Methodological concerns in the psychology of religion: Continuities, losses and transforming perspectives

This article seeks solutions to what has recently been called the ‘crisis’ in the psychology of religion by returning to the programs of its founding fathers. It explores some of the methodological debates that followed the translation of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience into German. More was at stake than the commonly drawn distinction between empirical and hermeneutical approaches to religion, or between quantitative and qualitative methods. What was at stake was the need for another kind of psychology in general. This article pays special attention to Wilhelm Wundt's fundamental criticism of James and of others in the psychology of religion. Despite the problems inherent in both James' and Wundt's aborted general psychology programs, each nonetheless contains approaches that may yet serve as an impetus to contemporary research on religion. Contemporary developments in cultural psychology in particular complement current research in the psychology of religion.     

Liberalism, the First Amendment and Religious Studies: a review of Stanley Fish's The Trouble With Principle

In The Trouble with Principle Stanley Fish argues that (1) there are no neutral principles; (2) that liberalism is intolerant, anti-religious and amoral; (3) that only politics, ideology and rhetoric ‘exist’ and that in politics and rhetoric, as in war, ‘anything goes’; (4) that the principles embodied in the First Amendment stand in the way of political responsibility; and (5) that religion, the primary victim of liberalism, should reassert itself in the public sphere and in academe by putting on the full armour of rhetoric and politics. Although in his book Fish distinguishes between professional experts and true believers, he recently has given up this distinction and instead advocates the creation of departments of religious studies staffed by ‘true believers’. Disagreeing with all of these positions, the reviewer argues that Fish's antifoundational attack on liberalism and advocacy of a neo-foundational fideism bespeak a singular lack of political wisdom.     

Monkey kings make havoc: iconoclasm and murder in the Chinese cultural revolution

This article explores the interplay between destruction of material icons and people during China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when authority figures—teachers, landlords, monks and nuns, bosses, intellectuals, doctors, Party leaders—were ‘struggled against’ by gangs of teenage revolutionaries called Red Guards. There is striking continuity in the rhetoric and the symbolic practices of the Red Guards as they destroyed statues and to a lesser extent, signs, buildings, and books, and as they killed people. Through techniques of demonisation—the affixing of negative iconic values—the rhetoric of destruction moved all too easily from image to body and from body to image. Yet just as iconoclasm is not always the utter annihilation of an iconic object but, more crucially, an attack on its iconicity, the violence against living people which tends to accompany iconoclastic movements often seems to be about stripping away the external signs of identity and then redefining the boundaries between categories of bodies. After a brief survey of four phases of Communist iconoclasm in China, I explore a number of aspects of Chinese iconoclasm which blur the distinctions between icons and bodies, related to conceptions of icons as living, the production of iconic bodies, and the ‘iconoclasm of the habitus.’ These themes are explored in commentary on two products of Cultural Revolution iconoclasm: Born Red, a memoir by Gao Yuan, and Qiao Dianyun's short story ‘The Blank Stele.’     

Dreams of passage:: An object-relational perspective on a case of a Hindu death ritual

By examining the case of a death ritual in a Surinam-Hindu community in the Netherlands, the authors want to demonstrate the usefulness of object-relations theory in the study of religion. Because it focuses on the dynamic interaction between individual and culture, this psychological theory embraces a truly cultural-psychological approach. D.W. Winnicott's idea of ‘transitional phenomena’ is central in this respect. Cultural activities, such as participating in rituals and myths, are said to have a transitional function, when they sustain identity formation and coping with crises. Based on Arnold van Gennep's famous term ‘rites of passage’ as well as on the psychoanalyst Geza Róheim's insights into rites and myths of passage, the new term rêve de passage (dream of passage) is coined. Dreams may also have a transitional function in situations of crisis and change. As an example, we discuss the dream of one of the mourners in the case discussed. By using cultural meanings from her social and religious context—in particular, the notion of the mahapatra—the dream helps the mourner to cope with a difficult situation and to make the transition back to ordinary life. The article concludes that the concept of rêve de passage, as developed within the object-relational framework, is a promising tool for dream research in both religious studies and anthropology.     

Absorbed in thought: the effect of mind wandering on the processing of relevant and irrelevant events

This study used event-related potentials to explore whether mind wandering (task-unrelated thought, or TUT) emerges through general problems in distraction, deficits of task-relevant processing (the executive-function view), or a general reduction in attention to external events regardless of their relevance (the decoupling hypothesis). Twenty-five participants performed a visual oddball task, in which they were required to differentiate between a rare target stimulus (to measure task-relevant processes), a rare novel stimulus (to measure distractor processing), and a frequent nontarget stimulus. TUT was measured immediately following task performance using a validated retrospective measure. High levels of TUT were associated with a reduction in cortical processing of task-relevant events and distractor stimuli. These data contradict the suggestion that mind wandering is associated with distraction problems or specific deficits in task-relevant processes. Instead, the data are consistent with the decoupling hypothesis: that TUT dampens the processing of sensory information irrespective of that information's task relevance.     

New Caledonian crows use tools for non-foraging activities

Tool use is of great interest for cognitive research, largely because it can be particularly revealing about the underlying information processing mechanisms. Tool use that is inflexible or requires extensive experience to change, and that is only addressed towards specific targets such as food, is not likely to reflect unusual or particularly complex cognition. On the contrary, if tools are employed flexibly and for a variety of innovative purposes, then conventional combinations of inherited predispositions and associative learning are challenged and interesting questions emerge. Since New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are especially adept at using and making tools for food extraction, we decided to examine their ability to generalise this to other contexts. We recorded how five pairs of New Caledonian crows interacted with novel objects that were not associated with food. We observed eight occasions in which the first contact with the novel object was mediated by a tool, suggesting that the function of the tool was for exploration. This is the first report of non-foraging tool use in New Caledonian crows, and it implies that the cognitive operations controlling tool-oriented behaviour in this species are more general than previously thought.     

What is the deficit in phonological processing deficits: auditory sensitivity, masking, or category formation?

Although children with language impairments, including those associated with reading, usually demonstrate deficits in phonological processing, there is minimal agreement as to the source of those deficits. This study examined two problems hypothesized to be possible sources: either poor auditory sensitivity to speech-relevant acoustic properties, mainly formant transitions, or enhanced masking of those properties. Adults and 8-year-olds with and without phonological processing deficits (PPD) participated. Children with PPD demonstrated weaker abilities than children with typical language development (TLD) in reading, sentence recall, and phonological awareness. Dependent measures were word recognition, discrimination of spectral glides, and phonetic judgments based on spectral and temporal cues. All tasks were conducted in quiet and in noise. Children with PPD showed neither poorer auditory sensitivity nor greater masking than adults and children with TLD, but they did demonstrate an unanticipated deficit in category formation for nonspeech sounds. These results suggest that these children may have an underlying deficit in perceptually organizing sensory information to form coherent categories.     

Group‐based evaluations for pupil‐on‐teacher violence: The impact of teacher intervention strategy

Although extreme violence to teachers is rare, the fact remains that in the UK, 29% of teachers report having been physically assaulted by a pupil (ATL, 2008a ). The ways in which responsibility for such assaults are attributed can have legal, educational and managerial implications. In the current study, teachers (N = 66), pupils (N = 68) and parents (N = 64) from a large secondary school in the UK read an incident report form outlining an incident depicting a pupil physically assaulting a teacher. The incident report was manipulated such that, prior to being assaulted, the teacher had either separated the assailant pupil from another pupil using a physical or non‐physical intervention. Results revealed that participating parents' and teachers' evaluations of the assailant's parents and the teacher differed from those of pupils in several ways. The results are discussed in terms of group‐based responsibility for deviant behaviour and implications for teacher behaviour in response to pupil on teacher violence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peer-facilitated cognitive dissonance versus healthy weight eating disorders prevention: A randomized comparison

Research supports the efficacy of both cognitive dissonance (CD) and healthy weight (HW) eating disorders prevention, and indicates that CD can be delivered by peer-facilitators, which facilitates dissemination. This study investigated if peer-facilitators can deliver HW when it is modified for their use and extended follow-up of peer-facilitated CD as compared to previous trials. Based on pilot data, we modified HW (MHW) to facilitate peer delivery, elaborate benefits of the healthy-ideal, and place greater emphasis on consuming nutrient dense foods. Female sorority members (N = 106) were randomized to either two 2-h sessions of CD or MHW. Participants completed assessment pre- and post-intervention, and at 8-week, 8-month, and 14-month follow-up. Consistent with hypotheses, CD decreased negative affect, thin-ideal internalization, and bulimic pathology to a greater degree post-intervention. Both CD and MHW reduced negative affect, internalization, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and bulimic pathology at 14 months.