Religion, Personality, and Social Behavior

Vassilis Saroglou, Vassilis Saroglou

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136449833
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychological interest in religion, in terms of both theory and empirical research, has been constant since the beginning of psychology. However, since the beginning of the 21st Century, partially due to important social and political events and developments, interest in religion within personality and social psychology has increased.

This volume reviews the accumulated research and theory on the major aspects of personality and social psychology as applied to religion. It provides a high quality integrative, systematic, and rigorous review of that work, with a focus on topics that are both central in personality and social psychology and have allowed for the accumulation of solid and replicated and not impressionist knowledge on religion. The contributors are renowned researchers in the field who offer an international perspective that is both illuminating, yet neutral, with respect to religion.

The volume's primary audience are academics, researchers, and advanced students in social psychology, but it will also interest those in sociology, political sciences, and anthropology.

1 Introduction

Studying Religion in Personality and Social Psychology

Vassilis Saroglou

For centuries, even thousands of years, within each society, individuals have differed from one another in attitudes and behavior about religion. Some have been very religious, some moderately so, whereas others are not interested in religion at all or may oppose it. Additionally, within believers and non-believers, there have been different ways of expressing positive or negative attitudes towards religion. From a personality and individual differences psychological perspective, this raises at least two questions. First, why are there individual differences in religious attitudes and behaviors (referred to as religiousness)? Second, do religious attitudes and behaviors reflect and influence cognitions, emotions, and behaviors at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social levels? In other words, what is the psychological relevance—determinants, correlates, and outcomes—of religiousness and its forms?

Similarly, social psychology is interested in understanding the situational factors that may have an impact on individuals' religious attitudes and behaviors: how personal experiences (e.g., life events), and social events (e.g., 9/11 terrorist attacks) may impact on religious attitudes and behaviors, at personal and group levels. Can researchers understand such effects by focusing on fundamental psychological processes studied experimentally in the laboratory? Also, social psychology is interested in whether religion (religious ideas, texts, feelings, symbols, images, figures, and groups) has an influence on people's cognitions, emotions, and acts relative to other, non-religious, domains. And is this influence relevant to some, many, or all domains of human behavior? As shown in this volume, these domains comprise intra-individual functioning, interpersonal and intergroup relations, morality, prosocial and antisocial behavior, sexuality and family, political, economic, and work-related behavior, as well as social processes involved in mental health and human development.

The two approaches (i.e., personality and social psychology) are in interaction, both theoretically and empirically. Overall, persons behave in contexts; and situations impact human behavior but not always similarly for all people (Leary & Hoyle, 2009; Rhodewalt, 2008). In particular, predictors or outcomes of religiousness may be moderated by, if not fully depend on, situational factors. For instance, religiousness's role with regard to prosocial attitudes may depend on the type of the target person (Blogowska & Saroglou, 2011). Similarly, the impact of religious ideas on social behavior (e.g., submission or rigid morality) may not be present in all persons but only among those with specific individual dispositions (Saroglou, Corneille, & Van Cappellen, 2009; Van Pachterbeke, Freyer, & Saroglou, 2011).

Research on the personality and social psychology of religion has a long history (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997). However, in the last 15 years, there has been a substantial increase of interest and investment in such research. Examples are the publication of special issues on religion in key personality, social, and cultural psychology journals (Baumeister, 2002; Emmons & McCullough, 1999; Saroglou & Cohen, 2011; Sedikides, 2010), the inclusion of chapters on religion and personality or culture in reference books (Ashton, 2007; Atran, 2007; Emmons, Barrett, & Schnitker, 2008), and, since 2009, the organization of preconferences on the psychology of religion and spirituality at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meetings.

Moreover, as depicted in Figure 1.1, the number of published articles on religion and spirituality in journals listed in PsycINFO and whose title includes “personality” or “social psychology” has increased from 1990 to 2011. Whereas the number of articles that focus specifically on these topics (on titles) follows the more general pattern of increase in the total number of articles published in these journals, the number of articles that integrate religion/spirituality somehow in the study (in abstracts) has increased more than the total number of articles published in these journals. In 2010–2011, the number of articles that included religion/spirituality in the abstract was three times higher than in the early 1990s. Interestingly, the shape of the increase of articles integrating religion parallels the one of articles integrating political issues.

This volume aims to offer an integrated, theory-based, and systematic overview of this recently accumulated empirical research. The present introductory chapter includes five sections corresponding to five objectives. First, operational psychological definitions of religion and religiousness are provided through the description of their basic components/dimensions. Second, the “varieties of religious experiences” (forms of religiousness), to refer here to William James' seminal book (1985 [1902]), are presented by selecting key forms that reflect specific psychological processes. Third, the reader is briefly introduced to methodological issues, mainly research methods, ways of measuring religion as an independent variable in experiments, and explicit, but also implicit, measures of individual religiousness. Fourth, issues of occasional misunderstanding related to the evaluation of findings from the social

Figure 1.1 Number of articles on religion and spirituality, comparatively to the number of articles on politics and the increase of total number of articles, all published in personality and social psychology journals (1990–2011).

Note. Articles on religion were identified through the formula “relig* or spiritual* or God or prayer” (in title or abstract) and journals including in their title “personality” or “social psychology” in the PsycINFO database. Articles in politics were identified through “politic*” in abstract in the same journals. The total number of articles published in these journals was divided by 100, to facilitate comparison of tendency curves. The latter are provided, from top to down, for articles in politics (abstracts) and articles in religion (abstracts and titles).

psychological research on religion are discussed: objectivity, reduction-ism, religion's causal status, and generalizability. Finally, the chapter closes with a brief overview of the volume's structure and chapters.

Defining Religion, Religiousness, and their Dimensions

Throughout the history of the psychological study of religion there has been a tension between an emphasis on the individual dimension of the connection with what a person perceives as a transcendent entity and the acknowledgment of the social dimension of a religious culture (i.e., collective beliefs, rituals, and norms referring to what a group perceives as a transcendent entity). It is legitimate today to acknowledge a relative independence between these two dimensions. People may experience and express their religious attitudes—positive or negative ones—somehow independently from their own or any religious culture (Flanagan & Jupp, 2007). Yet, people deal with religious beliefs, experiences, values, and communities that have been socially shaped and legitimated. Thus, the individual and social dimensions are related (e.g., Wolf, 2005). More than two-thirds of the world population consist of believers who report belonging to established religious traditions and groups (Barrett, 2001).

Religion

I define religion as the co-presence of beliefs, ritualized experiences, norms, and groups that refer to what people perceive to be a transcendent to humans entity. This definition is sufficiently large to include both established and new religions; forms that are perceived as positive (e.g., recognized religions) or negative (e.g., detrimental cults, Satanism); and traditions regarded as theistic religions (e.g., the three monotheisms), non-theistic religions, or even non-religions (e.g., Buddhism, franc-masonry). At the same time, the scope of this definition is not excessively large. It avoids to assimilate under the term “religion” individual and social realities such as paranormal beliefs, philosophical systems, ultimate concerns, secular rituals, self-transcendent emotions, core values, taboo trade-offs, and moral or political ideologies. These realities may be somewhat proximal to religion (thus, psychologically interesting for comparatively understanding religion; e.g., Saroglou, 2012a) but do not require the co-presence of the four components: beliefs, ritualized experiences, norms, and community.

These four components are universally present across cultures, religions, and societies. However, there is also important cultural, religious, and historical variation in the mean importance attributed to each of them, as well as in the strength of the interrelations between the four components, which leads to cultural variability of religious forms (Saroglou, 2011). For instance, beliefs and morality are more normative in mainstream Protestantism; in Judaism, this is more the case with rituals and community (Cohen, Hall, Koenig, & Meador, 2005).

This definition of religion emphasizing the co-existence of different components may be helpful to personality and social psychologists, who study basic psychological processes that operate across domains of individual and social life. Consequently, scholars may sometimes be prone to reducing the phenomenon under study (e.g., the historically and currently complex relations between Flemish and Walloons in the bilinguistic and bicultural Belgium) as simply one typical example of their preferred theory and subfield of research (e.g., intergroup conflict). Likewise, they may consider religion as simply an issue of group belongingness; or simply as a meaning-making system; or finally as just one among other conservative ideologies. Each of the above approaches is, of course, important to the understanding of a different aspect of religion. However, it is also, if not more, important to identify the combination of the various psychological mechanisms present in religion. For instance, philosophy, art, and religion all may be helpful for meaning-making or as a response to existential anxiety. Each of the above though may imply a specific combination of psychological processes involved in meaning-making or coping with existential anxiety.

Religiousness

I define here religiousness as the individual differences on being interested in and/or involved with religion. This includes individual differences in attitudes, cognitions, emotions, and/or behavior that refer to what people consider as a transcendent entity. Depending on whether one uses continuous or categorical variables, differences in religiousness can be observed gradually—varying from “not at all” to “totally” interested/involved—or can be summarized categorically—believers/religious and non-believers/non-religious.

Dimensions of Individual Religiousness

Like for religion as a social reality, religiousness as individual differences in attitudes towards religion is multifaceted and can be conceived of as including four major dimensions (four “Bs”): believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging (Saroglou, 2011). Specifically, religiousness includes: (a) believing specific ideas regarding the transcendent entity and its relations with humans and the world; (b) bonding emotionally through private and/or collective rituals with the transcendent entity and then with others; (c) behaving in a way to conform to norms, practices, and values perceived as established by the transcendent; and/or (d) belonging to a group that is self-perceived as eternal and as filled with the presence of the transcendent.

Within individuals, the four dimensions are importantly ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Studying Religion in Personality and Social Psychology
• Part I Personality, Cognition, and Emotions
• Part II Social Behavior, Morality, and Intergroup Relations
• Part III Religion in Context: Age, Gender, and Culture
• Author Index
• Subject Index