Explore the 'group mind' phenomenon and uncover its influences on religious and political experiences. This book investigates the idea that human groups, under certain conditions, can develop distinct personalities and possess 'minds' characterized by quasi-rational decision-making processes, emotions, intentional states, and actions in the world. Utilizing expert research, Patrick McNamara applies the explosion of findings in collective cognition to topics in evolutionary psychology, social science, and religion to demonstrate the associations between group minds and supernatural agents. The chapters examine the relationship between religious group minds and individual psychology from multiple perspectives, including identity dynamics, inter-group relations, group theory of mind, and the neuroscience of in-group monitoring. The book also addresses how religious groups evolve, maintain cohesion, and shape individual brains, offering a novel framework for understanding how collective minds emerge and operate. It is an essential resource for those interested in the psychology of religion, philosophy, and religious studies.

‘From Groups to Gods is McNamara at his best: drawing on data and theory from multiple scientific fields, he offers us a bold and exciting theory of collective cognition, and tantalizing implications for how we should think about a wide-range of phenomena from psychotherapy and dreaming to religion and politics. Even—and perhaps especially—those who end up disagreeing with McNamara's central thesis will gain much from this book: not least a plethora of hypotheses to be tested. This is a paradigmatic and potentially paradigm-shifting work of psychological theory.’

Jonathan Lewis-Jong - University of Oxford

‘This book offers a compelling and timely account of group minds, showing how collective cognition shapes culture, religion, and politics. By uniting evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and psychology, it opens new ways of understanding the promise and danger of shared minds, with wide-ranging implications for shaping individual minds.’

Viktor Müller - Research Scientist, Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

‘If the 20th Century was the age of individualism and reductionism, the 21st Century is becoming the age of holism and interactionism. Patrick McNamara writes about collective minds as if they are the only thing that makes sense for an ultrasocial species such as ourselves. His integration of ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (neuroscience) causation is especially admirable. Highly recommended.’

David Sloan Wilson - Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology, Binghamton University, and author of This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution

‘The realization that networks of distributed cognition may have non-reducible collective intelligence and agency has been growing in the past twenty years. McNamara's book is an indispensable addition to this growing field. The care, detail and thoroughness as well as the powerful theoretical integration strengthen the case for such collective intelligences and agents, and the proposal that such suprapersonal agents have significant religious functions as spirits is important and insightful. This book is a must read.’

John Vervaeke - Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Toronto