Trust in God: The COVID-19 Pandemic's Impact on Religiosity in China

Emerging research shows the COVID-19 pandemic has made substantial changes to the religious climate of several nations. Surprisingly, China, the outbreak center of the pandemic, has been scarcely researched. Our study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has evoked new religious disaster responses and provided psychological coping mechanisms during the pandemic. We also explore how the pandemic explains surprising rates of religiosity in China. Scholars have long proposed that religious resurgence in China has been a result of individuals seeking stability in turbulent times. We bridge parallel Literatures in these areas and treat the pandemic as a natural experiment for evaluating religious behavior over time as conditioned by heightened risk perception. Utilizing a difference-in-differences estimation strategy with panel data, our study reveals that the pandemic has led to a significant increase in religiosity in China, particularly in religious areas most affected by the pandemic. We propose that even in a highly regulative religious environment, with most of its population being religiously unaffiliated, religion is a significant resource for coping in China. We take an innovative approach to demonstrate this by utilizing online search data. Our research speaks to the sociology of religion, the social psychology of risk perception, and makes application to emerging research on the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic.     

SSSR Presidential Address Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy

Religious congruence refers to consistency among an individual's religious beliefs and attitudes, consistency between religious ideas and behavior, and religious ideas, identities, or schemas that are chronically salient and accessible to individuals across contexts and situations. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research establish that religious congruence is rare, but much thinking about religion presumes that it is common. The religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence .     

Toward an Evolutionary Psychology of Religion and Personality

Evolutionary psychology is an emerging paradigm for the social sciences that offers a powerful metatheoretical framework for personality psychology and, as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, for the psychology of religion as well. I argue that religion is not an evolved adaptation; rather, the diverse range of beliefs, behavior, and experience that we collectively refer to as religion emerge as byproducts of numerous, domain-specific psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve other (mundane) adaptive problems. These include mechanisms for reasoning about the natural world (naive physics and biology), about other people' minds (naive psychology), and about specific kinds of interpersonal relationships (attachment, kinship, social exchange, coalitions, status hierarchies).     

Linked Lives, Faith, and Behavior: Intergenerational Religious Influence on Adolescent Delinquency

Research on religion and delinquency has generally concluded that only minor forms of delinquency are affected by religious commitments. However, parents have not often been the focus of religion and delinquency research. This study explores the influence of parental religious identity and behavior on the serious delinquency of adolescent children. This analysis tested an intergenerational model of religious influence on delinquent behavior. Results suggest parental religious devotion protects girls considerably better than boys. In fact, it may amplify delinquency among boys, at least when controlling for other important influences such as autonomy and family satisfaction. Parents' conservative Protestant affiliation displays consistent negative direct effects on delinquency, but little indirect influence. This study reinforces the importance of considering linked lives in the development of youth, as well as the need to assess both direct and indirect religious influences.     

Introduction

Spiritual and religious beliefs and practices are commonplace in the general population of North America today. In recognition of this fact, research on the interplay of spirituality, religion, and psychological variables increased substantially over the past 3 decades; a recent PsycInfo search identified over 28,000 scientific contributions to this area. However, the relevance of spirituality and religion to clinical practice remains poorly understood. As a result, many practitioners of empirically supported treatments may be reticent to address spirituality and religion in the course of their work. The intent of this special series is to help demystify this topic with the hope of increasing dissemination of spiritually sensitive, empirically supported treatments. The authors in this series cast some light on this understudied topic by highlighting several salient spiritual and religious issues in behavior change. Moreover, based on case material, the authors illustrate how to assess for and address both adaptive and maladaptive utilizations of spirituality and religion in the practice of cognitive behavior therapy. This introductory paper presents a rationale for why it is important to address this topic, and provides an overview of recent research developments in the creation of spiritually integrated psychosocial treatments.     

Is analytical psychology a religion? Rationalist and romantic approaches to religion and modernity

The relationship between analytical psychology and religion is part of the larger issue of the relationship between modernity and religion. There are three main views on the issue. The fundamentalist position sets religion against modernity and opts for religion over modernity. What I call the 'rationalist' position likewise sets religion against modernity but opts for modernity over religion. By contrast to both views, what I call the 'romantic' position reconciles religion with modernity. Rationalists maintain that religion can exist only in so far as it serves as an explanation of the physical world, which the rise of science now precludes. Romantics maintain that religion, while serving as an explanation of the physical world till dislodge by science, is at heart anything but an explanation. The toppling of the religions explanation by the scientific one, far from dooming religion, prods religion into making explicit what it has in fact been all along. By this categorization, Jung is overwhelmingly a romantic. For him, the function of religion has always been more psychological than explanatory, and the rise of science does not preclude the continuing existence of religious myths as a psychological rather than an explanatory phenomenon. For those for whom science does spell the demise of religion, secular myths can replace religious ones, and those secular myths are more secular versions of religions myths than secular alternatives to religions myths. Yet even if for Jung religion can still exist today because religion is in fact psychology, it does not follow that psychology is therefore a religion.     

‘Mixed’ Religion Relationships and Well-being in Northern Ireland

Religion plays a pivotal role in intergroup and interpersonal relationships in Northern Ireland, and individuals traditionally marry within their own religious group. However, ‘mixed’ marriages between Catholics and Protestants do occur and present an interesting, yet under researched, dynamic within this divided society. Both religion and committed relationships have been associated with physical and psychological health, but little is known about how divergence in religious beliefs within relationships impacts on health. A secondary data analysis of the Northern Ireland cohort of the Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study was conducted to investigate the impact of mixed religion relationships on physical and psychological well-being in Northern Ireland. Less than 10 % of relationships were mixed religion relationships, and being in a mixed relationship was associated with poorer mental health but not with physical health. Mixed religion relationships in Northern Ireland are relatively uncommon in Northern Ireland, but are an important form of intergroup contact, as such it is important to fully understand the implications for the individuals involved and develop mechanisms to support those individuals psychological well-being.     

Principles of Religious Prosociality: A Review and Reformulation

Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in others, and in some cases actually increasing antisocial behavior. In addition, different forms of religious belief are associated with different styles of co-operation. This body of evidence paints a somewhat messy picture of religious prosociality; however, recent examinations of the cognitive mechanisms of belief help to resolve apparent inconsistencies. In this article, we review evidence of two separate sources of religious prosociality: a religious principle associated with the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents. These two principles emphasize different prosocial goals, and so have different effects on prosocial behavior depending on the target and context. A re-examination of the literature illustrates the independent influences of religious and supernatural principles on moral action.     

Identification with Religion: Cross‐National Evidence from a Social Psychological Perspective

Why is religion a more central social identity for some people than for others? Previous studies focus on explaining individual differences in religious affiliation and religiosity, often using the term “identification” in reference to these concepts. Yet, few scholars operationalize—let alone attempt to explain—identification with religion in social psychological terms, i.e., as a construct that captures the subjective psychological centrality of one's religious identity. After underscoring the benefits of exploring religious identification using cross‐national data, we employ an original data set composed of nationally representative surveys in three European countries to model religious identification in two ways: importance (independent strength of attachment) and prominence (prioritization of one's religious identity relative to the others one holds). We document substantial variation in the degree to which individuals define themselves on the basis of their religious identity. We then test predictions drawn from existing theories to model these two measures. Our results extend current understandings of what shapes psychological attachment to religion and raise new questions for future theorization and analysis.     

Modern application of evolutionary theory to psychology: key concepts and clarifications

Darwinian selection has become the centerpiece of biology, and in the past few decades many psychologists and anthropologists have recognized the value of using an evolutionary perspective to guide their work. With a focus on evolved psychological mechanisms and associated information processing features, evolutionary psychology has risen as a compelling and fruitful approach to the study of human psychology and behavior. In this article we review the instrument of evolution: natural selection, the products of evolution, and the impact of evolutionary thinking on modern psychological science. We conclude that as prejudicial barriers are overcome, as more evolutionary psychological work is conducted, and as hypothesized psychological mechanisms are substantiated in other disciplines, evolutionary psychology will emerge as the metatheory for psychology.     

The Enduring Influence of Religion on Senators’ Legislative Behavior

Does a senator's personal religion influence their legislative behavior in the Senate? To date, empirical research has answered this question only using senators’ religious traditions, while more concurrent work implies that religion should be measured as a multifaceted phenomenon. This study tests this proposition by compiling a unique data set of senators’ religion, conceptualized and measured by three different elements—belonging, beliefs, and behavior. The study estimates the association between these three religious facets and senators’ legislative behavior on economic, social, and foreign policy issues, while controlling for their constituencies’ political and religious preferences. It finds that religious beliefs are a strong predictor of senators’ legislative behavior, while religious tradition and behavior are mostly not. Furthermore, it finds that religious beliefs are associated with legislative behavior across a wide array of policy areas and are not confined to sociocultural issues.     

Switching tracks in psychotherapy: Parallel paradigms in psychology and religion

Can a practitioner work with patients who frame their concerns in religious terms and are ignorant of or hostile to psychological theory? A “roundhouse” metaphor, predicated upon the assumption that psychology and religion employ models wherein individuals are influenced byagencies that expressintentions in service ofdesigns, is proposed to facilitate movement from psychology to religion and back again. Utilizing the personality theory of C. G. Jung, a case is analyzed to see how well the roundhouse assists in using psychology to address the religious issues of the patient.     

《圣经》中希伯来医学文化探析

医学文化是希伯来文明的重要组成部分,是世界非物质文化遗产。在圣经时代,希伯来人的医学与宗教紧密结合。一些宗教戒律逐渐演变成希伯来的民俗和传统文化。希伯来人治疗心理疾病主要通过宗教仪式和祈祷求得上帝的拯救;在保健和预防疾病方面是保持圣洁。犹太教的一些戒律具有养生保健作用。犹太教在希伯来医学的发展中打下了深刻的烙印。     

Making Space for a Dialogical Notion of Religious Subjects: A Critical Discussion From the Perspective of Postsecularity and Religious Change in the West

In this article I address some topical themes from the ongoing discussion on contemporary religious change in the West and how it poses conceptual challenges to the study of religion. The academic discussion on religious change is vast and my observations are, of course, by necessity limited to my particular interest and argument in this article. On the one hand, I draw on some of the literature that has evolved within and around the concept of postsecularity and, on the other, on more general literature on contemporary religious change. Based on some selected observations, I underline the need to critically rethink how we conceptualize both religion and religious subjects. In my view, current research fosters a greater attentiveness of complexity with regard to religion, but simultaneously it requires us to take seriously a dialogical notion of religious subjects that provides a conceptual account of a subject constituted by being located within and emerging through ongoing social process. This dialogical notion provides a better tool for how current social and cultural reconfigurations of religion are simultaneously played out as a diversity of identities that challenge received categories, such as the religious and the secular.     

The Psychological Benefits of Humor

In Men and Their Religion: Honor, Hope, and Humor (2002), I proposed that men have two primary ways of being religious—the religion of honor and the religion of hope. I also proposed that because these two religions do not always have their desired outcomes, men have developed a third way of being religious, the religion of humor. In A Time To Laugh (2005) I have expanded on my claim in Men and Their Religion that if men have three religions—honor, hope, and humor—the greatest of these is humor. In the course of doing the necessary research for a book on humor, I acquired and read a few books and a host of articles that explored the psychological benefits of humor. While I did not report on these studies in the book, I believe they are relevant to the assumption that a religion will have psychological benefits for those who embrace it. This article therefore provides a review of empirical studies of the psychological benefits of humor in order to answer the question whether a religion of humor is likely to have psychological benefits and, if so, what these might be.     

God is watching you: priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game

We present two studies aimed at resolving experimentally whether religion increases prosocial behavior in the anonymous dictator game. Subjects allocated more money to anonymous strangers when God concepts were implicitly activated than when neutral or no concepts were activated. This effect was at least as large as that obtained when concepts associated with secular moral institutions were primed. A trait measure of self-reported religiosity did not seem to be associated with prosocial behavior. We discuss different possible mechanisms that may underlie this effect, focusing on the hypotheses that the religious prime had an ideomotor effect on generosity or that it activated a felt presence of supernatural watchers. We then discuss implications for theories positing religion as a facilitator of the emergence of early large-scale societies of cooperators.     

Some contributions of a psychological approach to the study of the sacred

ABSTRACT

This paper examines some of the contributions psychology is making to the study of the sacred and its role in human functioning. The focus here is not on the ontological reality of the sacred, but rather perceptions of the sacred. We suggest that psychological theory and research on this topic offers: a clarification of the meaning of the sacred; new knowledge about sanctification – the process through which people come to perceive the sacred in daily life; a response to criticisms about the scientific study of the sacred; a sharper perspective on the meanings of religion and spirituality; a method for measuring sanctification; knowledge about the ways perceptions of the sacred predict important aspects of human behavior, and; an understanding of the sacred as a product of psychological, social, institutional, cultural, and situational forces. We conclude that the sacred represents a vital phenomenon of interest for religious and spiritual study.     

The Influence of Early Life Course Religious Exposure on Young Adults' Dispositions Toward Childbearing

Previous research about religion and childbearing focuses on childbearing behavior, yet is motivated by the idea that behavioral outcomes result from the influence of religion on individuals' childbearing dispositions. This article describes how early life religious exposure may influence young adults' childbearing attitudes and preferences as they transition to adulthood. Analyses of intergenerational panel data suggest that, compared with others, young adults with Catholic mothers, or mothers who frequently attend religious services, are more likely to object to voluntary childlessness, to feel the average American family should have more children, and to desire many children for themselves. The effect of having a Catholic mother appears to operate through the mother's own dispositions and behaviors. The effect of their mothers' religious service attendance operates through the young adults' own religious participation and the importance they place on religion. The consistent effects of early life religious exposure on subsequent child-bearing dispositions outweigh the effects of socioeconomic factors and point to religion as an influential institution in the formation of child-bearing preferences.     

Atheism is only skin deep: Geertz and Markusson rely mistakenly on sociodemographic data as meaningful indicators of underlying cognition

Cognitive scientists of religion and evolutionary theorists alike have been increasingly arguing in recent years that religion is “natural” in the sense of being motivated by core, evolved psychological intuitions. Atheism, and irreligion more generally, appear to pose problems for the naturalness hypothesis, especially considering the significant proportion of people in contemporary societies who reject supernatural beliefs. Although Geertz and Markusson clarify why the naturalness hypothesis does not imply religious determinism, they fail to weigh adequately the more conservative prediction, that of religious probabilism. Furthermore, unlike cognitive scientific accounts favoring the naturalness hypothesis, the authors base their arguments for the cultural scaffolding of atheistic cognition on sociodemographic data aloneda—source that is unlikely to be a meaningful reflection of “natural” underlying cognitive processes