Addressing Criticisms of Global Religion Research: A Consumption‐Based Exploration of Status and Materialism,Sustainability, and Volunteering Behavior

Religion is a key source of core values and one of the most deeply psychological experiences; however, prior research has often inadequately measured religion's influence on consumption behaviors. Our research addresses criticisms of prior research by (1) reducing cultural bias by conducting research within one country, (2) examining both religious affiliation and religiosity, (3) exploring numerous consumption behaviors (social status desire, materialism views, sustainable behaviors, environmental views, and volunteering behavior) in a within‐subjects design, and (4) testing religion's effect on consumption behavior with over 1,000 participants. Findings provide insight for consumer well‐being. Specifically, consumers high in external religiosity are more materialistic, more sustainable, and more likely to volunteer than consumers low in external religiosity. Consumers high in internal religiosity are also more likely to be sustainable and hold pro‐environmental views. In addition, Buddhists and Hindus are less likely to hold pro‐environmental views than Christians. Buddhists are more materialistic than Christians, and Hindus are less desiring of social status than Christians. In addressing the criticisms of prior research in the context of consumption, our research builds on values‐based and social‐based theories.     

Religion,Religiousness, and Narrative: Decoding Women's Practices in Senegalese Islamic Reform

Martin Riesebrodt argues that his theory of religion can help explain religion's enduring power in the contemporary globalizing and secularizing world. Although he emphasizes the necessity of objective categories for theorizing religion's purpose, adherents’ narratives about their religious practices reveal lived relationships between ideal‐typical liturgical texts (which help comprise religion) and their appropriations of them for navigating rapidly changing social contexts (religiousness). The validity of Riesebrodt's approach for explaining religion in empirical settings is demonstrated by using ethnographic interviews of Muslim reformist women in Dakar, Senegal. These female adherents’ discourses on the practices of veiling, prayer, and preaching the uniqueness of God highlight the ways religion's directives operate in a dialectical relationship with a religiousness that encompasses their dual efforts to achieve closeness to God and overtly critique other Muslim groups, contemporary urban life, and the state.     

Exegesis,Postmodernism, and Auschwitz 1

Based on material consisting of interviews, we ask how this material sheds light on religion's performance regarding moral competence. Four questions structure the study: Firstly, how do informants articulate moral insights and reasons for actions, practices or personal ideals in religious terms? Secondly, how do they articulate and express religious beliefs in moral terms? Thirdly we discuss theoretically how these ways of articulating moral insights in religious terms, and vice versa, can be linked to the notion of moral competence, and as a possible indication of “religion's performance outside itself”. Finally, we ask how the connection between religion and moral competence identified through the discussion in the third point can be further interpreted in light of the informants’ perceptions of religious contexts and communities where they locate themselves and with which they identify. This provides a more nuanced understanding of how contextual embeddedness conditions moral competence, and the potential performance of religion in that respect.     

Christian Identification and Self‐Reported Depression: Evidence from China

The nexus between religion and mental health in the East has been understudied, where the coexistence of multiple religions calls for scholarly attention to religious identification. This article investigates the impact on self‐reported depression of an individual's identification with Christianity in a non‐Judeo‐Christian and religion‐regulating social setting. Taking advantage of the Chinese General Social Survey 2010, our empirical analyses suggest that people who explicitly identify with Christianity report a significantly higher level of depression compared with both religious nones and self‐claimed Buddhists. In contrast, there is no significant difference in self‐reported depression between religious nones and self‐identified Buddhists. This study supplements current literature on the connection between religious affiliation and mental health with a particular interest in East Asia, suggesting that the consequence on mental health of religious identification is contingent on a religion's social status, and a religion's marginal position may turn religious identification into a detrimental psychological burden.     

Contesting Chineseness: An Examination of Religion and National Identity in Mainland China

For citizens of many countries around the world, religion is a necessary—though often contested—component of their national identity. From the vantage point of the symbolic boundaries approach, we argue that the Chinese government and various other social actors are in contestation to define “Chineseness” in religious terms. Using data from the 2007 Spiritual Life Study of Chinese Residents, this study explores the extent to which religion functions as a constitutive part of Chinese national identity. We find that the effectiveness of the Chinese government's demarcation of the symbolic boundaries around Chineseness related to religion varies across religious groups. Believers of each religion are likely to be strong advocates for their own religion's connection to Chinese national identity. Among the religions, traditional Chinese religions tend to demonstrate a stronger affinity with one another than with Christianity. Daoists are a particularly strong contestant in aligning Daoism with Chineseness, to the extent that they discredit the other religions’ suitability for the Chinese. We discuss the implications of these findings and point out directions for future research.     

Recovered Memories of Child Abuse:

In this paper we exemplify the ongoing and inconclusive nature of empirical research examining the validity of adults' recovered memories of childhood abuse. In view of increasing evidence that the processes underlying traumatic memories differ in fundamental ways from those underlying memories for nontraumatic events, experimental studies of everyday memory processes are likely to have little relevance for our understanding of the memory processes underlying traumatic child abuse. Further, given ethical concerns, it is unlikely that research will ever establish a definitive 'scientific' conclusion regarding the accuracy of recovered memories. Nevertheless, both laypersons and professionals are taking a stand on the recovered memory issue. In this regard, we discuss social psychological research that suggests that people's beliefs about recovered memories and other aspects of child abuse are tied to their personal needs and sociopolitical interests rather than to science or social values. These personal needs and interests include people's inability to acknowledge the injustice of child abuse and their opposition to women's equality, both of which vary as a function of people's authoritarian inclinations. The implications of these findings for social action, as opposed to social research, are discussed.     

Understanding the Role of Everyday Practices of Privilege in the Perpetuation of Inequalities

To explain the interrelated effects of material and psychosocial inequalities, we suggest a move beyond research focused on deprived communities to include their broader social situation. Bourdieu's theory of practice explains how social and material disadvantages are interconnected, and struggles for power are enacted in everyday practice. In this paper, we draw on data from a qualitative study of two neighbourhoods to provide examples of everyday practice as people work to perpetuate or overcome inequalities in one field: education of their children. These examples show that those with more resources are actively working to retain and improve their children's social advantage, which rests on the disadvantage of others. In conclusion, we suggest that many current interventions to improve material and social conditions within disadvantaged communities ignore the damaging effects of social inequalities between social groups. Work towards understanding the nature of power struggles in daily life and the everyday actions of the privileged will help us understand and address the damaging effects of inequalities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fear of a Black Pulpit? Real Racial Transcendence Versus Cultural Assimilation in Multiracial Churches

The growing literature on multiracial churches tends to take the position that religious values can be influential in promoting racially inclusive religious communities. Marti offers further evidence for this argument: cosmetic changes predominately white churches make to their worship, music, and leadership in order to attract/retain “race‐conscious” black congregants. In this response, I argue that these churches do not cause blacks to transcend their race consciousness. They merely offer havens for those blacks who have already transcended their race enough to pursue membership in these religious communities. I conclude with a challenge to scholars in this line of research to add evidence of religion's ability to promote racial transcendence for “race‐conscious” white congregants.     

RELIGION‐AND‐SCIENCE DIALOGUE FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Loyal Rue suggests that religion is not about God as such but about the cultivation of personal and social well‐being. Religion may employ cultural resources that include concepts of supernatural agencies, but religion's essential functionalities are not dependent on that particular resource. I largely endorse Rue's view of religion and employ Rue as a guide to thinking through its consequences for the future of Christianity. For Rue, two challenges face Christianity: the erosion of confidence in personal‐god concepts and the ecological crisis engulfing the planet. In the face of these twin momentous changes, I suggest ways in which certain cultural tropes in the Christian matrix will rise to the fore and others will erode.     

Religious Involvement and Dynamics of Marijuana Use: Initiation,Persistence, and Desistence

Studies that examine the effects of adolescent religiosity on the initiation of, persistence in, and desistence from delinquency are rare. Yet, religion may differentially affect dimensions of delinquency in the early life course. Therefore, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we examine the relationship between measures of adolescent religion, as well as changes in religious involvement, and later patterns of marijuana use. We also examine the extent to which religious effects, if any, are mediated by key predictors of delinquency drawn from prominent criminological theories. The results suggest that the primary effect of religion on marijuana use is to prevent its initiation in the first place. Only part of religion's preventative effect on initiation is mediated by social bonds, delinquent peers, or self control. Although religious youth are less likely to ever use marijuana, adolescent religious involvement does not significantly predict desistence from marijuana use.     

Organized New Atheism in Germany?

This article provides a comparison of the New Atheism with German organized Humanism in terms of agendas and strategies. It draws on British and American as well as German discourses on the New Atheism and fieldwork on the Giordano Bruno Foundation (Giordano Bruno Stiftung) and the German Humanist Association (Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands). With reference to Johannes Quack’s nonreligion approach, contextual differences are highlighted in order to explain heterogeneities between the New Atheism and organized Humanism in Germany. However, further differences between the two organizations show that context is not everything. The article concludes by raising the question of how these differences should be interpreted: in contrast to the widespread opinion that organized nonreligion is constituted of small competing splinter groups, it suggests that we may observe the development of an international or even transnational movement, which is heckling its religious opponents from different directions.     

Psychology's own mindfulness: Ellen Langer and the social politics of scientific interest in “active noticing”

Ellen Langer's mindfulness construct is presented as “indigenous” to disciplinary psychology. Langer's early work laid the foundations for the research program she would come to call the psychology of possibility. Studying inattentive behavior (mindlessness) and intentionally reflective cognition (mindfulness) placed her work directly in line with the theoretical priorities of the 1970s and influenced the direction of research in several subdisciplines related to social cognition. Positioning Langer's work at an intersection crossed by various discourse communities in psychology explains much of its influence within the discipline. However, its relevance is additionally related to a broader field of research and application also employing the terminology of mindfulness. While superficially synonymous, the majority of mindfulness research is distinguished from Langer's due to differences in origination, definition, and goals. Comparative assessments are used as a lens through which to interrogate the social politics of mindfulness theories’ burgeoning success over the past half century.     

H. Richard Niebuhr's Reading of George Herbert Mead: Correcting,Completing, and Looking Ahead

In this essay, I reconstruct H. Richard Niebuhr's interpretation of George Herbert Mead's account of the social constitution of the self. Specifically, I correct Niebuhr's interpretation, because it mischaracterizes Mead's understanding of social constitution as more dialogical than ecological. I also argue that Niebuhr's interpretation needs completing because it fails to engage one of Mead's more significant notions, the I/me distinction within the self. By reconstructing Niebuhr's account of faith and responsibility as theologically self‐constitutive through Mead's I/me distinction, I demonstrate Niebuhr's deep yet unacknowledged agreement with Mead: the self is constituted by its participation in multiple communities, but responds to them creatively by enduring the moral perplexity of competing communal claims. I conclude by initiating a constructive account of conscience that follows from this agreement. Conscience is more ecological than dialogical because it regards our creative participation in multiple ecologies of social roles oriented by patterns of responsive relations.     

Reflexivity in quantitative research: A rationale and beginner's guide

Reflexivity is the act of examining one's own assumption, belief, and judgement systems, and thinking carefully and critically about how these influence the research process. The practice of reflexivity confronts and questions who we are as researchers and how this guides our work. It is central in debates on objectivity, subjectivity, and the very foundations of social science research and generated knowledge. Incorporating reflexivity in the research process is traditionally recognized as one of the most notable differences between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Qualitative research centres and celebrates the participants' personal and unique lived experience. Therefore, qualitative researchers are readily encouraged to consider how their own unique positionalities inform the research process and this forms an important part of training within this paradigm. Quantitative methodologies in social and personality psychology, and more generally, on the other hand, have remained seemingly detached from this level of reflexivity and general reflective practice. In this commentary, we, three quantitative researchers who have grappled with the compatibility of reflexivity within our own research, argue that reflexivity has much to offer quantitative methodologists. The act of reflexivity prompts researchers to acknowledge and centre their own positionalities, encourages a more thoughtful engagement with every step of the research process, and thus, as we argue, contributes to the ongoing reappraisal of openness and transparency in psychology. In this paper, we make the case for integrating reflexivity across all research approaches, before providing a ‘beginner's guide’ for quantitative researchers wishing to engage reflexively with their own work, providing concrete recommendations, worked examples, and reflexive prompts.     

Religious Heterogamy and the Intergenerational Transmission of Religion in China

In Western societies, religious heterogamy and its effects on religious socialization outcomes have been interpreted through the lens of secularization. How about China, where religion has been resurging in recent decades? Using data from the 2007 Spiritual Life Survey of Chinese Residents, this study shows that despite China's atheist education system and strict religion policies, having at least one religiously affiliated parent is associated with increased religiosity compared to having two nonreligious parents. Whereas religious heterogamy in the West has a secularizing effect on the next generation, religious heterogamy in secular nations, such as China, has a religionizing effect and contributes to religion's rise.     

Complicating Narratives: Defining and Deconstructing Ethical Challenges in Community Psychology

In this concluding essay, we review the case studies presented in this Special Issue and examine whether community psychology has a distinctive approach to defining and resolving the core ethical canons of the Belmont Report (1979): Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. For two of these Principles—Respect for Persons and Beneficence—community psychologists elaborate upon and extend their definitions to consider their meaning in community‐based, social justice‐oriented research. The field's approach to Respect for Persons is multilevel in nature; in addition to respecting individuals and their diverse identities, we also have obligations to respect our community partnerships, the communities with whom we work, and the populations and cultures represented in our work. Similarly, for community psychologists, Beneficence is a multilevel construct that considers risks and benefits at the group, community, and cultural levels of analysis. With respect to Justice, community psychologists’ views of our ethical responsibilities are qualitatively different in meaning from the original Belmont Report and from disciplinary‐specific interpretations of this principle in ethical guidance documents from psychology, sociology, and evaluation. Our valuing of social change demands that we contribute to individual and group empowerment and liberation, and in so doing, that we avoid collusion with oppressive systems. Thus, we define our ethical responsibilities for promoting Justice as more action‐oriented than do other disciplines. The essay closes with an exploration of future directions for developing a comprehensive ethical framework for community psychology.     

A European in Asia†

How culture‐proof are the social sciences? Travelling in another continent, one meets culture's influences not only in the objects of social science research, but at least as much in the minds of the researchers. Researchers' problem definitions and choices of issues to be addressed and questions to be asked limit what they will find; they are a potential source of ethnocentric bias. A case example of the discovery of such a bias was the emergence of a fifth dimension of national cultures supplementing Hofstede's four, through Bond's Chinese Value Survey. In the area of personality research, a number of newer and older findings by Asian and European researchers suggest the need for expanding the ‘Big Five’ model of personality traits with a sixth factor, Dependence on Others, in order to make the model culturally universal. In general, researchers recognize primarily those aspects of culture for which their own culture differs most from others. For escaping from the cultural constraints in our own research we therefore need to trade ideas with colleagues from other parts of the world. In this respect, Asian researchers have an important role to play.     

The phenotype of loneliness

Goossens' review (2012, this issue) nicely maps the progression of scientific research from its early focus on loneliness as a dysphoric state that results from the discrepancy between a person's ideal and actual social relationships to its current emphasis on the centrality of loneliness to our very nature as a social species, and he argues that developmental science throughout Europe has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of this construct. He concludes that psychologists should care about research on loneliness for five reasons: (i) it is a well-defined phenotype; (ii) it shows both high stability and individual differences in rates of change across years; (iii) it has adaptive value and evolutionary significance; (iv) it has a genetic substrate that is moderated by social environments; and (v) it has self-maintaining features that can lead to adverse mental health outcomes. Goossens' review is rife with information and ideas. We focus here on two additional important reasons and on the phenotype of loneliness.     

Investigating sexual harassment in online video games: How personality and context factors are related to toxic sexual behaviors against fellow players

Online video games are social spaces for players from around the world. They use this space to form communities, relationships, and identities. However, gaming communities are not always welcoming, and some are even perceived as being “toxic.” A prevalent issue is online sexual harassment, which is keeping many women from participating in the gaming community. Research on the factors contributing to the problem is limited, though. The present study replicates and expands previous research, using a sample of 856 online gamers. The study supports earlier findings that found hostile sexism and social dominance orientation as predictors of sexual harassment perpetration in online video games. In addition, we expanded the previous research with additional predictors: machiavellianism, psychopathy, and gamer identification predicted higher sexual harassment perpetration. Our results have implications for the gaming community's role in curtailing sexual harassment and making itself a more inclusive community.