Participation: A Religious Worldview

This essay is an experimental project. It proposes that the theme of participation issues in an insightful, distinctive, comprehensive, and coherent interpretation of human experience. My personal history is a test case.     

The Worldview of Memory Lane

This article is a response to Jacob Belzen’s Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion, Principles, Approaches and Applications (New York: Springer, 2010) from a cross-cultural pastoral perspective and identifies seven issues where the book and cross-cultural pastoral thinking impact each other: definition, research methodology, object of research, flexibility of research, the relationship between cultural and cross-cultural psychology, culture, and private religious experience. Below I will view Belzen’s book through the prism of my primary concerns as a Dutch academic trained in cross-cultural pastoral care and counseling who pastors in a diverse and fluid cultural context.     

Probing the Fundamentalist Worldview

The following is a response to Calvin Mercer’s (2009) Slaves to Faith, A Therapist Looks Inside the Fundamentalist Mind from a multicultural pastoral perspective.     

Religion as Orienting Worldview

Religions are complex, and any attempt at defining religion necessarily falls short. Nevertheless, any scholarly inquiry into the nature of religion must use some criteria in order to evaluate and study the character of religious traditions across contexts. To this end, I propose understanding religion in terms of an orienting worldview. Religions are worldviews that are expressed not only in beliefs but also in narratives and symbols. More than this, religions orient action, and any genuine religious tradition necessarily is concerned with normative behavior, whether ethical or religious in character. Such an understanding of religion has several advantages, one of which is its natural relation to current forms of the science-religion dialogue. Not only can the findings of cognitive science and related areas inform us about the nature of religion; scientific discoveries also prove to be important for any religious synthesis that attempts to construct a worldview for the twenty-first century.     

Spirituality in the Treatment of Alcoholism: A Worldview Approach

To consider alcoholism an addiction with a spiritual dimension has historically posed a problem for the logical positivism and egalitarian orientations of most Western-trained therapists and academics. Many of these professionals argue that to define alcoholism as including a spiritual component invites nonscientific if not mystical approaches to treatment. For this reason, it has been difficult to legitimize a definition of alcoholism that considers spiritual components to etiology or treatment. In this article, the author suggests that issues of spirituality are an important focus in the treatment of alcohol dependence. To consider spirituality as representative of how one views the world and his or her role in creation may well relieve some of a professional counselor's apprehension about inserting a “theology” into treatment.     

Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison

Philosophy lacks criteria to evaluate its philosophical theories. To fill this gap, this essay introduces nine criteria to compare worldviews, classified in three broad categories: objective criteria (objective consistency, scientificity, scope), subjective criteria (subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality), and intersubjective criteria (intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity). The essay first defines what a worldview is and exposes the heuristic used in the quest for criteria. After describing each criterion individually, it shows what happens when each of them is violated. From the criteria, it derives assessment tests to compare and improve different worldviews. These include the is‐ought, ought‐act, and is‐act first‐order tests; the critical and dialectical second‐order tests; the mixed‐questions and first‐second‐order third‐order tests; and the we‐I, we‐it, and it‐I tests. The essay then applies these criteria and tests to a concrete example, comparing the Flying Spaghetti Monster deity with Intelligent Design. For another application, it draws more general fruitful suggestions for the dialogue between science and religion.     

A Primer on Consultation Theory: Building a Flexible Worldview

The purpose of this article is to provide potential consultants with a broad introduction to the learning, gestalt, systems, organizational, psychoanalytic, and chaos theories of consultation. The goal of this article is to demonstrate how the consultant can map each of these theories onto the consultation environment to produce a unique perspective that each theory alone cannot provide. Each theory is described as to how it views and frames the consultation problem and how interventions are then based on these frames. Additionally, each theory is examined as to its view of process difficulties and when termination is deemed appropriate.     

Science Education from a Social Constructivist Position: A Worldview

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Overpopulation and the Lifeboat Metaphor: A Critique from an African Worldview

This article is a contribution to overpopulation discourse in environmental ethics. It is based on the hypothesis that, even though the idea and reasoning behind Garret Hardin’s lifeboat metaphor are crucial within the current environmental crisis, from an African perspective, the metaphor raises a number of questions. The article argues that the lifeboat metaphor poses an ethical challenge to most communities particularly in Africa because it runs contrary to their political and cultural worldview. I advance two central claims in the framework of insights from an African worldview. First, the ethics behind the lifeboat metaphor is deeply dependent upon political power differentials, particularly between affluent and poor nations. Second, the metaphor fails to take into consideration the cultural understanding of population in Africa.     

Effects of Worldview and Mortality Salience in Persuasion Processes

Individual differences in media effects research have yielded a trove of insights into how media content can have varying effects. One such variable is worldview—a philosophy of life that enables a person to make sense of one's experience—but the notion has largely been unexamined in media effects research. A person's worldview can moderate the way a persuasive message is processed—sometimes in the opposite direction of that intended by communicators. Building on the construct of worldview and terror management theory, two experiments (N = 149 and N = 151) examined the question with worldview as a measured variable and mortality salience as a two-level factor. Worldview had a main effect on global evaluations of ads, as participants who tended toward a relativist worldview had lower evaluations of the ads and lower behavioral intentions, while participants who tended toward a positivist worldview had higher evaluations of the ads and higher behavioral intentions. Also, mortality salience was found to moderate participants' worldview, presumably making their worldview more accessible to exert a greater influence. The importance of worldview as a construct in media effects research, as well as theoretical implications for persuasion and terror management theory, are discussed.     

Contribution of Cultural Worldview to Generic Counseling and Development

A brief review of the major advances in multicultural counseling and psychotherapy literature and research is presented. A major emphasis is on the construct of “worldview” and on how knowledge and understanding of client worldview leads to more effective, ethical, sensitive, and client-specific counseling and development activities and interventions. This article reviews research and theory to support use of the worldview construct as a mediating variable in counseling and development interventions. This information can help the process of engaging clients, training effective and sensitive counselors, understanding organizational culture, and understanding the impact of gender on worldviews of men and women. Current research on the construct of worldview and its applications in counselor training, in counseling interventions, and in industrial-organizational settings is presented. Se presenta un repaso de los mayores avances en consejería multicultural y de la literatura e investigación en psicoterapia. Se pone un gran émfasis en la construcción de una visión universal y en como el conocimiento y entendimiento de la visión universal del cliente redunda en intervenciones mas efectivas, éticas, y sensibles. El trabajo revisa investigaciones y teorías para apoyar el uso del constructo de la visión universal coma un variable intermedia entre la consejería y las intervenciones de desarollo. Esta información puede ayudar al proceso de vinculación del cliente, entrenamiento de consejeros efectivos y sensitivos, comprensión de la cultura organizacional, y las diferentes maneras de concebir la visión universal por hombres y mujeres. Se presentan las investigaciones corrientes sobre la construcción de la visión universal y sus aplicaciones en el entrenamiento de consejeros, en intervenciones de consejería, y en ambientes industriales/organizacionales.     

Worldview and Counseling Preference: An Analogue Study

A 2 × 3 mixed factorial design was used to study the relationship between a person's dominant worldview (mechanism or organicism) and preference for three counseling approaches (behavioral, rationalist, and constructivist). A total of 90 undergraduate participants completed the Organicism-Mechanism Paradigm Inventory and subsequently evaluated three audiotaped presentations designed to depict counselors who were introducing their counseling approaches to a new client. Results revealed a significant interaction between worldview and counseling approach—organicists exhibited a significant self-preference for constructivist counseling, whereas mechanists significantly preferred behavioral counseling for themselves and others. Implications of these findings for counseling and psychotherapy are discussed.     

Identity Development and Worldview: Toward an Optimal Conceptualization

Positive self-identity is not easily attained in this culture. This premise is supported by the pervasive number of “-isms” (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism) and their adverse impact on those who are defined as inferior by the dominant way of perceiving. Examination of the conceptual system that predisposes people to these “-isms” concludes that (a) it is the nature of the conceptual system that is inherently oppressive and (b) all who adhere to this conceptual system have a difficult time developing and maintaining a positive identity. This article postulates a new way of describing the identity development process under oppression using optimal theory (Myers, 1988). From this optimal worldview, oppression is perceived as self-alienating and yielding a fragmented sense of self, based upon devaluation by self and others. Therefore, identity development is a process of integrating and expanding one's sense of self. Optimal theory provides a new inclusive model of identity development, which is described, along with its applications for counseling practice. No es facíl obtener una identidad positiva de uno mismo en esta cultura. Esta premisa se apoya en la gran cantidad de “-ismos” (e.g., racismo, sexismo, heterosexismo, “edadismo”) y los impactos adversos en la gente que sería definida como inferior por la manera dominante de percibirlo. La conclusión de un examen del sistema conceptual que predispone a las personas a estos “-ismos” es que (a) la naturaleza del sistema conceptual es inheréntemente opresivo, y (b) todos aquellos que se adhieran a este sistema conceptual tendrán dificultades con el desarrollo y mantemiento de una identidad positiva. Este artículo postula una nueva manera de describir el proceso del desarrolo de la identidad bajo opresión utilizando la teoría óptima (Myers, 1.988). Desde esta visión universal óptima, se ve a la opresión como autoalienación y creadora de un sentido fragmentado del yo, basado en la devaluación por uno mismo y por los demás. Por tanto, el desarrollo de la indentidad es un proceso de integración y amplificación de la percepción de uno mismo. Esta óptima teoría nos da un modelo inclusive nuevo del desarrollo de identidad, lo cual se describe, junta con sus aplicacions para la práctica de consejería.     

The Impact of Social Threat on Worldview and Ideological Attitudes

Research has shown that social threat correlates with ideological authoritarianism, but the issues of causal direction and specificity of threat to particular ideological attitudes remain unclear. Here, a theoretical model is proposed in which social threat has an impact on authoritarianism specifically, with the effect mediated through social worldview. The model was experimentally tested with a sample of undergraduates who responded to one of three hypothetical scenarios describing a future New Zealand that was secure, threatening, or essentially unaltered. Both threat and security influenced social worldview, but only threat influenced authoritarianism, with differential effects on two factorially distinct subdimensions (conservative and authoritarian social control attitudes) and with the effects of threat mediated through worldview. There was a weak effect of threat on social dominance that was entirely mediated through authoritarianism. The findings support the proposed theoretical model of how personal and social contextual factors causally affect people's social worldviews and ideological attitudes.     

Worldview Differences Between College Students and Graduate Counseling Trainees

The purpose of this study was to examine whether graduate students in counseling (n = 95) have different worldviews than undergraduate students (n = 177) who might be potential clients. Students in both groups completed the Scale to Assess World Views (Ibrahim & Kahn, 1987). Results indicated that undergraduate students' worldviews were significantly different from graduate counseling students'. In comparison, undergraduates were more likely than graduate counseling students to focus on the past, to perceive human nature as evil, human relationships as linear-hierarchical and collateral-mutual, and nature as powerful. Graduate counseling trainees, on average, were more likely than undergraduates to perceive human nature as good. Men were more likely than women to perceive human nature as evil, human relationships as linear-hierarchical and individualistic, and nature as controllable. Women, in contrast, preferred the being-in-becoming modality. Implications and limited generalizability of these findings for counseling are discussed.