CV


Academic Appointments

2024 - Ongoing Senior Lecturer (above the bar). School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury. Christchurch, New Zealand.
2019 - Ongoing External Research Associate. Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Leipzig, Germany.
2019 - 2023 Research Fellow → Lecturer → Senior Lecturer. Religion Programme, School of Social Science, University of Otago. Dunedin, New Zealand.
2017 – 2019 Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group, University of Oxford. Oxford, United Kingdom.
2016 – 2019 Postdoctoral Researcher. Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Jena, Germany.

Education

2013 - 2017 Ph.D. in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
2012 B.Sc. Honours in Psychology (1st Class), School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
2009 - 2011 B.Sc. in Psychology and Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Publications

Journal Articles

Spake, L., Hassan, A., Schaffnit, S. B., Alam, N., Badjie, J., Cerami, C., Crampin, A., Dube, A., Hawkins, E., Jagne, A. Y., Kaye, M., Kotch, R., Liew, F., Munthali, S., Mwalwanda, L., Ndow, M., Petersen, A. C., Prentice, A., Rai, R. K., Zohora, F., Watts, J., Sear, R., Shenk, M. K., Sosis, R., & Shaver, J. H. (2024). A practical guide to cross-cultural data collection in the human behavioural sciences: insights from the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biology, 291:20231422.

Spake, L., Schaffnit, S.B., Page, A.E., Hassan, A., Lynch, R., Watts, J., Sosis, R., Sear, R, Shenk, M.K., & Shaver, J.H. (2024). Religious women receive more allomaternal support from kin in two low-fertility countries. Evolution and Human Behavior.

McKay, R., Price, M., Ross, R. M., Watts, J., Cristofori, I., Hoogeveen, S., Shaver, J., Sosis, R., & Wildman, W. (2024). Replacing the irreplaceable. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 14(2), 111-118.

Jackson, J. C., Wilbanks, D., Bastian, B., Watts, J., DiMaggio, N., & Gray, K. (2023). Supernatural Explanations Across the Globe Are More Common for Natural Than Social Phenomena. Nature Human Behavior.

Sheehan, O., Watts, J., Gray, R.D., Bulbulia, J. & Atkinson, Q.D. (2023). Coevolution of Religious and Political Authority in Austronesian Societies. Nature Human Behavior, 7, 38-45.

Watts, J., Hamerslag, E.M., Sprules, C., Shaver, J.H., & Dunbar, R.I.M. (2022). Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter-gatherer societies. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 4, E17.

Jackson, J. C., Lindquist, K., Drabble, R., Atkinson, Q., & Watts, J. (2022). Valence-Dependent Mutation in Lexical Evolution. Nature Human Behavior, 7, 190-199.

Passmore, S., & Watts, J. (2022). WEIRD People and The Western Church: who made whom? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 12(3), 304-311.

Watts, J., Jackson, J.C., Arnison, C., Hamerslag, E.M., Shaver, J.H., & Purzycki, B.G. (2021). Building Quantitative Cross-cultural Databases from Ethnographic Records: Promise, Problems and Principles. Cross-Cultural Research, 56(1), 62-94.

Jackson, J.C., Watts, J., List, J.M., Puryear, C., Drabble, R., & Lindquist, K.A. (2021). From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(3), 805-826.

Evans, C.L., Greenhill, S.J., Watts, J., List, J.M., Botero, C., Gray, R.D., & Kirby, K.R. (2021). The Uses and Abuses of Tree Thinking in Cultural Evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376 (1828), 20200056.

Leisterer-Peoples, S., Hardecker, S., Watts, J., Greenhill, S., Ross, C., and Haun, D. (2021). The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 8 (113).

Shaver, J.H., Power, E.A., Purzycki, B.G., Watts, J., Sear, R., Shenk, M.K., Sosis, R., & Bulbulia, J.A. (2020). Church attendance and alloparenting: an analysis of fertility, social support and child development among English mothers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375 (1805), 20190428.

Watts, J., Passmore, S., Jackson, J.C., Ryzimski, C. & Dunbar, R.I.M. (2020). Text analysis shows conceptual overlap as well as domain-specific differences in Christian and secular worldviews. Cognition, 201 (104290), 1-5.

Jackson, J.C., Watts, J., Henry, T.R., List, J.M., Forkel, R., Mucha, P.J., Greenhill, S.J., Gray, R.D., & Lindquist, K.A. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science, 366 (6472), 1517-1522.

Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Bulbulia, J., Gray, R.D., & Atkinson, Q.D. (2018). Christianity spread faster in small politically structured societies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 559-564.

Sheehan, O., Watts, J., Gray, R.D., & Atkinson, Q.D. (2018). Coevolution of landesque capital intensive agriculture and sociopolitical hierarchy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (14), 3628-3633.

Gray, R.D., & Watts, J. (2017). Cultural macroevolution matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7846-7852.

Bulbulia, J., Fraser, G., Watts, J., Shaver, J.H., & Gray, R.D. (2017). Can honest signaling theory clarify religion’s role in the evolution of social inequality? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 7 (4), 285-288.

Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q.D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R.D. (2016). Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature, 532 (7598), 228-231.

Watts, J. Bulbulia, J., Gray, R.D., & Atkinson, Q.D. (2016). Clarity and Causality Needed in Claims about Big Gods (Commentary). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, 41-42.

Watts, J., Greenhill, S., Atkinson, Q., Currie, T., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biology, 282 (1804), 20142.

Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Greenhill, S.J., Gomes-Ng, S., Atkinson, Q.D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R.D. (2015). Pulotu: Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices. PLoS ONE, 10 (9), e0136783.

Atkinson, Q., Latham, A., & Watts, J. (2014). Are big gods a big deal in the emergence of big groups? Religion, Brain & Behaviour, 5 (4), 266-274.

Low, J., & Watts, J. (2013). Attributing false-beliefs about object identity is a signature blindspot in humans' efficient mind-reading system. Psychological Science, 24 (3), 305-311.

Book Chapters

Watts, J. (2023). The Cultural Macroevolution of Religion. In J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, & R. Kendal (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q.D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R.D. (2019). Did ritual human sacrifice help build and sustain social inequality? In D.J. Slone & W.W. McCorkle Jr. (Eds.) The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic.

Watts, J., Gray, R.D., & Bulbulia, J. (2018). The New Collaborative Scientific Study of Religious History. In A. K. (Ed.) Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis. Leiden: Brill.

Articles for a General Audience

Purzycki, B. G. and Watts, J. (2018). Reinvigorating the cooperative, comparative ethnographic sciences of religion. Free Inquiry, 38(3): 26-29.

Watts, J. (2016). How human sacrifice helped to enforce social inequality. Aeon.

Watts, J. (2016). The Function of Human Sacrifice in Ancient Societies. The Conversation, This View of Life and IFL Science.

Watts, J. (2015). Did Fear In Supernatural Punishment Build Complex Societies? This View of Life.


Selected Media Coverage

The Times. Power not poverty spreads Christianity, study finds. By Tom Whipple.

The Herald, NZ. What Christianity's spread teaches us about social change.

Science. Human sacrifice may have helped societies become more complex. By Emily Benson.

The Guardian. Study shows human sacrifice was less likely in more equal societies. By Tim Radford.

New York Times. Why Some Societies Practiced Ritual Human Sacrifice. By Tatiana Schlossberg.

Nature. Complex societies evolved without belief in all-powerful deity. By Philip Ball. Re-posted in Scientific American, and The Richard Dawkins Foundation.

Science. To foster complex societies, tell people a god is watching. By Lizzie Wade.

Additional media coverage here

Grants

2020 The Evolution and Endurance of Religious Explanations.
Team: Jackson, J.C., Watts, J. (AI), Bastian, B., Gray, K.
Issachar Fund, Templeton Religion Trust
2019 Cross-cultural Patterns in Theory of Mind.
Team: Watts, J. (PI), Greenhill, S. , & Low, J.
Marsden Fund, Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi (19-VUW-188).
2019 Characterizing and Predicting Variation in Gods’ Minds across Culture and History.
Team: Gray, K, Jackson, J.C., Purzycki, B. Watts, J. (AI)
John Templeton Foundation (61111)
2016 Religion and the Social Brain.
Team: Reiss, M., Dunbar, D., Turner, L., Farais, M., Watts, J. (AI), Lockhard, A., Bretherton, R., Vermon, M.
Templeton Religion Trust (TRT0153)

Awards

2022 Early Career Award for Distinction in Research. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
2017 Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
2013 Ph.D. Scholarship, University of Auckland. Auckland, New Zealand.
2011 Summer Research Scholarship, Victoria University of Wellington. Wellington, New Zealand.

Talks

Testing the Role of Culture in Theory of Mind: a text analytic approach (2024). Cultural Evolution Society Conference. Durham, United Kingdom.

The mental state vocabularies in Māori and English narratives differ in content but not size (2024). The Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention. Online & San Diego, United States of America.

Modelling Secularization across Nations Using Phylogenetic Causal Path Analysis (2021). Cultural Evolution Society Conference. Online.

The Emergence of Professional Religious Specialists in Hunter-gatherer Societies (2021). European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association Annual Conference. Online.

Modelling Secularization across Nations Using Phylogenetic Causal Path Analysis (2021). The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size and Child Success Seminar Series. Online.

Predicting the emergence of paid religious specialists in hunter-gatherer societies (2019). International Society for Science and Religion Conference. Oxford, United Kingdom.

Testing Evolutionary Theories of Religion Across Cultures (2019). University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. University of Oxford, United Kingdom

The evolution of secular and religious leadership were tightly coupled and mutually reinforcing in early Austronesian societies (2018). Cultural Evolution Society Conference. Tempe, United States of America.

The cultural evolution of supernatural beliefs and practices (2018). School of Psychology. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Greater political hierarchy predicts faster conversion to Christianity (2017). European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association Annual Conference. Paris, France.

Pulotu: The Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices (2017). Cultural Evolution Society Conference. Jena, Germany.

Testing for Co-evolution with Pagel’s Discrete (2017). Quantitative Methods Spring School. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

The Cultural Evolution of Religion (2017). Life Sciences Kolleg. German National Academic Foundation, Germany

Pulotu, the Database of Pacific Religions: Construction and Data Analysis (2016). Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. Stanford, United States of America.

Announcing Pulotu! A Public Database of Pacific Supernatural Belief and Practice (2015). World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. Erfurt, Germany.

The Function of Human Sacrifice in Austronesia (2015). Human Behaviour and Evolution Society. Columbia, United States of America.

The Evolution of Moralising Gods and Political Complexity (2013). Allan Wilson Centre Conference. Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Teaching

2025 - Ongoing PSYCH485 Evolutionary Approaches to Human Psychology (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Psychology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
2024 - Ongoing PSYCH382 Culture and Cognition (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Psychology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
2021 - 2023 RELS237/337 The psychology of religion (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Religion Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand
2021 - 2022 RELS110 The scientific study of religion (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Religion Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand
2021 RELS240/340 The cultural evolution of religious systems (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Religion Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand
2021 RELS238/338 Religion and Human Behaviour (Lecturer & Course Coordinator). Religion Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand
2013 - 2015 PSYCH317 Evolution, Behaviour, and Cognition (Graduate Teaching Assistant). School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Service

2024 - Ongoing Editor. Religion, Brain & Behavior.
2023 - Ongoing President. New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions
2013 - Ongoing Editor. Pulotu database of Austronesian religion and culture
2020 - 2024 Internet Officer. International Association for the Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of Religion
2022 - 2023 School of Social Science Research Committee Member. University of Otago
2020 - 2023 Postgraduate Student Coordinator. Religion Programme, University of Otago
2022 Research Committee, University of Otago Research Grants. University of Otago
2020 - 2022 Vice-president. New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions
2020 - 2021 Seminar series and events coordinator. Religion Programme, University of Otago
2019 - 2020 Steam Co-Chair. International Association for the History of Religion Congress.
2018 Scientific Committee Member. Applications in Cultural Evolution: Arts, Languages, Technologies Conference.
2016 - 2017 Regional Editor. Database of Religious History.

Ad-hoc reviewer for: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Current Anthropology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Religion, Brain & Behavior, Ethology, Evolution and Human Behaviour, Evolutionary Human Sciences, Journal of Anthropological Research, Palgrave Communications, Plos One, Studies in Religion-Sciences Religieuses, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Human Nature, Archive for the Psychology of Religion