Staff profile

• I obtained my PhD is experimental psychology at the University of Queensland (Australia), then spent three years as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford in the School of Anthropology. Following that I was a lecturer in Developmental Psychology at Keele University (UK), and now I am an Assistant Professor in Data Science at Durham University.
• I am interested in ritual, religion and reality beliefs. I look at each of these topics through the lens of Cultural Evolution.
• I'm fundamentally interested in what cognitive and environmental forces shaped human culture throughout deep history. Ritual, religion, and reality beliefs are useful tools for getting at this topic - to the best of our knowledge, no other species exhibits these traits, and to the extent that they do, they have not influenced the shape and consistency of culture across time and geographics regions as is the case with us.
• At a more grounded level, when I consider rituals I examine how we perceive them and evaluate their consequences; when I consider religion I examine how certain beliefs are aquired and maintained (often due to ritual commitments); and when I consider reality beliefs I examine how both adults and children understand this universe as a universe with various kinds of agencies (such as God, Santa Claus, Aliens, Dinosaurs, and Germs). I am also interested in exploring game-like methodologies in imaginary games (like D&D and other TTRPGs) as tools for understanding how the imagined influences the real (and vice versa).
• I am willing, able, and interested in supervising PhD research on the following topics.
• Cognitive Permeation between the real and the imagined. Or put another way, how do we maintain a boundary between factual and imaginary cognitions, and when do we allow the imagined to influence the factual.
• The cognitive consequences of ritual and religious experiences. How do rituals influence what we belief, how we identify, and how we behave. I'm particularly interested in topics that utilize VR technology.
• How does belief in [non]real agencies and phenemona change across development. I am interested in examinine how children understand supernatural and fictive entities in their world (such as God, Santa Claus), ambiguous entities (such as Aliens and Dinosaurs) from real and fictive entities.
• I am open to student-led proposals on these, and related, topics. When in doubt, just send me an email!
• If you are a prospective MSc or PhD student, or collaborator, please reach out!

Journal Article

• Borg, J. M., Buskell, A., Kapitany, R., Powers, S. T., Reindl, E., & Tennie, C. (2024). Evolved Open-Endedness in Cultural Evolution: A New Dimension in Open-Ended Evolution Research. Artificial Life, 30(3), 417-438. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00406
• Muzzulini, B., van Mulukom, V., Kapitány, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2022). Shared flashbulb memories lead to identity fusion: Recalling the defeat in the Brexit referendum produces strong psychological bonds among remain supporters. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 11(3), 374-383. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0101873
• Kapitany, R., Hampejs, T., & Goldstein, T. R. (2022). Pretensive Shared Reality: From Childhood Pretense to Adult Imaginative Play. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.774085
• Davis, J. T. M., Robertson, E., Lew-Levy, S., Neldner, K., Kapitany, R., Nielsen, M., & Hines, M. (2021). Cultural Components of Sex Differences in Color Preference. Child Development, 92(4), 1574-1589. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13528
• Kavanagh, C., & Kapitany, R. (2021). Promoting the Benefits and Clarifying Misconceptions about Preregistration, Preprints, and Open Science for the Cognitive Science of Religion. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 6(1-2), https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.38713
• Kapitány, R., Kavanagh, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2020). Ritual morphospace revisited: the form, function and factor structure of ritual practice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1805), Article 20190436. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0436
• Nielsen, M., Langley, M. C., Shipton, C., & Kapitány, R. (2020). Homo neanderthalensis and the evolutionary origins of ritual inHomo sapiens. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1805), Article 20190424. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0424
• Kapitány, R., Nelson, N., Burdett, E. R. R., & Goldstein, T. R. (2020). The child’s pantheon: Children’s hierarchical belief structure in real and non-real figures. PLoS ONE, 15(6), Article e0234142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234142
• Kavanagh, C. M., Kapitány, R., Putra, I. E., & Whitehouse, H. (2020). Exploring the Pathways Between Transformative Group Experiences and Identity Fusion. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01172
• Kapitány, R., Kavanagh, C., Buhrmester, M. D., Newson, M., & Whitehouse, H. (2020). Ritual, identity fusion, and the inauguration of president Trump: a pseudo-experiment of ritual modes theory. Self and Identity, 19(3), 293-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2019.1578686
• Kapitány, R., & Nielsen, M. (2019). Ritualized Objects: How We Perceive and Respond to Causally Opaque and Goal Demoted Action. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 19(1-2), 170-194. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340053
• Kapitány, R., Kavanagh, C., Whitehouse, H., & Nielsen, M. (2018). Examining memory for ritualized gesture in complex causal sequences. Cognition, 181, 46-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.005
• Kapitány, R., Davis, J. T., Legare, C., & Nielsen, M. (2018). An experimental examination of object-directed ritualized action in children across two cultures. PLoS ONE, 13(11), Article e0206884. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206884
• Nielsen, M., Tomaselli, K., & Kapitány, R. (2018). The influence of goal demotion on children's reproduction of ritual behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(3), 343-348. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.02.006
• Kapitány, R., & Nielsen, M. (2017). Are Yawns really Contagious? A Critique and Quantification of Yawn Contagion. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 3(2), 134-155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-017-0059-y
• Kapitány, R., & Nielsen, M. (2017). The ritual stance and the precaution system: the role of goal-demotion and opacity in ritual and everyday actions. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 7(1), 27-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599x.2016.1141792
• Wilks, M., Kapitány, R., & Nielsen, M. (2016). Preschool children's learning proclivities: When the ritual stance trumps the instrumental stance. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 34(3), 402-414. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12139
• Kapitány, R., & Nielsen, M. (2015). Adopting the ritual stance: The role of opacity and context in ritual and everyday actions. Cognition, 145, 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.002
• Nielsen, M., Kapitány, R., & Elkins, R. (2015). The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(3), 191-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.11.002