Sources of Influence and Influences of Agency 153
1997, 1998; Von Weisaker 1971). Religious choices are often driven by adaptive pref-
erences. People are comforted by familiar religious explanations, and they find value
and solace in the supernatural rewards and compensators of familiar religious goods.
Endogenous preference shifts like adaptive preferences are a function of individual
fluctuations in desire that are not a response to social influences on tastes. Instead,
people’s prior consumption of religious goods makes them more desirous of similar
goods – just as when people desire the same sort of soft drink they consume every day.
This tendency of preferences to adapt to common alternatives leads to a substantial
conservative bias in the development and reproduction of preferences (Sherkat 1998).
Iannaccone (1990) explains the inertia of religious choices as a function of the devel-
opment of human capital, rather than shifting preferences. From the human capital
perspective, religious experiences build individuals’ stocks of religious human capital.
Religious human capital enables the efficient and effective production of religious value
in collective settings. Hence, the human capital perspective views preferences as stable;
what is seen to change is the ability to produce religious value. Both the theory of
adaptive preferences and human capital theory lead to similar conclusions regarding
the development and trajectory of religious beliefs and behaviors, and they are not
mutually exclusive explanations for religious dynamics. What is also common to both
of these perspectives is that they lend agency to individuals making religious choices –
adaptive preferences and human capital are not a function of socialization, but instead
are generated endogenously by individuals.
Preferences sometimes shift endogenously in a way that promotes change rather
than the reproduction of sentiment.Counteradaptive preferencesoccur when people
aver from previously desired collective goods, and instead prefer more novel ends
(Elster 1983). Hence, people sometimes may gravitate to varied religious expressions
and modes of supernatural explanations, while rejecting their formerly preferred re-
ligious options. Counteradaptivity is evident in motivations for religious seekership
(Sherkat 1997; Roof 1993). As with adaptivity, counteradaptivity is not the result of
socialization or preference learning, but is endogenously motivated. Social influences
may generate preference shifts in another way as well. People may be coerced or seduced
into trying a particular good, and then come to prefer it (Elster 1983). Preference shift
through seduction combines dynamic preferences with social influences on choices –
which will be elaborated below. Religious seduction is clearly evident in the educa-
tional process in seminaries, where students preferring faithful orthodoxy are forced
into trying more secular ideologies, which they then come to embrace (Finke and Stark
1992). Forced conversion, like that experienced by African slaves in the United States
or indigenous peoples on a variety of continents on contact with Christian, Hindu,
Moslem, or Buddhist crusaders, will also follow this pattern if coerced “conversion”
genuinely succeeds.
Social Influences on Individuals’ Choices
Religious preferences are not the only motivations for making religious choices. Like all
decisions about cultural consumption, religious choices have social consequences, and
because of this religious decision making may be dominated by social influences on
choices. These social influences on choices are not to be confused with socialization –
if we define socialization as an influence on preferences as I have above. Instead, social
influences provide an explanation for religious dynamics in spite of or in addition to