical approach

The objectives of the research are: (a) to develop a model that relates and evaluates the power of ritual

and the power of ordinary action in relation to group cohesion (trust and cooperation), and (b) to find a

systematic way of analysing and quantifying the power of religious authority (of specific religious

groups in Denmark), in terms of trust and reputation. The methodological framework is Game Theory (GT) combined with a minor ethnography/fieldwork and with evolutionary psychology.

My reason for using the above approach is that GT as a branch of applied mathematics is

a box of analytical tools designed to help us understand the phenomena we observe when decision

makers interact. GT is a theory of decision-making, and its models are abstract representations of real-life situations. GT provides us with a common language applicable to social interactions and is central

to understanding the dynamics of human life forms. But GT should not stand alone; it should be

combined with: (a) a well informed ethnographic database, which will give us the social epistemology to

analyse high-level cognitive capacities when humans interact within a society, and (b) an evolutionary

approach, which will help us understand the emergence, transformation, and stabilisation of behaviours.

There are two basic experiments that will test two different hypotheses: (a) Common Pool game, and (b) Dictator game. The project combines interdisciplinary approaches and should be seen as a contribution to sociological, economical and anthropological approaches to religion and to investigations into specific elements of human emotion and behaviour as trust, cooperation, altruism, group solidarity, functional/non-functional action. The final goal of the research is to build a data-set which will be comparable and a tool to predict individual and social norms.