Just like how we save our favorite things for a special occasion, people throughout history have been burying objects with the dead, believing that these ‘grave goods’ will be useful in the afterlife. But why do we do this? That’s the question these researchers set out to answer. They wanted to understand if people’s explicit and implicit beliefs about life after death influence their decisions to include grave goods with their loved ones. Through three studies involving participants from the United States and New Zealand, they found that sentimental and emotionally valuable items like jewelry and photographs were commonly buried. Additionally, they discovered that intuitive afterlife reasoning played a significant role in people’s decision-making process, even for those who did not believe in an afterlife. The research also uncovered other motivations behind grave-good practices, such as magical contagion beliefs and the need for personal comfort. These findings provide valuable insight into our understanding of the cultural and psychological factors that drive this ancient practice. To learn more about this fascinating study, check out the full article!

Abstract
The practice of burying objects with the dead is often claimed as some of the earliest evidence for religion, on the assumption that such “grave goods” were intended for the decedents’ use in the afterlife. However, this assumption is largely speculative, as the underlying motivations for grave-good practices across time and place remain little understood. In the present work, we asked if explicit and implicit religious beliefs (particularly those concerning the continuity of personal consciousness after death) motivate contemporary grave-good practices. Across three studies, and comparing participants from the United States and NZ, we measured grave-good deposition at actual or hypothetical funerals, finding that jewelry, photographs, and other items with sentimental, emotional, and relationship value were common. In addition, intuitive afterlife reasoning (as measured by people’s attributions of mental states to the dead) motivated grave-good decision-making for about half (Study 2) or more (Study 3) people, including afterlife nonbelievers (“extinctivists”), while those who held explicit (i.e., stated) afterlife beliefs were more likely to participate in the practice. The decision to leave grave goods was also associated with magical contagion beliefs and a need for personal comfort, while other motivations, such as social signaling, were less common. Our results suggest that “afterlife use” is a common motivation for grave-good practices, and that humans possess evolutionarily early intuitions about postdeath consciousness.

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