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Head of Department

Email jesse.bering@otago.ac.nz Jesse Bering headshot
Tel +64 3 471 6147

Jesse Bering is a research psychologist and Head of the Department of Science Communication. His primary research area is the cognitive science of religion, with his work centered on the cognitive underpinnings of afterlife beliefs. He is also interested in how we ascribe purpose to inherently meaningless life events as a consequence of our species' evolved psychology, most notably as an artifact of our social cognition. More recently, using controlled studies he has begun to explore people's ability to cognitively reconcile religious and scientific beliefs when they are faced directly with experiences or information that challenges their worldviews.

Bering is also an essayist and popular science writer specializing in evolution and human behavior. In addition to writing extensively for Scientific American and Slate, his essays and opinion pieces have appeared in, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Discover, Aeon, and others.

Bering's first book, The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life (W. W. Norton, 2011), was included in the American Library Association's Top 25 Books of the Year and voted one of the “11 Best Psychology Books of 2011” by The Atlantic.

This was followed by a collection of his Webby-award nominated essays, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Scientific American Press, 2012), and Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us (2013, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Scientific American Press), a taboo-breaking work that received widespread critical acclaim and was named as a New York Times Editor's Choice.

His book Suicidal (University of Chicago Press, 2018, published in the UK as A Very Human Ending, Doubleday), about the psychology of suicide, was described by the Evening Standard as “transcend[ing] its own objectives… It is a fascinating, thoughtful, unflinching meditation on one of the most intriguing and curious aspects of the human condition.”

His latest book, The Incredible Afterlives of Dr Stevenson, will be published in 2025.

Bering's books have been translated into many different languages.

As a practicing science communicator, he has also been featured in numerous documentaries, TV shows, podcasts, and radio programs, including Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, Conan, Chelsea Lately, Q&A (Australia), NPR's All Things Considered, and the BBC.

To learn more, visit www.jessebering.com

Current teaching

  • SCOM 432 The Craft of Storytelling (Semester 1)
  • SCOM 434 Science Communication Internship
  • APPS 597 Supervised Independent Study

Research interests

  • Cognitive science and religion
  • Human sexuality
  • Suicidology
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Social psychology and science communication

Potential postgraduate projects

  • Communicating controversial scientific topics in conflict with religious beliefs
  • Experimental (lab-based) approaches to social psychology and science communication
  • Cognitive biases and science communication

Current PhD students

  • Alex Gilbert – Risk communication of sports-related concussion
  • Emma Harcourt – The use of scientific language by anti-abortion groups
  • Mahfudza Ulfa – Indonesian scientists’ perception of religion and science
  • Ryan Harcourt – Effect of religious beliefs on health beliefs and behaviours
  • Sean Lennon – Suicide in Aotearoa: The lived experiences of queer youth

Books

Publications

Gillespie, C. M., & Bering, J. M. (2025). Avoiding stigma and sensationalism in therapeutic psilocybin communications: Considerations for reaching older patients. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2025.07.003 Journal - Research Article

Bering, J. (2024, October). The incredible afterlives of Dr. Stevenson. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. [Inaugural Professorial Lecture]. Other Research Output

Halberstadt, J., Hughes, R., Jayasinha, G., & Bering, J. (2023, June-July). Motivational and cognitive explanations of postmortem consciousness. Poster session presented at the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) General Meeting, Kraków, Poland. Conference Contribution - Poster Presentation (not in published proceedings)

Swan, T., Bering, J., Hughes, R., & Halberstadt, J. (2023). The role of implicit and explicit beliefs in grave-good practices: Evidence for intuitive afterlife reasoning. Cognitive Science, 47(4), e13263. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13263 Journal - Research Article

Waggoner, B., Bering, J. M., & Halberstadt, J. (2023). The desire to be remembered: A review and analysis of legacy motivations and behaviors. New Ideas in Psychology, 69, 101005. doi: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2022.101005 Journal - Research Article

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