Paper short abstract:

Memories of experiences of high-arousal religious rituals become important emotional symbols through unusually large increases in dopamine. This dopamine theory explains not only the ongoing motivation of participants, but also informs theories about the evolution of the earliest forms of religion.

Paper long abstract:

Previously, I have argued that high-arousal religious rituals become important parts of the ritual participants' life stories through narrative processing, and by virtue of the highly emotional content of the memories (van Mulukom, 2017). What was missing from this account are the exact mechanisms by which the emotion of memories of high-arousal rituals are processed, and by which the memories become highly significant, continuing to motivate ritual participants long after the experience has taken place.

In this paper, I will lay out the psychological pathway of how high-arousal religious rituals become important emotional symbols, with a focus on how emotions function together with memories in the brain. I will argue that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a pivotal role in this process, together with two brain structures in the limbic system: the amygdala and the hippocampus.

Finally, I will extend this dopamine theory of religious rituals to explanations as to how this would have been important in the evolution of religion: I will suggest that the earliest forms of religion likely involved rituals that induced states of trance (such as in imagistic, shamanic religions), and that such states are particular adept at producing dopamine surges, which in turn would have imbued the ritual experiences with high levels of significance.