form and structure. As will be seen, most religious behaviors are Type II Behaviors.
Having given some general background about behavior and how to categorize and conceptualize it in terms of form and function, the next step is to apply this understanding to religious behavior. The next two sections will address Type I and Type II religious behaviors.
is done in conjunction with simultaneously occurring or rapidly alter-nating approach-avoidance behaviors, producing the classic picture of coyness or teasing.22Also, in courtship there can be a variety of facial affects seen, but one facial affect is avoided—fear. Fear is the facial affect that accompanies the LSV behavior when it is used in true sub-mission. Therefore the absence of a fearful affect makes it clear that the LSV behavior is being used as courtship solicitation and not sub-mission. In contrast, in some of the earliest premammalian ancestors of humans the female courtship solicitation behaviors are indistin-guishable from the behaviors whose function is submission.23
Lastly, one also sees variations of the LSV behavior associated with the nonvocal aspect of petitioning prayer in all major and at least some tribal religions of the world. Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews all use different variations of the LSV theme.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the eyes are often closed during prayer, making the praying individual even more vulnerable. Christians bow their heads and put their hands together in front of their chests in the nonvocal aspect of petitioning prayer. Most Christians pray with their hands in front pressed together pointing upward. However, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mor-mon) faith often pray by folding both arms across their chest. Some Christian denominations also kneel at times. Sometimes Pentecostal Christians pray by putting their empty (weaponless) hands over their heads similar to signs of surrender.24Hindus can sit with their hands up. Buddhists exhibit various LSV behaviors when petitioning in front of statues of the Buddha for enlightenment. Muslims pray on their knees (smaller) and get even smaller, lower, and more vulnerable by putting their forehead on the ground with their eyes downward.
Orthodox Jews as well as Muslims bow back and forth, which lowers them when they read sacred texts in prayer.
It is possible to ask the question, ‘‘Why do people engage in the nonvocal LSV behaviors associated with petitioning prayer?’’25We know that as part of the socialization process, children interact with other children and adults in a variety of interactions, some of which are potentially or actually hostile or aggressive. In such an interaction when a child is confronted with an overwhelmingly more powerful adversary, often a punishing parent, and when this individual is corpo-rally threatening or actually punishing or hurting the child, the child becomes fearful. The child’s automatic response is to assume LSV behavior. In this context the function of the LSV behavior is submis-sion. The submissive LSV behavior is an intraspecies signal. When
seen by an aggressive adversary, it tends to decrease aggression. Sub-mission signals to the overwhelmingly more powerful adversary that the submissively displaying individual has essentially given up. If decreased aggression occurs in the adversary, a decrease in fear by the individual who displayed the LSV behavior follows. It is not known for certain if simply engaging in LSV behavior reduces fear or if one learns through association in childhood that LSV behavior reduces fear. Under natural conditions fear reduction would almost always follow the execution of LSV behavior when it is used in the context of submission.
From the perspective of ethology (behavioral biology), LSV behav-ior, as a Type I coordinated motor pattern, can also be considered a
‘‘consummatory end act.’’ The term ‘‘consummatory’’ derives from the Latin summa, which means a total or sum. Nothing literally (such as food) has to be consumed by the organism as a whole. The term is used to signify that an appetitive (derives from an appetite) search has just been ended.26There are other familiar examples of consum-matory end acts that when executed raise the thresholds for their con-tinued execution and make them less likely to occur through a change in mood. These acts (behaviors) have to do with food (eating), water (drinking), and sex (copulation). In reference to LSV behavior, if fear were motivating escape from an adversary but where escape was not possible, then executing the LSV behavior can be considered the consummatory end act that under natural conditions would almost always reduce fear. By whatever mechanism—innate, acquired, or both—the child comes to associate the execution of LSV behavior with fear reduction. The significance of this should be obvious, as LSV behavior is also used in the nonvocal aspect of petitioning prayer.
When one eats, drinks, copulates, or makes a petitioning prayer, there is a clear endpoint when one feels satisfied after the consumma-tory end act.
As a result, whenever a child or an adult who has had such a fear-dissipation-through-submission type of upbringing was in a fearful mood and felt fearful, if he or she assumed the LSV behavior, even when not in a hostile interaction with another individual, the experi-ence could be calming and fear reducing. Appreciate that in the non-vocal aspects of petitioning prayer, the function of the LSV behavior is prayerful petition rather than stopping punishment from an over-whelmingly more powerful adversary. Fear, which is associated with true submission, is seldom if ever seen on the face of someone praying.
Petitioning prayer can ask for favors from a loving God as well as ask
for mercy from what is believed to be a punishing God. In support of the above the historical relationship between childhood abuse and abandonment (which were rampant during the time the Judeo-Christian scriptures and other sacred narratives were being written27) and the thematic content of various sacred narratives will be presented in Chapter 6.