A Bayesian model of religious conversion

The Economics of Religion literature is of two minds on whether conversion is more likely to occur between close or distant religions. The religious capital model suggests that conversion should involve sufficiently close religions whereas cognitive considerations suggest that conversion should involve sufficiently distant religions. We reconcile these seemingly contradictory insights about conversion for the class of non-instrumental, intrinsically motivated conversions within a Bayesian framework. We show that religious conversion should involve moderately distant religions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013