The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism 9780128172049

Citation preview

The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism

The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism

Edited by Kenneth E. Vail III Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, United States

Clay Routledge Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, United States

Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier 125 London Wall, London EC2Y 5AS, United Kingdom 525 B Street, Suite 1650, San Diego, CA 92101, United States 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-0-12-817204-9 For Information on all Academic Press publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Nikki Levy Editorial Project Manager: Barbara Makinster Production Project Manager: Bharatwaj Varatharajan Cover Designer: Miles Hitchen Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India

Contents List of Contributors Preface

xvii xix

Part 1 Death 1. Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion

3

Jeff Greenberg, Peter J. Helm, Mark J. Landau and Sheldon Solomon Terror management theory The ontogeny of terror management A brief phylogenic history of terror management The experimental research supporting terror management theory Research directly focused on the terror management function of religion The association between religiosity and death anxiety Mortality salience and investment in religiosity Evidence that strong or bolstered religious belief reduces defensive responses to mortality salience Summary of the evidence Broad implications of a terror management analysis of religion Conclusion References Further reading

2. Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review

4 6 7 8 9 9 10 11 13 13 16 16 20

21

Jonathan Jong Are people afraid of death? Pt 1: Evidence from lists Are people afraid of death? Pt 2: Evidence from scales Are people afraid of death? Pt 3: Death anxiety and proximity to death Are people afraid of death? Pt 4: Death anxiety and mortality salience Are people afraid of death? Coda Are death anxiety and religiosity correlated? Does mortality salience increase religious belief? Concluding remarks References

3. Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering

23 24 25 26 28 28 31 32 33

37

Daryl R. Van Tongeren How do people usually cope with existential concerns?

37 v

vi

Contents

The existential and individual functions of religious beliefs Conceptualizing God When beliefs fail Suffering elicits existential concerns Facing death Disasters Terminal and chronic illness Trauma Religion and suffering: fighting, freezing, fleeing, or flourishing Toward existentially resilient religion Concluding thoughts Acknowledgment References

4. Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality

38 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 45 46 47 47

51

Natasha Tassell-Matamua and Janice Miner Holden Near-death experience phenomenology Defining near-death experiences Historical reports and estimated incidence of near-death experiences Disclosure of near-death experiences Explanatory models for near-death experiences Physiological explanations Psychological explanations Psychopathological explanations Nonmaterialist explanations Impact of near-death experiences References

51 52 53 54 55 55 56 57 57 58 61

Part 2 Freedom 5. Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory

67

Benjamin D. Rosenberg and Jason T. Siegel Psychological reactance theory Historical roots Psychological reactance theory framework Psychological reactance theory and religion Question 1: Threats to religious freedom and reactance Psychological reactance theory predictions Supporting evidence Summary: Question 1 Question 2: Restrictive faith-based regulations and reactance Psychological reactance theory predictions Supporting evidence Summary: Question 2 Question 3: Avoiding or minimizing reactance

67 68 68 70 70 70 71 73 73 73 74 74 75

Contents

Psychological reactance theory predictions Supporting evidence Summary: Question 3 Future directions Moderators Expanding catalysts of reactance Expanding outcomes of reactance Conclusion References

6. Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of self-determination theory

vii

75 75 77 77 77 77 78 78 79

83

Maria Brambilla and Avi Assor The core concepts of self-determination theory How self-determination theory helps us understand different forms of religiosity Self-determination theory’s perspective compared with other conceptualizations about religiosity Different religious motivations correspond to different ways of approaching religious contents Connection between different motivations for religious behaviors and well-being and social outcomes The antecedents of religious internalization in the family How larger social context could predict self-determined religiosity Discussion and conclusion Some practical implications References

7. A goals perspective on religion and spirituality

83 84 84 85 85 86 87 87 88 88

91

Ross Rogers The existential relevance of goals 91 Religion and spirituality through the lens of goals: ultimate existential concerns and subjective well-being 92 Subjective well-being 92 Sanctifying the “everyday” 93 Sanctifying objects 93 Sanctifying locations 95 Sanctifying behavior 96 Goal frustration, conflict, and religious zeal 98 Are religious and spiritual goals optimal for existential security? 99 References 101

8. Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation

103

Adam S. Hodge, Courtney J. Alderson, David K. Mosher, Cameron W. Davis, Joshua N. Hook, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Jeffrey D. Green and Don E. Davis What is free will? Philosophical terminology The psychological construct of free will belief The social-cognition of free will Moral judgments and responsibility Punishment and retributive versus restorative justice motives Self-other bias in free will perceptions

104 104 105 105 105 106 107

viii

Contents

Effects of free will beliefs Prosocial behavior Conformity Gratitude Religion, spirituality, and motivated action Self-control Rational choice Planful behavior Taking initiative Religion and self-regulation Self-regulation as a limited resource Religion’s influence in facilitating effective self-regulation Concluding remarks References Further reading

9. Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality

107 107 108 108 109 109 109 110 111 112 112 113 114 114 117

119

Andrew G. Christy, Grace N. Rivera and Rebecca J. Schlegel The historical emergence of authenticity concerns and their ties to religion The true self and authenticity: perspectives from existential philosophy and psychology The interplay of religion and authenticity: conceptual and empirical considerations Having religious experiences Holding religious beliefs Participating in religious communities Morality: the key to understanding the relationship between religion and authenticity? Concluding thoughts: is religion uniquely relevant to authenticity? References

10. Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint

119 120 121 122 124 130 132 133 133

141

Barry Schwartz Choice overload and paralysis “Freedom,” “choice,” “autonomy,” and the “self” Sincerity and authenticity From “You Are What You Do” to “You Are What You Own” Freedom, choice, and welfare: a nonmonotonic relation Religion, spirituality, freedom, and choice References

142 143 144 145 146 146 147

Part 3 Isolation and social identity 11. Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns

153

Andrew H. Hales, Eric D. Wesselmann and Kipling D. Williams Temporal need-threat model of ostracism Reflexive stage

153 153

Contents

Reflective stage Resignation stage Religion and ostracism Religion as a potential source of ostracism Religion as a potential response to ostracism Ostracism and extremism Concluding remarks References Further reading

12. The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion

ix

154 154 155 155 157 159 161 161 166

167

Elizabeth C. Pinel, Geneva C. Yawger and Young Chin Park Existential isolation I-sharing Faith-based practices and existential connection I-sharing, intergroup outcomes, and faith Summary References

13. An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality

167 168 169 171 172 172

175

Pehr Granqvist, Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver Attachment theory: basic concepts Religion and attachment: normative aspects Points of departure Seeking and maintaining proximity to God God as a safe haven God as a secure base The attachment figure is perceived to be stronger and wiser Summary Religion as attachment: individual differences The correspondence pathway The compensation pathway Coda References

14. A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self

175 176 177 177 178 179 179 179 180 180 182 183 184

187

Kenneth I. Mavor and Renate Ysseldyk Religion, prejudice, and collective action Religious orientations Religious ideology: orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and components of right-wing authoritarianism Specificity of prejudice targets and social identity Social identity and the religious self Social identity and religious opinion based groups SIMCA and EMSICA models of social identity and collective action The normative alignment model of social action and opinion-based group interventions Ideology-based social identities

188 188 189 190 190 191 191 192 193

x

Contents

A tripartite social identity normative model of religious fundamentalism Summary of group-based models Religion, self-structure, and personal well-being The salience model of self-categories Convergent perspectives from theories of the personal self Self-complexity and the multiple self-aspects model Complexity versus coherence Convergent perspectives of the self from social identity theorizing Religious identity and personal well-being Summary of person-based models Final summary and conclusion References

15. Religion and the construction of identity

193 195 195 195 196 196 197 197 198 199 199 200

207

Roman Palitsky, Daniel Sullivan, Isaac F. Young and Harrison J. Schmitt An existential perspective on religion and the construction of identity Existential perspectives on identity and religion Psychological approaches to the relation between religion and identity Common psychological approaches to religion and identity Experimental existential psychology research on the religious identity Toward an integrative model of religion and identity A closing note on the origin References

207 207 210 212 214 216 219 219

Part 4 Systems of meaning 16. Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion

225

Ewa Szumowska*, Aneta Czernatowicz-Kukuczka*, Małgorzata Kossowska, Szymon Kro´l and Arie W. Kruglanski Need(s) The epistemic need to know The need for personal significance Joint working of the two needs Narrative Common characteristics of religious narratives Differences between narratives Personal narratives Network Religion as a social phenomenon Religious groups as a source of shared reality Religious identification as a source of certainty and significance Uniqueness of religious groups Interplay between the 3Ns Conclusion References Further reading

226 226 228 229 230 230 231 232 233 233 234 234 235 236 236 236 241

Contents

17. Existential uncertainty and religion

xi

243

Holly R. Engstrom and Kristin Laurin What is religion, and what is uncertainty? Religion Uncertainty Why does religion help people deal with uncertainty? Uncertainty-identity theory Identifying with social groups helps alleviate uncertainty Entitative groups are especially good at alleviating uncertainty Why are religions useful? Reactive approach motivation theory Uncertainty related to goal pursuit is anxiety-inducing Zealously approaching a different goal can quell this anxiety Why are religions useful? Compensatory control theory Personal and external control reassure people that the world is orderly Why are religions useful? System-justification theory Construing the system in a negative light causes dissonance Reconstruing the system in a more positive light reduces dissonance Why are religions useful? Integrating the four perspectives How is each type of uncertainty alleviated by religion? Future directions for this field Considering religion’s influence on uncertainty Conducting cross-cultural investigations The relationship between uncertainty and religious fundamentalism Conclusion References

18. Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes

244 244 244 245 246 246 246 246 247 247 247 248 249 249 249 249 249 250 250 251 251 252 252 253 254 255 255

261

Travis Proulx Anxiety gives rise to the (religious) Absolute Kierkegaard and cosmic horror Anxiety dissolves the (religious) Absolute Freud and cosmic delusions Anxiety gives rise to and dissolves (any) Absolute Camus and absurd heroes Neuroscience of the Absolute Your brain is a meaning-making machine Your brain is a meaning-maintenance machine Anxiety is everywhere The eternal recurrence of the Absolute References

19. Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events

262 262 264 264 266 266 268 268 269 269 270 270

273

Crystal L. Park The meaning making model

274

xii

Contents

Religiousness and global meaning Religion and meaning in stressful life circumstances Religiousness and initial appraisals of stressful events Religiousness and discrepancy/distress Religiousness and meaning making coping Religiousness and meanings made Religiousness and stress-related growth Future directions in research on religiousness and meaning making References Further reading

275 276 276 278 278 279 280 281 282 284

20. Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being

287

Nick Stauner, Julie J. Exline and Joshua A. Wilt Overview of the positive psychology of religions and spirituality The mixed blessing of supernaturalism R/S struggles Divine struggle Demonic struggle Interpersonal struggle Moral struggle Doubt struggle Ultimate meaning struggle Review of recent research relating R/S struggles to well-being and R/S meaning Potential for growth and spiritual maturity Conclusion References Further reading

287 288 290 291 292 292 293 293 294 294 297 298 298 303

Part 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences 21. In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion

307

Tom Pyszczynski and Mark J. Landau Terror-management theory’s perspective on religion Integrating terror management and evolutionary perspectives on religion Theory of mind Fear and anxiety Disgust Inability to imagine nonexistence Mind body dualism Elaborating concepts of powerful deities to transcend death Conceptual metaphor Moral intuitions Social aspects of religion Religion as social signal Evangelism, missionary activity, and the spreading of religious beliefs Religious specialization and social power

308 310 311 312 312 313 313 314 315 316 317 317 318 318

Contents

Social cohesion and summing up The costs of religion Concluding thoughts References Further reading

22. Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns

xiii

319 320 320 321 323

325

Allon Vishkin and Maya Tamir Forms of coping with fear of death Religion and problem-focused coping with fear of death Belief in supernatural beings The afterlife and mind body dualism Human uniqueness Summary Religion and emotion-focused coping with fear of death Selecting emotion-focused coping Enacting emotion-focused coping Summary Religion and coping with fear of death: reinterpreting existing findings Conclusion References Further reading

23. Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience

325 327 327 328 328 328 329 329 330 333 333 334 335 338

339

Johannes Klackl Death awareness The neuroscience of death awareness Death awareness and religion Freedom, choice, and responsibility Freedom and neuroscience Freedom and religion Isolation Neuroscience of isolation Isolation and religion Meaning Religion, neuroscience, and meaning A goal perspective on meaning and religion Conclusion Outlook References

24. The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations: fundamentalism, quest religiosity, and intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity

340 340 341 341 342 342 342 343 343 344 344 344 345 345 346

351

Andrew A. Abeyta and Elizabeth N. Blake The existential function of religion Religious orientations: maintaining faith and managing existential concerns

351 352

xiv

Contents

The fundamentalist orientation The religious quest orientation The conventional religious orientations Conclusion References

25. Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness

352 353 354 355 355

359

Louis Hoffman, Benjamin Ramey and Danielle Silveira Introduction Understanding mindfulness Defining mindfulness and variations of mindfulness Research on mindfulness Comparison between mindfulness and existential-humanistic psychology Here-and-now focus Accepting and exploring emotions and their meaning Embodied meditation The ego and self in existential psychology and mindfulness Quieting the ego Ego, self-esteem, and self-acceptance in existential psychology and mindfulness The self in existential psychology The role of meaning Conclusion References Further reading

359 359 359 361 361 361 362 363 363 363 364 365 365 366 367 369

Part 6 Applications and controversies 26. Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions

373

Bastiaan T. Rutjens and Jesse L. Preston Science and religion: a brief history Science and religion: key shared functions Need for explanation Need for control Need for existential meaning Differences in processes: assumptions and biases Science and religion in action: morality and mortality concerns Morality Mortality Conclusion References

27. Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine

373 374 374 375 376 377 379 379 380 382 382

387

Cathy R. Cox, Robert B. Arrowood and Julie A. Swets Terror management and human corporeality

387

Contents

Death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Dehumanization and objectification of women Conclusion References

28. Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses

xv

390 394 397 398

405

Jaı¨s Adam-Troı¨an and Matt Motyl Motivating religion The belief in an afterlife exorcizes death Religion provides global meaning and significance External agents are in control so we can feel free I believe, therefore I am Religion, morality, and identity Religion and morality From morality to community Grave questions for future research Conclusion References Further reading

29. Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems for satisfying the need for order

405 406 406 407 408 409 409 410 412 413 414 419

421

Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay Compensatory control theory God as a source of control and order Secular and sociopolitical systems as a source of control and order The substitutable nature of god and government Symbolic alignment between sociopolitical and religious sources of control and order Conclusion References

30. The paradox of faith: how existential concerns motivate both prosocial and antisocial religious behaviors

422 422 423 425 427 430 430

435

Spee Kosloff and Sheldon Solomon Terror management and the motivational underpinnings of religion Empirical evidence for the death-denying function of pro- and anti-social religious behaviors Testing for the existential allure of faith Religious tribalism as the default response to mortality salience The moderating role of intrinsic religiosity The curious case of fundamentalism Who, then, follows the light? Can religious worldviews be deinstitutionalized? Changes at the societal level Changes at the individual level Conclusion References

435 437 437 438 439 441 443 444 444 447 450 450

xvi

Contents

31. Religion and health: building existential bridges

455

Tyler Jimenez, Michael N. Bultmann and Jamie Arndt The framework of an existential religion health perspective Using the awareness of mortality to bridge religion and health Basic processes for managing awareness of mortality Terror management health model Death, religion, and health Using the search for meaning to bridge religion and health Meaning and health Religion, meaning, and health Using existential isolation to bridge religion and health Religion as a solution God as a bridge and ravine Using freedom to bridge religion and health Freedom and the health benefits of religion Freedom, religion, and health behavior change The burden of freedom Looking forward References Index

455 456 456 457 457 459 459 460 461 462 462 463 463 463 464 465 465 469

List of Contributors Andrew A. Abeyta Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ, United States

Andrew H. Hales University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States

Jaı¨s Adam-Troı¨an Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

Peter J. Helm University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

Courtney J. Alderson Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States

Adam S. Hodge University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Jamie Arndt University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States

Louis Hoffman Rocky Mountain Humanistic Counseling and Psychological Association, Colorado Springs, CO, United States

Robert B. Arrowood Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, United States Avi Assor Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva, Israel

Janice Miner Holden University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Elizabeth N. Blake Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ, United States

Joshua N. Hook University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Maria Brambilla Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

Tyler Jimenez University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States

Michael N. Bultmann University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States

Jonathan Jong Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom

Andrew G. Christy Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, United States

Aaron C. Kay Duke University, Durham, NC, United States

Cathy R. Cox Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, United States

Johannes Klackl University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

Aneta Czernatowicz-Kukuczka Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Cameron W. Davis University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Spee Kosloff California State University, Fresno, CA, United States Małgorzata Kossowska Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Szymon Kro´l Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

Don E. Davis Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, United States

Arie W. Kruglanski University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States

Holly R. Engstrom University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Mark J. Landau University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States

Julie J. Exline Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States

Kristin Laurin University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Pehr Granqvist Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Kenneth I. Mavor University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom

Jeffrey D. Green Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States

Mario Mikulincer Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel

Jeff Greenberg University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

David K. Mosher University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States xvii

xviii

List of Contributors

Matt Motyl New York University, New York, NY, United States

Jason T. Siegel Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, United States

Roman Palitsky University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

Danielle Silveira Saybrook University, Pasadena, CA, United States

Crystal L. Park University of Connecticut, Mansfield, CT, United States

Sheldon Solomon Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, United States

Young Chin Park University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States

Nick Stauner Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States

Elizabeth C. Pinel University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States

Daniel Sullivan University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

Jesse L. Preston University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Julie A. Swets Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, United States

Travis Proulx Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

Ewa Szumowska Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland; University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States

Tom Pyszczynski University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, United States Benjamin Ramey Saybrook University, Pasadena, CA, United States Grace N. Rivera Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States Ross Rogers Colby College, Waterville, ME, United States Benjamin D. Rosenberg Dominican University of California, San Rafael, CA, United States Bastiaan T. Rutjens University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Rebecca J. Schlegel Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States Harrison J. Schmitt University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States Barry Schwartz Berkeley Haas, Berkeley, CA, United States Phillip R. Shaver University of California, Davis, CA, United States Steven Shepherd Oklahoma State University, Spear’s School of Business, Stillwater, OK, United States

Maya Tamir The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Natasha Tassell-Matamua Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Daryl R. Van Tongeren Hope College, Holland, MI, United States Allon Vishkin The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Eric D. Wesselmann Illinois State University, Normal, IL, United States Kipling D. Williams Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States Joshua A. Wilt Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States Geneva C. Yawger University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States Isaac F. Young University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States Renate Ysseldyk Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Preface Religious and spiritual beliefs are incredibly wide-spread phenomena, with important influences on social behavior, cultural practices, and even societal functioning. Polls estimate that the vast majority of the population is religious believers, with 300 million Americans and over 5 billion globally (Pew, 2017). Further, although the number of religiously unaffiliated has been growing, the spiritual impulse has hardly receded. In fact, polls indicate that each of the world’s major religions’ populations (except Buddhism) is expected to grow over the coming decades (Pew, 2017). That is, as the population growth of believers outpaces that of unbelievers (Lipka & McClendon, 2017), the world is set to become more—not less—religious. The scientific study of religion and spirituality has of course been making steady progress toward better understanding religious and spiritual phenomena. However, recent decades have seen rapid expansions in the number and scope of interested researchers, in the available theoretical perspectives they bring to the table, and in the sophistication of their technological and methodological tools. One important thread in that expansion has been the increased focus on empirical, quantitative, existential psychology—including the scientific study of how religion and spirituality may (or may not) function to address the “ultimate concerns” that uniquely characterize human existence. This book, therefore, explores the known contours and emerging frontiers of the science of religion, spirituality, and existentialism and applies it to address some of the big questions about why religious belief and spirituality have been—and remain—such central features of the human experience.

Core existential concerns In nearly every moment of every day, people around the world must grapple with existential concerns, including concerns about death, freedom, isolation, identity, and meaning in life. People possess sophisticated cognitive capacities for abstract thought, self-awareness, and personal control of their attitudes and behaviors which, among many other things, force them to grapple with certain issues in ways that no other animal does—in ways that uniquely characterize human existence. First, such capacities allow humans to appreciate the brevity and fragility of life, not only in the concrete but also the abstract. What does one do about the basic knowledge of the concept of mortality, how does one manage the corresponding fear of death, and how does one cope with more traumatic near-death experiences? Second, such capacities allow people the freedom to appreciate choice and exercise control over themselves and their environments. But, in any given moment, how should one exercise that freedom in deciding who to be and what to do, and what are the causes and consequences of an authentic/genuine expression of one’s autonomy compared to simply relinquishing control over one’s freedom to external forces? Humans are also social creatures, in need of acceptance and belonging, and in need of consensual validation of one’s own experience—of one’s own truth and reality. How should one best seek out that acceptance and experiential validation, and what are the consequences when one finds themselves either socially or experientially isolated? On a related note, given the freedom to choose one’s attitudes and behaviors, and the needs for social acceptance and consensual validation, what makes you “you”? That is, what contributes to the construction of the personal and social identities that allow “you” to exist in form and function, how do you participate in that process, and how do those identities impact your attitudes and behaviors? And lastly, people clearly navigate all of these issues with purpose in systematic, meaningful ways. So, how does one find purpose in the world, and search for and experience meaning in life?

The scope and treatment of the present volume The present handbook presents in-depth analysis of many such core issues in existential psychology, their connections to religion and spirituality (e.g., religious concepts, beliefs, identities, and practices), and their diverse outcomes (e.g., psychological, social, cultural, and health). In the process, leading scholars from around the world, representing diverse xix

xx

Preface

conceptual and methodological approaches, present the current state of the science in those areas. Over the course of 31 chapters, arranged into six parts, those scholars describe theory and research illustrating how fundamental existential issues can operate as cause and consequence of religion and spirituality, informed by work spanning multiple levels of analysis, such as evolution, cognition and neuroscience, emotion and motivation, personality and individual differences, social and cultural forces, physical and mental health, and many others. Part 1 focuses on the abstract concept of mortality, concrete near-death experiences, and other death-related concerns. In Chapter 1, Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion, Greenberg, Helm, Landau, and Solomon present terror management theory, a theoretical perspective that suggests the abstract concept of mortality exerts a nonconscious motivational push to maintain faith in religious and spiritual concepts that offer some sense of permanence—such as faith in afterlife, souls, and their supporting worldviews. They cover the large body of primarily experimental evidence revealing the basic processes, the psychological death-denying function of religious and spiritual faith, and the implications of this existential motivation for well-being and inter-religious conflict. Extending that contribution in Chapter 2, Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review, Jong further considers the body of selfreport and correlational research exploring whether people are consciously aware of and afraid of death, whether and how self-reported (explicit) death anxiety is related to religious faith, and what causal paths might be involved. Next, in Chapter 3, Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering, van Tongeren considers the theodicy—how traumatic encounters with human suffering and the apparent evils of the world can shake a person’s fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, erode the sense of meaning in life, and challenge one’s religious faith. van Tongeren then discusses work revealing how such challenges to one’s faith can lead one to acknowledge the suffering yet defensively double-down on the extant belief, to cognitively bury one’s head in the sand and deny that one’s faith has even been challenged, to admit the failure of one’s beliefs and leave religion altogether, and/or potentially open-mindedly seek spiritual growth in search of alternative faiths capable of better explaining the world and restoring spiritual meaning. In Chapter 4, Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality, Tassell-Matamua and Holden consider research on near-death experiences, when people survive being at or near the point of clinical death and experience a perceived transcendence of space, time, and mental boundaries (i.e., out-of-body experiences). Often reported as complex and profoundly spiritual events, the chapter considers the physiological, psychological, psychopathological, and the more controversial “nonmaterialist” explanations for these and similarly mystical experiences, followed by an in-depth consideration of the often immediate and dramatic changes in religion/spirituality. Part 2 covers the struggles and triumphs associated with freedom, self-regulation, and authenticity. In Chapter 5, Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory, Rosenberg and Siegel present psychological reactance theory, which posits that a fundamental existential concern is the individual’s freedom to choose when and how to behave, and that threats to one’s perceived freedoms trigger behavioral attempts to restore those freedoms. Informed by a now-classic body of reactance research, the authors examine how religions may often convey their spiritual messages and behavioral directives in ways that preserve or even affirm the believer’s perceived behavioral freedoms, whereas overbearing religious prescriptions and proscriptions may trigger reactance and thus motivate heresy and apostasy. In Chapter 6, Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of selfdetermination theory, Brambilla and Assor offer a similar perspective, based on self-determination theory, and focus on the degree to which people may internalize the available spiritual messages and religious behavioral directives. Rogers then explores, in Chapter 7, A goals perspective on religion and spirituality, how religions can define overarching spiritual ideals/goals that organize and guide purposeful actions, helping people to effectively contend with existential concerns about meaning in life, personal significance and mortality, and maintain better subjective wellbeing. Hodge et al. extend that discussion in Chapter 8, Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation, focusing on free will and self-regulation. The authors consider the influence of religion/spirituality on free will belief, and vice versa, with implications for moralistic behavior via four components of pursuing religious/spiritual goals: rational choice, exerting self-control, taking initiative, and planful behavior. In Chapter 9, Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality, Christy, Rivera, and Schlegel address the existential struggle for self-knowledge and authenticity, drawing from the empirical evidence to consider ways in which religious/spiritual experiences, beliefs, and communities might facilitate or antagonize one’s subjectively authentic experience—especially when it comes to moral functioning. In Chapter 10, Freedom as a cross to bear: choice-overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint, Schwartz closes out the section by considering the potential problems posed by the freedom to choose who to be and what to do. In a world with increasing amounts of options and possibilities, evidence suggests choice may sometimes induce uncertainty and paralysis rather than enlightenment and empowerment, and some religious/spiritual worldviews may help the faithful find a happy medium between autonomy-support and autonomy-constraint.

Preface

xxi

Part 3 examines the roles of social exclusion, experiential isolation, attachment, and the construction of social identity. First, in Chapter 11, Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns, Hales, Wesselmann, and Williams explore evidence suggesting interpersonal ostracism is related to a variety of existential concerns, that religious groups sometimes wield ostracism to ensure group cohesiveness, and that other sources of ostracism can lead people to turn to religion (and perhaps even extremist religious groups) in search of acceptance and belonging. Then, in Chapter 12, The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion, Pinel, Yawger, and Park add further nuance by focusing on experiential isolation—the inability to directly validate one’s inner mental experiences with others’ experiences. The authors relate how the quest for existential connection (i.e., I-sharing) can motivate the perception of intimate spiritual relationships with divine agents, social connections with fellow believers, and even conflict against those with different religious faiths. Granqvist, Mikulincer, and Shaver present attachment theory in Chapter 13, An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality, build upon it to cover research showing that people also form attachment to God and then consider emerging research on two models: a correspondence model in which one’s attachment to God mirrors one’s other attachment bonds, and a compensation model in which attachment to God may be strategically relied upon to substitute for one’s insecure attachments with others. Chapter 14, A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self, and Chapter 15, Religion and the construction of identity, explore the role of religion in the fundamental construction of social identity. First, Mavor and Ysseldyk review research suggesting religions are involved in navigating both individual and collective social identities; then, Palitsky, Sullivan, Young, and Schmitt adopt a variety of existentially informed perspectives and multimethod approaches to studying how private, social, and developmental dimensions of religion and identity are constructed and integrated. Part 4 considers the problems of uncertainty, the effort to discern truth and reality, and the challenge to find meaning in life. In Chapter 16, Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion, Szumowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, Kossowska, Kro´l, and Kruglanski present the 3N model perspective, in which religiosity often stems from two existential needs—the epistemic need to know and the need for significance—and is shaped by cultural narratives outlining stories and goals/values, which are then sanctified and enforced by relevant social networks. In Chapter 17, Existential uncertainty and religion, Engstrom and Laurin consider research from a variety of perspectives— uncertainty-identity, reactive approach motivation, compensatory control theory, and system justification theory—each supporting the conclusion that uncertainty can motivate people to become more religious. Proulx then utilizes Chapter 18, Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes, to highlight theory and research suggesting that people often gravitate toward religious absolutes because such approaches can calm one’s anxieties about an unnerving world that does not always seem to make sense. Chapter 19, Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life eventsand Chapter 20, Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being, explore the struggle with stressful and traumatic life events and even the struggle with religious/spiritual beliefs themselves. Park first presents the meaning making model, which posits that experiencing an event as inconsistent with one’s understanding of the world (one’s meaning system) can motivate efforts to resolve that discrepancy; that process can not only lead to assimilation of the stressor into one’s extant religious/spiritual beliefs but also to spiritual growth if one needs to adjust one’s religious/spiritual beliefs to accommodate the discrepant event. Stauner, Exline, and Wilt then provide a detailed review of research on the shape of religious/ spiritual struggles involving conflicts with deities, spirits, religious people, and even one’s own internal moral tumult. Part 5 discusses how the mind developed (e.g., evolution) to handle such existential topics, how the brain and mind implement the relevant processes (e.g., neuroscience, emotion regulation, concept acquisition), and the many variations and individual differences that alter those processes. Pyszczynski and Landau, in Chapter 21, In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion, present an impressive integration of existential and evolutionary perspectives and data, providing an explanation of the emergence of intuitive spirit concepts and elaborate spiritual cosmologies, religious moral codes, and both individual and social psychological dynamics. They cover topics such as theory of mind, fear and anxiety, disgust, the inability to imagine nonexistence, mind body dualism, death awareness, conceptual metaphor and concept acquisition, and moral intuitions, in addition to social cohesion, social power, and proselytizing. In Chapter 22, Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns, Vishkin and Tamir describe how people may rely upon religion/spirituality to implement problem-focused and emotion-focused emotion regulation strategies when coping with existential (e.g., death-related) concerns. In Chapter 23, Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience, Klackl examines even deeper mechanisms in the “existential neuroscience” of religion and spirituality; the author discusses how various brain structures may facilitate the religious/ spiritual handling of existential issues such as mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaning. In Chapter 24, The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations: fundamentalism, quest religiosity, and intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity, Abeyta and Blake describe individual differences in religious orientations, along a continuum ranging from strict/closed-minded fundamentalism to secure/genuine internalization to flexible/open-minded

xxii

Preface

quest orientations, which have implications for well-being, intergroup relations, and whether believers utilize religion to cope with existential issues in either defensive or growth-oriented ways. In Chapter 25, Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness, Hoffman, Ramey, and Silveira adopt an existential therapy perspective to better understand the role of mindfulness in religion/spirituality, especially its expression in Buddhist and related approaches. Part 6, delves into the controversies and applications stemming from the present analyses. Rutjens and Preston, in Chapter 26, Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions, consider the shared— and possibly competing—existential psychological functions of religion and science to help humans experience knowledge, control, and meaning in life. In Chapter 27, Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the divine, Cox, Arrowood, and Swets discuss research revealing the implications of existential concerns and the human body for religion/spirituality, with connections to disgust emotions, notions of spiritual and divine purity, and religious regulations so often placed upon women and female bodies. In Chapter 28, Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses, Troı¨an and Motyl apply relevant existential, evolutionary, and sociological perspectives and research to better understand the development of religious identities, beliefs, and moral values, with implications for the homogeneity and parochiality of religious groups. Shepherd and Kay, in Chapter 29, Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems for satisfying the need for order, apply compensatory control theory—which posits that people are motivated to perceive the world as an orderly and controllable system of meaning— to understand why people might turn to external systems of orderly and controllable meaning, such as secular institutions (e.g., government) and/or religious institutions and beliefs (e.g., organized religion and belief in a controlling god), with implications for the role of religion/spirituality in political beliefs and public policy. Likewise, in Chapter 30, The paradox of faith: how existential concerns motivate both prosocial and antisocial religious behaviors, Kosloff and Solomon apply terror management theory and research to better understand the impact of existential concerns on religious pro-/antisocial behavior, ranging from religious intolerance and even war/terrorism to peaceful compassion and helpfulness. And lastly, in Chapter 31, Religion and health: building existential bridges, Jimenez, Bultmann, and Arndt apply existential perspectives and research to better understand how the issues of death, freedom, isolation, and meaning can impact physical health related decisions in both beneficial and hazardous ways.

The broader context This book is part of a growing interest in empirical existential psychology, broadly, as well as the more specific application of existential psychology to religion and spirituality. The research presented here, and the present volume itself, owes much to earlier work pioneering the field of experimental existential psychology (Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski, 2004). The present volume also appears alongside the emergence in 2019 of annual meetings of existential psychology researchers at the Existential Psychology Preconference (hosted by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology) and the formation in 2020 of a new International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology. Thus the present volume will be of critical interest to researchers across a variety of relevant fields. But given that discussion of existential topics has been so consistently dominant that Dictionary.com (2019) dubbed “existential” the word of the year, we suspect it may be of interest to a broader readership as well. As editors, we hope the present volume further facilitates the spreading interest in existential psychology and further inspires scholars and researchers to continue building toward an improved understanding of the role of existential issues in religion and spirituality. Kenneth E. Vail III1 and Clay Routledge2 1

2

Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, United States, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, United States

References Dictionary.com. (2019, December 2). Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2019 is: Existential. From Everything After Z by Dictionary.com website: ,https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year/. Retrieved 11.12.19. Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Pyszczynski, T. (Eds.), (2004). Handbook of experimental existential psychology. Guilford Press. Lipka, M., & McClendon, D. (2017). Why people with “no religion” are projected to decline as share of world population. From Pew Research Center website: ,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/. Retrieved 12.12.19. Pew. (2017, April 5). The changing global religious landscape. From Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project website: ,https://www. pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/. Retrieved 12.12.19.

Chapter 1

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Jeff Greenberg1, Peter J. Helm1, Mark J. Landau2 and Sheldon Solomon3 1

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, 2University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States, 3Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY,

United States

Fear, first of all, produced gods in the world. Statius (AD 45 AD 96). . . .In the decisive moments of existence, when man first becomes man and realizes his immense loneliness in the universal, the world-fear reveals itself for the first time as essentially human fear in the presence of death. . . higher thought originates as meditation upon death. Every religion, every scientific investigation, every philosophy proceeds from it. Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West (1926/1999, p. 166).

A phenomenon as long-standing, complex, and far-reaching as religion undoubtedly serves multiple psychological functions. Indeed, Allport (1950) explored many of these functions in his classic The Individual and His Religion. More recently, Batson and Stocks (2004) proposed that, over historical eras and for many individuals, religion has served each of the categories of human needs in Maslow’s (1970) hierarchical model: physiological, safety, belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Numerous chapters in this volume examine the relationship between religion and one or more of these needs. Here, we make the case that a critical function of religion is to manage the potential for terror inherent in living in an apparently absurd universe in which the only certainty in one’s life is the knowledge that it will inevitably end. Religious affiliations and identities can help assuage existential terror by providing a sense of symbolic continuance beyond death via enduring contributions to the religious group or its causes, or simply by identifying with the collective, which will continue beyond one’s individual death. In this regard, religions are very similar to secular forms of symbolic death transcendence, such as nations, the sciences, and the arts. Religions are, however, unique in that they also offer hope of literal death transcendence by providing people with supernatural conceptions of reality that include the possibility of transcending death through an immortal soul and afterlife, a function deemed important by many writers (e.g., Allen, 1897/2000; Allport, 1950; Atran, 2002; Becker, 1971; Burkert, 1996; Durkheim, 1995; Feuerbach, 1843/1980; Freud, 1915/1959; Kierkegaard, 1955; James, 1902; Lifton, 1979/1983; Rank, 1931/1961; Spengler, 1999; for alternative views, see Boyer, 1994; Leuba, 1925; Skinner, 1948; Wilson, 2002). For example, Allport (1950, p. 9) noted that Man’s life, bracketed between two oblivions, is haunted by fear of enemies, of nature, of sickness, poverty, ostracism; most of all of death, for of all creatures on earth man alone knows that he will die. Do we evoke the protection of an amulet, do we trust ourselves to the everlasting arms, do we discipline ourselves to seek Nirvana and so escape the threats that hover over us?

Historical and anthropological observations provide abundant evidence for this proposition. All small tribal religions include elaborate rituals associated with death and explicit beliefs that some aspect of the individual—one’s soul or spirit—persists after physical death (e.g., Siegel, 1980; Smart, 1996). Similarly, death rituals and beliefs in a The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00002-0 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

3

4

PART | 1 Death

death-transcending soul or other essence are prominent in the most popular contemporary religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism (although there is ongoing debate regarding Judaism). Moreover, the primary theme of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian text believed to be the foundational myth from which all the major monotheistic religions have sprung, was the search for immortality. From this perspective then, Jesus’ restoring of Lazarus to life and his own rising from the dead 3 days after his crucifixion were far more than mere parlor tricks to establish his supernatural powers; rather, they spoke to humanity’s most burning desire, to believe that death is not the absolute end of one’s existence. There is also evidence that the threat of death inclines people to embrace and rely on religious beliefs. For example, following the attacks of September 11, 2001, there was a surge in church attendance in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia (Lampman, 2001; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003); in Bible sales in the United States (Rice, 2001); and in visits to religious and spiritual websites (Lampman, 2001). Heflick (2006) found that references to religion and afterlife beliefs were highly prevalent in 228 Texas death row inmates’ last statements. More recently, Pelham et al. (2018) found that, across many cultures, there is a substantial uptick in Google searches for religious constructs following surges in Google searches for potentially deadly diseases. Although theological, anthropological, and historical scholarship, and these correlational findings are of great importance, terror management theory (TMT; for overviews, see Greenberg, Vail, & Pyszczynski, 2014; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991a, 2015) has generated a considerable body of experimental research that provides additional support for the central roles that religion (and secular culture as well) play in quelling mortality concerns by providing people with a sense of death transcendence. TMT builds on pan-disciplinary cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s (1971, 1973, 1975) synthesis of insights from scholars such as biologist Charles Darwin, philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, psychologists Sigmund Freud, William James, Gregory Zilboorg, and Otto Rank, sociologist Erving Goffman, psychohistorians Norman Brown and Robert Jay Lifton, and theologian Paul Tillich to understand the motivational underpinnings of human behavior. After encountering Becker’s work in the early 1980s, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1986) distilled Becker’s synthesis into TMT. Subsequent tests of TMT-based hypotheses have generated a corpus of research that now consists of over 1400 studies conducted in 26 different countries. We believe that TMT provides a compelling account of why and how religion serves to manage existential terror and offers clues as to how religion might have evolved to serve this aim.

Terror management theory Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Baldwin, 1963/1998, p. 339).

TMT begins by noting fundamental commonalities between humans and other animals. As products of evolution, humans share with other species a variety of biological systems geared toward survival. We have elaborate mechanisms to sustain the necessary intake of oxygen and nutrients, to regulate our internal temperature, and to execute a myriad of other vital physiological processes. We also have basic emotions that help keep us alive, such as fear and anger to marshal fight or flight responses to parry threats to existence. Indeed, reminiscent of Freud’s concept of the it (also known as the id), our limbic system seems designed primarily to keep us alive by regulating basic biological needs and generating fear and urgent action when our lives are threatened. Of course humans are not all it; what distinguishes us most clearly from other animals is the relatively large and highly developed cerebral cortex that provides our species with a unique intelligence: a capacity for symbolic thought and reasoning, which has facilitated the vast proliferation of our species around the globe. Humans are singularly capable, for example, of contemplating their own existence and shifting attention away from the momentary flow of sensations to think in complex, symbolic ways about the past, present, and future. At this very moment, this seemingly crowning jewel of evolution is precisely what allows us to proclaim ourselves the crowning jewel of evolution! These awe-inspiring, powerful conceptual tools have made us so smart that we can imagine and bring to fruition all kinds of great possibilities (e.g., plows, planes, and pizzas). However, they also allow, and at times compel, us to imagine possibilities and inevitabilities that are distinctly less desirable. To know that we exist enables us to consider the possibility that we will not exist. We can anticipate all sorts of possible threats to existence; but even more unsettling,

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

5

we know that, sooner or later, our own death is inevitable. Combine this knowledge with the desire for survival rooted in our limbic system and you have an organism with an omnipresent potential to experience dread, or terror: In every calm and reasonable person there is hidden a second person scared witless about death. Philip Roth, The Dying Animal (Roth, 2001, p. 153).

How, then, can the human animal—abundantly predisposed to survive while knowing full well that annihilation is always potentially impending, and ultimately, inevitable—function securely in this world? TMT posits that we do so by imbedding ourselves in a symbolically constituted reality according to which, the world is orderly, stable, and meaningful; and each of us is a significant being who will survive in some way after physical death. Toward this end, all cultural worldviews explain where we humans come from, our present place in the universe, how we may be valuable contributors to this ultimate reality, and how, through our valued status, we can transcend death. People thus manage the potential for terror engendered by knowledge of mortality by sustaining faith in culturally derived worldviews and shoring up self-esteem by perceiving themselves to be living up to the standards of valued conduct prescribed by that worldview. For those who meet the mark, cultures offer one or both of two basic types of death transcendence: literal immortality, which is based on concepts such as soul, spirits, heaven, and nirvana; and symbolic immortality, which is gained through progeny and inheritance, culturally valued achievements, memorials and monuments, and identification with groups, nations, causes, and movements (Lifton, 1979/1983). Although religion provides avenues for both literal and symbolic immortality, empirical evidence suggests that literal immortality is a particularly alluring element of religious faith (Kahoe & Dunn, 1975; Spilka, Stout, Minton, & Sizemore, 1977). Based on anthropological, archeological, and historical evidence, Becker (1971) and many others have concluded that, prior to the influence of Darwin’s theorizing, virtually all cultures were fundamentally spiritual or religious in character. The sharp distinction between secular culture and religion is a recent development, one still not accepted in many parts of the world, particularly among members of Islamic and indigenous tribal cultures as well as many American evangelical Christians. Pharaohs, kings, shamans, and tribal chieftains were always tied to spirit powers; even Hitler linked himself to “the divine will,” and the Japanese emperor Hirohito was considered a deity. As promoters of the religious right in the United States are quick to point out, this country was built largely upon a deistic foundation, aspects of which remain to this day. Indeed, as of 1985, a popular survey indicated that 98% of Americans would refuse to vote for an atheist president (Elliot, 1985), and following the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared that God had chosen him to lead the United States (Carney & Dickerson, 2001). Clearly, in many contemporary cultures, religion continues to serve a critical terror management function by providing standards of value to live up to and by promising literal forms of death transcendence to those who do live up to them. But Becker (1973, p. 5) extended the scope of religion even further by arguing that even explicitly atheistic cultural worldviews are essentially religious: It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive, or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, . . . of unshakable meaning. . . Western society since Newton, no matter how scientific or secular it claims to be, is still as “religious” as any other . . .: “civilized” society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious.

Certainly, the customs, morals, and rituals of secular cultures are just as arbitrary as those of religious cultures, and they are often steeped in the same degree of mystification. To buttress this point, Becker (1973) points to the mummification of Lenin and the pilgrimages to his tomb during the Soviet reign and thereafter; Lifton (1968) makes a similar point in his analysis of Mao’s ideology of revolutionary immortality. The reverence with which the flag is treated here in the United States provides another example that is closer to home. If there is a clear distinction between religious and secular worldviews, it is that the religious ones offer literal immortality in the context of an invisible yet powerful world of deities and spirits. Both kinds of worldviews, however, offer meaningful conceptions of reality, foundations for self-worth, and sacred modes of death transcendence. Another key psychological difference between religious and secular worldviews according to Becker (1971, 1975) is that for religious worldviews, people’s self-esteem is heavily dependent on their relationship with their gods. Indeed, recent work has found that, for many Americans, their spiritual relationships are a primary source of self-worth (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003; Crocker & Wolfe, 2001; Fishbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003). For secularists, in contrast, self-esteem derives mainly from cultural accomplishments, such as artistic or charitable works, the accumulation of material possessions, or identification with collectives and ideologies that survive

6

PART | 1 Death

beyond one’s own death. But ultimately such purely secular forms of immortality are never entirely satisfying because they offer no guarantee of one’s eternal significance. Accordingly, adherents of these worldviews may often feel compelled to strive for more and more and to protect from loss or degradation of one’s mundane grounds for immortality, whether they be offspring, property, creative achievements, or social or political organizations. When, however, a spiritual dimension serves as the basis of one’s self-worth and security, terror is likely to be more fully managed. Such a dimension provides a stable, immutable basis for cosmic significance, freeing one from earthly prescriptions of selfworth and potentially bringing one a greater sense of peace. Furthermore, because religious worldviews provide more explicit and compelling means for death transcendence, cultures and people who subscribe to them seem to be less intent on denying the fragility and transience of earthly life, and less subject to the fear that accompanies this knowledge: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. . . Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23 (King James Version).

The ontogeny of terror management How does the newborn become imbedded within a symbolic conception of reality and ultimately become so dependent on it for security? Briefly (for a full account, see Solomon et al., 2015), each human is born helpless and profoundly dependent, more so than neonates of any other species. And the birth process itself may well be the individual’s first traumatic separation, as Rank (1929/1973) cogently argued. The subsequent physical distress that infants experience from the biological needs that were formerly met through their direct connection to the mother’s body elicits intense emotional reactions that can be thought of as a “primal terror,” an inchoate fear that precedes any conscious awareness of what the source of this distress might be. Only through a reattachment process of love, sustenance, and protection received from the parents does the infant thrive and grow (Rank, 1929/1973). Thus, from the outset, survival depends on the love of the parents: they are the primary basis of safety and security. In their loving presence, all is right and the child can happily explore and develop; if threat appears, the parents provide a safe harbor. However, as the small child’s physical and intellectual capabilities expand in interaction with the environment, the parents begin to put conditions on their approval and love, praising some behaviors and admonishing the child for others. Throughout the socialization process, the child struggles between expressing urgent natural desires and conforming to the parents’ standards for good behavior in order to sustain the security afforded by parental love and protection. As Freud (1917/1952) and Mead (1934) argued, in order to anticipate and try to adhere to parental dictates while simultaneously establishing self-control, the child must internalize symbolic representations of the parents and their standards. Sullivan (1953) proposed that once these representations are in place, viewing the self as “good” by meeting parental standards is associated with a secure sense of parental affection and protection, whereas viewing the self as falling short of those standards is associated with anxiety over possible separation from, and abandonment by, the parents. In short, through a dynamic process of security-seeking and individuation, the child develops a psychological need for selfesteem, a feeling that one is meeting internalized cultural standards of value and is therefore safeguarded from basic fears. Concurrently, intellectual development entails a growing capacity to cope with external reality, as well as the ability to realize one’s vulnerabilities and to anticipate threats to one’s safety. From about the age of 3 years, children begin to conceptualize and think about death (see, e.g., Yalom, 1980) and, over time, the primitive representations of threat epitomized by fears of the dark, monsters, and big dogs are replaced with more realistic fears and the unwelcome realization that death is the ultimate threat. To make matters worse, as children better understand their real vulnerabilities, they also recognize their parents’ limited abilities to protect them. Becker (1973) proposed that, in response to this growing awareness, children transfer their base of security from the parents to more potent resources that can better address the problem of death, such as deities and religious authorities, national leaders, and the culture itself as an enduring entity. These key components of the overarching worldview

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

7

provide individuals with a basis for perceiving life as meaningful and themselves as significant and protected participants in the world. Kirkpatrick’s (1998) characterization of deities as attachment figures thus fits with Becker’s (1971) much earlier idea that children transfer their basis of security from parents to spiritual figures who promise protection from and transcendence of death. Indeed, a quarter of a century before Kirkpatrick (1998), and based on much earlier authors such as Ferenczi (1916), Reich (1933), and Redl (1942), Becker offered a deeper and broader analysis that explained the motivation underlying the need for “attachment” figures and specified the conditions under which leaders can take on the same role as parents and deities. Becker conceptualized this process in terms of attachment to transference objects: bases of security that help people manage the potential for terror engendered by awareness of vulnerability and ultimate mortality. Sometimes people transfer power and protection to a narrow object, such as a single individual and his or her ideology (Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, and the Dalai Lama are examples of such transference figures, albeit ones that became broadly sanctioned within a culture. Charles Manson, Reverend Jim Jones, and the gay-bashing Reverend Phelps of Kansas are examples of more exotic, fringe transference objects). According to Becker, such narrow transferences occur primarily when people are having difficulty sustaining faith in or deriving self-worth from the broader mainstream secular or religious worldview. Under such conditions, people are in great need of alternative bases for terror management, and consequently, often fall under the spell of an individual who with great confidence (unconflicted personalities, Redl, 1942) promotes a compelling grand vision (i.e., an alternative worldview) that more effectively imbues life with meaning and allows people to feel like enduringly significant members of that meaningful world. For most people, however, the transference is to a variety of concepts, mythic narratives, deities, and seemingly larger-than-life figures that embody or represent their internalized, culturally derived worldviews. Although many aspects of the worldview are widely shared by individuals in a group, each individual internalizes a personalized version of the worldview shaped by his or her idiosyncratic biological propensities and socialization experiences. Furthermore, each adult derives a unique basis for significance and self-worth by choosing among the many options offered by the culture. For example, one American may invest in love of Jesus or country, another may yearn for a Lexus or Mercedes, and yet another may devote themselves to creative achievements.

A brief phylogenic history of terror management In addition to explaining allegiance to belief systems from a broad, cultural perspective and an individualdevelopmental point of view, TMT provides an evolutionary explanation of how religion and the wider culture may have come to serve the vital psychological function of managing terror (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). This phylogenic account is based on the assumption that with the gradual rise of our species’ unique intellectual abilities, the precarious and ultimately finite nature of life eventually dawned on our hominid ancestors: And with the rise and gradual conception of the self as the source of personal autonomy comes, of course, the knowledge of its limit—the ultimate prospect of death. The effect of this intellectual advance is momentous. . .As a naked fact, that realization is unacceptable . . . Nothing, perhaps, is more comprehensible than that people—savage or civilized would rather reject than accept the idea of death as an inevitable close to their brief earthly careers. (Langer, 1982, pp. 87, 90, 103)

Saddled with this anxiety-provoking knowledge, these first modern humans must have found great appeal in existing conceptions of reality that could be embellished to deny the finality of death and thereby allow its proponents to reclaim some measure of equanimity. Although fear of death in response to imminent danger is undoubtedly rational and adaptive, a perpetual concern with the fragility and finite nature of one’s physical being would be quite debilitating. Those whose worldviews protected them from such apprehensions and hence allowed them to hunt and explore with bold confidence would be more successful in propagating both their genes and their conceptions of an afterlife. Thus the survival and perpetuation of genes, individuals, and death-denying belief systems likely facilitated each other. Based on these ideas, Rank (1931) and Becker (1975) delineated the historical succession of the various immortality ideologies prevalent up to modern times: History . . . is the career of a frightened animal who must lie in order to live. . .societies are standardized systems of death denial; they give structure to the formulas for heroic transcendence. History can then be looked at as a succession of immortality ideologies, or as a mixture at any time of several of these ideologies.. . .For primitive man, who practiced the ritual renewal of nature, each person could be a cosmic hero of a quite definite kind: he could contribute with his powers and observances to the replenishment of cosmic life. Gradually as societies became more complex and differentiated into classes, cosmic

8

PART | 1 Death

heroism became the property of special classes like divine kings and the military. . . And so the situation developed where men could be heroic only by following orders. . . .With the rise of money coinage one could be a money hero and privately protect himself and his offspring by the accumulation of visible gold-power. With Christianity something new came into the world: the heroism of renunciation of this world and the satisfactions of this life. . .It was a sort of antiheroism by an animal who denied life in order to deny evil. Buddhism did the same thing even more extremely, denying all possible worlds. In modern times. . . a new type of productive and scientific hero came into prominence, and we are still living this today. And with the French Revolution another type of modern hero was codified: the revolutionary hero who will bring an end to injustice and evil once and for all, by bringing into being a new utopian society perfect in its purity. Becker (1975, pp. 153 155).

The experimental research supporting terror management theory Over the last three decades, well over 700 published studies have been conducted to test hypotheses derived from TMT. Here we briefly summarize some key findings, focusing on those most directly pertinent to understanding the role of terror management in religion (for fuller reviews, see Greenberg et al., 2014; Solomon et al., 2015). According to TMT, stable high self-esteem buffers anxiety because it qualifies the individual for the protection and sense of eternal value provided by his or her worldview. In support of this hypothesis, dispositionally high self-esteem is associated with low anxiety in stressful circumstances, and raising self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to threat, as measured by both self-report and physiological measures (Greenberg et al., 1992). Furthermore, dispositionally high or temporarily heightened self-esteem reduces defensive responses to reminders of death (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). The vast majority of the other TMT studies have tested variants of the mortality salience (MS) hypothesis: if worldviews and self-esteem protect people from the potential terror of death, then reminding them of their own mortality should lead to intensified efforts to sustain faith in their worldview and to strive for self-esteem. Many studies have supported this hypothesis by showing that MS increases positive reactions to others who exemplify or share one’s worldview and negative reactions to others who violate or criticize one’s worldview (worldview defense; for reviews, see Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010; Greenberg et al., 2014). For example, MS intensifies desire to reward heroes and punish moral transgressors. Similarly, MS increases positive reactions by Americans to a foreign student who praises America and negative reactions to a foreign student who criticizes America (parallel findings have been documented among Israelis, Iranians, Germans, and other nationalities). In addition, MS increases conformity to salient cultural norms, including tolerance of different others, competitiveness, fairness, generosity, healthy behaviors, and appearanceenhancing behaviors (see, e.g., Arndt, Schimel, & Goldenberg, 2003; Jonas, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2013). Another line of inquiry has established that MS increases self-esteem striving. For instance, MS leads those who base their self-worth on driving skill to drive more boldly (Taubman Ben-Ari, Florian, & Mikulincer, 1999); those who pride themselves on their physical strength to display a more powerful handgrip (Peters, Greenberg, Williams, & Schneider, 2005); those who care about their performance in basketball to do better in a basketball game and shooting task (Zestcott, Lifshin, Helm, & Greenberg, 2016); and those who derive self-worth from their appearance to focus more on how they look (Goldenberg, McCoy, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000). Further studies have shown that MS leads people to distance themselves from anything that reminds them of their basic animal nature, and that reminders of animality increase the accessibility of death-related thought (for an overview, see Goldenberg, 2012). This work suggests that an important component of terror management is denying one’s corporeality, because being an animal means one is merely a transient material creature. Religion and spirituality are one important way that people deny their animality by elevating themselves above, and separating themselves from, the rest of the natural world. Death reminders also increase interest and investment in romantic relationships, and threats to such relationships increase death-related thought (for a review, see Plusnin, Pepping, & Kashima, 2018). As central sources of worldview validation and self-worth, our romantic partners play an important role in terror management. Indeed, Rank (1931/1961, 1941/1958) and Becker (1973) argued that with the reduced centrality of religion in modernity, people have shifted toward investment in romantic love as a central basis of meaning and self-worth. Florian, Mikulincer, and Hirschberger (2002) have also posited that close relationships may serve an additional, more primal terror management function as secure attachments, although the evidence to date is far from definitive on this point. In addition to demonstrating the many ways people respond to reminders of mortality, research has also established the convergent and discriminant validity of MS inductions and has clarified the role of cognitive processes and affect in

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

9

MS effects (see Greenberg et al., 1997; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999; Solomon, et al., 2015). MS effects have been obtained using a variety of MS inductions; for example, gory automobile accident footage, proximity to funeral homes and cemeteries, and subliminal primes of the word “dead” or “death.” Furthermore, these inductions have different effects from making salient or accessible a wide variety of other negative thoughts, including pain, failure, social exclusion, uncertainty, general anxieties and worries, meaninglessness, and paralysis. Studies have also established that MS effects are triggered by heightened accessibility of death-related thoughts outside of focal attention (for reviews, see Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004; Pyszczynski et al., 1999). After conscious contemplation of mortality, participants show intensified worldview defense and self-esteem striving only after a delay when death-related thought is no longer focal but remains highly accessible (e.g., Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994); and death-thought accessibility returns to baseline levels after participants defend their worldview (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997). In addition, threats to central aspects of one’s worldview or self-worth increase death-thought accessibility (for a review, see e.g., Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010). Although heightened death-thought accessibility does not necessarily increase self-reported negative affect or physiological arousal, it instigates terror management defenses by signaling a heightened potential to experience anxiety (Greenberg et al., 2003).

Research directly focused on the terror management function of religion The research reviewed so far demonstrates the terror management role of cultural worldviews and culturally derived self-esteem by showing that MS increases moral judgment, defense of one’s cherished beliefs, striving to display competencies and adhere to cultural values, and distancing from being an animal. Given the major role religion plays in these kinds of judgments and behaviors, and the common focus on death and the afterlife, it is highly likely that for many people, religion serves a terror management function. A variety of studies over the years have supported this idea in different ways; this section will briefly review them.

The association between religiosity and death anxiety To the extent that religious faith serves a terror management function, stronger faith should be associated with lower death anxiety. In a review of correlational studies, Lonetto and Templer (1986) concluded that religious faith is indeed associated with lower death anxiety, although a few studies failed to confirm this finding. Cohen et al. (2005) subsequently found that for Protestants, self-reported death anxiety was negatively correlated with intrinsic religiosity and belief in an afterlife but positively correlated with extrinsic religiosity. This suggests that genuine belief is associated with lower death anxiety but more superficial belief or participation in religion solely for social purposes is not. More recently, Jong et al. have argued that from a TMT perspective, there should be a curvilinear relationship between religiosity and death anxiety, with the most religious and the least religious being lowest in death anxiety. This pattern was expected because for religious people, more faith would quell death anxiety, resulting in a negative correlation for them, but for nonreligious people, some religious leanings would be indicative of an uncertain worldview and so be associated with more death anxiety. It is also possible that such a positive correlation for the nonreligious would occur because death anxiety would spur them toward some religious leanings. Consistent with this idea, Jong, Bluemke, and Halberstadt (2013) developed a supernatural belief scale and found that for people who identified as religious, stronger religious beliefs were associated with lower death anxiety, whereas the opposite relationship held for the nonreligious. Jong et al. (2018) conducted a metaanalysis of relevant studies and found further support for such a curvilinear relationship. Overall, these findings are consistent with the idea that religion helps quell death anxiety, at least for those invested in a religious worldview, but of course correlations can be explained in other ways. Moreover, from a terror management perspective, measures of explicit attitudes toward death should be viewed with skepticism because they likely reflect styles of defense against the fear of death, and because the fear is assumed to exist outside of awareness. Supporting this view, research has found a negative correlation between self-reported death anxiety and MS-induced worldview defense; inconsistency in response to explicit and implicit measures of death anxiety; and a causal connection between subliminal primes of death and worldview defense (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Simon, 1997; Greenberg et al., 1995; Lundh & Radon, 1998). Experimental evidence is thus also needed to make the case for a terror management function of religion.

10

PART | 1 Death

Mortality salience and investment in religiosity If religion serves a terror management function, making mortality salient should lead people to defend and bolster their religious faith. Prior to the development of TMT, Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) found that, among those confident about the existence of an afterlife, disturbing images of death in combination with information suggesting a high likelihood of an early death led to an increased belief in an afterlife; a conviction that is, of course, a central component of how religions quell mortality concerns. However, the first TMT study that examined the effects of MS on religiosity superficially seemed to contradict the Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) finding. Specifically, Burling (1993) found that MS did not increase self-reported religiosity on Batson and Ventis’s (1982) interactional and internal scales. Burling proposed that the null finding may have occurred because, according to TMT, MS should intensify bolstering and defense of religious participants’ cherished beliefs rather than necessarily changing those beliefs; and, consistent with Osarchuk and Tatz (1973), that MS may not necessarily lead nonreligious people to increase their reliance on religious beliefs they did not already subscribe to. Accordingly, MS should not influence responses to measures that tap long-standing religious beliefs, but rather measures of defense of one’s religiosity, one’s particular religion, specific practices, and one’s beliefs about the value of religion. A variety of studies since Burling (1993) have supported these ideas. In the first of these studies, Greenberg et al. (1990) proposed that MS should lead people to like someone who validates their preferred religion and dislike someone who advocates a different religion and found that MS increased Christian students’ liking for a fellow Christian student and decreased liking for a Jewish student. Death reminders should also motivate people to treat sacred objects with greater reverence and respect. In virtually every religious tradition, certain objects crafted of ordinary materials are revered as representations of deities, magical powers, and sacred values. These consecrated objects serve an important terror management function by lending concrete, tangible form to collectively held beliefs and customs and thereby affirming their absolute validity. Greenberg, Simon, Porteus, Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1995) consequently hypothesized that MS would render people more reluctant than usual to use such religious objects inappropriately. Following either an MS or a control induction and under the guise of assessing creative problem-solving, predominantly Christian American participants were shown a set of objects and asked to use them to hang a crucifix on a laboratory wall. For half of the participants the most effective way to accomplish this task was to use a block of wood as a hammer; for the other half the best way was to hammer with the crucifix itself. When the block of wood could be used, MS had no effect on task performance. In contrast, when the crucifix had to serve as the hammer, mortality-salient participants took twice as long to complete the task and found doing it especially difficult and tension-producing. Similar results were found with regard to inappropriate use of the United States flag. By showing that MS increases reluctance to use such icons inappropriately, these findings support the idea that intimations of mortality increase people’s investments in their core religious and national symbols. Belief in the effectiveness of prayer is another aspect of religion that should be augmented in response to MS. In support of this hypothesis, Norenzayan and Hansen (2006) found that, after MS, religious Christians increased their belief in evidence that religious prayer can be effective. Moreover, this result occurred even when the prayers were directed toward non-Christian deities or spirits. Norenzayan and Hansen proposed two possible explanations for their findings. One is that a generic belief in supernatural powers plays a fundamental role in terror management, even if the powers are inconsistent with the particular religion to which people subscribe. However, we believe their full pattern of findings is more consistent with the other explanation they offered, that the existence of deities and spirits responsive to prayer is consistent with, and helps bolster, virtually any specific religious worldview because it fortifies the possibility of both a protective higher power and a spiritual afterlife. Supporting the latter explanation, the MS-induced boost in belief in prayer did not occur on an item referring specifically to belief in Buddha’s existence and did not occur for explicitly nonreligious participants. Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi (2012) then replicated and clarified these effects by finding that MS increased religiosity and belief in a higher power among religious participants but not atheist participants. Importantly, Vail et al. (2012) also found that among Christian participants, MS increased faith in God/Jesus but decreased faith in Allah and Buddha. Likewise, among Muslim participants, MS increased faith in Allah and decreased faith in God/Jesus and Buddha. Among agnostic participants, MS increased self-reported religiosity, belief in a higher power, and faith in God/Jesus, Allah, and Buddha, suggesting that those who are skeptical, but open-minded toward religious worldviews, are motivated to invest in broad range of spiritual beliefs following MS. In a related set of studies, Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, and Goldenberg (2009) found that MS motivates religious fundamentalists to rely on faith-based solutions when making medical decisions and to perceive prayer as an effective means to ameliorate medical ailments. Thus, after being reminded of their mortality, people react favorably to those

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

11

who validate their religious beliefs but unfavorably to those who subscribe to a different religious outlook and endorse beliefs and behaviors consistent with their religious worldview. Similarly, experiencing the death of a loved one, but not an equally traumatic event not involving death, predicted a subsequent increase in private religious behavior (e.g., prayer) among those already practicing such behaviors, and an increase in the importance of religious ceremonies among those with relatively little prior interest in them (Vail, Soenke, Waggoner, and Mavropoulou, 2019). Extending this kind of finding beyond prayer to lower reliance on material things, Chinese Christians who had experienced a life event carrying existential threat (e.g., serious life-threatening illness and death of a loved one) reported less material goals in life compared to Chinese Christians who had not had such experiences (Hui, Chan, Lau, Cheung, & Mok, 2014). In contrast, religiously unaffiliated participants who had experienced a death-related significant life event reported greater material goals in life compared to those who had not had such an experience.

Evidence that strong or bolstered religious belief reduces defensive responses to mortality salience If religion serves a terror management function, then making religion salient or bolstering faith in religious belief should buffer death anxiety and thus reduce defensive responses to MS inductions. Consistent with this notion, Schoenrade (1989) and Dechesne et al. (2003) found that belief in an afterlife, whether based on religious belief or supposed scientific findings, reduces worldview defense in response to MS. Further support for this buffering effect of religious belief comes from two studies reported by Jonas et al. (2013). In one study, they grouped participants as either high or low in intrinsic religiosity, provided half the participants with an opportunity to affirm their religious beliefs, manipulated MS, and measured worldview defense (specifically, championing one’s home city, a nonreligious aspect of the worldview). MS increased worldview defense among individuals low in religiosity as well as those high in religiosity who did not affirm their religious beliefs. However, people high in intrinsic religiosity who affirmed their religious beliefs did not exhibit intensified worldview defense in response to MS. Interestingly, this effect did not occur for people high in extrinsic religiosity. In a follow-up study, Jonas and Fischer had high and low intrinsically religious participants who had just affirmed their religious beliefs write a sentence about death or about dental pain. Then, after a delay, they measured deaththought accessibility using a word stem completion task (a German version based on Greenberg et al., 1994). Low intrinsic religiosity participants showed the usual delayed increase in death-thought accessibility; in contrast, high intrinsic religiosity participants did not. As in the prior study, high extrinsic religiosity did not play such a moderating role. In another series of studies demonstrating that intrinsic religiosity buffers existential terror, Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, Orehek, and Abdollahi (2012) found that intrinsic religiosity, but not extrinsic or quest religiosity, decreased intergroup hostility following MS. In sum, after affirming their religious beliefs, those high in intrinsic, but not extrinsic, religiosity did not show increased worldview defense or heightened accessibility of death-related thoughts in response to MS, suggesting that investing in faith for its own sake may be more effective for terror management than pursuing religion for extrinsic reasons (e.g., gaining belonging or social approval). Consistent with this conclusion, a 2009 Gallup Poll reported that non-Muslim Americans who attend religious services more than once a week reported the lowest anti-Muslim and anti-Islam prejudice. In contrast, not attending religious services was associated with extreme prejudice toward Muslims (Gallup Inc., 2009). In a metaanalysis on religious racism, intrinsic religiosity was related to lower prejudice (Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010), and personal prayer has been found to reduce hostility (Butler, Stout, & Gardner, 2002). In addition, when American or Iranian religious fundamentalists, who typically endorse greater prejudice, ethnocentrism, and militarism are primed with both compassionate religious values and MS, they tend to report less support for intergroup hostility (Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski, 2009). One core aspect of religiosity is belief in an immortal soul. Lifshin, Greenberg, Weise, and Soenke (2016) demonstrated a specific buffering effect of soul beliefs, arguing that believing in an immaterial soul provides a kind of security that protects not only against personal mortality but also against the prospect of human extinction. Thus they predicted, and generally found, that soul believers would be more accepting of the possibility of the world ending. However, this effect was attenuated (i.e., participants reacted negatively to the idea of the end of the world) when soul believers were asked to write about their nonreligious symbolic immortality investments. In other words, without additional priming, those who believed they have an immortal soul were less perturbed by apparent evidence that the world was going to end than individuals who did not believe in an immortal soul. These studies suggest that having literal immortality beliefs provide a defense against the threat of humanity’s destruction, and symbolic immortality beliefs do not provide

12

PART | 1 Death

this same protection, presumably because the end of humankind would mean our identities, achievements, offspring, and groups would all be permanently obliterated. Another line of research found that those with weak investment in their religious values may be quick to abandon their religious ideas for a scientific means of averting death. Lifshin, Greenberg, Soenke, Darrell, and Pyszczynski (2017) asked participants to read an article that either argued that scientific advances would make indefinite life extension technologies possible in the near future or that such technologies were never likely to come to fruition. Afterward, participants were reminded of their mortality or a control topic. When primed with mortality or plausible indefinite life extension technologies, individuals with weak religious beliefs reported less belief in an afterlife compared to control conditions. In contrast, participants who highly valued their religious beliefs did not change their attitudes after MS or when reading about the possibility of living forever. Presumably participants who did not value their religious beliefs were less invested in literal immortality beliefs and were also less likely to be involved in religion for intrinsic reasons.

What about atheists? In stark contrast to religious worldviews is religious disbelief (Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013). Atheism refers to the explicit belief that there is not a God or gods, in contrasted with agnosticism, which refers to a stance where the existence of God or gods is unknowable (Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013). Because atheists are steadfastly opposed to the central tenet of all religions, they are treated as a worldview threat in many cultures, including the United States In fact, a majority of Americans report they would not vote for an atheist (Jones, 2012) and rate atheists as the group that least follows American ideals, even compared to Muslims and immigrants (Edgell, Gerteis, & Harmann, 2006). Gervais, Shariff, and Norenzayan (2011) argue that atheists are perceived as untrustworthy and found evidence that atheists are rated as untrustworthy as rapists. From a terror management perspective, antiatheist sentiment stems from the explicit threat atheism poses to theist worldviews. Based on this notion, Cook, Cohen, and Solomon (2015) predicted and found that MS increased social distancing from, and disparagement and distrust of, atheists. In a second study, religious believers asked to think about atheism reported greater death-thought accessibility compared to thinking about a control topic. Taken together, evidence suggests the atheist worldview may be particularly threatening to the average religious believer because atheists explicitly deny the existence of literal pathways to immortality. So how then do atheists respond when their mortality is salient, given that literal immortality beliefs are often more effective existential anxiety buffers than symbolic immortality beliefs (e.g., Dechesne et al., 2003; Heflick & Goldenberg, 2012; Vail et al., 2012)? Do they double down on their secular worldview or do they embrace the possibility that supernatural entities may exist? Evidence to date has been mixed. Heflick and Goldenberg (2012) found that after participants read an article supposedly proving the existence of an afterlife (i.e., disconfirming the atheist worldview) both atheists and theists reported less defensiveness in response MS relative to a pain control condition. Vail et al. (2019) reanalyzed Heflick and Goldenberg’s (2012) data and found that within the MS condition, worldview defense was not significantly lower in the afterlife confirmed condition. Then in two additional studies, Vail et al. showed that although support for existence after death did not reduce MS-induced worldview defense, support for the possibility of medical indefinite life extension did so. So for atheists, scientific immortality buffers against mortality concerns but the idea of continued existence after death does not. In accord with the idea that atheists get no comfort from religious belief, and indeed may be threatened by it, atheists reported higher death-thought accessibility after reading compelling evidence supporting intelligent design (Hayes, Schimel, Howard, Webber, & Faucher, 2010). Other research has, however, revealed an additional complexity regarding the question of whether atheists value religious beliefs for coping with mortality. Jong, Halberstadt, and Bluemke (2012) found that, in response to MS, Christian participants were more confident that supernatural entities exist, while nonreligious participants were more confident that supernatural entities do not exist. However, in a second study, when supernatural belief was measured implicitly, both religious and nonreligious participants exhibited implicit support for belief that supernatural entities exist after MS. Consistent with these findings, Jackson et al. (2018) strengthened or weakened religious belief in religious people and nonbelievers and assessed how doing so affected explicit and implicit measures of death anxiety. Bolstering religious belief reduced explicitly measured death anxiety in religious folks but increased death anxiety in nonbelievers; however, in a second study, bolstering religious belief led to lower implicit death anxiety in both religious people and nonbelievers. In sum, some research has found that MS leads atheists to reject religious ideals and embrace their secular beliefs, and that challenging their secular worldviews leads to higher death-thought accessibility and explicit death anxiety. However, other research has found that nonreligious people at least implicitly exhibit belief in supernatural entities after MS, and that supporting religious belief reduces their implicit death anxiety. These latter findings suggest that outside of consciousness and controlled processing, atheists may still be drawn toward belief in literal immortality.

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

13

Consistent with this view, Lindeman, Heywood, Riekki, and Makkonen (2014) report that atheists were as stressed as religious individuals when asked to challenge God to do terrible things (e.g., “I dare God to make someone murder my parents cruelly”). Similarly, Haidt, Bjo¨rklund, and Murphy (2000) found atheists were unwilling to sell their soul to the experimenter, even when assured the supposed contract was meaningless. In essence, although atheists may be explicitly less anxious about death and are able to fall back on their secular worldviews, implicitly they may still lean on religious or spiritual beliefs when existential concerns are aroused, even while explicitly denying such belief. However, more research is needed to fully understand these matters. For example, there may be interesting but as yet unexplored differences in terror management strategies between casual nonbelievers and ardent atheists who view atheism as a major aspect of their worldview.

Summary of the evidence Taken together, existing research provides converging evidence of a terror management function of religious belief. Religiosity is generally associated with lower death anxiety; and reminders of mortality increase belief in an afterlife among believers; bias toward members of one’s own religion and against proponents of another religion; reluctance to use religious icons inappropriately; belief in the power of prayer in those who are religious; and subtle indications that outside of consciousness, even atheists may be drawn toward spiritual beliefs after MS. Thus, when mortality is salient, people invested in religion bolster commitment to their religious beliefs. Furthermore, belief in an afterlife and intrinsic religiosity reduces the use of terror management defenses; death-related thinking following a reminder of death; and is associated with lower self-reported death anxiety in religious people and implicit death anxiety in nonbelievers. This body of work thus points clearly to the conclusion that religious faith protects people from their concerns about death.

Broad implications of a terror management analysis of religion . . .society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives. (Becker, 1973, p. 7).

Freud (1927/1964) viewed religious belief as a sign of human weakness, a set of childish illusions to deny the truth of human vulnerability and mortality. Becker (1973) argued that, while rejecting conventional religion, Freud effectively embraced psychoanalysis as his personal religion. Becker stretched the use of the term “religion” to make the important point that all worldviews that serve a death-denying function by providing ultimate meaning and enduring value to life are fundamentally fictional and have supernatural elements. Indeed, Becker observed that “Science, after all, is a credo that has attempted to absorb into itself and to deny the fear of life and death; and it is only one more competitor in the spectrum of roles for cosmic heroics” (p. 284). Religious faith uses allegiance to a higher power as the primary source of security, whereas scientific and humanistic worldviews provide security through symbolic bases of death transcendence such as one’s nation, offspring, science, art, humankind, and fervent efforts to extend life indefinitely. Along similar lines, Roheim (1943, p. 100) broadly characterized all versions of culture as “. . .a huge network of more or less successful attempts to protect mankind against the danger of object-loss, the colossal efforts made by a baby who is afraid of being left alone in the dark.” In this sense, devotion to any meaning system is ultimately based on fear and a need for palliative illusion. However, it is certainly worth considering the relative merits for terror management of religious worldviews in contrast to purely secular ones.

The upside of religion Mythological and religious imagery of life beyond death. . .constitutes an “archetype,” a primordial, inherited, instinctual structure that is worthy of one’s “faith.” . . .I therefore consider the religious teaching of a life hereafter consonant with the standpoint of psychic hygiene. When I live in a house that I know will fall about my head in the next two weeks, all of my vital functions will be impaired by this thought; but, if on the contrary, I feel myself to be safe, I can dwell there in a normal comfortable way. (Jung, quoted in Lifton, 1979/1983, p. 15)

To manage existential terror, humans need some fabricated hero-system within which they can live with equanimity; and, as noted earlier, Becker (1971, 1973), following Kierkegaard, extolled the virtues of spiritual beliefs as the most secure basis for terror management. Faith in a hero-system that includes a sacred dimension, some connection with

14

PART | 1 Death

invisible higher powers, provides a more stable and fulfilling basis for self-worth and security than a life dedicated to the perpetual pursuit of pleasure, wealth, fame, and other ephemeral and external indicators of one’s lasting significance (e.g., James, 1902; Jung, 1969; St. Thomas Aquinas). This is, from a TMT perspective, one of the primary reasons that correlational evidence largely finds that religiosity is associated with mental health and well-being (for a review, see Koenig, 2009, 2015; Pargament, 1997). But Becker (1971, 1973) argued that a spiritual worldview does more than provide a firmer source for security; it also allows for the greatest possibilities of freedom, self-validation, and self-reliance (see also Erikson, 1963). The theologian Tillich (1959/1964, p. 9) put it this way: Religion opens up the depth of man’s spiritual life which is usually covered by the dust of our daily life and the noise of our secular work. It gives us the experience of the Holy, of something which is awe-inspiring, an ultimate meaning, the source of ultimate courage.

Religious faith provides strength to endure the difficulties of life, the prospects of an uncertain, scary future, and of inevitable death, while enabling people to resist conformity to others and investment in material things. If God is the primary basis of self-worth and security then one might be able to avoid the need to grope desperately for the approval and accolades of others or amass material wealth and external indicators of worth.

The downside of religion Of course, religion’s influence has not been unequivocally positive, a fact that did not escape Becker nor Tillich. The latter remarked “besides religion’s glory lies its shame. It makes its myths and doctrines, its rites and laws, into ultimates and persecutes those who do not subject themselves to it” (Tillich, 1959/1964, p. 9). Indeed, Lifton (1979/1983) argued that, although some forms of death transcendence are essential for mental health, the literal immortality ideologies espoused by major religions are the most immature and destructive. Similarly, Dawkins (2001), among others, has vilified religion as the foremost cause of many of the current violent problems around the globe. Clearly, over the course of history, religion has played, and continues to play, a major role in “man’s inhumanity to man,” for example, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Protestant conflict in Ireland, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Hindu Muslim discord in India, and Christian Muslim antagonism in Serbia. However, no student of the 20th-century history could abide such an exclusive focus on religion to explain humankind’s inability to peacefully coexist with others who do not share their beliefs. The explicitly nonreligious movements of Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, and Hitler wreaked more havoc on human life in a mere 60-year period than all the religion-influenced conflicts in recorded history combined. These tragic examples show that the problem is not religion per se, but something about certain particular types of worldviews and people’s vulnerabilities to them. In this regard, Rank (1941) and Becker (1971, 1973) proposed that violence and destruction do not stem from religious beliefs per se, but (as Tillich argued) from taking religious teachings too literally. People too often take metaphorical guidelines for good living and turn them into rigid, concrete absolutes. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Martin Luther all protested against idol worship and investment in mere material things instead of abstract principles. Yet their followers have continually fallen into the same trap; the Catholic Church, with its massive elaborately adorned cathedrals full of statues of saints, being one of many examples. Rank and Becker argued that most people simply cannot sustain faith in a symbolic worldview without concrete representations to materially buttress that faith. Even so, Rank, Becker, and Tillich advocated a personal spirituality quite different from the rigid, conventional forms of worship so prevalent in many parts of the world. In terms of Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis’s (1993) conceptualization of religious orientation, this type of spirituality is similar to the concept of a quest orientation as opposed to a means or end orientation (however, see Wulff, 1997; for alternative conceptualizations of a quest orientation). Research indicates that the quest but not the means or end orientation is associated with open-mindedness, differentiated moral reasoning, and greater cognitive complexity (for a review, see Batson et al., 1993). Jonas et al. (2013) findings that intrinsic but not extrinsic religiosity serve a protective function also points to the greater psychological benefits of a more personal religiosity.

A tale of two worldviews Perhaps the issue of what type of worldview serves humanity best comes down not to religious worldviews versus secular ones, but rather flexible, tolerant, and open worldviews versus dogmatic, fundamentalist, and closed ones. Indeed, Pyszczynski et al. (2003) argued that many of the current conflicts around the globe, particularly those involving terrorism, can be characterized as conflicts between these two types of worldviews, and that people are, in a sense, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

15

A rock The fundamentalist worldview is characterized as a rock because it provides a very clear, firm basis for psychological equanimity. Such worldviews have very clear prescriptions regarding the meaning and purpose of life and how to be an eternally valuable contributor to the world. They emphasize absolute truth and absolutes of good and evil. Those with different worldviews are designated as evil and are often considered worthy of annihilation. The fundamentalist Islamic worldview espoused by Osama bin Laden is an obvious example, but so too was Stalin’s Communism and Hitler’s Nazism. In the United States, fundamentalist Christianity often seems to fit this description as well, as these words of Pat Robertson demonstrate: The people who have come into [our] institutions are primarily termites. They are destroying institutions that have been built by Christians. . .the time has arrived for a godly fumigation. (Kramer, 1986, p. 24)

Some might suggest that, more generally, the worldviews of political conservatives, whether religious or not, in places such as the United States and Israel, are of the rock type, with their proneness to designating others as evil, whether it be Communists or Muslims (see, e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). However, as Greenberg and Jonas (2003) pointed out, rigid worldviews that demonize dissenters can readily be found in left-wing politics as well, as the regimes of Mao and Stalin made all too clear. A hard place The hard place, the alternative type of worldview, is a relativistic one, in which one’s views of meaning and purpose as well as right and wrong are held tentatively. With this type of worldview, one lives in uncertainty, aware that people can apprehend reality in a myriad of ways and that one’s own may not be any more true or worthy than a variety of others. Will one’s life be of ultimate value? Those who have accepted this type of worldview can never be sure. Hard place worldviews thus may be less effective for personal terror management and their proponents may live with greater anxiety and be more prone to legal and illegal drug use and other forms of distraction from awareness of one’s precarious existential state. To borrow from Marx the fundamentalist worldview is the opiate for its proponents, but for relativistic worldview advocates, literal opiates might be appealing. However, this hard place is one in which there is greater tolerance of different others and less demonization of others as evil. Consistent with this conceptualization of the hard place type of worldview, open-ended quest oriented religiosity is associated with high levels of anxiety and low levels of prejudice (see Batson et al., 1993). In addition, Weise, Arciszewski, Verlhiac, Pyszczynski, and Greenberg (2012) found that after MS, although highly authoritarian people become more negative toward immigrants, low authoritarians became less negative toward them. The analysis and findings to date suggest that the hard place is the more ecumenical and peace-promoting type of worldview. However, a substantial body of research has shown that after reminders of mortality, people generally show an increased preference for real and hypothetical leaders who promote rock-type worldviews over those who advocate hard place worldviews. In a fairly recent example, Cohen, Solomon, and Kaplin (2017) found that both terrorist attacks in the news and MS increased support for Donald Trump but not Hillary Clinton prior to the 2016 presidential election. A key psychological question then concerns what dispositional and situational factors encourage people to embrace open, tolerant worldviews instead of closed, dogmatic ones. We have few answers at this point. Pyszczynski et al. (2003) speculated that in places where material conditions are very difficult, like many parts of the Middle East there may be a particularly great need to believe in a highly specific form of afterlife that offers the things that are unobtainable in this one. Fundamentalism may also be particularly appealing when people have difficulty feeling of value or deriving meaning in the context of the global cultural worldview promoted in the secular, Western-dominated mass media. Thus areas of great poverty and groups that are portrayed as backward or are otherwise stigmatized on the global stage may be ripe for the appeal of extreme, rigid ideologies. As an example, based on Becker (1973), we have proposed that the rise of Nazism in Germany was a result of the poverty and humiliation experienced after the loss of World War I, combined with Hitler’s persistent self-confident selling of his worldview, according to which the German people would fulfill their great destiny (Greenberg, Schimel, Martens, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2001; see also Fromm, 1941/1965). The general point is that when mainstream worldviews are not serving terror management needs sufficiently, people are prone to turn to narrow fundamentalist worldviews—whether religious, Marxist, fascist, or capitalist—to help them feel that life is eternally meaningful and that they are of enduring value. Although considerably more empirical work is needed to understand this problem and how to ameliorate it, a recent line of research points to one dispositional factor that may contribute to susceptibility to fundamentalist worldviews:

16

PART | 1 Death

need for structure (Dechesne & Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). In a series of studies, Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and Martens (2006), Landau, Greenberg, Sullivan, Routledge, and Arndt (2009), Landau et al. (2004) have found that people high in need for structure reminded of their mortality increase their preference for consistent, simple, stereotypic views of other persons and social relationships, for mythic and conventional art, and for simplistic views of themselves. In contrast, people who are low in need for structure do not show these tendencies after MS and may even become more open to the unusual and the complex. In addition, people who value tolerance, have stable and intrinsic self-esteem, and are oriented toward self-expansive growth may be able to face mortality with a more open, hard place type of worldview, whether religious or not. Thus understanding the determinants of need for structure and a self-expansive orientation may be a fruitful avenue for exploring the appeal of more and less destructive forms of religious and secular worldviews.

Conclusion Beyond [the intellect] there is a thinking in primordial images. . .It is possible to live the fullest life only when we are in harmony with these symbols. . .one of these primordial images is the idea of life after death. . .The man who despairs marches toward nothingness, the one who has placed his faith in the archetype follows the tracks of life and lives right until death. Both, to be sure, remain in uncertainty. But the one lives against his instincts, the other with them. (Jung, quoted in Lifton, 1979/1983, p. 15)

Our goal in this chapter was to present the theoretical and empirical case for the idea that the uniquely human problem of awareness of mortality is a core motivational impetus for the formation of and adherence to religious beliefs and behavior. Religion, and more generally culture, enables humans to function securely in the world despite the knowledge of their perpetual vulnerability and inevitable death by providing them with a sense that they are persons of value in worlds of meaning, and thus potentially eligible for symbolic or literal immortality. The development of religion was thus a critical advance of central importance to the evolution of our species, rather than an irrelevant byproduct of cognitive processes that emerged to glean accurate accounts of reality (e.g., Pinker, 1997), or an infantile narcotic affectation that we may hope someday to outgrow. Human beings are fundamentally religious creatures, and the challenge for us now is developing religious orientations that maximize psychological well-being and prosocial behavior while minimizing the appalling carnage of crusades, inquisitions, jihads, and other malignant efforts to secure one’s own immortality at the expense of others. As Burkert (1996, p. 32) poignantly reminds us, religion is not only about denying death; it is also about “the longing for life.”

References Allen, G. (1897/2000). The evolution of the idea of god. Escondido, CA: The Book Tree. Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion: A psychological interpretation. New York: Macmillan. Arndt, J., Cook, A., & Routledge, C. (2004). The blueprint of terror management: Understanding the cognitive architecture of psychological defense against the awareness of death. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 35 53). New York: Guilford. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1997). Subliminal presentation of death reminders leads to increased defense of the cultural worldview. Psychological Science, 8, 379 385. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Simon, L. (1997). Suppression, accessibility of death-related thoughts and worldview defense: Exploring the psychodynamics of terror management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 5 18. Arndt, J., Schimel, J., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2003). Death can be good for your health: Fitness intentions as a proximal and distal defense against mortality salience. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33, 1726 1746. Atran, S. (2002). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford: University Press. Baldwin, J. (1963/1998). Collected essays. New York: Library of America. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, L. W. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social psychological perspective (pp. 141 155). New York: Oxford University Press. Batson, C. D., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Religion: Its core psychological functions. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford. Batson, C. D., & Ventis, L. W. (1982). The religious experience: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Becker, E. (1971). The birth and death of meaning. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press. Boyer, P. (1994). The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. University of California Press.

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

17

Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 155 195. Burkert, W. (1996). Creation of the sacred. Harvard University Press. Burling, J. W. (1993). Death concerns and symbolic aspects of the self: Effects of mortality salience on status concern and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 100 105. Butler, M. H., Stout, J. S., & Gardner, B. C. (2002). Prayer as a conflict resolution ritual: Clinical implications of religious couples’ report of relationship softening, healing perspective, and change responsibility. American Journal of Family Therapy, 30, 19 37. Carney, J., & Dickerson, J. F. (2001). A work in progress. Time, 158, 4. Cohen, A. B., Pierce, J. D., Chambers, J., Meade, R., Gorvine, B. J., & Koenig, H. G. (2005). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, belief in the afterlife, death anxiety, and life satisfaction in young Catholics and Protestants. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 307 324. Cohen, F., Solomon, S., & Kaplin, D. (2017). You’re hired! Mortality salience increased Americans’ support for Donald Trump. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 17(1), 339 357. Cook, C. L., Cohen, F., & Solomon, S. (2015). What if they’re right about the afterlife? Evidence of the role of existential threat on anti-atheist prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6, 840 846. Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R., Cooper, M., & Bouvrette, A. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 894 908. Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108, 593 623. Dawkins, R. (2001). Comment & analysis: Religion’s misguided missiles (p. 20) London: The Guardian. Dechesne, M., & Kruglanski, A. (2004). Terror’s epistemic consequences: Existential threats and the quests for certainty and closure. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 247 262). New York: Guilford Press. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 84, 722 737. Durkheim, E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press. (Original work published 1912). Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Harmann, D. (2006). Atheists as ‘‘other’’: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review, 71, 211 234. Elliot, E. (1985). Religion, identity and expression in American culture. Social Science Information, 24, 779 797. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1950). Ferenczi, S. (1916). Introjection and transference. Contributions to psychoanalysis. London: Phillips. Feuerbach, L. (1843/1980). Thoughts on death and immortality: From the papers of a thinker, along with an appendix of theological-satirical epigrams. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fishbach, A., Friedman, R. S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2003). Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 296 309. Florian, V., Mikulincer, M., & Hirschberger, G. (2002). The anxiety-buffering function of close relationships: Evidence that relationship commitment acts as a terror management mechanism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 527 542. Freud, S. (1915/1959). Thoughts for the time on war and death (Vol. 4). New York: Basic Books, 1915. Collected papers. Freud, S. (1917/1952). A general introduction to psychoanalysis. New York: Washington Square Press. Freud, S. (1927/1964). The future of an illusion. Garden City: Doubleday. Fromm, E. (1941/1965). Escape from freedom. New York: Avon Books. Gallup, Inc. Religious perceptions in America. With an in-depth analysis of U.S. attitudes toward Muslims and Islam. (2009). Available from ,http:// www.abudhabigallupcenter.com/.../WorldReligion_Report_en-US_final.pdf.. Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1189 1206. Goldenberg, J. L. (2012). A body of terror: Denial of death and the creaturely body. In P. R. Shaver, & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 93 110). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Goldenberg, J., McCoy, S. K., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2000). The body as a source of self-esteem: The effect of mortality salience on identification with one’s body, interest in sex, and appearance monitoring. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 79, 118 130. Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Orehek, E., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Intrinsic religiosity reduces intergroup hostility under mortality salience. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 451 461. Greenberg, J., & Jonas, E. (2003). Psychological motives and political orientation: The left, the right, and the rigid: Comment on Jost et al. (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129, 376 382. Greenberg, J., Martens, A., Jonas, E., Eisenstadt, D., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (2003). Psychological defense in anticipation of anxiety: Eliminating the potential for anxiety eliminates the effect of mortality salience on worldview defense. Psychological Science, 14, 516 519. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 308 318.

18

PART | 1 Death

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Simon, L., & Breus, M. (1994). Role of consciousness and accessibility of death-related thoughts in mortality salience effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 627 637. Greenberg, J., Schimel, J., Martens, A., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (2001). Sympathy for the devil: Evidence that reminding whites of their mortality promotes more favorable reactions to white racists. Motivation and Emotion, 25, 113 133. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Harmon-Jones, E., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1995). Testing alternative explanations for mortality salience effects: Terror management, value accessibility, or worrisome thoughts? European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 417 433. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Porteus, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1995). Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1221 1228. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements. In Mark Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 29, pp. 61 139). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Burling, J., Lyon, D., Pinel, E., & Simon, L. (1992). Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 913 922. Greenberg, J., Vail, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2014). Terror management theory and research: How the desire for death transcendence drives our strivings for meaning and significance. Advances in Motivation Science, 1, 85 134. Haidt, J., Bjo¨rklund, F., & Murphy, S. (2000). Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason. University of Virginia, Unpublished manuscript. Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2010). Why don’t we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 126 139. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 699 739. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Howard, A. L., Webber, D., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). When worldviews change and when they stay the same: Exploring accommodation vs. derogation in response to worldview threat. Edmonton, AB, Canada: University of Alberta, Unpublished manuscript. Heflick, N. A. (2006). Sentenced to die: Last statements and dying on death row. Omega: Journal for the Study of Death and Dying, 51, 323 336. Heflick, N. A., & Goldenberg, J. A. L. (2012). No atheists in foxholes: Arguments for (but not against) afterlife belief buffers mortality salience effects for theists. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 385 392. Hui, C. H., Chan, S. W. Y., Lau, E., Cheung, S. F., & Mok, D. S. Y. (2014). The role of religion in moderating the impact of life events on material life goals: Some evidence in support of terror management theory. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture, 17, 53 61. Jackson, J. C., Jong, J., Bluemke, M., Poulter, P., Morgenroth, L., & Halberstadt, J. (2018). Testing the causal relationship between religious belief and death anxiety. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 57 68. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1238842. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. New York: Modern Library. Jones, J. M. (2012). Atheists, Muslims see most bias as presidential candidates: Two-thirds would vote for gay or lesbian. Based on June 7-10, 2012 Gallup poll. Gallup News Service. June 21, Available from ,http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/Atheists-Muslims-Bias-Presi-dential-Candidates. aspx.. Jong, J., Bluemke, M., & Halberstadt, J. (2013). Fear of death and supernatural beliefs: Developing a new supernatural belief scale to test the relationship. European Journal of Personality, 27(5), 495 506. Jonas, E., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2013). Generosity, greed, norms, and death differential effects of mortality salience on charitable behavior. Journal of Economic Psychology, 35, 47 57. Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 983 989. Jong, J., Ross, R., Philip, T., Chang, S., Simons, N., & Halberstadt, J. (2018). The religious correlates of death anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 4 20. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339 375. Jung, C. G. (1969). Psychology and religion, . (2nd ed., pp. 3 105). Collected works, (Vol. 11, pp. 3 105). New York: Pantheon. (Original work published 1938). Kahoe, R. D., & Dunn, R. F. (1975). The fear of death and religious attitudes and behavior. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 379 382. Kierkegaard, S. (1955). Fear and trembling and the sickness unto death. Doubleday. (Original work published in 1843). Kirkpatrick, L. (1998). God as a substitute attachment figure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 961 973. Koenig, H. G. (2009). Research on religion, spirituality, and mental health: A review. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 54, 283 291. Koenig, H. G. (2015). Religion, spirituality, and health: A review and update. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 29, 19 26. Kruglanski, A., & Webster, D. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing”. Psychological Review, 103, 263 283. Lampman, J. (2001, November 29). Spiritual resurgence rises, fall in U.S.; more in Europe identify as religious. The Christian Science Monitor. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 879 892. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Sullivan, D., Routledge, C., & Arndt, J. (2009). The protective identity: Evidence that mortality salience heightens the clarity and coherence of the self-concept. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 796 807. Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Martens, A. (2004). A Function of form: Terror management and structuring of the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 190 210. Langer, S. K. (1982). Mind: An essay on human feeling (Vol. III). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: on the terror management function of religion Chapter | 1

19

Leuba, J. H. (1925). The psychology of religious mysticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Soenke, M., Darrell, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2017). Mortality salience, religiosity, and indefinite life extension: Evidence of the reciprocal relationship between afterlife beliefs and support for forestalling death. Religion, Brian, and Behavior, 8, 31 43. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Weise, D., & Soenke, M. (2016). It’s the end of the world and I feel fine: Soul belief and perceptions of end-of-the-world scenarios. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 104 117. Lifton, R. J. (1968). Revolutionary immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese cultural revolution. New York: Random House. Lifton, R. J. (1979/1983). The broken connection: On death and continuity of life. New York: Basic Books. Lindeman, M., Heywood, B., Riekki, T., & Makkonen, T. (2014). Atheists become emotionally aroused when daring God to do terrible things. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 24, 124 132. Lonetto, R., & Templer, D. I. (1986). Death anxiety. Washington, DC: Hemisphere. Lundh, L., & Radon, V. (1998). Death anxiety as a function of belief in an afterlife. A comparison between a questionnaire measure and a Stroop measure of death anxiety. Personality and Individual Differences, 25, 487 494. Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York: Harper and Row. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neuberg, S., & Newsom, J. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simpler structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 113 131. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2013). The origins of religious disbelief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 20 25. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174 187. Osarchuk, M., & Tatz, S. (1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in an afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 256 260. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. New York: Guilford Press. Pelham, B. W., Shimizu, M., Arndt, J., Carvallo, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2018). Searching for God: Illness-related mortality threats and religious search volume in Google in 16 nations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(3), 290 303. Peters, H. J., Greenberg, J., Williams, J. M., & Schneider, N. R. (2005). Applying terror management theory to performance: Can reminding individuals of their mortality increase strength output? Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 27, 111 116. Plusnin, N., Pepping, C. A., & Kashima, E. S. (2018). The role of close relationships in terror management: A systematic review and research agenda. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22, 307 346. Pinker, S. (2009). How the mind works (1997/2009). Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835 845. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rank, O. (1929/1973). The trauma of birth. New York: Harper & Row. Rank, O. (1931/1961). In Perpetua (Ed.), Psychology and the soul. New York: A. S. Barnes. Rank, O. (1941/1958). Beyond psychology. New York: Dover Books. Redl, F. (1942). Group emotion and leadership. Psychiatry, 573 596. Reich, W. (1933). The mass psychology of fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus. Rice, P. (December 22, 2001). Religious books are rising to the occasion. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 16, Religion section. Kramer, M. (August 18, 1986). “Are You Running with Me Jesus? Televangelist Pat Robertson Goes for the White House,” New York Magazine. Roheim, G. (1943). The origin and function of culture. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph no. 69. Roth, P. (2001). The dying animal. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 816 827. Schoenrade, P. (1989). When I die . . .: Belief in afterlife as a response to mortality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 91 100. Siegel, R. (1980). The psychology of life after death. American Psychologist, 35, 911 931. Skinner, B. F. (1948). “Superstition” in the pigeon. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 168 172. Smart, N. (1996). Dimensions of the sacred. London: Harper Collins. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991a). A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of selfesteem and cultural worldviews. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 24, pp. 91 159). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 13 34). New York: Guilford. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The worm at the core: The role of death in life. New York: Random House. Spengler, O. (1999). The decline of the West, Vol. 1: Form and actuality. New York: Alfred A Knopf. (Original work published 1926). Spilka, B., Stout, L., Minton, B., & Sizemore, D. (1977). Death and personal faith: A psychometric investigation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 16, 169 178. Statius (AD 45 AD 96), Book X of the Thebaid and five poems from the Silvae. Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton.

20

PART | 1 Death

Taubman Ben-Ari, O., Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1999). The impact of mortality salience on reckless driving: A test of terror management mechanisms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 35 45. Tillich, P. (1959/1964). In R. Kimball (Ed.), Theology of culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 38, 1288 1300. Vail, K. E., III, Soenke, M., Waggoner, B., & Mavropoulou, I. (2019). Natural, but not supernatural, literal immortality affirmation attenuates mortality salience effects on worldview defense in atheists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0146167219855051. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Exploring the existential function of religion: The effect of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on faith-based medical refusals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334 350. Weise, D. R., Arciszewski, T., Verlhiac, J. F., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2012). Terror management and attitudes towards immigrants: Differential effects of mortality salience for low and high right-wing authoritarians. European Psychologist, 17, 63 72. Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, religion and the nature of society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wulff, D. H. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Zestcott, C. A., Lifshin, U., Helm, P., & Greenberg, J. (2016). He dies, he scores: Evidence that reminders of death motivate improved performance in basketball. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 38, 470 480.

Further reading Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2000). Fleeing the body: A terror management perspective on the problem of human corporeality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 200 218. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Arndt, J. (2008). A basic but uniquely human motivation: Terror management. In J. Shah, & W. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of Motivation Science (pp. 114 134). New York: Guilford Press. Kass, J. D., Friedman, R., Leserman, J., Zuttermeister, P. C., & Benson, H. (1991). Health outcomes and a new index of spiritual experience. Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 203 211. Mikulincer, M., Florian, V., & Hirschberger, G. (2003). The existential function of close relationships: Introducing death into the science of love. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 20 40. Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T. J., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 789 803. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991b). A terror management theory of self-esteem. In C. R. Snyder, & D. Forsyth (Eds.), Handbook of social and clinical psychology: The health perspective (pp. 21 40). New York: Pergammon Press. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2003). Human awareness of death and the evolution of culture. In M. Schaller, & C. Crandall (Eds.), The psychological foundations of culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chapter 2

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Jonathan Jong Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom

This chapter further explores the connection between explicit death anxiety and religious belief. Dealing with a large body of empirical research, it considers various interpretations of terror management theory (TMT) and their predictions about whether people are aware of and consciously afraid of death; whether death anxiety systematically covaries with religiosity; and how the two are causally related. As we gain more—and more complex—answers to these empirical questions, TMT may have to evolve to reconsider how death thought accessibility (DTA) and death anxiety are related, whether literal immortality pursuits outweigh symbolic immortality pursuits, and how culturally specific factors impact the ostensibly universal fear of death. The idea that religious beliefs and practices are psychological and cultural means for assuaging fear is one that enjoys an impressive and impressively venerable pedigree. Lucretius Carus’s (c. 99 BCE c. 55 BCE) poetic celebration of Epicurean philosophy, On the Nature of Things, contains among its speculations the idea that it is the uncertainties and perils of mortal life that lead us to believe that the gods control the natural world. The gods can at least be appealed to and appeased, unlike the inanimate atoms that Lucretius knew to be the real causes of things. It would not be long before the sentiment is enshrined in a phrase—primus in orbe deos fecit timor; fear first made gods in the world—that appears in at least two different poems in the 1st century CE.1 The more specific idea that the fear of death is what motivates religious belief and practice develops later, though the idea that death anxiety is a powerful force in human psychology more generally can already be found in antiquity. For example, in City of God (4.3, 5.13), Augustine of Hippo analyzes the Roman love of glory—as evinced by their pursuit of war as well as art—as a product of death anxiety: he also interprets the fear of death theologically, arguing that our fear of death may, and indeed ought to, lead us to treasure eternal things (Martin, 2009). Hume’s (2008) Natural History of Religion is perhaps the best early example of a naturalistic theory of religion. The theory set out in the book is surprisingly modern, comprising both cognitive elements as well as affective ones. Among the litany of passions that Hume (2008, p. 140) lists as the triggers of “the first obscure traces of divinity” in the minds of our ancestors is the terror of death. A century later, Feuerbach (1967) also lists the fear of death as an example of the feelings of dependency that he claims as the psychological source of religion: but death also clearly has a special place in his theorizing. “If man did not die, if he lived forever, if there no such thing as death,” writes Feuerbach (p. 33), “there would be no religion”; and again, that “man’s tomb is the sole birthplace of the gods.” All of which is to say that such ideas were already in the air by the time we get to Sigmund Freud and Bronisław Malinowski, with whom social and psychological scientists may be more familiar. Freud actually has surprisingly little to say directly on the role that the fear of death plays in religious belief: his theorizing about the interplay between anxiety, death, and religion is characteristically convoluted, involving themes we have come to expect of Freud such as the incest taboo and primordial patricide. However, in The Future of an Illusion, Freud (2001, p. 18) does claim that gods—if they are to deserve devotion—“must exorcize the terror of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.” Furthermore, Freud’s work also proved sufficiently suggestive for later psychoanalytic theorists like Ernest Becker, who in turn inspired TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). 1. Petronius’s (27 CE 66 CE) Poems 1 and Statius’s (45 CE 96 CE) Thebaid, Book 3. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00003-2 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

21

22

PART | 1 Death

The anthropologist Malinowski (1948) was more emphatic about the role that death played in the emergence of religion: reminiscent of Feuerbach, he writes that “[t]he belief in spirits is the result of the belief in immortality” (p. 51); and again, “Of all sources of religion, the supreme and final crisis of life—death—is of the greatest importance” (p. 47). Although numerous thinkers down the centuries have speculated about the role of death anxiety in the emergence of religion in human cognitive and cultural evolution, Ernest Becker’s development and expansion of this theme remains significant as a watershed. The Denial of Death—published in 1973 (Becker, 1973), and which posthumously won Becker a Pulitzer Prize a year later—put the fear of death at center stage. In it, Becker argued that all human beings share a fundamental need to deny our mortality, which in turn shapes our other desires including the desire for selfesteem, sociality with others, and systems of shared values and accomplishments such as religion, morality, art, and science. In other words, it expressed a social scientific theory of everything organized around a single fundamental force: the fear of death. Just as Becker’s theory is about more than religion as commonly understood, so is TMT, the social psychological interpretation of Becker. Indeed, of the hundreds of published studies under the rubric of TMT, the vast majority are about what the theory calls “symbolic immortality.” These studies have found that when people are confronted with reminders of their mortality, they become more desirous of fame and fortune, self-esteem and the esteem of others.2 Thoughts of death also lead people to prefer others such as themselves and be less tolerant of those who differ from them: prejudice—whether on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, or age—is the dark side of our pursuit of symbolic immortality, which is the kind of immortality that one obtains by being a part of a larger more longevous phenomenon than the individual human organism. Symbolic immortality is, in other words, an ersatz immortality, even if it is the only kind possible. The term itself carries this implication, especially when contrasted with the literal variety promised by many religions and some biomedical sciences, whether through the transmigration of the soul or the extension of telomeres. Literal immortality is not only analytically prior to the symbolic kind that has received most of the psychological research attention but also theoretically prior, as we find it both in Becker’s own work and in recent expositions of TMT. In the first chapter of The Denial of Death, even before the central argument begins, he describes what it is he is trying to explain: he begins by calling it heroism, which he comes to diagnose as the human aspiration that comes from the “ache for cosmic specialness” (p. 4). This leads him to the conclusion that “[e]very society thus is a ‘religion’ whether it thinks so or not . . . no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.” Similarly, in Solomon et al.’s (2015) recent book-length treatment of TMT, religion—belief in the immortality-granting supernatural—is posited to be a precondition of further cultural and technological achievement: “the sophisticated cognitive capacities associated with consciousness could serve our ancestors well only when buttressed by confidence in a supernatural universe in which death could be forestalled and ultimately transcended” (p. 69). Given the centrality of religion to TMT and its direct predecessor, the empirical literature’s emphasis on symbolic immortality overliteral immortality is surprising: fortunately, it is recently being rectified, and one of the tasks of this present chapter is to summarize these newer contributions. However, there is another neglected and yet fundamental aspect of TMT to be addressed: indeed, it is one shared with all thanatocentric theories of religion, even from David Hume’s incipient comments onward. All these theories assume that people fear death. Neither Ernest Becker nor terror management theorists are shy about this: in the latter case, the clue is in the name. People are not merely afraid of death; they are terrified by it. Solomon et al. (2015) wax superlative about just how terrified we are, insisting that without an ability to deny death, our fear would have hurled “our terrified and demoralized ancestors into the psychological abyss and onto the evolutionary scrap heap of extinct life-forms” (p. 64). Similarly, The Denial of Death opens with the claim that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else” (p. ix); and Becker goes so far as to posit “the universality of the innate terror of death” (p. 20). The fear of death is, for Becker, the flip side of our desire to live, “the instinct of self-preservation” (p. 16) for which there is plenteous evidence, not only in human beings but also across many species: just watch what happens when an animal—human or otherwise—is confronted with imminent danger. Whereas this instinct of self-preservation is not unique to human beings, the awareness of our mortality is to the extent that existential awareness is also unique to our species: even in the absence of immediate peril, we alone among creatures know the fate that awaits us all, and the fear of death therefore disturbs us greatly. Or so goes the theory. The trouble with this first premise of TMT is that it is rather difficult to prove, or for that matter, to falsify. This is because it is coupled with another fundamental hypothesis in the theory, that the knowledge and concomitant terror of

2. For a recent and comprehensive review, see Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (2015).

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

23

death are suppressed or denied in some way. There are various accounts of the mechanisms of death denial, but the upshot of all of them is that because human beings are very successful at keeping our thoughts and fears about death at bay, these thoughts and fears must be very difficult to detect. Becker himself noticed that his theory ran the risk of unfalsifiability, and so proposed two potential solutions: he suggested that psychophysiological measures may succeed to detect death anxiety where self-report measures fail, and also that “shocks in the real world [may] jar loose repressions” (p. 21). Becker’s first suggestion is a promising one, but only a few studies have attempted to used measures such as galvanic skin response and electromyography to assess death anxiety (e.g., Arndt, Allen, & Greenberg, 2001; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989; Templer, 1971); none of them are large enough to permit reasonable generalizations about the prevalence of death anxiety. There have been recent attempts to employ neuroimaging methods, but these have resulted in equivocal and inconsistent results (Jong & Halberstadt, 2018). Also beyond the scope of this chapter is research on implicit measures: although there is increasing interest in implicit measures of religiosity (Jong, Zahl, & Sharp, 2017), the development of implicit measures of death anxiety is still in its infancy (Jackson et al., 2018). His second proposal is more difficult to apply in the laboratory, though TMT’s standard mortality salience induction procedure may serve a similar function of bringing suppressed thoughts of death to fore; we shall consider the relationship between mortality salience and death anxiety later. Perhaps Becker is right to be pessimistic about the ability of self-report measures to detect the universal innate terror of death that forms the primary assumption of his theory. He is certainly not alone in pointing out the limitations of self-report measures. On the other hand, the alleged limitations of self-report measures are often exaggerated (Chan, 2009), and we have a better understanding of how self-report measures work and what they mean than we do about more subtle measures that rely on reaction times or physiological changes. Psychologists should not too easily give up on self-report measures, even if our theories tell us that the phenomena we are trying to measure is likely to be elusive. It is in this spirit that this chapter begins—with Becker’s caveat in mind—with a review of the varied attempts that have been made to detect death anxiety in people.

Are people afraid of death? Pt 1: Evidence from lists Before we get to the evidence, there is a matter of terminology to clarify. This chapter will mostly use the terms “fear of death” and “death anxiety” interchangeably. However, there may be good theoretical reasons to distinguish between fear and anxiety; different theorists have drawn the distinction in different ways, for example, as that between concrete versus symbolic threats (Lazarus & Averill, 1972) or immediate versus anticipatory responses (McNaughton & Corr, 2004). Jong and Halberstadt (2016) have argued that anxiety is the right term, as the “fear” of death is an anticipatory response to an abstract threat. Death is not a thing in the way that a poisonous snake or armed robber is a thing; and if death anxiety is theorized to be a chronic aspect of human nature, then it exists even in the absence of such threats to our lives as snakes or robbers. In contrast, Lambert et al. (2014) have focused on other criteria like the inevitability of the threat in question (viz., death) to argue that it is fear that TMT should be concerned with. This chapter will mostly sidestep this debate but will draw the distinction between immediate and anticipatory fears where necessary. The most obvious way to know whether people are afraid of death is to ask them. There are two ways one might go about this. One might ask people what they are afraid of, and see if death appears in the list. Alternatively, one might ask people directly whether they are afraid of death. There are upsides and downsides to both approaches. The upside to the latter method is that it is unambiguous: participants state whether they fear death, and if so, how much. The downside is that the method explicitly plants the idea of the fear of death in their minds: their response may therefore be affected by the suggestion. The upside to the free-list method is that the researcher does not prejudice the respondents’ answers in this way; the downside is that the researcher has to judge whether the answers indicate death anxiety. She may take a restrictive route, and only count overt mentions of death and dying; or she may also count lifethreatening diseases and hazards such as cancer and car accidents; or she may opt for an even more permissive rule, counting all manners of hazards—such as the fear of spiders or heights—as indicators of death anxiety. In any case, she risks under- or overestimating respondents’ death anxiety. Perhaps for the reasons outlined previously, the free-list method has been unfashionable for many decades, which makes free-list data on people’s fears difficult to come by Hall’s (1897) and Jersild and Holmes’s (1935) studies in the early decades of psychological science remain among the largest relevant datasets available, though both focus on children. Hall obtained—in a rather unsystematic fashion, as he himself admits—written responses from 1701 individuals describing their own, their children’s, or their students’ “early or present fears” (p. 149); from these, he extracted 6456 fears, predominantly those of children between the ages of 4 15 years. He summarized his findings thus:

24

PART | 1 Death

It would appear that thunder storms are feared most, that reptiles follow, with strangers and darkness as close seconds, while fire, death, domestic animals, disease, wild animals, water, ghosts, insects, rats and mice, robbers, high winds, dream fears, cats and dogs, cyclones, solitude, drowning, birds, etc., represent decreasing degrees of fearfulness. (p. 152)

The published tables show that death only makes up less than 5% of the total fears listed: even if we included diseases, that would only bring the figure up to just over 8%. Jersild and Holmes’s subsequent studies similarly found little evidence of death anxiety among children, though obviously dangerous or threatening things do appear more frequently. Parental reports they collected of 136 children aged 8 years and under found that only 4 mentioned the fear of death and death-related things such as corpses and cemeteries; interviews with 398 children aged between 5 and 12 years found that the fear of death made up less than 1% of the responses, with another 2.5% being the fear of death-related things. Fear of “possible danger or threat of bodily injury in specific situations, through fire, traffic, drowning, fighting, and the like” added a further 11.9%. More recently, Muris, Merckelbach, Gadet, and Moulaert (2000) looked at differences between children’s fears and worries, defining the latter to refer to anticipatory thoughts about a future negative experience in keeping with our definition of anxiety at the beginning of this section. They found—as Hall (1897) and Jersild and Holmes (1935) did—that only 2.1% of the children (N 5 190; age range: 4 12 years; Mage 5 7.9, SD 5 2.3) reported fearing death; however, 14.8% of them reported being worried about death. This raises the possibility that the low rate of death-related responses among children in previous studies is an artifact of their choice of terminology. In any case, the frequency of death-related responses seems to increase as children get older. One of the biggest recent studies on fears among teenagers is a Gallup telephone poll that asked 1028 teenagers, aged 13 18 years, what they were most afraid of (Lyons, 2005): only 7% of respondents mentioned death, dying, or being killed as their greatest fear. However, this was the second most common response, after the fear of terrorists (8%), which reflects the salience of this threat in the years directly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The fear of terrorism might be a proxy for the fear of death, as might other sources of bodily harm mentioned (e.g., “crime,” “nuclear war”; reported by 3% and 2% of respondents, respectively). Even so, fears of death and mortal threats do not add to up a majority of the responses, which also included things such as spiders (7%), heights (5%), being alone (3%), and the “real world” (3%). Jong and Halberstadt (2016) have also run a similar poll, also in the United States (N 5 813; Mage 5 35.9, SD 5 11.3). Rather than asking for only one thing that people were the most afraid of, they asked participants to list five of the things they were “most afraid of or most worried about” (p. 92). In contrast to previous studies, 46.5% of these participants mentioned the fear of death among their top five fears, with 21.4% specifying the fear of their own death. However, this American sample seems to be an outlier in their broader study, which also included samples from Russia, Brazil, South Korea, and the Philippines (n 5 200 each; Mage 5 35.4, SD 5 10.5). Across these countries, 26.6% mentioned the fear of death with only 4.1% specifying the fear of their own death. These figures are still conspicuously higher than those from previous studies. This may be because adults are more prone to death anxiety than teenagers and children, but it could also be because participants were asked to list five fears: perhaps if they were asked for fewer, fewer people may have reported a fear of death. On the (dubious) assumption that the first thing mentioned indicates respondents’ topmost fear, 18.7% of the American participants feared death most; across the other countries, 13.4% mentioned death first. List and other open-ended survey data may be rich, but they also present many methodological challenges to researchers who have to categorize and interpret participants’ responses. For example, one way to think about the results we have just considered is to say that both the Gallup survey on teenagers and Jong and Halberstadt’s multinational survey on adults indicate that death features prominently among our most salient fears. Jong and Halberstadt’s findings suggest that for a significant minority—a quarter to almost half—of us, death is one of the five things we fear most: the Gallup survey suggests that even though only 7% of us claim death as our greatest fear, death—especially we include terrorism—is mentioned more than anything else. On the other hand, if only 7% of us fear death most of us and fewer than half of us name death among our five greatest fears, the fear of death seems far from the universal terror that terror management theorists claim it to be.

Are people afraid of death? Pt 2: Evidence from scales Free-list studies may have gone out of fashion, but psychometric testing has not. From the late 1960s onward, there have been several attempts to construct and validate psychometric tools to assess individual levels of death anxiety (for reviews of available scales, see Jong & Halberstadt, 2016; Neimeyer, 1994). However, large-scale studies on population

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

25

levels and distributions of death anxiety are still quite rare. Templer and Ruff’s (1971) collation of data from 23 different samples (N 5 3600) of adolescents and adults is the largest available source of descriptive statistics for Templer’s (1970) Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). They found that, out of a maximum score of 15 (with higher scores indicating higher levels of death anxiety), “means of normal [subjects] tend to be roughly from 4.5 to 7.0; the standard deviations a little over 3.0” (p. 173). Similarly, Neimeyer and Moore’s (1994) study on Hoelter’s (1979) Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) found a sample mean of 139.6 (SD 5 21.3) out of a maximum of 210, with higher scores indicate lower fear of death (Mage 5 53.9, SD 5 17.2; N 5 952). In both cases, they found that people were generally not explicitly afraid of death. One problem with looking at aggregate scores is that most of the available scales have—either theoretically or empirically—multidimensional structures, often including fears of the dying process (e.g., pain) and fears for others (e.g., the death of loved ones), which are not directly germane to our concerns. This is true for both the DAS and the MFODS, for example. Furthermore, there is also some evidence that items that target the fear of one’s own death generally elicit lower scores than those that target other related fears (e.g., Mooney & O’Gorman, 2001; Power & Smith, 2008; Zana, Szabo´, & Heged˝us, 2009). To address this concern, Jong and Halberstadt (2016) developed the Existential DAS (EDAS), which specifically targets the fear of one’s own death (as opposed to the dying process), with an emphasis on the fear of annihilation or nonexistence. Examples of items include “The finality of death is frightening to me” and “I am scared that death will extinguish me as a person,” to which participants respond on a 9-point scale anchored at “Strongly Disagree” (24) and “Strongly Agree” (4) with “Neither Agree nor Disagree” (0) as a midpoint.3 The EDAS was included in the study previously mentioned, which collected lists of participants’ worst fears. Given the relatively high frequency of responses concerning death in that task, one might expect relatively high EDAS scores. However, in all the countries, sample means varied around the midpoint: on average, people did not feel strongly about their own death.4 Upon closer inspection, Jong and Halberstadt (2016) found that most samples showed a trimodal distribution, in which the modal responses clustered around the extreme low and high ends of the scale, with another smaller peak at the midpoint. Additional data from Japan (n 5 225) also showed peaks at the low end and midpoint (M 5 20.99, SD 5 2.0). As part of another project led by McKay, Jong and Halberstadt (2016),5 more data on the EDAS were collected from the United States (n 5 299), Brazil (n 5 189), and Russia (n 5 185), as well as from China (n 5 194), India (n 5 188), Indonesia (n 5 191), Thailand (n 5 183), and Turkey (n 5 195) (age range 5 18 91 years; Mage 5 34.5, SD 5 10.5), which confirmed this pattern.6 Many of these samples showed peaks at the extreme low end and midpoint, with some also showing the trimodal pattern early. The evidence from DASs is less ambivalent than that from free-list studies: overall, people do not explicitly fear death. The standard TMT response to the observation that we are not all crippled by death anxiety is, as we have already seen, that this is because we are very good at variously suppressing or denying our death. However—as Becker suggests—it is not unreasonable to suppose that we might find it difficult to distract ourselves from the inevitability of our mortality when it is imminent.

Are people afraid of death? Pt 3: Death anxiety and proximity to death As psychologists are rarely permitted to administer DASs at people’s deathbeds, the most relevant evidence comes from studies focused on the elderly and the terminally ill. Studies of the general population like those we have been considering are of limited value, as older adults tend to be underrepresented. Furthermore, as these studies generally employ cross-sectional correlational designs rather than a longitudinal one, we are not able to tell whether any effects are due to aging or whether they reflect cohort differences. 3. Jong and Halberstadt (2016) typically analyzed two subscales of the EDAS separately—corresponding to the fear of the cessation of life and of the extinction of the self respectively—but this chapter will, for sake of brevity, aggregate all scale items together to form a single score. They also transformed the scale scores to range from 1 to 9 to be comparable with other measures they discuss; for this chapter, the original 24 to 4 scale will be maintained. 4. The mean scores were as follows: United States 5 0.24 (SD 5 2.7), Brazil 5 0.35 (SD 5 2.6), South Korea 5 20.18 (SD 5 2.3), the Philippines 5 0.33 (SD 5 2.5), and Russia 5 20.08 (SD 5 2.5). 5. The project titled Toward an affective science of religion: the emotional causes and consequences of religious belief was funded by the John Templeton Foundation (no. 52257), awarded to Ryan McKay, Jonathan Jong, and Jamin Halberstadt. 6. The mean scores were as follows: United States 5 20.49 (SD 5 2.6), Brazil 5 21.02 (SD 5 2.8), Russia 5 20.14 (SD 5 2.6), China 5 20.77 (SD 5 2.4), India 5 20.99 (SD 5 2.5), Indonesia 5 21.09 (SD 5 2.4), Thailand 5 20.01 (SD 5 2.3), and Turkey 5 20.15 (SD 5 2.5).

26

PART | 1 Death

It has been observed before that studies sometimes find that death anxiety is negatively correlated with age—older people fear death less than younger people—but Fortner and Neimeyer’s (1999), see also Fortner, Neimeyer, and Rybarczyk (2000) review of 27 studies, found no robust effect. Jong and Halberstadt (2016) did find a weak negative correlation between age and death anxiety in their American sample (r 5 20.18, P 5 .001), but not in their Brazilian, Korean, Filipino, and Russian samples. McKay et al. (2016) did not replicate the finding in their American sample, but negative correlations did obtain in their Thai (r 5 20.29, P , .001), Brazilian (r 5 20.21, P , .005), and Indonesian (r 5 20.18, P , .05) samples. The main problem with these and most other studies is that participants skew young: across both of these multinational studies, only six participants were over the age of 70. For this reason, Cicirelli’s (2002) research stands out as it focuses on elderly participants in the United States, between the ages of 70 and 99 years (N 5 109). He found no linear trend across the sample, but both the fear of the dying process (e.g., pain) and of the unknown (e.g., nonexistence) did increase with age between participants’ 70s and mid-80s, before declining again toward and into their 90s. As with the previous studies, it is not clear here whether the age differences reflect a cohort effect or an effect of aging per se. Research among terminally ill individuals is no less difficult than research among the very elderly. Even when access to a clinical sample is available, researchers face further methodological challenges. For example, as psychological distress often accompanies terminal illness, death anxiety is often difficult to distinguish from more generalized anxiety, and other forms of negative affect (e.g., Cella & Tross, 1987; Gonen et al., 2012; Hintze, Templer, Calleppetty, & Frederick, 1993). In any case, there is very little evidence that terminally ill patients are more death anxious than other ill or healthy people. For example, Feifel and Branscomb (1973) and Feifel (1974) found that most of their 92 seriously and terminally ill patients explicitly denied fearing their own death (77% among religious and 80% among nonreligious participants, respectively); this was similar to their findings among healthy participants. Aggregating across 371 participants, both healthy and ill, Feifel and Branscomb (1973) did not find that participants’ nearness to death predicted their fear of it. Furthermore, by far the most common reason given for their lack of fear was that death is inevitable, which is in direct contradiction with Ernest Becker’s and TMT’s claim that it is precisely this exact aspect of death that is the cause of fear. Goranson, Ritter, Waytz, Norton, and Gray (2017) recently tried to tackle the question in a novel way, by analyzing the writings of terminally ill patients and convicts on death row. In their first study, they compared blog posts of patients with cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (n 5 20 and 5, respectively, totaling 2616 posts) who were near death with those of recruited healthy participants who were asked to write blog posts as if they were terminally ill. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count tool to assess the emotional valence of the blog posts, Goranson et al. (2017) found that the simulated posts were less positive and more negative than those written by people who were actually near death: this result was replicated when they employed human coders to rate the posts for emotional valence. Furthermore, longitudinal analyses revealed that the blog posts for the patients did not become more negative over time (i.e., as they got closer to death), and instead became more positive. They then repeated this comparative method in the second study, this time comparing the recorded last words of inmates on death row, poetry by inmates on death row, and simulated last words by recruited participants imagining they were on death row. The actual last words were taken from the Texas Department of Justice, which makes available executed prisoners’ last words going back to 1982 (n 5 396). The death row poetry came from five books that collected such poetry (n 5 188). Analogous to the previous study, the researchers again found that actual last words were more positive and less negative than imagined last words; actual last words were also less negative but not more positive than death row poetry. The most obvious TMT interpretation of the fact that death anxiety does not increase—and may even decrease— with proximity to death is that people close to death have psychological resources available that help them to suppress or deny their fears. The elderly, for example, may have shored up enough accomplishments in their lives to satisfy their own needs for symbolic immortality. However, it is difficult to imagine situations that would “jar loose” thoughts and fears of death more than actual proximity to death: there is therefore something ad hoc about the attempt to incorporate these findings seamlessly into TMT.

Are people afraid of death? Pt 4: Death anxiety and mortality salience According to most expositions of TMT, it is not simply the fact of our mortality that gives rise to terror: the problem unique to our species, so far as we know, is that we are aware of the fact of our mortality and its inevitability. It would therefore be reasonable to suppose that people are more aware of their mortality to be more fearful of death, and that people would be more death anxious when they are reminded of their mortality. In the previous section, we saw that

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

27

TABLE 2.1 Death anxiety as a function of life-threatening experience. Country

n (Y, N)

F

P

η2p

United States Brazil South Korea The Philippines Russia Japan

288, 525 105, 95 86, 114 77, 123 40, 160 109, 116

0.001 0.392 0.021 0.448 0.563 0.653

.982 .532 .021 .448 .563 .420

0.000 0.002 0.027 0.003 0.002 0.003

people who were near death—and therefore presumably more aware of their mortality than the rest of us—were not more death anxious. However, there may be other proxies for increased awareness of mortality to consider. We might, for example, look to see whether people’s previous experiences with death predicted their levels of death anxiety. Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) international study included several items relevant to this, which permit new analyses that they did not originally consider. For example, they asked whether participants had ever had an experience in which they almost died. The only country in which such a close brush with death predicted death anxiety was South Korea (see Table 2.1 for other countries), where respondents who reported that they had at least once almost died (M 5 0.24, SD 5 2.1) also had higher EDAS scores than those who have never had such an experience (M 5 20.05, SD 5 2.4). They also asked a question about one’s subjective familiarity with death—“Overall, how familiar are you with death, the dead (e.g., what corpses are like), and dying (e.g., what the process looks like)?”—responses to which did predict death anxiety in the United States (r 5 0.18, P , .001) and Japan (r 5 0.23, P , .001) but not elsewhere.7 The American version of Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) study also included a standard measure of what TMT calls DTA, which is the extent to which thoughts of death are activated in someone’s mind, albeit unconsciously (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994). This measure is a word fragment completion task, in which participants are given an incomplete word—for example, C O F F_ _—which they have to complete: in the target cases, the word fragment may be completed in a death-related (COFFIN) or death-unrelated (COFFEE) way. In TMT research, this is a measure of temporary accessibility: that is, it is a state measure, rather than a trait measure. However, the word fragment completion paradigm has also been used in other domains as a trait measure (Uhlmann et al., 2012), which is how it was applied in Jong and Halberstadt’s study. The task comprises 25-word fragments, of which 6 could be completed in a death-related manner. None of the participants completed all six in this manner; the modal response was two. DTA was not correlated with death anxiety; however, neither participants’ encounters with near death nor their subjective familiar with death and dying predicted DTA scores either, which raises questions about the validity of the measure. Even if trait levels of DTA might not predict death anxiety, it may still be the case that state levels of DTA do. In other words, perhaps reminding people of death—thus increasing DTA—might also temporarily increase their death anxiety. It turns out that things are not quite as simple as that, theoretically speaking. As Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, and Faucher (2010) describe it, TMT underwent a theoretical refinement and elaboration in the mid-1990s when studies were finding that the standard manner of reminding people about death—asking them to imagine themselves dying, and write about the feelings this arouses in them—did not increase self-reported levels of negative affect.8 This and other subsequent findings led the architects of TMT to conclude that when people are reminded of death they immediately attempt to suppress conscious thoughts and feelings about death, which leads to the ironic effect of increased unconscious accessibility (Hayes et al., 2010; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). Therefore according to TMT, we should expect low levels of both DTA and death anxiety directly after people are reminded of death: this period of suppression should then be followed by increased DTA without increased anxiety. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesized chronology. Earlier on, Greenberg et al. (1994) did find that DTA increased after participants completed a distraction task. However, Trafimow and Hughes (2012) more recently found the opposite effect: DTA was high immediately after mortality was made salient, thereafter declining. Neither study had a very large sample, so it is difficult to adjudicate between the two contradictory findings. To get around this 7. Pearson’s correlations for each country are as follows: United States; Brazil 5 0.05, South Korea 5 0.08, the Philippines 5 0.09, and Russia 5 20.08, all ns. 8. Except in certain conditions, such as when people lack a sense of meaning or structure or positive self-esteem (Abeyta, Juhl, & Routledge, 2014; Routledge & Juhl, 2010; Routledge, Juhl, & Vess, 2013).

28

PART | 1 Death

problem, Steinman and Updegraff (2015) recently aggregated data from multiple studies that were not designed to test this hypothesis but nevertheless included the relevant manipulations and measures. They did not find evidence for death thought suppression immediately after mortality salience tasks but did find that more complicated and time-consuming distractor tasks were associated with larger DTA effects. Terror management theorists may take this as a partial vindication of their view. On another front, Lambert et al. (2014) have recently called into question TMT’s claim that increased DTA is affect-free, which is based on null findings about the effects of experimentally induced mortality salience on selfreported negative affect. First, they note that the claim is made on insufficient evidence, as TMT studies do not examine the effects of mortality salience on specific emotions such as fear and anxiety, but only negative mood more generally. Then across three experiments, they consistently found that participants who were asked to imagine their own deaths did report higher levels of fear than those in a neutral control condition. Furthermore, they found that it was fear rather than anxiety that was affected; this is in tension with previous approaches to studying death anxiety and raises questions about exactly what specific emotion TMT should be concerned with. Abeyta et al. (2014) also found that death anxiety increased when mortality is made salient, but only among people with low self-esteem. As before, these findings are not easy to interpret. On one hand, there is intuitive appeal to the idea that reminders of death increase both death anxiety and death thoughts, conscious or otherwise; Lambert et al.’s (2014) and Trafimow and Hughes’s (2012) results provide evidence for these common sense views. On the other hand, TMT posits the rather counterintuitive hypotheses that death reminders only increase death thoughts after delays or distractions and do not normally increase death anxiety at all; there is some evidence for these claims too, though they tend to be more indirect. In particular, the affect-free claim is based on failures to detect broad changes in mood after mortality is made salient; Lambert et al. (2014) rightly point out the weaknesses of this form of arguing from the absence of evidence. More direct evidence is needed here, to determine whether TMT should abandon its counterintuitive and complicated theoretical elaborations in favor of more straightforward hypotheses.

Are people afraid of death? Coda It would not be an exaggeration to say that the direct evidence on whether people fear death is mixed. The evidence as it stands warrants the claim that the fear of death is common, but not the claim that it is universal; it further warrants the claim that people may—under certain circumstances—be bothered by death, but not that people are terrified of death. On one hand, this may be taken to mean that the first premise of TMT lacks empirical justification. However, as we have already seen, even Becker anticipated this outcome decades ago. Death anxiety is difficult to detect, not— according to the theory—because it does not exist, but because human beings are very good as dealing with it, either by suppressing our thoughts of and anxieties about death or by displacing them through our pursuits of symbolic immortality or by resolving them through our hope in literal immortality. As evidence of this, terror management theorists might point to the hundreds of studies that show that reminders of death lead people to behave in ways that can reasonably be described as pursuits of symbolic immortality. They infer from this that we fear death and seek to quell this fear by asserting ourselves and enhancing the groups to which we belong. Whether this inference is the best explanation of the data is a matter of some current debate, but this goes beyond the scope of this chapter’s focus on explicit death anxiety (e.g., Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Holbrook, Sousa, & Hahn-Holbrook, 2011; Navarrete & Fessler, 2005). More to the point of this chapter, perhaps, are the small handful of studies on the effects of mortality salience on behaviors reasonably described as pursuits of literal immortality. Before this, however, let us consider whether trait levels of death anxiety—such that they are—covary in theoretically sensible ways with trait levels of religiosity.

Are death anxiety and religiosity correlated? According to TMT and other similar thanatocentric theories of religion, religion emerged—at least in part—as a means to mitigate our death anxiety. It does so in at least two broad ways. First, and most obviously, to the extent that religious beliefs include beliefs about the afterlife, religion provides the potential for literal immortality. Second, to the extent that religious traditions are more longevous than their adherents, religion provides the potential for symbolic immortality. The first of these is more or less unique to religion, with a few exceptions in the transhumanist direction, and for this reason will be the main focus of this chapter. In other words, by “religion” and its cognates, we will mostly be concerned with supernatural beliefs, especially as they pertain to literal immortality.

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

29

Even if one is persuaded that rumors of a pan-human chronic terror of death have been exaggerated by theorists, one might still be interested in whether individual variability in death anxiety and religiosity covary. All else being equal, TMT should predict that it does, though exactly what it should predict about the shape of the relationship is more difficult to pin down. On one hand, if religious beliefs are the product of death anxiety, it seems reasonable to suppose that people who are more death anxious should also be more tempted by religious faith: that is, a positive correlation between death anxiety and religiosity. On the other hand, if religious beliefs are effective mitigators of death anxiety, it seems reasonable to suppose that the faithful is less prone to fearing death than their faithless counterparts: that is, a negative correlation between religiosity and death anxiety. These are, on their face, contradictory propositions. However, they are reconcilable if one considers different patterns between believers and nonbeliever. Among nonbelievers, irreligiosity—that is, skepticism toward religious beliefs—should be tempered to the extent that one fears death, which would show up as a positive correlation between death anxiety and religiosity. In contrast, among believers, death anxiety should decline to the extent that one is confident of one’s hope in everlasting life, which would show up—assuming that one’s religious tradition promises everlasting life—as a negative correlation between religiosity and death anxiety. Therefore the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity is not linear but curved, moderated by whether the respondent is a believer or nonbeliever (Fig. 2.1). There have, fortunately for us, been dozens of studies that have examined the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity. However, unfortunately for us, almost none of them have specifically tested this curvilinear or quadratic relationship, in part because nonreligious participants tend to be underrepresented in the samples, particularly in older studies. Jong et al. (2018) found that of the 100 studies—totally 202 effect sizes—they included in their metaanalysis, only 8 directly tested for curvilinearity. Their metaanalyses of the linear effects found very high levels of heterogeneity across studies: the modal result was that there was no significant correlation between death anxiety and religiosity. When they aggregated effect sizes across studies, they found very weak negative correlations across different dimensions of religiosity. For example, the average correlation between death anxiety and religious belief was r 5 20.07, P , .01 across 58 studies; the magnitude of the effect was not much changed by looking at afterlife beliefs specifically, r 5 20.07, P , .01, across 35 studies. Only eight of the studies included in the metaanalysis directly tested for curvilinearity, but Jong et al. (2018) also found a further three, whose effects were not amenable to metaanalysis. Of these 11, 8 unequivocally supported the curvilinearity hypothesis and 2 more partially support it. Two of these studies warrant some further comment. Jong, Bluemke, and Halberstadt (2013) study deliberately oversampled nonreligious participants (N 5 147; 88 nonreligious) in New Zealand: they found no overall linear correlation between death anxiety and religious belief, but they did find an interaction with religious identification. For those who self-identified as religious, death anxiety and religious belief were negatively correlated, r 5 20.33, P , .01; for those who self-identified as nonreligious (e.g., atheist, agnostic), they were positively correlated, r 5 0.27, P , .01. Ellis, Wahab, and Ratnasingan (2013) collected data in Malaysia (n 5 2396), the United States (n 5 1291), and Turkey (n 5 265); although they found similar quadratic patterns, they FIGURE 2.1 Diagram of the curvilinear hypothesis.

30

PART | 1 Death

TABLE 2.2 Death anxiety and afterlife belief in 14 samples. Country

n

% No belief in afterlife

r (EDAS, afterlife)

Curve estimation R2

Indonesia The Philippines Thailand Brazil Turkey Brazil Russia India Russia United States United States South Korea Japan China

191 200 183 200 195 189 185 188 200 813 299 200 224 194

7.3 15.5 18.6 24 25.6 28 33.5 35.1 37 48 48.5 56 69.2 73.7

2 0.14 0.234b 2 0.01 2 0.07 2 0.01 2 0.01 0.03 2 0.02 0.01 0.02 0.08 2 0.06 2 0.02 0.167a

0.02 0.07c 0.00 0.03 0.09c 0.04a 0.00 0.05a 0.00 0.04c 0.01 0.05a 0.01 0.07b

EDAS, Existential Death Anxiety Scale. a P , .05. b P , .01. c P , .001.

also found—contrary to our predictions—positive linear relationships between death anxiety and religiosity in Malaysia and Turkey, both Muslim-majority countries. Only in the United States was the quadratic effect consistently stronger than the linear one. This suggests that even among religious traditions that promise literal immortality, cross-cultural differences may be found. Not included in Jong et al.’s (2018) metaanalysis, which only included studies published before 2016, were findings from Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) and McKay et al.’s (2016) multinational studies from which this chapter has already drawn. As there were very few studies that looked specifically at afterlife beliefs, the ensuing analyses will look exclusively at the item of the Supernatural Belief Scale that pertains to this: “There is some kind of life after death.” As with Jong et al.’s (2013) New Zealand study, both Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) and McKay et al.’s (2016) American samples included overrepresentations of nonreligious participants. In neither study did they find a linear relationship between death anxiety and afterlife belief. Curve estimation analyses detected a quadratic relationship in Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) sample, R2 5 0.04, P , .001 (see Table 2.2). Analyzing those who believed in an afterlife (scores .0; n 5 421) separately from those who did not (scores # 0; n 5 389) revealed that death anxiety and afterlife belief were negatively correlated for believers, r 5 20.25, P , .001, whereas the reverse was true for nonbelievers, r 5 0.15, P , .005. However, these findings were not replicated in McKay et al.’s (2016) sample (r 5 20.08 and 0.08, respectively). Combining the two samples results statistically significant effects, albeit smaller than those in Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) study alone, r 5 20.17 and 0.14, P , .001. Most of the other countries in both studies were highly religious, and therefore less amenable to testing our curvilinear hypothesis. The exceptions to this were South Korea, Japan, and China. In these three countries, proportions of participants who self-identified as nonreligious approached or exceeded 50%; more directly relevant to the hypothesis, the proportion of individuals who were agnostic or disbelieving in an afterlife approached or exceeded 50%. Curve estimation analyses found that a quadratic model fit the data in South Korea and China, but not in Japan.9 It is possible that this difference is driven by doctrinal differences in afterlife beliefs across these countries, but further research is required to establish this. Although the other samples—Brazil, Russia, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, and Turkey—do not include enough nonreligious participants to test the curvilinear hypothesis in full, there may be enough variation in afterlife beliefs to test one half of the model: among believers in an afterlife, we should expect negative correlations between death anxiety and afterlife belief. As predicted, in most of these samples, among participants who believed in an afterlife, the strength of their afterlife belief was negatively correlated with death anxiety. In McKay et al.’s study, only Russia 9. A linear model also fits the Chinese data; consistent with the prediction for nonreligious samples, death anxiety, and religious belief were positively correlated, r 5 0.167, P , .05. There were no significant linear correlations found in South Korea and Japan.

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

31

(r 5 0.01, n 5 123) and Thailand (r 5 20.07, n 5 149) did not evince this pattern found in Brazil (r 5 20.19, P , .05, n 5 136), India (r 5 20.29, P , .001, n 5 122), Indonesia (r 5 20.29, P , .001, n 5 177), and Turkey (r 5 20.27, P , .001, n 5 145). Jong and Halberstadt (2016) replicated the finding in Brazil (r 5 20.21, P , .01, n 5 152); similarly, no correlation was detected in Russia (r 5 0.003). This study also included a Filipino sample, in which death anxiety and afterlife belief were not correlated (r 5 20.04). Expanding the analysis to include nonbelievers—bearing in mind that there were very few in each sample—we also found some evidence for a curvilinear pattern, though the effects were understandably weak and inconsistent. In Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) study a quadratic model fit the data from the Philippines (R2 5 0.07, P , .001) and marginally fit the data from Brazil (R2 5 0.02, P 5 .06); no such pattern emerged in the Russian sample. McKay et al.’s (2016) study also found a curvilinear pattern in Brazil (R2 5 0.04, P , .05), as well as in India (R2 5 0.05, P , .05), Indonesia (R2 5 0.06, P , .005), and Turkey (R2 5 0.09, P , .001), and not in Russia and Thailand. Inspections of the best fit curve revealed that in almost all cases where a quadratic function fit the data, the inflection point was around the midpoint of the scale (viz., 0), indicating agnosticism. The only exception to this was the Philippines, in which the estimated curve closely matched a positive linear correlation, which could also be found, r 5 0.23, P , .001. Although these results are broadly supportive of the curvilinear hypothesis, they should be interpreted with caution as these samples included relatively few nonbelievers, ranging from 7% in Indonesia to 35% in India (see Table 2.2). With a few exceptions—Japan, Russia, Thailand, and the Philippines—these findings support the curvilinear hypothesis. The effect sizes tend to be small, but this is to be expected given the multitude of factors that were not accounted for in these analyses. Furthermore, it remains the case that correlational studies do not go very far in testing causal claims. Thus we next consider some experimental evidence about whether mortality salience increases religious belief.

Does mortality salience increase religious belief? It is, for obvious reasons, difficult to directly test the hypothesis that the fear of death increases religious belief. Therefore in this final section of this chapter, we depart somewhat from our brief—the investigation of the relationship between explicit death anxiety and religiosity—and turn instead to the available research on mortality salience and religiosity. As previously discussed, the relationship between mortality salience and death anxiety is uncertain. All the same, as the mortality salience paradigm is the dominant way in which TMT’s hypotheses are tested, it is to such studies that we must turn. It should first be said that there is some ambiguity over what TMT should predict about the effects of mortality salience on religious belief. On one hand, to the extent that religious traditions offer literal immortality to their adherents, they are almost unique among cultural products: and we might expect such offers to hold universal appeal, given that mortality is a universal problem universally acknowledged, even if suppressed. On the other hand, human beings are fractious, ready to form coalitions and therefore to draw lines between ingroups and outgroups, including religious ingroups and outgroups. Whatever tendency we might have to be promiscuously religious may be tempered, even reversed, by this tendency. If so, then it is only our own particular brand of literal immortality that we want: and, indeed, for some the pursuit of symbolic immortality may motivate them to repudiate the literal version altogether. In keeping with TMT’s focus on symbolic immortality pursuits since its inception, most researchers are inclined toward the second possibility. In the same year that Becker published The Denial of Death, and over a decade before TMT was first formalized in print, Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) ran a study that is still the closest thing we have to a manipulation of the fear of death and not just its cognitive accessibility. They subjected a third of their participants to what they called their “death threat treatment,” which involved listening to exaggerated statements about the risk of mortality and watching a slideshow— set to funereal music—of automobile accidents, murder, and corpses. Another third of their participants were told that they were going to experience electric shocks—this was in order to generate in them anticipatory stress—which were never actually given. The last third were in a neutral condition. Both prior and after the experimental manipulation, participants answered questions about their afterlife beliefs. What Osarchuk and Tatz (1973) found was that among participants who already believed strongly in an afterlife, as indicated in their premanipulation responses, the death threat condition further increased their commitment to their belief. No such effect was found for participants who disbelieved or believed only very weakly in an afterlife. Osarchuk and Tatz’s (1973) findings among believers are consistent with TMT’s worldview defense hypothesis, which says that increased mortality salience motivates us to bolster our own and our ingroup’s beliefs and values—in the pursuit of symbolic immortality—sometimes even to the detriment of outgroup members. However, their null findings with respect to nonbelievers are more difficult to interpret. On one hand, the lack of belief in an afterlife does not

32

PART | 1 Death

seem to constitute a worldview to be defended; on the other hand, other experiments have shown that people are willing to bolster much flimsier elements of identity, including ad hoc minimal groups (Harmon-Jones, Greenberg, Solomon, & Simon, 1996). Furthermore, in some cultural contexts, religious disbelief is certainly a more strident and existentially significant position than a construal of it as a mere absence of belief implies. So, it is that researchers are increasingly interested in nonbelievers’ responses to mortality salience vis-a`-vis religious beliefs, as a robust test of whether reminders of mortality cause people to become promiscuously religious or stubbornly secular. One difficulty with this growing body of work is that studies differ on how participants are categorized as religious and nonreligious, respectively. For example, Jong, Halberstadt, and Bluemke’s (2012) nonreligious sample included atheists, agnostics, and those who explicitly stated that they had no religious affiliation: they found that mortality salience increased supernatural belief among religious participants while marginally decreasing supernatural belief among nonreligious participants. Employing a similar demarcation principle, Norenzayan and Hansen (2006, Study 4) found that mortality salience increased Christians’ religious beliefs but did not affect nonreligious participants in either direction. To complicate matters, Heflick, Goldenberg, Hart, and Kamp (2015) found that it was only the participants who did not believe in body-self dualism who evinced a decrease in afterlife belief when mortality was salient; believers were unaffected. Similarly, in Lifshin, Greenberg, Soenke, Darrell, and Pyszczynski (2018) study, it was only participants who scored low on a religious importance measure who were affected by mortality salience: they showed decreased belief in God and an afterlife, whereas highly religious participants were unaffected. Taking a more nuanced approach, Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi (2012) distinguished between atheists and agnostics and found that whereas atheists were unaffected by mortality salience, agnostics reported increased belief in Allah, Jesus, and Buddha. Indeed, in this study, it was the nonreligious participants who became promiscuously religious, whereas Christians showed increased belief only in their own deity, more strongly disbelieving others. This finding contradicts one of Norenzayan and Hansen’s (2006) earlier result that reminders of death led Christians to become more willing to endorse even outgroup deities. Another, less direct, way to examine the causal relationship between mortality salience and religious belief is to see whether affirmations of the latter mitigate the known effects of the former. For example, it is well established that mortality salience increases preferences for the ingroup, punitiveness against transgressors of cultural norms, and other manifestations of what TMT calls cultural worldview defense. Norenzayan, Dar-Nimrod, Hansen, and Proulx (2009) have found that religious participants are less affected in this way by mortality salience than nonreligious participants; Jonas and Fischer (2006) found that this was especially true among intrinsically religious participants who were given the opportunity to affirm their religious beliefs. Dechesne et al. (2003) also found that exposing participants to arguments for afterlife beliefs decreased worldview defense after mortality salience; Heflick and Goldenberg (2012) confirmed this finding among nonbelievers as well as believers. Certainly for believers—and perhaps for nonbelievers too—the belief in literal immortality can reduce the alleged psychological effects of death anxiety.

Concluding remarks The empirical literature on death anxiety and its relationship to religious belief is, to put it mildly, messy. This is especially true as we look at data from outside the United States, as indeed we must when testing theories that make universal claims as TMT certainly does. The fear of death—the phenomenon upon which TMT is premised—is elusive: the claim that normal levels of death anxiety are low, even among those for whom death is imminent, because of the success of our terror management strategies is plausible but requires more scrutiny. Direct evidence of mortal terror may always be beyond our reach: perhaps, we will never be able—or allowed—to strip away participants’ defenses enough to reveal the worm at their core. But if so, then more indirect evidence is needed. In particular, the relationships between anxiety, DTA, and the pursuit of literal and symbolic immortality are still unclear. Is mortality salience and its downstream effects affect-free? Do challenges to our immortality projects increase death anxiety, or just death thoughts? Does TMT deserve its name in the absence of any evidence of terror? The evidence base for the relationship between trait levels of death anxiety and religious belief—and afterlife belief in particular—seems more secure, even from a cross-cultural perspective. Jong et al.’s (2017) systematic review of published research found some initial evidence for a curvilinear relationship between death anxiety and religious belief, which was then confirmed by new analyses of Jong and Halberstadt’s (2016) and McKay et al.’s (2016) cross-cultural datasets. There are two possible interpretations of this inverted U-shape pattern, reflecting different interpretations of TMT. The first interpretation is based on TMT’s worldview defense hypothesis: the fear of death is low among those who are strongly committed to their worldviews, and high for those who are weakly committed. On this view, the

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

33

content of the worldview is less important than one’s belief in it: so, belief and disbelief in an afterlife are equally effective strategies. The second interpretation tells two causal stories: among nonbelievers, the fear of death chips away at their religious skepticism, whereas among believers, religious conviction mitigates death anxiety. As causal relationships cannot be validly inferred from correlational data, experimental evidence is required to adjudicate between these two alternatives: unfortunately, the jury is still out on this front. The effects of mortality salience on nonreligious people are ambivalent and depend in part on the type of nonreligious people they are: agnostics may be more amenable to adopting religious beliefs in the face of death than their more atheistic counterparts, who sometimes (but not always) strengthen their secular resolve in those circumstances. There is very little evidence available about the efficacy of beliefs—religious or otherwise—at mitigating death anxiety. However, Heflick and Goldenger’s study on worldview defense—theoretically the downstream effect of death anxiety—suggests that afterlife beliefs may assuage the fear of death even among nonbelievers. Clearly, as ever, more evidence is required.

References Abeyta, A. A., Juhl, J., & Routledge, C. (2014). Exploring the effects of self esteem and mortality salience on proximal and distally measured death anxiety: A further test of the dual process model of terror management. Motivation and Emotion, 38, 523 528. Arndt, J., Allen, J. J., & Greenberg, J. (2001). Traces of terror: Subliminal death primes and facial electromyographic indices of affect. Motivation and Emotion, 25, 253 277. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Cella, D. F., & Tross, S. (1987). Death anxiety in cancer survival: A preliminary cross-validation study. Journal of Personality Assessment, 51, 451 461. Chan, D. (2009). So why ask me? Are self- report data really that bad? In C. E. Lance, & R. J. Vandenberg (Eds.), Statistical and methodological myths and urban legends: Doctrine, verity and fable in the organizational and social sciences (pp. 309 336). New York: Routledge. Cicirelli, V. G. (2002). Older adults’ views on death. New York: Springer. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722 737. Ellis, L., Wahab, E. A., & Ratnasingan, M. (2013). Religiosity and fear of death: A three-nation comparison. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 16, 179 199. Feifel, H. (1974). Religious conviction and fear of death among the healthy and the terminally ill. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 353 360. Feifel, H., & Branscomb, A. B. (1973). Who’s afraid of death? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 81, 282 288. Feuerbach, L. (1967). Lectures on the essence of religion. (R. Manheim, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. (Original work published 1851). Fortner, B. V., & Neimeyer, R. A. (1999). Death anxiety in older adults: A quantitative review. Death Studies, 23, 387 411. Fortner, B. V., Neimeyer, R. A., & Rybarczyk, B. (2000). Correlates of death anxiety in older adults: A comprehensive review. In A. Tomer (Ed.), Death attitudes and the older adult: Theories, concepts, and applications (pp. 95 108). New York: Brunner-Routledge. Freud, S. (2001). The future of an illusion. In In. J. Strachey (Ed.), Complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (vol. XXI, pp. 5 56). London: Vintage. (Original work published in 1927). Gonen, G., Kaymak, S. U., Cankurtaran, E. S., Karslioglu, E. H., Ozalp, E., & Soygur, H. (2012). The factors contributing to death anxiety in cancer patients. Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 30, 347 358. Goranson, A., Ritter, R. S., Waytz, A., Norton, M. I., & Gray, K. (2017). Dying is unexpectedly positive. Psychological Science, 28, 988 999. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Simon, L., & Breus, M. (1994). Role of consciousness and accessibility of death related thoughts in mortality salience effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 627 637. Hall, G. S. (1897). A study of fears. The American Journal of Psychology, 8, 147 249. Harmon-Jones, E., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Simon, L. (1996). The effects of mortality salience on intergroup bias between minimal groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 677 681. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). A theoretical and empirical review of the death thought accessibility concept in terror management research. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 699 739. Heflick, N. A., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2012). No atheists in foxholes: Arguments for (but not against) afterlife belief buffers mortality salience effects for atheists. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 385 392. Heflick, N. A., Goldenberg, J. L., Hart, J., & Kamp, S. M. (2015). Death awareness and body-self dualism: A why and how of afterlife belief. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 267 275. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88 110.

34

PART | 1 Death

Hintze, J., Templer, D. I., Calleppetty, G. G., & Frederick, W. (1993). Death depression and death anxiety in HIV-infected males. Death Studies, 17, 333 341. Holbrook, C., Sousa, P., & Hahn-Holbrook, J. (2011). Unconscious vigilance: Worldview defense without adaptations for terror, coalition, or uncertainty management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 451 466. Hoelter, J. W. (1979). Multidimensional treatment of fear of death. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47, 996 999. Hume, D. (2008). In J. C. A. Gaskin (Ed.), The natural history of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1757). Jackson, J., Jong, J., Bluemke, M., Poulter, P., Morgenroth, L., & Halberstadt, J. (2018). Testing the causal relationship between religiosity and death anxiety. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 57 68. Jersild, A. T., & Holmes, F. B. (1935). Children’s fears. Child development (Monograph 20). New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. Jong, J., Bluemke, M., & Halberstadt, J. (2013). Fear of death and supernatural beliefs: Developing a new Supernatural Belief Scale to test the relationship. European Journal of Personality, 27, 495 506. Jong, J., & Halberstadt, J. (2016). Death anxiety and religious belief: An existential psychology of religion. London: Bloomsbury. Jong, J., & Halberstadt, J. (2018). Death anxiety and religious belief: Responses to commentaries. Religion, Brain & Behavior. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2017.1414712. Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 983 989. Jong, J., Ross, R., Philip, T., Chang, S. H., Simons, N., & Halberstadt, J. (2018). The religious correlates of death anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 4 20. Jong, J., Zahl, B. P., & Sharp, C. (2017). Indirect and implicit measures of religiosity. In R. Finke, & C. Bader (Eds.), Faithful measures: New methods in the measurement of religion (pp. 78 107). New York: New York University Press. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553 567. Lambert, A. J., Eadeh, F. R., Peak, S. A., Scherer, L. D., Schott, J. P., & Slochower, J. M. (2014). Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation: Revisiting the “affect-free” claim of terror management research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 655 678. Lazarus, R. S., & Averill, J. R. (1972). Emotion and cognition: With special reference to anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger (Ed.), Anxiety: Current trends in theory and research (vol. 2, pp. 242 284). New York: Academic Press. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Soenke, M., Darrell, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2018). Mortality salience, religiosity, and indefinite life extension: Evidence of a reciprocal relationship between afterlife beliefs and support for forestalling death. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 31 43. Lyons, L. (2005). What frightens America’s youth? Teens have a host of fears. [Data file]. Retrieved from ,http://www.gallup.com/poll/15439/whatfrightens-americas-youth.aspx.. Malinowski, B. (1948). Magic, science and religion and other essays. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Martin, E. (2009). Timor mortis: The fear of death in Augustine’s sermons on the martyrs. Studies in Church History, 45, 31 40. McNaughton, N., & Corr, P. J. (2004). A two-dimensional view of defensive systems: Defensive distance and fear/anxiety. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews, 28, 285 305. Mooney, D. C., & O’Gorman, J. G. (2001). Construct validity of the revised Collett Lester Fear of Death and Dying Scale. Omega, 43, 157 173. Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Gadet, B., & Moulaert, V. (2000). Fears, worries, and scary dreams in 4-to 12-year-old children: Their content, developmental pattern, and origins. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 29, 43 52. Navarrete, C. D., & Fessler, D. M. (2005). Normative bias and adaptive challenges: A relational approach to coalitional psychology and a critique of terror management theory. Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 297 325. Neimeyer, R. A. (Ed.), (1994). Death anxiety handbook: Research, instrumentation, and application. London: Routledge. Neimeyer, R. A., & Moore, M. K. (1994). Validity and reliability of the multi- dimensional fear of death scale. In R. A. Neimeyer (Ed.), Death anxiety handbook (pp. 103 119). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Norenzayan, A., Dar-Nimrod, I., Hansen, I. G., & Proulx, T. (2009). Mortality salience and religion: Divergent effects on the defense of cultural worldviews for the religious and the non-religious. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 101 113. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174 187. Osarchuk, M., & Tatz, S. J. (1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 256 260. Power, T. L., & Smith, S. M. (2008). Predictors of fear of death and self mortality: An Atlantic Canadian perspective. Death Studies, 32, 253 272. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835 845. Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1989). Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 681 691. Routledge, C., & Juhl, J. (2010). When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 848 854. Routledge, C., Juhl, J., & Vess, M. (2013). Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals low in personal need for structure. Motivation and Emotion, 37, 303 307. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The worm at the core: On the role of death in life. New York: Random House.

Death anxiety and religious belief: a critical review Chapter | 2

35

Steinman, C. T., & Updegraff, J. A. (2015). Delay and death-thought accessibility: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1682 1696. Templer, D. I. (1971). The relationship between verbalized and nonverbalized death anxiety. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 119, 211 214. Templer, D. I. (1970). The construction and validation of a death anxiety scale. The Journal of General Psychology, 82, 165 177. Templer, D. I., & Ruff, C. F. (1971). Death anxiety scale means, standard deviations, and embedding. Psychological Reports, 29, 173 174. Trafimow, D., & Hughes, J. S. (2012). Testing the death thought suppression and rebound hypothesis: Death thought accessibility following mortality salience decreases during a delay. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 622 629. Uhlmann, E. L., Leavitt, K., Menges, J. I., Koopman, J., Howe, M., & Johnson, R. E. (2012). Getting explicit about the implicit: A taxonomy of implicit measures and guide for their use in organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 15, 553 601. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1288 1300. ´ ., Szabo´, G., & Heged˝us, K. (2009). Attitudes toward death in Hungary using the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale. Clinical and Zana, A Experimental Medical Journal, 3, 327 335.

Chapter 3

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Daryl R. Van Tongeren Hope College, Holland, MI, United States

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’ C.S. Lewis

Human suffering is both the central focus of many religions as well as one of the biggest obstacles for maintaining a serious religious belief. As C.S. Lewis astutely reveals in two very different quotes, religion helps address the problem of suffering, but suffering also can become problematic for religion. On the one hand, most religions directly address human suffering, often making promises regarding how to solve or overcome the problem of suffering. For example, Islam and Christianity make promises of an afterlife free from suffering for faithful believers, and Buddhism contends that suffering is inherent to the human condition yet enlightenment can lead one to nirvana, in which suffering ceases. For those who are suffering, religion seems to have promising answers. On the other hand, making sense of suffering often leads people to question the benevolence of any potential deity or sacred being who might permit, or even cause, such suffering. Theodicy—the problem of evil or suffering in the world—is a major source of religious strain and struggle (Wilt, Exline, Grubbs, Park, & Pargament, 2016). Evil is problematic because it creates a tension between what people often believe about the nature of God (e.g., omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent) and the reality of the world (e.g., the existence of pain, suffering, and death). When tragedy strikes, people are left attempting to make sense of their suffering. For example, the Christian story of Job details the capriciousness of life and death, and the struggle of trying to understand God’s role in adversity. How could a loving or good God (or sacred force) allow or cause such horrible things to happen? Either that deity is not as powerful as people imagined or is not as good as they hoped. The necessity of pain and inevitability of death can lead people to wonder what role God plays in the world. Thus suffering may cause people to rethink, doubt, or leave their religious beliefs. In this chapter, I discuss the interactive relationship between religious beliefs and concrete threats of death—notably, those made clear by suffering. Religious beliefs affect how people view and interpret various features of suffering, and suffering also shapes people’s religious beliefs. How people reconcile their confrontation with death in light of their religious beliefs may cause some people to fight, others to freeze, still others to flee, and, perhaps in some cases, others to flourish.

How do people usually cope with existential concerns? A long line of psychological research purports that the human awareness of death motivates a wide range of social thought and behavior (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Koole, & Solomon, 2010). Terror management theory (TMT) contends that humankind’s superior intellectual capability, coupled with their capacity for self-awareness, uniquely positions them to be keenly aware of their eventual death (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). Although this awareness The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00004-4 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

37

38

PART | 1 Death

of mortality should leave people gripped with the existential anxiety of knowing that the only certainty in life is death, humans have evolved complex responses to this terror through the development of cultural worldviews, the pursuit of self-esteem, and the cultivation of close relationships (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015). First, TMT posits that humans have created, and adhere to, cultural worldviews, which are socially validated sets of beliefs regarding the nature of humanity and its relation to the world (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). Many cultural worldviews make claims about how the world came into existence (e.g., creation myths or origin stories), how humans should live (e.g., codes of morality), and what happens to people after they die (e.g., afterlife beliefs). These cultural worldviews are meaning-making systems: they help people make sense of the social world (Van Tongeren, in press), and by providing meaning, help reduce death-related anxiety (Van Tongeren, Pennington, et al., 2017). Cultural worldviews can offer symbolic immortality (ways for people to “live on” through accomplishments, legacies, or memories after they die) or literal immortality (promises of continued life, in some form)—both of which reduce the sting of death (Dechesne et al., 2003). According to TMT, the ability of cultural worldviews to address the fear of death is a primary anxiety-reducing mechanism, and it is a central reason why people defend their worldviews with such ferocity. And for many, religious beliefs comprise these cultural worldviews that individuals defend so vigorously (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017). Second, TMT contends that another route to mollifying death-related anxiety is through viewing oneself as a significant, meaningful contributor to the world who is making a lasting difference that will be remembered long after one has perished (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004). Thus humans are strongly motivated to pursue and obtain self-esteem, which is often granted when people live up the standards set forth by their cultural worldview. That is, when they achieve the cultural standards of beauty, worth, accomplishment, goodness, or piety that their worldview lauds, they feel good about themselves and are likely to report high self-esteem. When people have positive evaluations of themselves and have lived up to these valued standards, they think their life is meaningful and their memory will live on. Third, research has found that when threats of death are made salient, people turn toward the safe haven of close relationships to manage potential anxiety (Florian, Mikulincer, & Hirschberger, 2002). Indeed, researchers have found that people seek out secure relationships to help manage death-related anxiety (Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003). This has led researchers to contend that terror management defensives involve a tripartite response of cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and close relationships (Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005). These relationships can offer actual protection and safety from impending physical threats, symbolic validation of being around ideologically likeminded individuals who support one’s way of seeing the world, and loving affirmation that may distract from the threat of death or imbue everyday life with significance, purpose, and meaning. To be sure, these three defensive processes work in tandem. Individuals live in societies where cultural worldviews are socially validated and communally expressed (though with individual variation), and they seek self-esteem by living up to the standards of their particular worldview, often under the scrutiny and judgment of others, who may assess the degree to which they are meeting such standards. People often surround themselves with others who share their beliefs and can offer validation that their way of seeing the world is correct; moreover, when one does embrace the views of others and feels included, they may report greater self-esteem (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). Thus a highly effective and optimally operating defense against death involves a coherent set of beliefs in which one can clearly discern its standards and ascertain self-esteem while being supported and affirmed by ideologically similar close others. Religion appears to fit all these criteria quite well.

The existential and individual functions of religious beliefs TMT suggests that existential function of religion is to mitigate death-related anxiety through adherence to a worldview that promises both symbolic and literal immortality (Vail et al., 2010). For example, religious adherents are not only promised to live on in the minds and memories of other because of living moral lives dedicated to a higher purpose, but they are also promised actual immortality in an afterlife, where their soul lives on in eternity. The belief in the supernatural, which provides a meaning that transcends this world, the existence of everlasting souls, and faith in a literal afterlife all reduce the meaninglessness of this life and virtually vanquish the fear of death by promising the continuance of life and by imbuing this life with meaning (e.g., Van Tongeren, Pennington, et al., 2017). Religion appears to offer a solution to the thorny problem of death. The aforementioned research on cultural worldviews in the wake of existential concerns suggests that the bulk of the psychological defenses oriented toward the management of death-related anxiety reside in one’s meaningful conception of reality and the ability to live up to the standards set forth by this set of beliefs, including those that are validated

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

39

by a community of like-minded others. For this reason, religion is often considered a prototypical cultural worldview (Jonas & Fischer, 2006): religions have narratives regarding how humans came into existence, set forth standards of moral conduct and righteous living, and often make claims about how to vanquish death through the securing literal immortality in an afterlife (Vail et al., 2010). These beliefs help reduce death-related anxiety (Van Tongeren, McIntosh, Raad, & Pae, 2013). Accordingly, religion serves a powerful existential function. Religious beliefs are substantively varied, and people can hold religious beliefs with similar variability. A primary way of conceptualizing religious beliefs is by understanding an individual’s religious orientation. Individuals who have an intrinsic religious view religion as a central and organizing feature in their thoughts, emotions, motivations, and behavior (Allport & Ross, 1967). They hold their religious beliefs because they believe them to be true, and the existential benefits of such beliefs are clear. Individuals high in intrinsic religiousness, for whom religion is of central importance, are less defensive following death if they are first reminded of their religious beliefs: that is, affirming religious beliefs serves an existentially soothing function for intrinsically religious individuals (Jonas & Fischer, 2006). Similarly, those high in intrinsic religiousness report lower death-related anxiety and greater intercultural tolerance following reminders of religion (Van Tongeren, McIntosh, et al., 2013). Moreover, such individuals are likely to hold beliefs in literal immortality, which reduces afterlife-related anxiety, in part by enhancing perceptions that life is meaningful (Van Tongeren, Pennington, et al., 2017). It appears that intrinsic religiousness is ideally suited to manage existential concerns. Individuals who have an extrinsic religious orientation are motivated more by the personal, social, or protective benefits of religious beliefs (Allport & Ross, 1967). Such individuals may engage in religious practices or hold religious beliefs because they enjoy the social features of a religious community (e.g., making friends, establishing business connections), desire personal benefit or gain (e.g., asking God or some divine power for peace and happiness), or seek protection and comfort in times of need (e.g., God’s protection from threat, illness, misfortune, or harm). Accordingly, religious beliefs are instrumental for an alternative motivation, and these beliefs may not occupy a central feature in their life. Previous research has found that existential reminders are particularly unsettling for individuals high in extrinsic religiousness (Van Tongeren, Hook, Davis, Aten, & Davis, 2016). Still some individuals view religion as a quest (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). Such individuals do not think religion is necessarily a set of fixed beliefs that one must learn and hold with certainty, but rather, they view religion as a journey in which they, and their beliefs, continually grow, evolve, and change. Doubt and uncertainty are not signs of deficiency but rather are lauded important features of honestly holding any religious beliefs. Thus individuals with a quest orientation are typically more open, less defensive, and more likely to change their beliefs (Beck, 2006). A helpful approach to viewing religious orientations is to locate them on a spectrum ranging from security-focused on one endpoint and growth-focused on the other (Van Tongeren, Davis, Hook, & Johnson, 2016). Security-focused beliefs highlight the defensive nature of religious beliefs and are principally marked by: the belief that God (or the divine or sacred) protects adherents from danger; the specialness of the individual and ingroup; suspicion and mistrust of nonbelieving outgroup members; dogmatism and certainty; and believing that one’s beliefs are superior to other beliefs (Beck, 2004). Moreover, these beliefs are exclusive: they rule out the possibility that other views may be valid. Examples of beliefs frameworks that are chiefly security-focused include religious fundamentalism, such as believing in the inerrancy and literal interpretation of biblical scripture, and defensive theology, which are theological beliefs held dogmatically and with certainty. Research has found that individuals holding security-focused beliefs typically report greater meaning in life and lower death-related anxiety, though they also report less tolerance and greater intergroup conflict (Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016; Van Tongeren, Hook, & Davis, 2013). Growth-focused beliefs are those in which the individual is oriented toward openness, tolerance, and expanding one’s potential repertoire of beliefs. Such individuals prioritize questions over answers, doubt over certainty, and tentativeness over conviction. A hallmark growth-focused religious orientation is quest religiousness. Such individuals are more likely to value cooperation across ideologically different groups rather than defending the veracity of their beliefs. Accordingly, research has found that embracing growth-focused religious beliefs is associated with greater tolerance and less prejudice (Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005), though with the cost of lower meaning in life (and a more pronounced search for meaning), greater death-related anxiety, and more existential anxiety (Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016). Taken together, how one holds their religious beliefs can have profound effects on their reaction to existential reminders. Security-focused religious beliefs, such as defensive religiousness, provide people with meaning in life and can offer a steadfast buffer against the negative effects of existential reminder such as death (Beck, 2004; Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016; Van Tongeren, Hook, et al., 2013). However, they are typically rigid and inflexible, and they often carry significant interpersonal and intergroup costs. Conversely, growth-focused beliefs promote

40

PART | 1 Death

interpersonal and intergroup functioning, especially in situations where ideological differences are powerful and salient, but are less effective in reducing existential anxiety (Beck, 2006; Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016). So, how people hold their beliefs matter; but, so too, does the specific content of what people believe.

Conceptualizing God People vary in what they believe about God or the divine. And in the wake of suffering and existential threats, sometimes these beliefs help and other times they hinder. For example, people vary in the degree to which they make supernatural attributions, or assertions about how, and how much, supernatural agents may have been involved in aspects of human life (Ray, Lockman, Jones, & Kelly, 2015). Some may believe that God is controlling and plays a central role in every aspect of daily life. Others may believe that God is more passive, either allowing events to occur or perhaps only mildly interested but mostly disengaged. The differences between those who believe in an interactive God, who is actively involved in the daily life of humans, and a detached “blind watchmaker,” who set the world into motion and is rather inactive or passive in everyday life, should yield profound variation in the psychological experiences following negative events. Although both views of God may view God as somewhat “responsible” for events (depending on whether people believe that God predestined all events to unfold in a particular way, even if God is somewhat “detached”), if God is actively involved in daily life, and in fact causes everything in life, it stands to reason that people may blame God—and harbor anger and resentment—when life does not go as expected. Indeed, people who make such attributions often report greater anger toward God, which can have negative mental health effects (Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey, 2011; Stauner, Exline, Pargament, Wilt, & Grubbs, 2019). On the other hand, if people believe that God is generally disinterested or uninvolved in human life, there is little to reconcile when things go wrong, other than the larger question of why God isn’t more active at all. In the case of suffering, trauma, or concrete threats of death, people must come to terms with their beliefs about the role of God. Closely related to beliefs about the role of supernatural agents, such as God, in (particularly negative) events, are beliefs about the nature and character of God or the sacred. Is God perceived to be loving, kind, and compassionate, or angry, vindictive, and judgmental (Zahl & Gibson, 2012)? Beliefs about God’s nature can include beliefs that God is a “strict father” style authoritarian (demanding obedience and punishing violators), and a “nurturing mother” style benevolent being (forgiving, gracious, and merciful) (Johnson, Li, Cohen, & Okun, 2013). People hold doctrinal beliefs about God’s nature, known as God-concepts, which are types of cognitive knowledge structures or schemas about God. However, these beliefs are not simply taught, but can also be formed through experiences. Thus people also develop God-images, which are experiential representations of God that people hold in their mind (for a review, see Davis, Granqvist, & Sharp, in press). These two ways of understanding God are related, and people may flexibly adjust their doctrinal views of God as a result of their perception of God’s character during times of stress or adversity (Van Tongeren et al., 2019). The beliefs that people hold about God’s nature carry certain assumptions—which may or may not hold up to reality. And some of these beliefs may be particularly challenging to hold together. For example, if people believe that God is very benevolent and that God is in control of all things, how can they reconcile God’s goodness and ultimate power when tragedy befalls them? How could a loving God cause their house to be obliterated by a hurricane? Or why would a merciful God fail to answer their prayers to heal their ailing child? When life is going well and the positive features of life are most salient, these beliefs likely operate without question. But the cold reality of suffering cast these assumptions into bold relief, and people must come to terms with the possibility that their beliefs may not support the weight of reality. And suffering may expose cracks in their worldviews that leave them prone to facing existential realities and dealing directly with the concomitant anxiety.

When beliefs fail Systems of meaning—most notably, religion—play a powerful role in maintaining psychological equanimity both in the absence of threat and when threats are salient. So, what happens when the very beliefs designed to mitigate the fear of death fail to bear the weight of existential pressures elicited by suffering? That is, what happens when cultural worldviews cannot account for the reality that people experience in their lives? When the assumptions promoted by religious teachings (or any other cultural worldview) are shattered, people often face existential realities and are gripped with anxiety. According to anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT; Pyszczynski & Kesebir, 2011), which is a clinical application and extension of TMT, when people’s cultural worldviews are sufficiently disrupted and unable to manage the potential

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

41

existential terror elicited by facing certain realities of life (e.g., one’s mortality), people experience severe anxiety and may be predisposed to demonstrate posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) like symptoms. Individuals who report PTSD often have experienced a severe, life-threatening traumatic event, in which their own safety or life was jeopardized. This encounter with trauma can shatter one’s beliefs (Janoff-Bulman, 1989, 1992), rendering such beliefs unable to account for the complexity of life and ineffectual in allaying existential fear. ABDT contends that worldviews are anxiety buffers to existential concerns, such as death. For example, people hold religious beliefs that mitigate the anxiety associated with death (e.g., beliefs in the afterlife), isolation (e.g., perceiving God as intimate and close), identity (e.g., conceptualizing oneself as a child of God), freedom/groundlessness (e.g., basing decisions on perceptions of “God’s will”), and meaninglessness (e.g., finding purpose in following religious teachings and serving God). When these cultural worldviews are disrupted and their assumptions are shattered—through suffering, trauma, or some event that pressures these assumptions—one is left to face the full terror of existential realities. According to ABDT, when people’s assumptions are shattered, and they do not have the protective comfort of their cultural worldviews, their ability to cope with existential anxiety breaks down and they suffer from fully facing these grave concerns. It is possible that some beliefs in one’s (religious) cultural worldview are proven false, such as just world beliefs in which people assume that life is fair and everyone “gets what they deserve” (Lerner, 1980), or that one’s entire belief structure is cast into doubt, such as in the case of religious deidentification or deconversion. Whether the incompatibility between one’s beliefs and experiences centers around a major component or involves the wholesale abandonment of beliefs, the key feature is a discrepancy between how people believed the world should work and their experience of trauma and suffering (Park, 2010). According to Park’s meaning-making model, people tend to appraise the meaning of a situation relative to their global meaning structures, in order to make sense of the event. For example, when there is congruence between beliefs (e.g., God is loving and good toward those that love God) and experiences (e.g., my life is going well and I feel loved by God), people tend to flourish. But when beliefs fail to account for people’s experiences in life (e.g., a sudden death of a family member feels like a spiritual violation from an unloving or cruel God), and there is an incongruence between beliefs and reality (e.g., my belief that God is loving is not my experience), people are no longer safely hidden behind their abstract belief systems and must come face to face with concrete existential certainties, such as death. Such an encounter reduces people’s felt meaning in life. In order to address these concerns, and recover lost meaning, people strive to make meaning, either by adjusting their beliefs or reevaluating their situation— either process is aimed at restoring psychological equanimity through achieving coherence between beliefs and reality.

Suffering elicits existential concerns Suffering is an existential issue. New clinical frameworks have emerged that conceptualize and treat suffering in this context (Van Tongeren & Van Tongeren, 2020). Previous work has argued that suffering—defined as experiences of persistent distress or emotional pain, often when there is little to no resolution in sight—is intricately linked to meaning in life (Edwards, & Van Tongeren, in press). Those who reported active suffering reported lower meaning in life, and this reduction in meaning impaired overall well-being. Meaning is a multidimensional construct that includes making sense of the world (i.e., coherence), feeling valued and important (i.e., significance), and having a direction or orientation that links to something greater than oneself (i.e., purpose) (Heintzelman & King, 2014). Meaning provides people with a sense of existential security and psychological equanimity (Yalom, 1980), and it is positively associated with mental health (Kashdan & McKnight, 2013; Zika & Chamberlain, 1992), physical health (Czekierdaa, Banika, Park, & Luszczynskaa, 2017; Hooker, Master, & Park, 2018; Roepke, Jayawickreme, & Riffle, 2014; Steger, Fitch-Martin, Donnelly, & Rickard, 2015), and longevity (Cohen, Bavishi, Rozanski, 2016; Hill & Turiano, 2014; Krause, 2009). When people experience ongoing periods of stress or suffering, their sense of meaning in life erodes, leading to deleterious effects on mental and physical health (Edwards, & Van Tongeren, in press; Van Tongeren, Hill, Krause, Ironson, & Pargament, 2017). As meaning fades, people may come face to face with existential concerns, such as death. Indeed, previous research has found that meaning helps manage death-related concerns (Van Tongeren & Green, 2018). Thus suffering can predispose people to existential concerns, especially when their expected ways of understanding the world do not match up with their experiences of adversity. Suffering erodes meaning and people face the harsh realities of death and other ultimate concerns.

Facing death Previous work on TMT has shown that as the first line of defense, people tend to avoid or deny their vulnerability to death: they rid their mind of conscious reminders of death (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). However, for

42

PART | 1 Death

those who are persistently suffering, these reminders of death cannot be denied or suppressed—death is a concrete and unavoidable possibility or reality. How might people come into direct confrontation with death? That is, how might one’s mortality become salient through experiences of suffering? Although there are numerous ways in which people might become aware of their eventual demise, I briefly discuss threads of research from three direct threats of death (that are hard to avoid) in which religion may play a significant role: disasters, terminal or chronic illness, and traumatic events.

Disasters Disasters can pose a significant threat of death to a large number of individuals, and it is often a reminder of mortality to those who were less directly affected. Disasters can take numerous forms. Natural disasters can cause massive damage and lead to a staggering number of fatalities, which is why natural disasters are a concrete threat of death. In times of need, people often turn to religious beliefs to help cope with these threats. Research has found that among disaster survivors, those who are able to create a sense of spiritual meaning are less likely to report PTSD-related symptoms when the effects of the disaster are high; but among those who are unable to find spiritual meaning, the greater the negative effect of the disaster, the worse their PTSD symptoms (Haynes et al., 2017). Spiritual meaning acted as a buffer against deleterious mental health consequences following a disaster. For example, when survivors are able to view their suffering as having some higher or nobler spiritual meaning, they report fewer symptoms; perhaps viewing one’s loss as “part of God’s plan” serves a meaning-preserving function that feels less congruent and traumatic. Sometimes, disasters are less of an “act of God” and more precisely caused by humans. Human-made disasters, such as 9/11, are often concrete threats to death. Research has found that reminders of 9/11 operate similarly to mortality salience inductions, eliciting defensive reactions (Landau et al., 2004). Recent research has found that priming video of images of natural disasters and 9/11 operated similarly among research participants: it increased the perceived discrepancy between people’s beliefs about God and their experiences of God, unless participants were high in intrinsic religiousness (Van Tongeren, Davis, Hook, Davis, & Aten, in press). Intrinsically religious individuals maintained a consistent view of God that was congruent with their experiences, suggesting that among individuals for whom religion is central and deeply integrated, religion is a powerful coping mechanism to help them deal with concrete, personal threats of death. When people can draw from their own religious sources of comfort, they are less likely to need to readjust their views of God in the wake of tragedy. Other disasters also elicit responses that vary based on religious beliefs. Following the Ebola outbreak in 2014, research examined the effects of making Ebola salient on political and social attitudes (Van Tongeren, Hook, et al., 2016). Importantly, reminders of Ebola operated very similar to mortality salience: among those who were high in extrinsic religiousness, these personally threatening reminders lead to endorsement of more restrictive social policies (e.g., travel restrictions to and from Africa). However, this was not found among individuals high in intrinsic religiousness. When religion is peripheral, people may act defensively in the wake of death-reminders; however, those whose lives center around their important and cherished religious beliefs may be better protected from such threats and react with more tolerance. Because disasters are broad and often escape easy causal explanation, people may turn toward their religious beliefs to make sense of this tragedy. Some may blame God or lean on supernatural attributions to explain the events as “acts of God.” Across diverse lines of research, the reviewed findings suggest that (1) disasters are often personally threatening, concrete threats of death; (2) intrinsically religious individuals are able to draw from their religious beliefs to cope with disasters, with fewer negative effects on their views of God and greater psychological equanimity; and (3) extrinsically religious individuals may respond defensively to disasters and do not reap the positive benefits of religion in times of threat.

Terminal and chronic illness The receipt of negative health diagnosis, such as a chronic medical condition or terminal illnesses, can elicit significant concerns about death. Toward this end, the terror management health model (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008), which is a theoretical extension of TMT in the health domain contends that the physical body, and notably physical illness, pose a significant threat because of the relationship of the physical body to eventual death. When people receive a diagnosis (and especially one that is persistent and inescapable), it is stark reminder of their mortality. Although religion is often employed as an effective coping mechanism among individuals living with serious illness (e.g., Tarakeshwar et al., 2006), some religious beliefs may impede seeking medical care. Research has found that when mortality is salient

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

43

(which is often the case among the chronically or terminally ill), believers high in religious fundamentalism are more likely to refuse medical treatments and rely on religious solutions (e.g., prayer, hoping for divine intervention) for their illnesses (Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, & Goldenberg, 2009). However, other research has found that religious individuals are more likely to engage in intensive, often heroic, measures to prolong life when they are nearing death (Phelps et al., 2009). When death is near, people may turn toward religion. However, the type of religious beliefs that one holds plays a large role in how individuals come to terms with, and live in the reality of, their medical diagnoses. Highly intrinsically religious individuals may employ religious coping, whereas those high in religious fundamentalism may refuse medical treatment and rely on their own faith, or hope for divine intervention, to stave off the impending threat of death. This work suggests that it is not merely that religious individuals fare better (or worse) when facing death. Rather, the content of one’s beliefs and how people hold such beliefs matter greatly.

Trauma When individuals experience a traumatic event, it is possible that death becomes a central concern. Trauma—which can include severe emotional or physical abuse, realistic threats of injury or death, surviving war or combat, or the witnessing of loss of life—may cause one’s mortality to become poignantly salient. Previous research has found that people often report experiencing positive growth following a traumatic event (i.e., posttraumatic growth; Joseph & Linley, 2005; Linley & Joseph, 2004). However, the concept of posttraumatic growth has received some criticism (Jayawickreme & Blackie, 2014). Nevertheless, whether these reports of growth accurately indicates actual growth (Frazier et al., 2009), or are instead a coping mechanism motivated by a desire to see one’s life as improving (McFarland & Alvaro, 2000), research has found that religion is positively associated with reports of growth following a trauma (Shaw, Joseph, & Linley, 2005). People who employ religious coping strategies that brought them closer to God reported experiencing posttraumatic growth; this relationship was found among those who faced death: survivors of cardiac surgery (Ai, Hall, Pargament, & Tice, 2013). In some cases, religion can be helpful perceiving growth after trauma. Some people view their lives as somehow better off because of spiritual and personal lessons learned through suffering. There are many possible pathways by which religion helps individuals perceive growth, but researchers contend that finding meaning often plays a central role in this process (Linley & Joseph, 2011). When individuals are able to make sense of the event (finding coherence), can still feel valuable and loved in the wake of trauma (achieving feelings of significance), and have a direction or broader goal that they are working toward (having purpose), life will feel more meaningful, and they may more readily identify ways in which they have experienced positive growth since the traumatic event. Religion can help facilitate this process (see Hall, Shannonhouse, Aten, McMartin, & Silverman, 2018 for a review). More specifically, religion can help individuals (1) translate an experience of trauma into spiritual terms that makes sense and imbue it with new meaning (e.g., viewing the trauma in a way that places it in a religious context), (2) transcend themselves and connect with others to feel significant (e.g., developing relationships in one’s religious community or seeking closeness with the divine), and (3) transform their suffering into something greater by having a bigger and broader purpose (e.g., viewing their trauma or suffering as part of “God’s will” or facilitating the development of character, resilience, or virtue).

Religion and suffering: fighting, freezing, fleeing, or flourishing The psychological reaction to the discrepancy between one’s beliefs and experiences (often found during ongoing suffering) typically leads to compensatory processes that can look quite different depending on the individual (Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012). From a meaning-based perspective, individuals usually attempt to assimilate their experiences to fit into their existing belief frameworks, or they accommodate their belief structures to better match their experiences (Park, 2010). People are motivated to address the potential anxiety resulting from the confrontation with existential realities that are made salient by suffering in myriad ways. Specifically, I propose that they may do so by responding defensively, denying, deidentifying, or possibly by experiencing growth and maturation. A hypothetical model of understanding the religious response to suffering is depicted in Fig. 3.1. The most common experience of religious suffering is one in which one’s beliefs and experiences are incongruent. In these situations, three responses may be typical. First, one may respond defensively, or fighting. Rather than attempt to modify one’s beliefs, defensive reactions are those in which an individual doubles down on their commitment, engages in worldview bolstering behaviors, and increases faith in their own beliefs, often through the derogation of

44

PART | 1 Death

FIGURE 3.1 Religious responses to existential suffering.

Religious beliefs

Suffering

Existential threats

Congruent with beliefs

Incongruent with beliefs

Existential security

Existential anxiety

Flourish

Fight

Freeze

Flee

Growth and maturation

Defensiveness

Denial

Deidentification

alternative beliefs (and the proponents who advocate such beliefs) (Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997). A long line of TMT research has found that following reminders of mortality salience, when the cognitive accessibility of death has been elevated and existential anxiety is rampant, individuals react defensively by bolstering aspects of their cultural worldview either directly (reaffirming one’s core values, increasing commitment to beliefs) or indirectly (disparaging alternative viewpoints, derogating those that hold different beliefs) (Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004). This can bear out in religiously motivated violence (e.g., Pyszczynski et al., 2006) and interpersonal aggression toward critical religious outgroup members (Van Tongeren, Stafford, et al., 2016). By affirming their existing beliefs, the perceived discrepancy appears smaller, and these defensive maneuvers are aimed at reestablishing psychological equanimity. However, according to ABDT, if the trauma is severe enough, if the encounter with death is potent enough, or if one’s cultural worldview is completely shattered, by suffering people tend to respond with PTSD-like symptoms, and do not

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

45

turn toward typical terror management defense mechanisms (Pyszczynski & Kesebir, 2011). Rather, their coping mechanisms are undermined, leaving them more fully prone to the anxiety of death (or another existential concern). Second, individuals may respond by denying any potential discrepancy and cognitively freezing. Rather than address a potential incongruence between beliefs and experiences, some individuals are unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge this mismatch and instead explicitly maintain that their religious beliefs and their experience of suffering are not incompatible, even when they are privately, or implicitly, experiencing stress and anxiety. That is, in their conscious mind, their religious beliefs simply pose no problem at all. They may maintain positive illusions that their beliefs can account for their severe emotional distress, although they are experiencing internal strife and uncertainty. They may engage in cognitive freezing (Kunda, 1990), where they fixate on their established beliefs and continue to work to force their experiences to align with such beliefs. Here, growth is unlikely, because all efforts are directed toward keeping all current beliefs intact and unaltered. This differs from an actual congruence, or the hard work of experiencing growth, in that such individuals fail to recognize any potential for a discrepancy or concede that they are experiencing any stress, uncertainty, or anxiety. So, for some, they go on living as though nothing ever happened. Third, some individuals may find the gap between their beliefs and life experiences to simply be too great, and so they flee religion by deidentifying. That is, they leave religion. By jettisoning their religious beliefs, there is no longer a discrepancy between their (newly updated) worldview and their experiences of suffering. In this way, they deal with the incongruence by abandoning their religious identity. Although work on religious deidentification is relatively novel, recent research reveals that as many as 20% of Americans (drawn from a nationally representative sample) may have experienced religious deidentification: they once identified as religious but no longer do so (Van Tongeren, DeWall, Chen, Bulbulia, & Sibley, under review). Although the motivation for becoming a religious “done” (i.e., religious deidentifier) varies, it is possible that some are compelled to do so because their beliefs can no longer sufficiently explain their life, so they alter this component of their identity. Interestingly, following deidentification religious psychological processes and associated behaviors often persist, suggesting that religion may leave a “residue” that remains after one’s identity changes. After suffering or trauma, some people might find that the most authentic response to adjust their worldview to match reality by abandoning their religious identity (and perhaps even many of their religious beliefs or practices) altogether, and so they leave religion. Indeed, in the wake of senseless abuse and countless scandals, many people have left the Church. Finally, in the face of suffering, some actually do experience positive growth and maturation—that is, some experience flourishing. For some, the incongruency of life’s experiences with their own beliefs leads them to revise, expand, alter, or deepen their religious beliefs in ways that are positive, prosocial, more authentic, and nondefensive (e.g., accommodation; Park, 2010). Previous research has found that the encounter with mortality can lead to a “roar of the awakening,” in which people clarify their priorities in life, decide to live more authentically, and engage in purposive actions oriented toward living lives of meaning and significance (Martin, Campbell, & Henry, 2004). Once people have come face to face with death, it shifts their perspective in ways that change their values, broaden their perspective to go beyond themselves, and invest in ways of building lasting meaning (see Vail et al., 2012). I hasten to clarify that for some, a sense of flourishing can be gained by fleeing. Some individuals experience personal growth by embracing a newly nonreligious identity, which provides them with a greater sense of coherence and meaning than holding on to a religious identity that no longer fits. Indeed, some people might find considerable relief by shifting their religious identity, beliefs, or practices in a way that is authentic to their experience of suffering. Still for others, they are able to integrate their beliefs and the reality of suffering that yields a deeper, richer set of religious beliefs and experiences and may lead to spiritual maturation. Although suffering—and the direct confrontation with death—does lead many people to respond defensively, there are situations where positive growth, deepening of one’s faith, a maturation of spirituality, and a more prosocial response may be possible. Although individual differences in personality and the contextual differences in people’s specific suffering play a role, it also stands to reason that certain features of religion may be more prone to positive responses to suffering.

Toward existentially resilient religion Not all religious beliefs are created equal. That is, not all systems of religious meaning are equitable in their ability to address existential concerns. First, how one holds beliefs matters. Various threads of research suggest that an internalized form of religion in which such beliefs are of central importance and direct one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—notably, intrinsic religiousness—may be particularly well-suited to reduce existential anxiety (e.g., Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Vail et al., 2010; Van Tongeren, Pennington, et al., 2017; Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., in press). Religious beliefs that loom large in one’s sense of identity are valuable to managing existential fears, such as death.

46

PART | 1 Death

Second, as previously mentioned, the content of such beliefs matter. Religious beliefs that are oriented toward maintaining security often protect individuals from existential anxiety but elicit defensiveness when existential concerns are made salient, whereas religious beliefs oriented toward growth are less effectual in dealing with such concerns, but promote tolerance, openness, and more favorable reactions toward attitudinally dissimilar others (Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016). Surely, as mentioned before, these different belief systems have tradeoffs; some are better are reducing existential concerns whereas others are better at promoting interpersonal and intergroup functioning. That is, either ultimate concerns are quieted by making social life more tumultuous for those with whom one disagrees, or one is able to interact peacefully with new cultures and explore novel ideologies but doing so undermines the ability to calm existential terror. Looked at this way, social and existential goals appear to be at odds. However, might there be a religious response that is effective in mollifying existential anxiety elicited by direct threats and does not incur negative social consequences? That is, might there be a religious orientation or set of beliefs that offer both social benefits (e.g., prosocial interpersonal and intergroup functioning) and reduces death-related anxiety (e.g., promise of an afterlife) for the future? Are certain adaptations of religious orientations that can handle doubt, questioning, and uncertainty while promoting intergroup tolerance and openness (e.g., quest religiousness) that might be particularly useful? A religious meaning system that is able to effectively handle existential concerns without incurring negative social costs would be an existentially resilient religion (see Van Tongeren & Van Tongeren, 2020). By existentially resilient religion, I mean a set of religious beliefs that (1) provides sufficient structure to mitigate existential anxiety, but (2) is adaptively flexible enough to account for reality of suffering, and (3) promotes remaining humble and open to new perspectives held by others. Such an approach to religiousness might be particularly powerful. Future research may benefit from exploring the nature, predictors, correlates, and consequences of such an existentially resilient form of religion. What types of beliefs, and what manners of holding such beliefs, are associated with balancing demands for managing social relations and reducing existential anxiety? For example, quest religion has been associated with increased tolerance toward dissimilar others but is often poorly suited to allay existential anxiety; similarly, religious fundamentalism provides security and structure but often at the cost of tolerance and openness (Van Tongeren, Davis, et al., 2016). Is there a religious approach that is balanced enough to satisfy security and growth motivations? And what would predict this form of religiousness? What are some intrapersonal, interpersonal, and existential consequences of such beliefs? Finally, how might such beliefs be maintained when the threats of death are concrete, direct, and unavoidable? There are several exciting avenues of future research that could catalyze research on the existential function of religion in response to direct threats of death. First, recent research has started to explore the idea of spiritual fortitude, which one’s perceived degree of spiritual resources in the wake of extreme adversity (Van Tongeren, Aten, et al., in press). Initial work with disaster survivors has been promising, suggesting that individuals high in spiritual fortitude may engage in positive religious coping, which can lead to meaning in life and spiritual well-being (McElroy-Heltzel et al., 2018). Future work could explore this burgeoning area of research. Second, more work has been focused on religions “nones,” including those that are “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). SBNRs may be a growing segment of the population, yet less research has focused on this group than those who adhere to more traditional forms of religion. Might such individuals reap the existential benefits of spirituality without the intergroup conflict associated with religion? Future work should examine how such individuals fare when threats of death are direct and salient. Finally, how might religious deconversion, reconversion, or religious switching affect how people respond to suffering and threats of death; and to what degree might they be a result of such adversity in life? I have suggested that some might leave religion following adversity, but perhaps those who have switched or reconverted might be more existentially resilient to threats and may instead experience religious growth and spiritual maturation when future adversity strikes. Future research could address this possibility.

Concluding thoughts Suffering often makes existential concerns an inescapable reality. Threats of death, and other ultimate fears, become salient and unavoidable. As people turn toward their religious beliefs to make meaning and cope with these negative events, both what people believe and how they hold such beliefs play a central role in their responses to these deep and profound questions. As the only animal that is aware of its future death, and the only animal that is religious, and given the consequences of various religious beliefs, better understanding how people turn toward, and engage, the Sacred in times of need is an important intellectual and social endeavor.

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

47

Acknowledgment This work was supported in part by grants from The John Templeton Foundation (nos. 60734 and 61392).

References Ai, A. L., Hall, D., Pargament, K., & Tice, T. N. (2013). Posttraumatic growth in patients who survived cardiac surgery: The predictive and mediating roles of faith-based factors. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 36, 186 198. Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432. Arndt, J., Cook, A., & Routledge, C. (2004). The blueprint of terror management. Understanding the cognitive architecture of psychological defense against the awareness of death. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 35 53). New York: Guilford Press. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1997). Subliminal exposure to death-related stimuli increases defense of the cultural worldview. Psychological Science, 8, 379 385. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 416 429. Beck, R. (2004). The function of religious belief: Defensive versus existential religion. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23, 208 218. Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus existential religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 143 153. Brandt, M. J., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2017). People both high and low in religious fundamentalism are prejudiced toward dissimilar groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112, 76 97. Cohen, R., Bavishi, C., & Rozanski, A. (2016). Purpose in life and its relationship to all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events: A meta-analysis. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(2), 122 133. Czekierdaa, K., Banika, A., Park, C. L., & Luszczynskaa, A. (2017). Meaning in life and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2017.1327325, Advanced online version available. Davis, E. B., Granqvist, P., & Sharp, C. (in press). Theistic relational spirituality: Development, dynamics, health, and transformation. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., Van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722. Edwards, M., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (in press). Meaning mediates the association between suffering and well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology. Exline, J. J., Park, C. L., Smyth, J. M., & Carey, M. P. (2011). Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 129 148. Florian, V., Mikulincer, M., & Hirschberger, G. (2002). The anxiety-buffering function of close relationships: Evidence that relationship commitment acts as a terror management mechanism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 527 542. Frazier, P., Tennen, H., Gavian, M., Park, C., Tomich, P., & Tashiro, T. (2009). Does self-reported posttraumatic growth reflect genuine positive change? Psychological Science, 20, 912 919. Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2008). The implications of death for health: A terror management model of behavioral health promotion. Psychological Review, 115, 1032 1053. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Hall, M. E. L., Shannonhouse, L., Aten, J., McMartin, J., & Silverman, E. J. (2018). Religion-specific resources for meaning-making from suffering: Defining the territory. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21, 77 92. Hart, J., Shaver, P. R., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2005). Attachment, self-esteem, worldviews, and terror management: Evidence for a tripartite security system. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 999 1013. Haynes, W. C., Van Tongeren, D. R., Aten, J., Davis, E. B., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., . . . Johnson, T. (2017). The meaning as a buffer hypothesis: Spiritual meaning attenuates the effect of disaster exposure on posttraumatic stress. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 9, 446 453. Heintzelman, S. J., & King, L. A. (2014). (The feeling of) meaning-as-information. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 153 167. Hill, P. L., & Turiano, N. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological science, 25(7), 1482 1486. Hooker, S. A., Master, K. S., & Park, C. L. (2018). A meaningful life is a healthy life: A conceptual model linking meaning and meaning salience to health. Review of General Psychology, 22, 11 24. Hunsberger, B., & Jackson, L. M. (2005). Religion, meaning, and prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 807 826. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1989). Assumptive worlds and the stress of traumatic events: Applications of the schema construct. Social Cognition, 7, 113 136. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press. Jayawickreme, E., & Blackie, L. E. R. (2014). Posttraumatic growth as positive personality change: Evidence, controversies and future directions. European Journal of Personality, 28, 312 331. Johnson, K. A., Li, Y. J., Cohen, A. B., & Okun, M. A. (2013). Friends in high places: The influence of authoritarian and benevolent god-concepts on social attitudes and behaviors. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(1), 15.

48

PART | 1 Death

Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553. Joseph, S., & Linley, P. A. (2005). Positive adjustment to threatening events: A organismic valuing theory of growth through adversity. Review of General Psychology, 9, 262 280. Kashdan, T. B., & McKnight, P. E. (2013). Commitment to a purpose in life: An antidote to the suffering by individuals with social anxiety disorder. Emotion, 13, 1150 1159. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480 498. Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., . . . . . . Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136 1150. Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1 62). Academic Press. Lerner. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum. Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2004). Positive change following trauma and adversity: A review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17, 11 21. Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2011). Meaning in life and posttraumatic growth. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 16, 150 159. Martin, L. L., Campbell, W. K., & Henry, C. D. (2004). The roar of awakening: Mortality acknowledgment as a call to authentic living. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 431 448). New York: Guilford Press. McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., Van Tongeren, D. R., Gazaway, S., Ordaz, A., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., . . . Stargell, N. A. (2018). The role of spiritual fortitude and positive religious coping in meaning in life and spiritual well-being following Hurricane Matthew. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 37, 17 27. McFarland, C., & Alvaro, C. (2000). The impact of motivation on temporal comparisons: Coping with traumatic events by perceiving personal growth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 327 343. Mikulincer, M., Florian, V., & Hirschberger, G. (2003). The existential function of close relationships: Introducing death into the science of love. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 20 40. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257. Phelps, A. C., Maciejewski, P. K., Nilsson, M., Balboni, T. A., Wright, A. A., Paulk, M. E., . . . Prigerson, H. G. (2009). Religious coping and use of intensive life-prolonging care near death in patients with advanced cancer. JAMA, 301, 1140 1147. Proulx, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). The five “A”s of meaning maintenance: Finding meaning in the theories of sense-making. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 317 335. Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006). Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The great Satan versus the axis of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 525 537. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Koole, S., & Solomon, S. (2010). Experimental existential psychology: Coping with the facts of life. In (8th ed.S. Fiske, & D. Gilbert (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1New York: Wiley. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835 845. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 435 468. Pyszczynski, T., & Kesebir, P. (2011). Anxiety buffer disruption theory: A terror management account of posttraumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 24, 3 26. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1 70). Academic Press. Ray, S. D., Lockman, J. D., Jones, E. J., & Kelly, M. H. (2015). Attributions to God and Satan about life-altering events. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 7, 60. Roepke, A. M., Jayawickreme, E., & Riffle, O. M. (2014). Meaning and health: A systematic review. Applied Research of Quality of Life, 9, 1055 1079. Shaw, A., Joseph, S., & Linley, P. A. (2005). Religion, spirituality and posttraumatic growth: A systematic review. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 8, 1 11. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 13 34). New York: Guilford Press. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., Wilt, J. A., & Grubbs, J. B. (2019). Stressful life events and religiousness predict struggles about religion and spirituality. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 11(3), 291 296. Steger, M. F., Fitch-Martin, A. R., Donnelly, J., & Rickard, K. M. (2015). Meaning in life and health: Proactive health orientation links meaning in life to health variables among American undergraduates. Journal of Happiness Studies, 16, 583 597. Tarakeshwar, N., Vanderwerker, L. C., Paulk, E., Pearce, M. J., Kasl, S. V., & Prigerson, H. G. (2006). Religious coping is associated with the quality of life of patients with advanced cancer. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 9, 646 657. Vail, K. E., Juhl, J., Arndt, J., Vess, M., Routledge, C., & Rutjens, B. T. (2012). When death is good for life: Considering the positive trajectories of terror management. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 303 329. Vail, K. E., III, Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94.

Face to face with death: the role of religion in coping with suffering Chapter | 3

49

Van Tongeren, D. R. (in press). The importance of meaning in the relationship between religion and death. Religion, Brain, and Behavior. Van Tongeren, D.R., Aten, J.D., McElroy, S., Davis, D.E., Shannonhouse, L., Davis, E.B., & Hook, J.N. (in press). Development and validation of a measure of spiritual fortitude. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Van Tongeren, D.R., Davis, E.B., Hook, J.N., Davis, D.E., & Aten, J.D. (in press). Existentially threatening stimuli increase religious cognitive dissonance among the less intrinsically religious. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Security versus growth: Existential tradeoffs of various religious perspectives. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 77 88. Van Tongeren, D.R., DeWall, C.N., Chen, Z., Bulbilia, J., & Sibley, C.G. (under review). Religious residue: Cross-cultural evidence that religious psychology and behavior persist following deidentification. Manuscript submitted for publication. Van Tongeren, D. R., DeWall, C. N., Chen, Z., Bulbilia, J., & Sibley, C. G. (under review). Religious residue: Cross-cultural evidence that religious psychology and behavior persist following deidentification. Manuscript submitted for publication.Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2018). Meaning and death-thought accessibility. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 230 239. Van Tongeren, D. R., Hill, P. C., Krause, N., Ironson, G. H., & Pargament, K. I. (2017). The mediating role of meaning in the association between stress and health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 51, 775 781. Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., & Davis, D. E. (2013). Defensive religion as a source of meaning in life: A dual mediational model. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5, 227 232. Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., Aten, J., & Davis, E. B. (2016). Ebola as an existential threat? Experimentally primed Ebola reminders intensify national security-based concerns among extrinsically religious individuals. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 44, 133 141. Van Tongeren, D. R., McIntosh, D. N., Raad, J., & Pae, J. (2013). The existential function of intrinsic religiousness: Moderation of effects of priming religion on intercultural tolerance and afterlife anxiety. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52, 508 523. Van Tongeren, D. R., Pennington, A., McIntosh, D. N., Newton, A. T., Green, J. D., Davis, D. E., & Hook, J. N. (2017). Where, o death, is thy sting?: The meaning-providing function of beliefs in literal immortality. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 20, 413 427. Van Tongeren, D. R., Sanders, M., Edwards, M., Davis, E. B., Aten, J. D., Ranter, J. M., & Davis, D. E. (2019). Religious and spiritual struggles alter God representations. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 11, 225 232. Van Tongeren, D. R., Stafford, J., Hook, J. N., Green, J. D., Davis, D. E., & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Humility attenuates negative attitudes and behaviors toward religious outgroup members. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11, 199 208. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Van Tongeren, S. A. S. (2020). The courage to suffer: A new clinical framework for life’s greatest crises. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Exploring the existential function of religion: The effect of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on faith-based medical refusals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334. Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., Park, C. L., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). God’s role in suffering: Theodicies, divine struggle, and mental health. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 352 362. Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Zahl, B. P., & Gibson, N. J. (2012). God representations, attachment to God, and satisfaction with life: A comparison of doctrinal and experiential representations of God in Christian young adults. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22, 216 230. Zika, S., & Chamberlain, K. (1992). On the relationship between meaning in life and psychological well-being. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 133 145.

Chapter 4

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Natasha Tassell-Matamua1 and Janice Miner Holden2 1

Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 2University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Existing at the interface of the material and nonmaterial worlds, and between psychological and spiritual phenomena, near-death experiences (NDEs) are intriguing occurrences that provide a platform for further understanding the influence of death-related phenomena on religion and spirituality. Intriguing because a general impression is that they typically occur near or at the point of clinical death when cognitive functioning is considered compromised, but also because they are often considered as “spiritual” experiences by those who have them. Although phenomena approximating NDEs have been described throughout history and across cultures and a large amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to their empirical study, much about NDEs remains unknown. However, a consistently reported outcome of these experiences is the profound and long-lasting changes they seem to induce, including transformations to notions of religiosity and spirituality. How and why these changes occur remains subject to speculation.

Near-death experience phenomenology Although the expression experiences de morte imminente was used in several French philosophy and medical articles during the 1800s (e.g., Egger, 1896), and the first systematic study of experiences characterizing NDEs was published by Heim (1892), the term “near-death experience” did not gain traction until the late 1970s with its (re)introduction and definition by Moody (1975) in his book Life After Life. Initially coined to describe “profound spiritual events that happen, uninvited, to some individuals at the point of death” (Moody, 1988, p. 11), the term NDEs has recently been conceptualized more broadly as anomalous psychological phenomena often occurring in near-death situations, representing a radical departure from everyday normative experiences due to their transcendence of space, time, and perceptual boundaries and including various cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental features. Cognitive features reflect the perception of extraordinary cognitive functioning not typical of everyday conscious abilities or perceptions. For example, near-death experiencers (NDErs) often report that during the NDE their perception of time was altered or that time lost all meaning. Studies indicate 9% 64% of individuals have reported this feature (Greyson, 1983, 2003; Schwaninger, Eisenberg, Schechtman, & Weiss, 2002). Hyperlucidity and rapid memory revival in the form of a life review are other examples of cognitive features. Reported by 13% 50% of NDErs (Cassol et al., 2018; Pacciolla, 1996; van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, & Elferrich, 2001), the life review is particularly intriguing and can involve the recollection of long-forgotten memories and events extending over one’s entire lifetime, as well as the awareness of the impact one’s actions had on others (van Lommel, 2006). Emotional features signal alterations to affective states. Most often, NDErs report intense and overwhelmingly positive emotions during the NDE, including joy, happiness, tranquility, and unconditional love. Particularly common are feelings of peace, which are reported by the majority of NDErs in any study, although Schwaninger et al. (2002) reported 100% of their sample described feelings of peace during their NDEs. The emotions felt are so intense and allencompassing that NDErs often have difficulty finding appropriate words to describe how they felt and indicate that The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00005-6 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

51

52

PART | 1 Death

such descriptions do not entirely capture the affective aspect of the NDE (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). An encounter with or feeling as though one is surrounded by a bright light is also commonly reported and is almost always accompanied by the previously described positive emotions. Although rare, unpleasant emotions have also been reported, including feelings of guilt, fear, loneliness, panic, and terror (Bush, 2012). Transcendental features are those reflecting a transcendence of one’s usual state of being. For example, NDErs have reported apparent travel to another unearthly realm, which is often described in positive terms. This aspect can also be accompanied by the sense that one has come to a border, either actual (e.g., a river that one is unable to cross) or psychological (e.g., a feeling that one can progress no further), which if crossed would mean the individual is unable to return to one’s physical body. The experience of meeting deceased others or encountering beings is perhaps the most commonly reported transcendental feature. Although the deceased others are usually those with whom the NDEr had a significant relationship during physical life, at times individuals have reported seeing an unknown person during their NDEs and becoming aware of the person’s identity only after subsequently seeing the person’s photo—sometimes decades after the experience (van Lommel, 2011). Others have reported experiences in which they encountered as deceased someone they thought was still alive, only to be later informed the person had died just prior to or during the NDE, sometimes at a distant location (Greyson, 2010). Kelly (2001) found NDErs whose proximity to physical death was imminent, as well as accident and cardiac arrest victims involving conditions of sudden onset, were significantly more likely to encounter deceased persons or beings. Paranormal features are often characterized by the apparent possession of psychic abilities, which can include precognition, in which the NDEr may report visions of the future, and extra-sensory perception, in which they describe information they could not have obtained using the five commonly accepted sensory modalities or the process of rational deduction. Depending on the study, an estimated 53% 99% of NDErs have also reported an out-of-body experience (OBE), which involves conscious abilities, usually from an elevated visuospatial perspective that is external to the physical body, accompanied by the perception of disembodiment. A number of well-known cases (e.g., Beauregard, St Pierre, Rayburn, & Derners, 2012; Parnia et al., 2014; Sabom, 1998) have illustrated the OBEs of individuals who described events, people, and even noises occurring around the vicinity of their physical bodies at a time when their physiological functioning was verifiably severely compromised. A recently published collection included over 100 cases where individuals reported paranormal phenomena during a time of compromised physiological functioning, and that compromised functioning was verified by credible witnesses—often physicians in attendance during the NDEr’s medical crisis (Rivas, Dirven, & Smit, 2016). To date, no known NDEs have contained all the abovementioned features, and no reports of identical NDEs have been recorded. Although NDEs are predominantly described in positive terms, distressing NDEs have also been reported (see Bush, 2012), with an estimated incidence rate of 1% 2% (Greyson & Bush, 1992). Features of distressing NDEs can include negative affect such as fear and confusion, travel to “hellish” realms, feelings of nothingness, and nonpleasant encounters with beings. The relative infrequency of distressing NDEs may be a consequence of such experiences either actually being less prevalent or being underreported due to individuals not willing to disclose their experience due to shame or desire not to be retraumatized.

Defining near-death experiences Although many authors have contributed delineations, currently there is no consensually agreed definition of NDEs. However, several tools have been developed to quantify whether or not an experience constitutes an NDE. Ring (1980) developed the Weighted Core Experience Index (WCEI), which is an interview scale assessing specific features, such as positive affect, an OBE, awareness of being dead, apparent travel through a tunnel, a life review, communication with a bright light, encountering deceased others, observation of colors, an otherworldly landscape, and the presence of a border. Each feature is assigned a particular “weight” (e.g., 1, 2, and 3), and responses are then calculated according to these weights to give a total score, enabling researchers to ascertain whether the experience constitutes a “core experience.” The development of the WCEI, however, was not based on psychometric analyses of items, so the instrument lacked statistical validity and reliability. The most popular and widely used measure is the NDE Scale developed by Greyson (1983), which was based on psychometric analyses. Using 16 items, the NDE Scale assesses the depth of the NDE by examining the relative intensity of various cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental features. Responses are made on a scale of 0 (phenomenon absent) to 2 (phenomenon present and intense) and are summed to give a total score, which, if calculated as 7 or above, identifies the experience as an NDE. Higher scores are indicative of deeper NDEs, or experiences that

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

53

display greater quantity and intensity of features. The introduction of this measure provided a standardized means of measuring NDEs for categorical purposes, yet definitional concerns persist. Perhaps, the most pertinent among these concerns relates to the physical state individuals are in when NDEs are believed to occur. Although a general impression is that NDEs do occur “near-death,” or at the point an individual is physiologically close to or at clinical death, experiences typifying NDEs have also occurred during circumstances not associated with immediate near-death events. For example, such experiences have occurred in situations where individuals felt a psychological closeness to death although physiologically there was limited risk of dying (Kelly, Greyson, & Kelly, 2007); in situations of mild sickness, seclusion, depression, and meditation; and also without any evident reason (van Lommel, 2013). These occurrences raise arguments about the appropriateness of the term “near-death experience,” with some scholars (e.g., Facco & Agrillo, 2012) suggesting that the introduction of new terminology—such as “neardeath-like experiences”—is needed to define anomalous psychological events that involve similar or the same phenomenological features as classically defined NDEs, but that occur in non life threatening situations and/or where consciousness is not compromised. Facco and Agrillo (2012) recently noted that such experiences can still score highly on the NDE Scale, which raises concerns about the ability of the NDE Scale to differentiate different types of anomalous experiences. A related issue is that some features, such as encounter with a bright light, positive affect, and enhanced cognition, appear to be more prevalent in individuals whose proximity to death was objectively verified (Owens, Cook, & Stevenson, 1990). As mentioned previously, however, not all those who have an experience typifying an NDE are in a life-threatening state. Are such features reflective of NDEs, or do they reflect some other type of anomalous experience similar to NDEs but typified by these specific features that occur at the point of clinical death and resuscitation, rather than in near-death, non life threatening, and actual death situations (e.g., end-of-life experiences)? Whereas such experiences may still score highly on the NDE Scale and may be phenomenologically similar to NDEs, clearly they are physiologically distinct from NDEs. This diversity again raises concerns about what constitutes an NDE and suggests that the distinction between NDEs that do or do not occur on the brink of death, needs to be more clearly differentiated. Although Moody (1975) first proposed a prototypical NDE containing a total of 15 sequential features, no recorded NDEs to date have contained all the features typical of the experiences, and features can occur in any sequence (Kelly et al., 2007). Some studies indicate the quantity of NDE features in any one experience varies according to whether it is reported prospectively or retrospectively, with more features often reported in retrospective accounts (Charland-Verville et al., 2014). This finding begs the question of whether an experience that contains just one or two of the typical features of NDEs has the same valence as an experience containing, for example, 10 features. Theoretically, the experience with one or two features could not score above the 7-point threshold specified by the NDE Scale, but the phenomenology of the experience could still be equally or more intense than the NDE containing 10 features. Specific NDE features may be culture-bound—or at least not described or interpreted the same way universally. Although reports of the characteristic features of NDEs are incredibly consistent, much of the academic information generated about NDEs derives from samples/cases from the United States and Western Europe, with far fewer cases analyzed or studies conducted in non Western cultures (Kellehear, 2009). In many ways the dominant information compiled about NDEs to date is treated as the “reference point” for NDEs, yet there is likely much more information about these experiences embedded within the narratives of other cultural contexts, particularly those that are non-Western. Because so little is known about the cultural-specificity of NDEs, conclusions regarding definition and phenomenology cannot be reached until a more thorough investigation of NDEs in a variety of cultural contexts is undertaken. A growing number of publications are now emerging from ethnically diverse Western nations, such as Aotearoa New Zealand (e.g., Tassell-Matamua, 2013a; Tassell-Matamua & Murray, 2014; Tassell-Matamua, Steadman, & Frewin, 2018), as well as non Western cultures (e.g., Ghasemiannejad, Long, Nouri, & Farahnakian, 2014; Matlock, 2017; Ohkado & Greyson, 2014; Shushan, 2011, 2016, 2017). Contributions such as these are important responses to the recent call to prioritize investigations into the cultural diversity of NDEs (Sleutjes, Moreira-Almeida, & Greyson, 2014). Combined, the abovementioned issues reflect the complexity involved in defining NDEs, while also suggesting that despite its unparalleled and monumental contribution to the field of near-death studies, the NDE Scale (Greyson, 1983) may need to be revised in light of current understandings and critiques of NDE definitions, and caution should be exercised in using the NDE Scale as the arbiter of whether or not to define an experience as an NDE (Facco & Agrillo, 2012).

Historical reports and estimated incidence of near-death experiences Notwithstanding the definitional concerns previously raised, available evidence suggests NDEs are part of the body of human knowledge. One of the earliest known written accounts of an NDE is the Myth of Er, found in Plato’s The Republic from the 4th century BCE. The account is that of a soldier who died in battle, but subsequently returned to

54

PART | 1 Death

life to describe an exceptional experience that occurred while he was dead—one that involved an OBE, encountering nonmaterial beings, and travel to an unearthly realm. Experiences approximating NDEs are also believed to be evident in the recorded histories of the earliest known cultures, including the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians (SchroterKunhardt, 1993). Some scholars have suggested they are also embedded in humanity’s oldest texts, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Old Testament, and that parallels are evident between NDE characteristics and teachings of some of the world’s major religions (Masumian, 2009). A plethora of information has been gained about NDEs over the past 40 years, largely due to the popularization of NDEs by Moody’s (1975) book Life After Life, which heralded the unofficial birth of the field of near-death studies and rigorous research into NDEs. Improved survival rates due to modern resuscitation techniques, as well as the popularization of NDEs through academic enquiry, social media, best-selling books, and documentaries (at least in Western cultures), have also likely influenced recent increases in NDE reports. Current estimates suggest the prevalence of NDEs ranges between 4% and 35% of the population. Retrospective studies examining NDEs among self-selected populations have indicated an average incidence rate of 35% (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009), whereas prospective studies—patients interviewed a short time after a life-threatening experience, and many completing the NDE Scale—have indicated an incidence rate of 10% 20% (e.g., Parnia et al., 2014; van Lommel et al., 2001). Nevertheless, NDEs are still believed to be largely underreported, making it difficult to estimate with any certainty the rate NDEs might occur in any population at any point in time.

Disclosure of near-death experiences Much of the underreporting of NDEs is believed to be directly linked to disclosure concerns. Decisions about whether or not to disclose an NDE are complex and influenced by a plethora of factors. Hoffman (1995a, 1995b) was one of the first researchers to investigate the disclosure habits of NDErs. In her interviews with 50 NDErs, it was revealed that prior knowledge of an NDE can influence decisions to disclose or not. Compared to participants who had heard of NDEs before their own experiences, those who had not heard of NDEs were less likely to disclose their NDEs to others. Hoffman suggested that disclosure reluctance may be due not only to the emotional potency of an NDE but also to the feeling of alienation resulting from a sense of having had a unique or anomalous experience. Hoffman’s study also revealed that despite the intensity of the NDE, some individuals felt compelled to tell their “story.” Reasons included a desire to help others, as many NDErs believed their experience offered a useful means for doing so as well as belief that the ramifications of not sharing their NDEs were too severe for humanity and that not to share would be disingenuous. Other factors linked to disclosure habits relate to the sociocultural context within which NDErs reside. Sociocultural perceptions and taboos about anomalous occurrences are dominant forces. At best, popular opinion views NDEs as able to be explained through conventional systems of knowledge, which typically adhere to a materialist reductionist philosophy that emphasizes established scientific principles and laws, such as cause-and-effect, objectivity, positivism, and empirical verification (Kelly et al., 2007). Modern Western cultures are typically skeptical of any human experiences that contravene these understandings and that cannot be objectively verified for their “realness”; they tend to consider such experiences to be unusual, abnormal, and/or anomalous. Interestingly, however, particular paranormal features of NDEs, such as one’s senses being more vivid, have been positively correlated with a desire to talk about one’s NDE (Hoffman, 1995a), which suggests there are likely very specific features of NDEs either that contravene societal norms, thus rendering them difficult to disclose to others, or that reflect societal norms, thus rendering them easier to disclose. Compounding the issue of stigma is the dysfunctional focus of current biological and psychological explanatory models for NDEs (Facco & Agrillo, 2012), which can equate NDE features with mental illness symptomology, as outlined in classification systems such as the DSM-V (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and the ICD-10 (World Health Organization, 2018). Although NDEs have not been reliably linked to any specific mental illness (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009), a lack of empirical evidence differentiating them from the spectrum of pathological syndromes, means the correlation between NDEs and pathology is not fully known (Landolt et al., 2014). Given the similarity of some NDE features—such as seeing deceased others, visiting otherworldly realms, and having an OBE—to some criteria used to diagnose mental illness—including visual and auditory hallucinations and dissociation—and their deviation from currently accepted norms of reality, some arguments suggest NDEs are anomalous and therefore fall within the realm of pathology. Indeed, NDErs who report greater quantity and intensity of NDE features as assessed by the NDE Scale also report a greater likelihood of distressing and harmful experiences disclosing their NDEs to health professionals (Holden, Kinsey, & Moore, 2014). This tendency to pathologize persists despite the aforementioned absence of

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

55

evidence of correlation between NDE and mental illness and analyses clearly differentiating NDEs from altered states of consciousness such as hallucinations and dreams (Sartori, 2014). It remains to be seen whether the aforementioned factors also impact disclosure of NDEs in non Western, indigenous, and settler cultures. It has been proposed that how anomalous experiences, such as NDEs, are interpreted is simply a function of whether an accepted structure exists against which to reference the experience (Adriaens, 2012). If a suitable niche exists into which the sociocultural milieu can “fit” NDEs, it is unlikely to be considered problematic by the NDEr or those existing within and endorsing the same cultural context. As an example, a variety of narratives within the indigenous M¯aori culture of Aotearoa New Zealand speak to a range of anomalous experiences, many of which describe features typifying NDEs (e.g., Reed, 1977). This narrative tradition suggests there are socially accepted structures to reference NDEs against within that cultural context, which facilitates a level of acceptance of anomalous occurrences, in turn making disclosure of NDEs less potentially ostracizing. Similar structures may also exist in other indigenous and minority cultures, which may in turn influence whether and in what ways NDEs are disclosed.

Explanatory models for near-death experiences Predisposing personal or circumstantial variables of NDEs remain elusive, and the likelihood of having such an experience seems to be equal for all persons (Holden, Long, & MacLurg, 2009; Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). The plethora of research based largely on Western cultures indicates NDErs do not differ from comparable groups on demographic variables, such as age, gender, religion, and race (Greyson, 2003, 2007). Given the previously mentioned challenges related to defining NDEs, the unpredictable nature with which they occur, as well as societal discourses that are reliant on material reductionism to explain the nature of everyday reality, speculation continues regarding the legitimacy of NDEs. Legitimacy claims are fed by and feed into debates about the causal mechanisms underlying these experiences. As yet, no explanatory model is able to sufficiently account for the totality of elements occurring during NDEs (Kelly et al., 2007; Parnia, Spearpoint, & Fenwick, 2007), although a host of physiological, psychological, and pathological explanatory theories have been proposed.

Physiological explanations Physiological explanations imply a biological basis to NDEs. One of the most enduring theories implicates blood gases as causative to NDEs and suggests that cerebral anoxia (i.e., oxygen depletion), hypoxia (i.e., reduced oxygen), or hypercarbia (i.e., elevated CO2 levels in the blood) trigger anomalous sensations that manifest as features including perceptions of light and deceased relatives, travel through a tunnel, and feelings of peace, joy, and happiness (for an overview, see Greyson, Kelly, & Kelly, 2009). Although it is plausible that blood gases contribute to some NDE features, it is not plausible that they alone could manufacture the totality of the experience. For example, many NDEs occur in the absence of changes to oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the brain (e.g., falls). Whereas results of one report suggested a positive correlation between carbon dioxide levels and NDE reports in cardiac arrest survivors (KlemencKetis, Kersnik, & Grmec, 2010), results of other studies have refuted this claim, indicating those reporting NDEs do not necessarily have higher levels of carbon dioxide in the brain in comparison to those not reporting an NDE (Parnia et al., 2007). Hypoxia and anoxia have been shown to produce experiences (e.g., frightening hallucinations) and aftereffects (e.g., irritation) quite unlike those typically reported by NDErs (e.g., peace, joy), although the limited number of distressing NDEs reported restricts the certainty of this claim, as it is not certain whether fewer distressing NDEs occur or whether they are simply underreported. van Lommel et al. (2001) noted that if anoxia is a necessary factor in manufacturing NDEs in their entirety, the incidence of NDEs among cardiac arrest patients should be higher, as anoxia is a typical feature of such a medical condition. Theories have also been proposed linking the release of specific neurochemicals during extreme stress situations— such as endorphins, endogenous opioids, and ketamine—to the manufacture of specific NDE features. Endorphins, which are known to reduce or eliminate pain, have been implicated in producing the absence of physical pain and the presence of pleasant feelings and sensations that NDErs typically report (Kelly et al., 2007). Limiting this theory is the observation that endogenous opioids produce pain relief lasting for hours, whereas the extreme effect and pain relief accompanying NDEs typically lasts only as long as the experience itself, with a “return” to the physical body immediately reigniting any physical pain while diminishing the intensity of the positive emotions (Fracasso & Friedman, 2011; Kelly et al., 2007). Jansen (1997a) proposed a ketamine-like endogenous agent may exist and is released during extreme stress situations; it could selectively engage NMDA receptors to produce the transcendental features of OBEs, encountering deceased others, and visiting an otherworldly realm. Jansen (1997b) did concede, however, that he does not

56

PART | 1 Death

consider the hypothesized role of ketamine to negate the phenomenology of NDEs, and Greyson (2009) argued further that the proposed ketamine-like agent, if it exists in the brain, has yet to be located. These neurochemical theories also do not account for the totality of features occurring during NDEs, such as encountering deceased others not known to have died (Kelly et al., 2007; Ohkado, 2013). Specific anatomic locale in the brain, such as the right and left temporal lobes, thalamus, hypothalamus, frontal lobe, and parietal lobe (e.g., Britton & Bootzin, 2004), have also been linked to the manufacture of NDEs. Although results of some studies indicate fMRI activation in specific locations of the brain when NDErs recall their NDEs, this finding does not constitute evidence the activated structures played a role in the manufacture of the experience. Findings from some studies imply specific brain anatomy may be related to particular features of NDEs, such as the right middle temporal lobe being implicated in the feeling of connection to a being of light (e.g., Beauregard, Courtemanche, & Paquette, 2009). Although these structures appear to play some role in the memory of the NDE, again the question remains as to whether retrospective recollection of the NDE is phenomenologically the same as the actual experience and whether these same structures can account for the totality of NDE features, particularly when the experiences can occur in the presence of severely compromised neurological functioning. The insufficient administration of anesthesia has been argued as accounting for OBEs and, in particular, reports of patients hearing conversations between surgical staff and being aware of surgical procedures (Ghoneim & Block, 1992). Although this explanation is not entirely implausible, cases of awareness due to insufficient anesthesia are rare, ranging between 0.2% and 1.5% of surgical patients (Ghoneim & Block, 1997). Furthermore, individuals reporting conscious awareness during surgery in the absence of an NDE typically describe feelings of paralysis, helplessness, anxiety, and fear (Schwender et al., 1998), whereas OBEs during NDEs are usually associated with pleasant feelings. Recent research has revealed brain activity is completely deactivated during anesthesia, making usual perceptual processes redundant (e.g., Shulman, Hyder, & Rothman, 2003; White & Alkire, 2003). Many NDEs occur outside of surgical procedures and in the absence of anesthesia, as in cases of drowning, car accident, and suicide, and the insufficient anesthesia hypothesis cannot account for many NDE features beyond OBEs, thus further casting doubt on its ability to explain the underlying causal mechanisms of such experiences. The occurrence of some NDEs during anesthesia also raises cause for hesitation with regard to another hypothesis: that REM intrusion might be responsible for NDEs (Nelson, Mattingly, Lee, & Schmitt, 2006). Amongst other arguments against this hypothesis, anesthesia inhibits REM, thereby limiting the viability of the REM intrusion proposition as a wholesale explanation for all NDEs (Greyson & Long, 2006).

Psychological explanations Psychological explanations tend to focus on NDE causality being a consequence of defense mechanisms and/or cultural conditioning. One proposal suggests NDEs are a coping mechanism, whereby the threat of imminent death leads an individual to construct pleasant feelings, sensations, and imagery to cope with what many view as an anxiety-laden experience, possibly brought about by the uncertainty associated with death or the presumed annihilation of the self at physical death, at least in many Western cultures. The positive affective component of the NDE therefore serves to mitigate any negativity associated with thoughts of death and the dying process. However, limiting this argument is the fact that not all NDErs are aware of the imminence of their death, as the catalyst for the experience occurs so suddenly, as in the case of car accident or unexpected physical assault from behind, when there is no time to contemplate they may die. Although less common, distressing NDEs have also been reported, suggesting the notion of positively constructed defense mechanisms cannot be consistently applied. The “cultural conditioning” hypothesis suggests religious and/or spiritual explanations and expectations of what happens at the time of death and in the afterlife, which are partly psychologically constructed based on the beliefs or valuesystems held by an individual, are responsible for at least some NDE features. For example, individuals adhering to one of the Christian-based religions, holding beliefs about heaven, hell, and God, may be conditioned to construct such imagery at the time of death. However, individuals holding religious beliefs prior to the NDE do not always experience features consistent with their beliefs, NDErs without previously held religious beliefs see figures they describe in religious terms, and NDEs occur in secular societies where religious adherence is not common in social discourses (Tassell-Matamua et al., 2018). Children, who are often considered too young to have been socialized with conceptions of what death is and what might happen when one dies, have also reported NDEs with features that could be considered religiously and/or spiritually based (e.g., Morse, 1994; Serdahely, 1991). A further aspect to the cultural conditioning argument is that NDErs have an unconscious wish to contact a dead relative, so as a consequence they encounter deceased relatives during an NDE. Challenging this claim are Kelly’s (2001) findings that revealed visions of deceased

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

57

persons were more frequently associated with conditions of sudden onset with little opportunity to contemplate potential death—such as accident or cardiac arrest—than with conditions in which individuals had more time to contemplate potential death—such as childbirth or surgery. Adding to the above rebuttals, if NDEs are the result of cultural conditioning, increased reports of NDEs should have occurred post-1975, when the experiences were popularized by Moody’s book Life After Life (1975), yet several studies have found no significant differences in NDE reports pre- and post-1975 (Athappily, Greyson, & Stevenson, 2006; Long & Long, 2003). Similarly, cultural conditioning should result in NDE phenomenology being highly congruent with the cultural context of the NDEr, yet such congruence has yet to be consistently demonstrated, which may be partly a function of the limited research conducted to date on the cultural diversity of NDEs.

Psychopathological explanations NDErs are typically indistinguishable from others in terms of mental health and a variety of psychological variables, including intelligence, anxiety, neuroticism, and extroversion, and research has yet to reliably link NDEs to any mental health condition, implying pathology does not serve as a convincing explanatory model for such experiences. Nonetheless, speculative links about a pathological basis to NDEs have been proposed, implying NDEs are either a consequence of or predisposing factor for psychopathology. Depersonalization/dissociation—now known as depersonalization/derealization disorder (DDD) in the DSM-V, has been purported to explain some NDE features. Greyson (2000) found dissociative symptoms were more common among NDErs than among individuals who had a close brush with death without NDE, although NDErs’ levels were still within the normal range and far below that seen in clinical dissociative disorders. Although DDD symptoms can include sensory anesthesia, limited affective response, and lack of autonomy over actions and speech (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), these symptoms contrast sharply with the enhanced sensorium, affect, and autonomy that NDErs typically report. Combined, these data suggest that although DDD symptoms may be mental health concerns for some NDErs, they are unlikely to be causative factors in NDE occurrence for all NDErs. Speculative claims about NDE features being hallucinatory in nature have also been made, but equally rebutted. For example, whereas 80% of Greyson and Liester’s (2004) NDEr sample reported “internal voices” post-NDE, 97% reported positive attitudes toward the auditory experiences, which contrasts with the negative attitudes toward auditory hallucinations typically reported by psychiatric populations. Although the majority of NDEs occur in the absence of recreational and medicinal psychoactive substances, studies show that in comparison to the fragmentary and often meaningless hallucinations induced by drugs, NDE features are often endowed with complexity and personal meaning (Bates & Stanley, 1985). Furthermore, individuals who have, on separate occasions, experienced both hallucinations and an NDE describe the experiences and associated imagery as being quite different (Sartori, Badham, & Fenwick, 2006). A more recent study indicated that compared to individuals who were categorized as having an NDE-like experience, those who had an NDE as indicated by the sum of their responses on the NDE Scale, scored lower on fantasy proneness but showed no difference to matched controls (Martial, Cassol, Charland-Verville, Merckelbach, & Laureys, 2018), indicating a tendency to engage in fantasy is also not reliably associated with NDE occurrence. In summary, a host of explanatory models have been proposed for NDEs. Many of these models have limited empirical support and thereby remain hypotheses about causality. Although it is still possible that aspects of these proposed physiological, psychological, and pathological mechanisms do play some role in the manufacturing or recall of NDEs, a model based in current understandings of physiology and psychology that sufficiently explains the totality of NDE features has yet to be proposed, verified, and accepted.

Nonmaterialist explanations Another explanatory model that has been offered has been called by various names, such as “Transcendent” (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 385) and “dualist” (Rivas et al., 2016, p. xxx). Proponents of this model do not adhere to the philosophical materialist assumption that pervades Western science: that all phenomena are the product of material actions and interactions, including that conscious experience is the product of brain activity. They adhere instead to the philosophical idealist assumption that consciousness is primary and that all phenomena, both material and nonmaterial, are a product of consciousness. This assumption opens the door to consider dualism, the idea that conscious experience and the brain are essentially separate though closely associated during physical existence. When an association is found between some aspect of brain activity and some conscious experience, materialists assume the brain caused the

58

PART | 1 Death

experience, whereas dualists assume that the relationship between the brain and the experience is correlational rather than causal, that is, associated with but not caused by the brain. This distinction becomes important with regard to NDEs for a few reasons. First, the majority of NDErs themselves are adamant that during the NDE “they”—their sense of self—was functioning apart from their physical bodies, observing the material world and observing and interacting with transmaterial environments and entities. Second, this functioning, typically characterized by enhanced mentation—such as lucidity, enhanced sensorium, and revival of longforgotten memories—appears to occur at exactly the times materialist models would predict diminished mentation, such as during unconsciousness, coma, and even clinical death (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 386). Third, this functioning is often characterized by veridical perception, whereby an NDEr gains information during the NDE that, based on the condition and position of the physical body and the normal sources of information available, the NDEr should not know—and yet the information is subsequently verified as accurate (Holden, 2017). The primary empirical strategy to test this model has so far taken the form of in-hospital studies in which researchers attempted to “capture” veridical perception under controlled conditions (Holden, 2017). Those studies so far have not yielded results. Another strategy has been the collection of cases of veridical perception verified by credible third parties; Rivas et al. (2016) have collected over 100 such cases and have argued for their evidential value. Whatever the state of empirical support for this model, understanding of it is important to an understanding of changes NDErs evidence with regard to spirituality and religion. Of NDErs who have reported that they separated from their bodies during the NDEs and that their NDEs convinced them that “they”—their consciousness or self—would survive physical death, 81% endorsed the former and 82% the latter (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 385). However staunchly some scholars may adhere to philosophical materialism, NDErs themselves appear to abandon any such adherence they may have had prior to their NDEs and instead adhere to idealism and dualism. Perhaps most noteworthy in this regard are people who had NDEs after having become physicians and who testify to this fundamental shift in their cosmological perspective (Cicoria & Cicoria, 2017; Hauscheer, 2017; Liester, Alexander, Cicoria, Kircher, & Neal, 2013).

Impact of near-death experiences A host of findings attest to consistently reported patterns of transformation that NDErs describe in the aftermath of their NDEs. Many of these changes have been measured using scales developed by Kenneth Ring. The first such scale, known as the Life Changes Questionnaire (LCQ; Ring & Rosing, 1990) comprised 50 items assessing nine personal value domains. Although initially considered an appropriate measure of NDE aftereffects, a host of qualitative studies revealed additional aftereffects that NDErs had reported. Consequently, Greyson and Ring (2004) revised the LCQ, creating the Life Changes Inventory-Revised (LCI-R). The LCI-R comprises 50 items, categorized into the value clusters: appreciation for life, self-acceptance, concern for others, concern with worldly achievement, concern with social/planetary values, quest for meaning/sense of purpose, spirituality, religiousness, and appreciation for death. Although the most widely-used assessment of NDE aftereffects, documentation of the measure’s psychometric properties is lacking (Noyes, Fenwick, Holden, & Christian, 2009). Several post-NDE changes may be considered directly or indirectly related to spirituality and/or religion. Although the terms spirituality and religion have and continue to be used synonymously, many scholars discern the two (Rambo & Haar Farris, 2012). Most frequently, spirituality is used to describe an intrinsic, autonomous, and subjective sense of transcendence or connection with a higher power or being, whereas religion denotes adherence to a social institution, often involving a more secular, doctrinal, and traditional form of authority (Preston & Shin, 2017). This differentiation is important: although research indicates that prior religious and/or spiritual beliefs and affiliation do not influence whether specific NDE features occur or are interpreted in religious and/or spiritual ways (Holden et al., 2009), findings indicate many NDErs distinguish between religion and spirituality when describing post-NDE transformations. Post-NDE changes that may be related to spirituality or religion include loss of the fear of death, strengthened belief in an afterlife, greater appreciation for life, increased sense of meaning and even divine purpose in life—without necessarily knowing exactly what that purpose is, increased compassion and concern for others, reduced desire for material wealth, reduced competition and consumerism, enhanced thirst for knowledge—including quest for spiritual knowledge, increased practice of prayer and meditation as a means to maintain and enhance a sense of connection with and guidance from a transcendent source, and psychic and healing abilities (Noyes et al., 2009). In addition, NDErs often report immediate and dramatic changes to their notions of spirituality and religion. Some studies suggest NDEs facilitate a rejection of religion in favor of spirituality. This shift was highlighted in Sutherland’s (1995) study of 50 NDErs, whom she interviewed about changes experienced after their NDEs. She discovered many (76%) of her participants rejected the term “religious” in favor of the term “spiritual.” Similarly, 80% of

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

59

NDErs in Musgrave’s (1997) study reported increased openness to religion and/or spirituality, although adherence to religious doctrine was less valued than a sense of spirituality and connection with God, with 67% of these participants indicating they were now “very” spiritual. Yet, other studies indicate NDEs might reinforce existing religious beliefs or sentiment but may not necessarily strengthen adherence to organized religion and/or specific religious practices. This pattern was shown in Ring’s (1980) study of 102 survivors of critical incidents, who described being more “religious” than those who had not had an NDE, although this enhanced religiousness manifested as tolerance and appreciation for religion as an inward expression of spirituality rather than increased practice of a specific religious denomination. More recent studies suggest NDEs have no influence on religiosity, such as that of Tassell-Matamua and Steadman (2017) who found NDErs’ scores on the NDE Scale were not significantly related to participants’ reported religiosity but were significantly correlated with their reported extent and degree of spiritual change. Our impressions from talking with and interviewing NDErs provide some qualitative data about possible dynamics behind the patterns researchers have found. Many NDErs say they have discontinued religious affiliation because they find the cosmology of organized religion to be too “small” compared to the expanse they now know to be the nature of the transcendent domain. They may find the secular, even hypocritical, aspects of organized religion to be more of a distraction from, than an enhancement of, the ongoing sense of connection they feel with a transcendent domain. Nevertheless, some NDErs become more invested in organized religion, finding it a useful way to enhance an ongoing connection to the transcendent. Although NDEs appear to have an effect on religion, the nature of the relationship—for example, whether religious sentiment/adherence/practice is reduced, changed, or eliminated—has not been consistently demonstrated across studies. What has been more reliably demonstrated is the effect of NDEs on spirituality. But exactly how or even why NDEs should facilitate such change is less clear. However, research results justify some tentative propositions. For example, could having survived a close brush with death, rather than an NDE itself, be responsible for facilitating religious and spiritual change? Scholars acknowledge that adversarial events, a category that presumably includes most close brushes with death, can initially shatter an experiencer’s worldview, assumptions, and sense of self; however, if given meaning, such events can lead to positive changes (Park, 2010)—a process known as adversarial growth (Linley, Joseph, & Joseph, 2004). Although it is reasonable to propose attribution of change to the existential threat rather than the transcendental experience, results of studies in which researchers compared changes between individuals who had a close brush with death with an NDE and those who had a close brush with death without an NDE suggest otherwise. Greyson and Khanna (2014) revealed significantly greater self-reported spiritual transformation after a traumatic event in NDErs compared to those who experienced a traumatic event but did not have an NDE. Subsequent studies by Khanna and Greyson (2014a, 2014b) revealed significantly greater spiritual wellbeing and more frequent daily spiritual experiences in NDErs than those who had had a close brush with death without an NDE. Also as previously noted, not all NDEs occur on the precipice of death, with many occurring under non life threatening conditions. Notwithstanding issues regarding how NDEs are defined and differentiated from other anomalous experiences, the combination of these findings implies it is the NDE itself, rather than survival of the close brush with death, that brings about the religious/spiritual transformations. This suggestion is complicated however by findings of several studies that indicate learning about NDEs, rather than actually having an NDE oneself, can also facilitate changes to religious and spiritual perspectives. Ring (1995) assessed the influence of three different semester-long courses about NDEs in college students, with many students reporting aftereffects typically described by those who have NDEs including a heightened sense of spirituality. Using a sample of 143 participants who had not had an NDE and were randomly assigned to either an intervention or nonintervention group, Tassell-Matamua, Lindsay, Bennett, Valentine, and Pahina (2017) found learning about NDEs, including their incidence, possible explanatory models, and features as well as several case studies highlighting NDE features, generated some of the same psycho-spiritual benefits typically reported by NDErs. Significant increases to a sense of spirituality were found in the intervention group after learning about NDEs but not in the nonintervention group. Such findings highlight a conundrum regarding how NDEs exert their effect on religion and spirituality, as learning about NDEs and actually experiencing one are phenomenologically distinct. These findings do, however, point to a possible role of specific NDE features as responsible for facilitating religious and spiritual changes. Both Greyson (2012) and Tassell-Matamua (2013b) separately noted researchers have so far failed to identify the actual content of the NDE leading to commonly described aftereffects. Investigations of these factors would be a fruitful avenue for future research. However, even if specific NDE features—whether felt in the context of an actual NDE or learned about by those who have not had an NDE—were to be reliably and statistically associated with changes to spirituality and religion, this result does not necessarily provide conclusive evidence of their sole causative role in producing such changes. Perhaps any potential relationship could be much more nuanced and involve

60

PART | 1 Death

a combination of the type and intensity of features. Khanna and Greyson (2014a, 2014b) and Greyson and Khanna (2014) found positive correlations between spiritual change and NDE depth reflecting a combination of quantity as well as intensity of NDE features—providing some support for the role of the relative intensity of NDE features in facilitating spiritual change. Even though an actual NDE versus learning about an NDE are assumed to be distinct subjective experiences, it is possible case studies describing specific NDE features could be described in such a way as to elicit the same or similar emotional and cognitive responses as NDEs for individuals who are learning about them, which may then catalyze changes in spirituality and/or religion. An added challenge to the above-described proposition is that spiritual and religious changes are of course not the exclusive domain of NDEs. Although NDEs are often described as “spiritual experiences” by those who have them (Sutherland, 1995), not all experiences described as spiritual in the literature could be categorized as NDEs, yet some induce similar changes to spirituality and religiousness as those described by NDErs. For example, similar effects on spirituality have been noted after mystical experiences (MEs), which are ineffable, transient states of consciousness that differ from everyday normative reality and are characterized by a strong sense of connection and unity to other material and nonmaterial beings, which can include humans, animals, the natural environment, the universe, and those existing in a perceived otherworldly realm. Pharmacologically induced MEs are significantly associated with increased spirituality at 1- and 14-month follow-up (Griffiths et al., 2011). In an earlier study (Griffiths, Richards, McCann, & Jesse, 2006), one-third of participants indicated their psilocybin-induced ME was the most spiritually significant event in their lives. Similarly, although recent research suggests many individuals in Western cultures attest to having had at least one “spiritual experience” in their lives (Landolt et al., 2014), not all such experiences facilitate spiritual changes. For example, Tassell-Matamua and Frewin (2018) found that whereas many participants in their study described various anomalous experiences in spiritual terms—such as spiritual, spiritually intuitive experience, holy spirit experience, or spiritual protection—such experiences were not significantly related to spiritual change. Rather, experiences categorized as mystical/unitive induced the most spiritual change. In our final point regarding the impact of NDEs on experiencers’ spirituality and religion, we depart from research on the effects of NDEs on contemporary experiencers and consider a hypothesis recently advanced by Shushan (2011, 2012) regarding the impact of NDEs on humanity’s belief systems regarding the survival of consciousness after death: that afterlife beliefs so ubiquitous across humanity and so central to most of its religious systems may have their origin in NDEs. To support his hypothesis, Shushan originally presented evidence from five ancient cross-cultural civilizations: Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, Sumerian and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, Vedic India, pre Buddhist China, and pre Columbian Mesoamerica. In historical sources from each of these civilizations, he found multiple references to apparent NDEs, and he drew connections between those references and the afterlife belief systems of their religious systems. More recently, he has found additional support from investigation into historical Native American sources (Shushan, 2016)—but less so in his exploration of African traditional religions (Shushan, 2017). The possibility remains that afterlife beliefs, so central not only to religious systems but also to individuals’ attributions of the meaning and purpose of life and of how best to live life, may have their origins in NDEs. To summarize, the previously mentioned concerns associated with defining NDEs, along with a lack of consensus and evidence for the numerous proposed explanatory models, also limit understandings about the mechanisms underlying change after NDEs. Furthermore, available evidence suggests it is not the close brush with death often associated with NDEs, or even the actual experience of having an NDE—as opposed to learning about them or having some other type of anomalous experience—that might facilitate spiritual and/or religious change. Rather, it could be the specific type and intensity of NDE features that catalyzes such changes, and given the tendency for MEs also to instigate similar transformations, there may be common factors or features to both MEs and NDEs that facilitate spiritual and religious changes. Indeed, many of the features associated with NDEs are also evident in MEs, although Wulff (2014) has suggested the experiences can be differentiated from each other in three particular ways: Compared to MEs, NDEs are usually characterized by (1) a persistence of self-identity—such as life review and encounters with deceased relatives, which are cognitive and transcendental features respectively, (2) greater clarity—a cognitive feature, and (3) less perceived union with the divine—a transcendental feature. If there are common features to NDEs and MEs that facilitate change, an assumption is these three are not them. Yet, recent evidence indicated extent of spiritual change after an NDE was more strongly associated with cognitive and emotional features, compared to paranormal and transcendental features. However, quality of spiritual life—which includes perspective on one’s spiritual purpose and meaning—was significantly associated with paranormal, but not cognitive, affective, or transcendental features (Tassell-Matamua & Steadman, 2017). These findings add another layer of complexity to the question of how and why NDEs might induce change and point to the possibility of specific features of NDEs—and MEs—facilitating different types of spiritual

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

61

transformations. Drawing back to a more metaperspective, the tantalizing possibility exists that humanity’s ubiquitous afterlife belief systems may have their origins in NDEs and ME, which are known to have occurred throughout history and across cultures.

References Adriaens, P. (2012). On niches and nutters. In C. Murray (Ed.), Mental health and anomalous experience (pp. 141 152). New York: Nova Science. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Athappily, G. K., Greyson, B., & Stevenson, I. (2006). Do prevailing societal models influence reports of near-death experiences? A comparison of accounts reported before and after 1975. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 194, 218 222. Bates, B. C., & Stanley, A. (1985). The epidemiology and differential diagnosis of near-death experience. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55, 542 549. Beauregard, M., Courtemanche, J., & Paquette, V. (2009). Brain activity in near-death experiencers during a meditative state. Resuscitation, 80, 1006 1010. Beauregard, M., St Pierre, E. L., Rayburn, G., & Derners, P. (2012). Conscious mental activity during deep hypothermic cardiocirculatory arrest? Resuscitation, 83, e19. Britton, W. B., & Bootzin, R. R. (2004). Near-death experiences and the temporal lobe. Psychological Science, 15, 254 258. Bush, N. E. (2012). Dancing past the dark: Distressing near-death experiences. Cleveland, TN: Parson’s Porch Books. Cassol, H., Petre, B., Degrange, S., Martial, C., Charland-Verville, V., Lallier, F., . . . Laureys, S. (2018). Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences. PLoS One, 13(2), e0193001. Charland-Verville, V., Jourdain, J.-P., Thonnard, M., Ledoux, D., Donneau, A.-F., Quertemont, E., & Laureys, S. (2014). Near-death experiences in non-life-threatening events and coma of different etiologies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(203), 1 8. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00203. Cicoria, T., & Cicoria, J. (2017). My near-death experience: A call from God. In J. C. Haggan, III. (Ed.), The science of near-death experiences (pp. 55 62). Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Egger, V. (1896). Le moi des mourants. Revue Philosophique de la France et de ‘E´tranger, 21, 26 38. Facco, E., & Agrillo, C. (2012). Near-death-like experiences without life-threatening conditions or brain disorders: A hypothesis from a case report. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 490. Fracasso, C., & Friedman, H. (2011). Near-death experiences and the possibility of disembodied consciousness. Challenges to prevailing neurobiological and psychosocial theories. NeuroQuantology, 9, 41 53. Ghasemiannejad, A., Long, J., Nouri, F. F., & Farahnakian, K. (2014). Iranian Shiite Muslim near-death experiences: Features and aftereffects including dispositional gratitude. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 33, 30 42. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2014-33-1-p30-42. Ghoneim, M. M., & Block, R. I. (1992). Learning and consciousness during general anesthesia. Anesthesiology, 76, 279 305. Ghoneim, M. M., & Block, R. I. (1997). Learning and memory during general anesthesia. An update. Anesthesiology, 87, 387 410. Greyson, B. (1983). The near-death experience scale: Construction, reliability, and validity. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171, 369 375. Greyson, B. (2000). Dissociation in people who have near-death experiences: Out of their bodies or out of their minds? Lancet, 355, 460 463. Greyson, B. (2003). Near-death experiences in a psychiatric outpatient clinic population. Psychiatric Services, 54, 1649 1651. Greyson, B. (2007). Near-death experiences: Clinical applications. Revista de Psiquiatria Clinica, 34, 49 57. Greyson, B. (2009). Explanatory models for near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 213 234). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Greyson, B. (2010). Implications of near-death experiences for a postmaterialist psychology. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 37 45. Greyson, B. (2012). The psychology of near-death experiences and spirituality. In L. J. Miller (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality (pp. 514 527). New York: Oxford University Press. Greyson, B., & Bush, N. (1992). Distressing near-death experiences. Psychiatry, 55, 95 110. Greyson, B., Kelly, E. W., & Kelly, E. F. (2009). Explanatory models for near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 213 234). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Greyson, B., & Khanna, S. (2014). Spiritual transformation after near-death experiences. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 1(1), 43 55. Greyson, B., & Liester, M. B. (2004). Internal voices following near-death experiences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 44, 320 336. Greyson, B., & Long, J. P. (2006). Does the arousal system contribute to near-death experience? Neurology, 67(12), 2265. Greyson, B., & Ring, K. (2004). The life changes inventory—Revised. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 23, 41 54. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.17514/JNDS-2004-23-1-p41-54. Griffiths, R. R., Johnson, M. W., Richards, W. A., Richards, B. D., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2011). Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: Immediate and persisting dose-related effects. Psychopharmacology, 218, 649 665. Griffiths, R. R., Richards, W. A., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 218, 268 283. Hauscheer, J. (2017). My unimaginable journey: A physician’s near-death experience. In J. C. Haggan, III. (Ed.), The science of near-death experiences (pp. 49 54). Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Heim, A. (1892). Notizen uber den tod durch absturz [Remarks on fatal falls]. Jahrbuch der Schweitzerischen Alpclub, 27, 327 337.

62

PART | 1 Death

Hoffman, R. M. (1995a). Disclosure habits after near-death experiences: Influences, obstacles, and listener selection. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 14, 29 48. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1995-14-1-p29-48. Hoffman, R. M. (1995b). Disclosure needs and motives after a near-death experience. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 13, 237 266. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1995-13-4-p237-266. Holden, J. M. (2017). Apparently non-physical veridical perception in near-death experiences. In J. C. Haggan, III. (Ed.), The science of near-death experiences (pp. 79 88). Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Holden, J. M., Kinsey, L., & Moore, T. R. (2014). Disclosing near-death experiences to professional healthcare providers and nonprofessionals. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 1, 278 287. Holden, J. M., Long, J., & MacLurg, J. B. (2009). Characteristics of Western near-death experiencers. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 109 133). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Jansen, K. (1997a). The ketamine model of the near-death experience: A central role for the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 16, 5 26. Jansen, K. (1997b). Response to commentaries on “The ketamine model of the near-death experience”. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 16, 79 95. Kellehear, A. (2009). Census of non-Western near-death experiences to 2005: Observations and critical reflections. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 136 158). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Kelly, E. W. (2001). Near-death experiences with reports of meeting deceased people. Death Studies, 25, 229 249. Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2007). Unusual experiences near death and related phenomena. In E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso, & B. Greyson (Eds.), Irreducible mind: Toward a psychology for the 21st century (pp. 367 422). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Khanna, S., & Greyson, B. (2014a). Near-death experiences and spiritual well-being. Journal of Religion and Health, 53(6), 1605 1615. Khanna, S., & Greyson, B. (2014b). Daily spiritual experiences before and after near-death experiences. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(4), 302 309. Klemenc-Ketis, Z., Kersnik, J., & Grmec, S. (2010). The effect of carbon dioxide on near-death experiences in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors: A prospective observational study. Critical Care, 14, R56. Landolt, K., Wittwer, A., Wyss, T., Unterassner, L., Fach, W., Krummenacher, P., . . . Ro¨ssler, W. (2014). Help-seeking in people with exceptional experiences: Results from a general population sample. Frontiers in Public Health, 2(Article 51), 1 9. Liester, M. (moderator), Alexander, A., Cicoria, T., Kircher, P., & Neal, M. (panelists). (2013). Physicians share how their own NDEs impact their lives and medical practice. In: Panel presented at the annual conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Arlington, VA, August 2013. Linley, P., Joseph, A., & Joseph, S. (2004). Positive change following trauma and adversity: A review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17, 11 21. Long, J. P., & Long, J. A. (2003). A comparison of near-death experiences occurring before and after 1975: Results from an internet study. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 22, 21 32. Martial, C., Cassol, H., Charland-Verville, V., Merckelbach, H., & Laureys, S. (2018). Fantasy proneness correlates with the intensity of near-death experience. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 190. Masumian, F. (2009). World religions and near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 159 184). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Matlock, J. G. (2017). Historical near-death and reincarnation-intermission experiences of the Tlingit Indians: Case studies and theoretical reflections. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 35, 215 242. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2017-35-4-p215-242. Moody, R. (1975). Life after life. New York: Bantam. Moody, R. A., with Perry, P. (1988). The light beyond. New York: Bantam. Morse, M. L. (1994). Near-death experiences of children. Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, 11, 139 144. Musgrave, C. (1997). The near-death experience: A study of spiritual transformation. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 15, 187 201. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1997-15-3-p187-201. Nelson, K. R., Mattingly, M., Lee, S. A., & Schmitt, F. A. (2006). Does the arousal system contribute to near-death experience? Neurology, 66, 1003 1009. Noyes, R., Fenwick, P., Holden, J. M., & Christian, R. (2009). Aftereffects of pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 41 62). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ ABC-CLIO. Ohkado, M. (2013). On the term “Peak in Darien” experience. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 31, 203 211. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/ JNDS-2013-31-4-p203-211. Ohkado, M., & Greyson, B. (2014). A comparative analysis of Japanese and Western near-death experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 32, 187 198. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2014-32-4-p187-198. Owens, J., Cook, E. W., & Stevenson, I. (1990). Features of “near-death experience” in relation to whether or not patients were near death. The Lancet, 336(8724), 1175 1177. Pacciolla, A. (1996). The near-death experience: A study of its validity. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 14, 179 185. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.17514/JNDS-1996-14-3-p179-185. Park, C. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257 301.

Near-death experiences: the mystical feeling of “crossing over” and its impact on faith and spirituality Chapter | 4

63

Parnia, S., Spearpoint, K., de Vos, G., Fenwick, P., Goldberg, D., Yang, J., . . . Schoenfeld, E. R. (2014). AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation—A prospective study. Resuscitation, 85(12), 1799 1805. Parnia, S., Spearpoint, K., & Fenwick, P. B. (2007). Near death experiences, cognitive function and psychological outcomes of surviving cardiac arrest. Resuscitation, 74, 215 221. Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017). Spiritual experiences evoke awe through the small self in both religious and non-religious individuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 212 221. Rambo, L., & Haar Farris, M. (2012). Psychology of religion: Toward a multidisciplinary paradigm. Pastoral Psychology, 61, 711 720. Reed, A. W. (1977). Maori myth: The supernatural world of the Maori. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishers. Ring, K. (1980). Life at death: A scientific investigation of the near-death experience. New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan. Ring, K. (1995). The impact of near-death experiences on those who have not had them: A report of a preliminary study and two replications. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 13, 223 235. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1995-13-4-p223-235. Ring, K., & Rosing, C. J. (1990). The Omega Project: An empirical study of the NDE-prone personality. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 8, 211 239. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1990-8-4-p211-239. Rivas, T., Dirven, A., & Smit, R. H. (2016). In W. Boeke, Trans., & J. M. Holden (Eds.), The self does not die: Verified paranormal phenomena from near-death experiences. Durham, NC: International Association for Near-Death Studies. Sabom, M. (1998). Light and death. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Sartori, P. (2014). The wisdom of near-death experiences: How understanding NDEs can help us live more fully. London: Watkins. Sartori, P., Badham, P., & Fenwick, P. (2006). A prospectively studied near-death experience with corroborated out-of-body perceptions and unexplained healing. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 25(2), 69 84. Schroter-Kunhardt, M. (1993). A review of near death experiences. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 7, 219 239. Schwaninger, J., Eisenberg, P. R., Schechtman, K. B., & Weiss, A. N. (2002). A prospective analysis of near-death experiences in cardiac arrest patients. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 20, 215 232. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2002-20-4-p215-232. Schwender, D., Kunze-Kronawitter, H., Dietrich, P., Klasing, S., Forst, H., & Madler, C. (1998). Conscious awareness during general anaesthesia: Patients’ perceptions, emotions, cognition and reactions. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 80, 133 139. Serdahely, W. J. (1991). A comparison of retrospective accounts of childhood near-death experiences with contemporary pediatric near-death experience accounts. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 9, 219 224. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-1991-9-4-p219-224. Shulman, R. G., Hyder, F., & Rothman, D. L. (2003). Cerebral metabolism and consciousness. Compets Rendus Biologies, 326, 253 273. Shushan, G. (2011). Conceptions of the afterlife in early civilizations: Universalism, constructivism, and near-death experience. London: Bloomsbury. Shushan, G. (2012). Near-death experience and the origins of afterlife beliefs. Oxford, England: Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Oxford University. Retrieved from ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v 5 QVeoV14J2dY.. Shushan, G. (2016). “The Sun told me I would be restored to life”: Native American near-death experiences, shamanism, and religious revitalization movements. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 34, 127 150. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2016-34-3-p127-150. Shushan, G. (2017). “He should stay in the grave”: Cultural patterns in the interpretation of near-death experiences in African traditional religions. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 35, 185 213. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2017-35-4-p185-213. Sleutjes, A., Moreira-Almeida, A., & Greyson, B. (2014). Almost 40 years investigating near-death experiences: An overview of mainstream scientific journals. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202(11), 833 836. Sutherland, C. (1995). Transformed by the light: Life after near-death experiences. Auckland, NZ: Transworld. Tassell-Matamua, N. (2013a). Phenomenology of near-death experiences: An analysis of a M¯aori case study. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 32, 107 117. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2013-32-2-p107-117. Tassell-Matamua, N. A. (2013b). Psychology and near-death experiences: Challenges to and opportunities for ongoing debates about consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20(11 12), 150 172. Tassell-Matamua, N. A., & Frewin, K. (2018). Psycho-spiritual transformation after an exceptional human experience. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/19349637.2018.1481487, Advance online publication. Tassell-Matamua, N. A., Lindsay, N., Bennett, S., Valentine, H., & Pahina, J. (2017). Does learning about near-death experiences promote psychospiritual benefits in those who have not had a near-death experience? Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 19, 95 115. Tassell-Matamua, N., & Murray, M. (2014). Near-death experiences: Quantitative findings from an Aotearoa New Zealand sample. Journal of NearDeath Studies, 33, 3 29. Available from https://doi.org/10.17514/JNDS-2014-33-1-p3-29. Tassell-Matamua, N. A., & Steadman, K. L. (2017). I feel more spiritual: Increased spirituality after a near-death experience. Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 7(1), 35 49. Tassell-Matamua, N. A., Steadman, K., & Frewin, K. (2018). Does cultural context influence descriptions of change after a near-death experience? Exploratory findings from an Aotearoa New Zealand sample. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 36, 193 218. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.17514/JNDS-2018-36-4-p193-218. van Lommel, P. (2006). Near-death experience, consciousness, and the brain: A new concept about the continuity of our consciousness based on recent scientific research on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest. World Futures, 62, 134 151. van Lommel, P. (2011). Near-death experiences: The experience of the self as real and not as an illusion. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1234, 19 28. van Lommel, P. (2013). Non-local consciousness: A concept based on scientific research on near-death experiences during cardiac arrest. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20, 7 48.

64

PART | 1 Death

van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., & Elferrich, I. (2001). Near death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands. The Lancet, 358, 2039 2045. White, N. S., & Alkire, M. T. (2003). Impaired thalamocortical connectivity in humans during general-anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. NeuroImage, 19, 402 411. World Health Organization. (2018). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th rev.). Geneva, Switzerland: Author. Wulff, D. M. (2014). Mystical experiences. In E. Carden˜a, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experiences: Examining the scientific evidence (2nd ed., pp. 369 408). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Zingrone, N. L., & Alvarado, C. S. (2009). Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: Features, circumstances, and incidence. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation (pp. 17 40). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.

Chapter 5

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Benjamin D. Rosenberg1 and Jason T. Siegel2 1

Dominican University of California, San Rafael, CA, United States, 2Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, United States

Psychological reactance theory (PRT; Brehm, 1966) is a prominent, empirically supported framework positing that behavioral freedom is an important and adaptive feature of people’s lives and that when something threatens or eliminates that freedom, they become motivated to restore it (for review see Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018). This motivation to restore threatened or lost freedom, which Brehm dubbed psychological reactance, is PRT’s central construct. According to Brehm (1966), psychological reactance involves motivational arousal; it is not inherently frustrating or negative but instead propels people to restore their lost freedom. In addition, physiological arousal can accompany psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966). A key contribution of PRT is that it outlines the circumstances under which threats to people’s freedom will arouse this motivation to regain their lost freedom. The initial proposal of PRT has resulted in over 50 years of research across numerous disciplines, including social psychology (for review see Miron & Brehm, 2006), clinical psychology (for a meta-analysis see Beutler, Edwards, & Someah, 2018), and communication (for review see Quick, Shen, & Dillard, 2013). Indeed, recent reviews (see Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018; Steindl, Jonas, Sittenthaler, Traut-Mattausch, & Greenberg, 2015) indicate relatively consistent support for PRT in these diverse domains. In the current chapter, we briefly outline research and theorizing on the existential value of freedom and free will, using that to contextualize the assumptions of PRT. We examine the utility of PRT as a framework for understanding phenomena related to religious beliefs and behavior. Although there has been scant literature examining the relationship between reactance and religion (e.g., Alhabash, Almutairi, & Rub, 2017), we review these contributions and complement this scholarship with evidence of PRT in other contexts (e.g., Fox & Tabory, 2008) to answer three specific questions. First, we examine the ways in which social, political, or environmental threats to people’s religious freedom could arouse reactance and possibly aggressive behavior. Second, we outline the ways in which religions themselves could arouse reactance among their adherents—outcomes of which could be heresy (i.e., holding a belief contrary to religious orthodoxy) and apostasy (i.e., renouncing religious affiliation). Third, we suggest that religions can use strategies from communication research to avoid (e.g., autonomy-supportive language; Miller, Lane, Deatrick, Young, & Potts, 2007) or significantly reduce (e.g., inoculation; Richards & Banas, 2015) reactance.

Psychological reactance theory PRT comes from a rich tradition of social psychological frameworks that assume people strive for cognitive consistency (e.g., cognitive dissonance theory, Festinger, 1957). Broadly, these theories suggest that inconsistency is motivationally unpleasant, prompting people to restore consistency and reduce feelings of unpleasantness (for review see Proulx, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012). Like these consistency frameworks, PRT focuses on motivational arousal and reduction, but it concerns one specific motivation—maintaining the freedom to choose when and how to behave. According to Brehm (1966), that freedom of behavior and thought is essential, “Given some minimal level of valid knowledge The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00006-8 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

67

68

PART | 2 Freedom

about oneself and the environment, freedom to choose among different behavioral possibilities will generally help one to survive and thrive” (p. 2). Guided by this focus on maintaining and restoring behavioral freedom, PRT hinges on two key assumptions (Brehm, 1966): 1. People have a set of free behaviors they believe they can enact. 2. When something threatens or eliminates people’s free behaviors, they become motivated to regain their threatened or lost freedom.

Historical roots With the goal of contextualizing these assumptions in the broader literature, we examine the conceptual roots of freedom and free will, both past and present. Brehm’s (1966) emphasis on the existential importance of freedom and its loss places PRT alongside philosophers such as Kant (1967), Sartre (1943/1956), Merleau-Ponty (1964), and Fromm (1941), who debated the existence and importance of free will. Viewpoints among these scholars varied widely—for instance, Sartre (1943/1956) suggested that freedom is absolute, equating free will with being human, and focusing on the importance of autonomy. Taking a slightly different perspective, Merleau-Ponty (1964) also noted freedom’s centrality to existence but suggested that it is not absolute, instead evolving from people’s interactions with their surroundings. In summarizing the range of ideas about freedom, Feldman (2017) noted, “Choice is important, as it is a fundamental factor in the understanding of the human psyche and is considered by thinkers to be a defining feature of human existence (Heidegger, 1962; Sartre, 1943/1956) and sense of freedom (Kant, 1967)” (p. 5). For many years, this debate about the existence and importance of freedom, free choice, and free will was largely the provenance of philosophers, with few empirical investigations informing their viewpoints (for review see Feldman, 2017). More recently, psychologists and neuroscientists have made considerable strides in defining and empirically studying the concept of free will as it relates to human behavior and cognition (for reviews see Brass, Furstenberg, & Mele, 2019; Feldman, 2017). An important advance is the acknowledgment that, as Brehm (1966) suggested, freedom of choice may be rooted in evolution, as it is likely adaptive for people to weigh their options and select an appropriate course of action (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004). One explanation holds that people evolved the capacity for free will because it allows them to maximize connection to their social group by choosing to act in culturally appropriate ways (Baumeister, 2005). An additional advance that has emerged from recent empirical investigations is the finding that simply believing in free will is related to a range of positive outcomes (e.g., subjective wellbeing; for review see Feldman, 2017). For instance, Baumeister et al. (2009) found that belief in free will is causally linked with increased prosocial behavior and decreased aggression. Other studies have shown that belief in free will reduces cheating (Vohs & Schooler, 2008) and increases gratitude (MacKenzie, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2014); it is also associated with increased subjective wellbeing (Kondaratowicz-Novak & Zawadzka, 2018) and emotional stability (Stillman, Baumeister, & Mele, 2011). Just as Vohs and Baumeister (2004) argued that free choice evolved because of its survival value, scholars have shown that a belief in free will may also be adaptive, developing in children as early as age of 3 years (Chernyak, Chernyak, Kushnir, & Wellman, 2010; Nichols, 2004).

Psychological reactance theory framework Taken at face value, PRT’s core proposal that people dislike having their freedom of choice restricted sounds like common sense. Although this main prediction is fairly straightforward, the true utility and power of PRT comes from its ability to explain the specific factors that predict the likelihood that freedom restriction will cause reactance. To illustrate this explanatory power, we follow the lead of prominent PRT scholars (Quick et al., 2013) and break PRT into four component parts, modeled in their proposed order of occurrence: (1) freedoms, (2) elimination and threats to freedom, (3) arousal of reactance, and (4) restoration of freedom. A central component of PRT’s utility is a suite of factors proposed to moderate the relationship between freedom threat and reactance arousal. Next, we briefly outline each of these components, along with an overview of the moderators, including further detail and empirical support throughout the chapter as we link PRT research with scholarship and theorizing on religion.

Freedoms PRT begins with the idea that people have free behaviors at their disposal. According to Brehm (1966), these free behaviors are acts that people have engaged in previously, are currently engaged in, or could be engaged in the future. For

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

69

behaviors to be considered free, people must be aware of the behaviors, and feel physically and psychologically capable of enacting them (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Moreover, freedom of behavior is subjective—to the extent that people perceive they have the freedom to do something, that freedom exists.

Elimination and threats to freedom When modeled sequentially, the second core component of PRT holds that threats to, and elimination of, people’s free behaviors is aversive and elicits a motivation to regain the lost freedom (i.e., psychological reactance; Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Brehm delineated between elimination of behavioral freedom and threats to behavioral freedom. Anything that completely blocks people from performing a behavior or holding a certain position constitutes elimination, including power relationships (e.g., employer employee, parent child, and guard prisoner), natural occurrences (e.g., inclement weather), and laws or policies (e.g., outright bans). On the other hand, PRT considers anything that blocks, but does not eliminate freedom as a threat (e.g., attempted social influence).

Arousal of reactance Once people perceive that something has threatened or eliminated their freedom, PRT outlines factors that determine the amount of reactance they will experience from a given threat or elimination of freedom. Specifically, Brehm (1966) suggested that characteristics of the freedom (e.g., importance; Goldman & Wallis, 1979) and characteristics of the threat itself (e.g., severity; Rains & Turner, 2007) influence reactance arousal. In general, wide-ranging threats or elimination of important freedoms that people perceive as highly restrictive will cause the most reactance (for review see Burgoon, Alvaro, Grandpre, & Voulodakis, 2002). In line, Brehm (1966) suggested, “If the magnitude of reactance is relatively great, the individual may be aware of hostile and aggressive feelings as well. In this connection, it may be noted that reactance can be an ‘uncivilized’ motivational state” (p. 9). The prediction that high magnitude threats to people’s freedom will result in motivation to restore lost freedom is rather straightforward and well supported (for review see Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018). However, a major feature of PRT’s utility is the research that provides details about the specific circumstances under which reactance is diminished or augmented—that is, moderators of the relationship between freedom threats and reactance arousal. Although there is minimal research directly addressing these moderators in the realm of religion (e.g., Hong, 1990), they are important to consider because they offer additional insight into the possible impact of religious regulations on people’s freedom restoration attempts. Moderators of the threat reactance relationship include personality characteristics (e.g., trait reactance; for review see Shoham, Trost, & Rohrbaugh, 2004) and people’s state of mind (e.g., empathy; Shen, 2010) at the time they perceive a freedom threat. Most notably in the personality trait domain, people with an internal locus of control (i.e., believe that they control what happens to them; Rotter, 1966), high levels of sensation seeking (Quick & Stephenson, 2008), Type A personality (i.e., extreme achievement striving, increased hostility, and time urgency; Rhodewalt & Comer, 1982), and those high in trait reactance (i.e., the “consistent tendency to perceive and react to situations as if one’s freedoms were being threatened”; Kelly & Nauta, 1997, p. 1124) exhibit greater reactance when a behavioral freedom is blocked compared to those with external locus of control, low sensation seeking, Type B personality, or low trait reactance. Scholars have also recently begun to identify the states of mind that may exacerbate (e.g., depression; Lienemann & Siegel, 2016) or diminish (e.g., self-affirmation; Schu¨z, Schu¨z, & Eid, 2013) reactance arousal.

Restoration of freedom Brehm (1966) also detailed what happens once people experience reactance; that is, the ways in which they seek to restore lost freedom. Brehm and Brehm (1981) posited two main ways in which reactance manifests behaviorally. The most straightforward manifestation of reactance occurs when people engage in the restricted behavior (i.e., boomerang effect; Brehm, 1966). Second, when people are unable to directly restore a threatened freedom, simply seeing another person engage in the threatened behavior can allow them to reestablish their perceived sense of freedom (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). When people are unable to behaviorally restore their freedom, several subjective responses may occur, including increased attractiveness of the threatened behavior (e.g., Brehm & Rozen, 1971) and hostility toward the source of the threat (e.g., Nezlek & Brehm, 1975).

70

PART | 2 Freedom

Psychological reactance theory and religion The considerable potential for real-world application of PRT was clear from an early stage, as Brehm and Brehm (1981) included chapters on reactance in interpersonal relationships, clinical psychology, and social influence, among other topics in their review and restatement of the theory. Building from this recommendation, scholars began to explore the utility of PRT in explaining thought and behavior in a variety of domains, such as health communication and behavior (for review see Quick et al., 2013) and treatment of mental disorders (for review see Beutler, Moleiro, & Talebi, 2002). Just as these researchers used PRT as a lens through which they could approach an established literature in a novel way, our current goal is to utilize its explanatory power to examine three questions at the intersection of reactance, religion, and religious behavior: 1. In what ways do social, political, or environmental threats to people’s religious freedom arouse reactance? If these threats do arouse reactance, then what occurs as a result? 2. How do religions themselves arouse reactance among their adherents? If religions do arouse reactance, then what outcomes occur as a result? 3. What strategies can religions use to avoid or minimize the arousal of reactance? We will examine each of these questions through the lens of PRT theorizing and research. Interestingly, Brehm (1966) mentioned religion once in his seminal book: Religious organizations prefer people to have certain theistic and moral beliefs and not others, advertising agencies want their people to believe in the products which they are promoting, and nations want citizens to agree with national policy and not to have subversive thoughts. How successful these attempts are in the control of thought is difficult to assess, but we may assume that they work to some degree. After all, there are such things as blushing and guilty looks without apparent cause and these presumably reflect transgressions of restrictions of thought. A belief system which includes an omniscient agent, of course, has some advantage for thought control. (p. 91)

Brehm’s statement suggests that he thought religions could avoid arousing reactance due to the fact that the freedom-restricting agent was all-seeing and omnipotent. Although relatively little scholarship has directly examined the relationship between reactance and religion (e.g., Alhabash et al., 2017), we review the few studies that exist and use the considerable indirect evidence (e.g., Fox & Tabory, 2008) to support PRT theorizing in answering these questions. In addition, we return to Brehm’s (1966) statement in the “Future Directions” section that concludes the chapter.

Question 1: Threats to religious freedom and reactance Our first question about the intersection between reactance and religion asks, In what ways do social, political, or environmental threats to people’s religious freedom arouse reactance? If these threats do, indeed, arouse reactance, then what occurs as a result?

Psychological reactance theory predictions In Brehm’s (1966) original theorizing, he suggested that elimination of freedom by an external source (i.e., impersonal elimination) would induce reactance, noting that even though these threats may not directly affect an individual, they do threaten a group to which they belong (e.g., religious or cultural). In addition, as noted earlier, reactance arousal is magnified when the threatened or eliminated freedom is something that is important (e.g., Goldman & Wallis, 1979) and when people perceive the threat as unjustified (Brehm, 1966). Given that a restriction on people’s religious freedom is likely to come from an external source, threaten something important, and will likely be viewed as unjustified, it seems reasonable to suggest that social, political, and environmental threats to religious freedom are capable of arousing reactance. As a result of an impersonal elimination of freedom, PRT indicates that the aversive state of reactance will cause people to seek freedom restoration by either directly engaging in the threatened behavior (e.g., Engs & Hanson, 1989), evaluating the eliminated choice more positively than before (e.g., Mazis, 1975), or showing anger toward the source of the threat (e.g., Rains & Turner, 2007). In the context of social, political, or environmental threats to people’s religious freedom, PRT suggests a few possible outcomes, including increased religious activity (i.e., direct restoration) and attachment to religion (i.e., positive evaluation), as well as anger toward the threatening agent (e.g., another social group).

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

71

Supporting evidence Impersonal freedom threats Studies from the PRT literature have rarely directly addressed whether impersonal threats to religious freedom will arouse reactance (for an exception see Alhabash et al., 2017), but the results of myriad studies provide support for the idea that external threats to people’s religious freedom could trigger reactance. For instance, Wiium, Aarø, and Hetland (2009) examined reactance in response to smoking control measures (e.g., warning labels on cigarette packs and increased taxes) among a nationally representative sample of Norwegian adolescents. Although the antismoking measures did not explicitly target any individual (e.g., “YOU must not. . .”), the data from this cross-sectional study indicated that regular smokers were particularly reactant to strong antismoking measures. In a similar study, Long (1978) reported data indicating that people view unfair or discriminatory political climates (e.g., treatment of underrepresented minority groups) as threatening their behavioral freedom (for similar results see Lessne & Notarantonio, 1988; West, 1975). In light of the current focus on religion, these investigations suggest that when an external agent, such as a governmental regulation, threatens people’s freedom of religion, they will become reactant (for an early review see Clee & Wicklund, 1980).

Oppositional behavioral outcomes When confronted with an impersonal or direct threat to religious freedom that causes reactance, people will attempt to restore their lost religious freedom in the ways outlined above—for one, directly engaging in the threatened behavior. Of the few studies that examined religion and reactance, one obtained data supporting this tenet of the theory. Sajjad et al. (2017) examined the idea that presenting people in Pakistan with secular ideals would arouse psychological reactance and, in turn, prompt them to endorse a radicalized worldview. The authors presented Pakistani youth with three sets of approaches to education (i.e., radical religious, Western secular, and liberal religious); they predicted that after exposure to secular ideals, youth would endorse more radicalized religious ideas. Findings were in line with this conception, as students preferred radical religious curricula to secular Western ones—suggesting that encountering secular ideals motivated students to restore their freedom by supporting more radical ones. It is worth nothing, though, that overall, participants preferred the liberal religious curricula to the two others. Fox and Tabory (2008) provided additional evidence that state/government endorsement of one specific religion can affect religious participation and belief. In the authors’ view, this reduction in commitment to religion could be due to a reduction in freedom of choice—people are less able to find a religious movement to which they are drawn. More in line with PRT, Fox and Tabory also indicated, “Government enforcement of religious laws and norms can in itself lead to resentment against the state religion” (p. 246). To examine these propositions, the authors utilized data for 81 countries from the World Values Survey and Social Survey Program. Findings indicated that state endorsement of religion was associated with lower levels of religious service attendance; it was also significantly related to decreased religious identification. Interestingly, state regulation of religion was not associated with people’s level of religious belief. These data align well with the PRT-derived prediction that people perceive state regulations on religion as impinging on their freedom to express religion as they please, and as a result, they may be less likely to attend religious services (for similar results see McCleary & Barro, 2006). Although the evidence directly examining the idea that threats to religious freedom will arouse reactance is relatively limited to the studies outlined above, additional support comes from the PRT literature. A particularly relevant group of studies examined the impact of alcohol consumption regulations on people’s drinking behavior (for a brief review see Burgoon et al., 2002). Gordon and Minor (1992) assessed the effects of an increase in the legal drinking age to 21 years old in North Carolina. Findings indicated that students whom the law had directly restricted reported significantly higher rates of alcohol consumption than those unaffected (for similar results see Allen, Sprenkel, & Vitale, 1994; Cassells & Ball, 2014; Engs & Hanson, 1989; Long, 1978). Placing these findings in the current context, when people perceive a social or environmental threat to religion as relevant to them, they could be more likely to engage in nonprescribed religious or nonreligious practices. Most often, Brehm’s (1966) proposition that threats to freedom will result in oppositional behavior are applied to undesired behaviors (e.g., increased drinking; Bensley & Wu, 1991). However, using the same reasoning, reactance can be used to prompt desired outcomes (e.g., support for clean air policies; Quick, Bates, & Quinlan, 2009). Quick et al. (2013) detailed this thinking, suggesting that this “rhetorical strategy” (p. 178) is a potential pathway to harnessing reactance to motivate desirable behaviors. In the context of threats to religious freedom, these findings show that as one possible reaction, people may become more adherent to their religion, possibly attending church or praying more

72

PART | 2 Freedom

frequently. Either of these responses would, in PRT’s view, allow people to restore their lost or threatened religious freedom. Only a handful of studies in the PRT literature have examined the possibility of leveraging reactance for desired outcomes (for review see Quick et al., 2013). Of these investigations, none have taken place in the context of religion and religious restriction of freedom. However, a few studies (e.g., Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011) and commentaries (e.g., Braithwaite, 2011) in the religion literature provide evidence for the possibility that reactance arousal can instigate prosocial behaviors. In line with PRT, Brathwaite suggested that if, we seek to regulate a freedom as important as freedom of religion by throwing Christians to the lions, we may then find, as the Romans did, that because defiance is so great with such a freedom, that Christianity actually grows as a result. (p. 384)

The author extended this commentary to include the possibility that authoritarian leaders such as Osama Bin Laden and the terrorist group Hamas utilize the same principle to drum up fervor for their causes. More specifically, it could be that promoting widespread threat against Islam from outside forces (e.g., the United States) arouses reactance among adherents, causing increased commitment to extreme Islam. In addition to this theorizing from the religion context, scholars in the PRT literature have suggested using reactance as an advantageous persuasive strategy (for review see Quick et al., 2013). One of the first studies to do this (Quick et al., 2009) used people’s anger (i.e., a component of reactance) about secondhand smoke to increase support for antismoking policies. The authors posited that because secondhand smoke threatens people’s freedom to breathe clean air, their anger could be used to prompt a desirable behavior (e.g., activism against smoking). Results indicated that anger with secondhand smoke was positively associated with reactance and, in turn, with attitudes toward clean indoor air policies. Anger with the policies, on the other hand, was associated with more negative attitudes toward the policies and increased reactance. The authors suggested that messages focusing on people’s reactions to secondhand smoke—rather than the policies themselves—may be effective in garnering support. From a religion perspective, the abovementioned data indicate that reactance can serve to maximize commitment: if people’s religious faith is important, they will react to threats to their freedom of religion by adhering to their religion more strongly.

Subjective outcomes Positive evaluation Along with directly engaging in the threatened behavior, another result of restrictions on people’s religious freedom could be that they evaluate their religion and its tenets more positively than before the threat occurred. In a study illustrating this possibility, Mazis et al. (1973) examined people’s reactions to a local ban on phosphate laundry detergents. These authors compared the pro-phosphate detergent attitudes of residents in Miami, FL, where the detergents had been banned, and Tampa, FL, where the detergents were still allowed. Results indicated significantly more positive attitudes toward phosphate detergents among Miami residents than among those in Tampa. The ban had eliminated Miami residents’ ability to choose a phosphate detergent, so they became reactant; as a result, their approval of the eliminated detergents increased (for similar results see Mazis, 1975; Ringold, 1988, 2002). These results suggest that a similar pattern of events might occur if an external agent threatened or eliminated people’s religious freedom—reactance to the restriction would trigger heightened approval of their religion and its tenets. Anger and source derogation A final possibility is that when faced with threats to religious freedom, people could express anger (e.g., Nezlek & Brehm, 1975) or negatively evaluate the source of the restriction (e.g., Smith, 1977). One study focused on religion and reactance supported this possibility. Specifically, Cottrell and Neuberg (2005) examined people’s level of threat and experience of a variety of emotions in response to a several outgroups (e.g., Fundamentalist Christians and activist feminists). Interestingly, the authors found that different outgroups were associated with distinct threat profiles and that, in turn, threat predicted negative emotions such as anger, disgust, and fear. Applied to the current theorizing, these findings indicate that threats to religion—particularly when an outgroup is the source of the threat—can arouse an array of negative emotions. A review by Springer and Larsen (2008) echoes the abovementioned findings. These authors examined the phenomenon of xenophobic violence in the United States in response to terrorist attacks. Specifically, Springer and Larsen argued that terrorist attacks threaten people’s conception of the “American way of life” (p. 271) and the freedom to live without fear. As a result, people who feel threatened may seek to restore their freedom by derogating or attacking perceived sources of the threat (e.g., foreign “others”). The authors argue that this mix—threats to Americans’ freedom to

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

73

live without fear and the consequent efforts to restore freedom—underlie many instances of xenophobic violence (e.g., World Trade Center, 1993; Oklahoma City, 1995; World Trade Center, 2001). A recent commentary by Burch-Brown and Baker (2016) aligns with Springer and Larsen’s (2008) review. These authors argued that contact between religious groups can result in perceptions of threat, which in turn trigger reactance, followed by distrust and anger toward the outgroup. Studies outside of the realm of religion offer further support for the idea that threats to religious freedom could cause subjective outcomes such as anger and negative cognitions. For instance, Dillard and Shen (2005) exposed participants to health messages with a high or low level of threat. Findings indicated that participants who received the high-threat messages reported significantly higher levels of anger and negative cognitions than those receiving the lowthreat messages. Moreover, restricting people’s freedom can lead them to derogate the source of a message (for review see Rains, 2013). Smith’s (1977) data indicated that participants exposed to a high-threat message rated the message’s source as significantly less trustworthy, objective, and expert than those exposed to a low-threat message. In line with such findings, when people’s religious freedom is under siege, they may exhibit increased levels of anger, as well as vitriol aimed at the source of the restriction.

Summary: Question 1 Taken together, the theorizing, data, and commentary outlined in this section offer clear support for the proposition that social, political, and environmental threats to people’s freedom of religion can arouse reactance. In turn, people’s attempts to restore their freedom could include oppositional behavior (e.g., attending church or praying with increased frequency), heightened approval of their religion and its tenets, and anger or disapproval of the source of the religious freedom threat. Thus the answer to Question 1 seems simple and straightforward: Yes, social, political, and environmental threats to people’s freedom of religion can cause reactance. As a result, it is likely that people will act religiously more often (e.g., via frequent prayer or church attendance), exhibit increased attachment to their religion, and anger or mistrust of the threatening agent (e.g., government or social group). It is important to note that these direct relationships assume that no moderators are operating—that no differences exist in the magnitude of a threat, people’s personality traits, or their state of mind at the time of the threat to religious freedom. For instance, a law restricting religious freedom would be more likely to arouse reactance in people to whom religion is important and whose lives the threat would profoundly affect (Brehm, 1966); in addition, reactance would be exacerbated in those who possess certain personality types (e.g., Type A; Rhodewalt & Comer, 1982) or are in a negative state of mind (e.g., heightened depressive symptomatology; Lienemann & Siegel, 2016).

Question 2: Restrictive faith-based regulations and reactance The second question considers whether threats emanating from people’s religion can cause reactance: Can invasive and restrictive faith-based regulations arouse reactance? If religions can, indeed, arouse reactance, then what outcomes occur as a result?

Psychological reactance theory predictions In proposing PRT, Brehm (1966) outlined several characteristics of freedom threats that influence the extent to which people will experience reactance (for review see Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018). Two of these effects provide insight into people’s experience of invasive and restrictive faith-based regulations. First, communications that use controlling language will arouse more reactance than those that use more supportive language (for review see Quick et al., 2013). For example, a message telling members of a religion they “must” show up to church every Sunday will lead to different levels of reactance than a communication telling members that they “might want to consider” coming every Sunday. Second, when people perceive that the source of a message is explicitly trying to persuade them, the likelihood of reactance arousal increases (for a meta-analysis see Benoit, 1998). For instance, this possibility could occur if the media informs church that members their religious leader is dishonest and trying to intentionally manipulate the congregation. This theorizing suggests that particularly when restrictive faith-based regulations use controlling language or are obvious attempts to persuade or coerce that they could be expected to arouse reactance among adherents. People’s responses to freedom threats emanating from religion are likely to be similar to the restoration attempts detailed in Question 1: engaging in the threatened behavior, more positive attitudes toward the threatened behavior, as well as anger and derogation of the source of the threat. The difference, in this case, is that people’s freedom restoration

74

PART | 2 Freedom

attempts are likely to push them away from the religion, decreasing their adherence with doctrine. As noted earlier, it is important to keep in mind that moderators may influence the relationship between controlling wording, persuasive intent, and these restoration attempts. In other words, these threats to freedom will not result in the same level of reactance for all people in all circumstances. For instance, people who do not feel they have the freedom to choose when to go to church or do not see it as important will likely feel minimal, if any, reactance regardless of the language used.

Supporting evidence Controlling language In recent years, communication scholars have taken the torch of investigating the relationship between the magnitude of threat and reactance arousal (for reviews see Burgoon et al., 2002; Quick et al., 2013). These studies typically follow a similar paradigm, wherein participants are presented with one of two types of messages: controlling (e.g., “must,” “ought,” and “should”) or autonomy-supportive (e.g., “perhaps,” “possibly,” and “maybe”; Miller et al., 2007, p. 223). This perspective suggests that if a religious scripture or religious source uses controlling language, it will lead to greater reactance than if they use autonomy-supportive language. Although minimal empirical data on religion and reactance speak directly to this position, a small qualitative study (Fogel, 2004) and two commentaries lend some credence to the idea (Crossley, 2002; Martin, 2006). Fogel (2004) conducted semistructured interviews with 11 Orthodox Jewish youths to examine the role of reactance in explaining their illicit drug use. Data were inconclusive, but Fogel suggested that the punishing and restrictive nature of religion could prompt oppositional behavior in the form of drug and alcohol use (for similar theorizing see Booth & Martin, 1998). Among PRT scholarship, there is abundant support for the impact of controlling messages on reactance and oppositional behavior. One of the first studies to manipulate message explicitness tested the effectiveness of high- and low-threat messages in reducing college students’ alcohol consumption (Bensley & Wu, 1991). Data revealed that participants exposed to the high-threat messages drank more than those who saw the low-threat messages (i.e., a boomerang effect; Brehm, 1966; for similar results see Crano, Alvaro, Tan, & Siegel, 2017). Assuming all things being equal in terms of importance, personality traits, and state of mind, these data could be taken to suggest that a directive demanding that parishioners, “Must tithe as much as possible each week” is likely to arouse more reactance than one suggesting they, “Might want to consider tithing as much as possible each week.”

Persuasive intent Aside from the content of a message, PRT also indicates that the way in which a message is delivered will affect reactance arousal. Specifically, Brehm (1966) indicated that when people perceive that a threatening agent is explicitly trying to persuade them, it will arouse reactance—the content of the message notwithstanding (for a meta-analysis see Benoit, 1998). Although we were unable to find any studies within the context of religion that focused on this tenet, theorizing suggests that when adherents feel that a communication emanating from their religion is intentionally coercive or overtly intended to persuade, it will likely arouse reactance. Heller, Pallak, and Picek (1973) illustrated this viewpoint by having a confederate make a clear attempt to influence participants’ attitudes in favor of a new power plant. Specifically, in the high-intent condition, the confederate arbitrarily assigned participants a position on the issue; participants in the low-intent condition were allowed to choose their position. In support, the authors found that participants exposed to the high-intent condition reported significantly more negative attitudes toward the power plant than those in the low-intent condition (for similar results see Jones & Brehm, 1970). All moderators (e.g., personality traits and state of mind) being equal, religious communications that contain overt attempts at coercion or persuasion (e.g., conversion or missionary efforts) will be likely to arouse reactance among recipients. Moreover, if adolescents begin to question the teachings of their religion and start to believe it is attempting to control them, the same message that did not cause reactance a few months earlier could begin to do so.

Summary: Question 2 The findings outlined above suggest that communications that use controlling language or are clearly attempting to persuade are likely to arouse reactance. These data indicate that a religious leader who uses terms such as “must not engage in X practices” would arouse more reactance than one who insists “it would be in your best interest to refrain from X.” We suggest a clear answer to Question 2: Invasive and restrictive faith-based regulations will arouse reactance among religious adherents—particularly when they use controlling language or are obvious attempts to persuade

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

75

or coerce. As a result, when invasive and restrictive religious regulations threaten people’s freedom, it is likely that people will act religiously less often (e.g., via infrequent prayer or church attendance), exhibit negative attitudes toward their religion, and anger or mistrust of the threatening agent (e.g., clergy or church doctrine). As noted before, these suggestions assume no differences in the moderators outlined previously, such as importance of the threatened freedom, personality traits, or state of mind at the time of the threat. For example, people are especially likely to respond to a controlling or clearly coercive faith-based regulation with reactance if the threatened freedom is important, they possess particular personality types (e.g., Type A, Rhodewalt & Comer, 1982) or are in a negative state of mind (e.g., depression, Lienemann & Siegel, 2016).

Question 3: Avoiding or minimizing reactance The final question on the intersection of reactance and religion asks, What strategies can religions use to avoid or minimize the arousal of reactance?

Psychological reactance theory predictions Brehm’s (1966) original suggestion that threatening communication will arouse reactance has prompted scholars to examine the effects of controlling message features on reactance processes (e.g., Buller, Borland, & Burgoon, 1998; Quick & Kim, 2009). As described earlier, the data from these studies revealed a main effect, where messages with controlling language arouse greater reactance than those with autonomy-supportive language (for review see Quick et al., 2013). The possibility that messages arouse reactance is important, as many social influence attempts instruct people how to behave, and as a result, could arouse the desire to behave counter to recommendations. Acknowledging this possibility, communication scholars have uncovered several messaging strategies that will minimize reactance by avoiding the use of controlling language, including the use of autonomy-supportive language (e.g., Miller et al., 2007) and narrative (e.g., Moyer-Guse´, 2008). In addition, other research has examined techniques that reduce reactance arousal when controlling language may be advantageous, such as the use of restoration postscripts (e.g., Kirchler, 1999), inoculation (e.g., Richards & Banas, 2015), and message sensation value (e.g., Quick, 2013). If findings from the PRT literature are generalizable to a religious context, communications directed at religious believers can avoid arousing reactance by using these strategies.

Supporting evidence Avoiding reactance arousal Autonomy-supportive language The typical paradigm that communication scholars use to test the effect of various message features on reactance arousal pits messages with controlling wording (e.g., “You simply have to do it,” Dillard & Shen, 2005, p. 152) against those with autonomy-supportive wording (e.g., “[it] is worthy of serious consideration,” Dillard & Shen, 2005, p. 152). In line with PRT, evidence indicates that people display greater reactance (e.g., anger, oppositional attitudes, and behavioral intentions) when presented with the controlling message than the supportive one (for review see Burgoon et al., 2002). The converse of this finding, of course, is that to avoid reactance arousal, communications should use autonomy-supportive language. In a religious context, assuming all else is equal, messages that communicate a religion’s position in a supportive manner are likely to be more effective than those presented in a controlling manner. For instance, encouraging congregants to “consider attending” compared with “attendance required” should prompt less reactance, and in turn, greater compliance. Narrative Another technique suggests that using narrative stories in persuasive messaging can avoid reactance effects and increase persuasive effectiveness (Quick et al., 2013). A series of studies from Moyer-Guse´ et al. (e.g., Moyer-Guse´, 2008; Moyer-Guse´, Jain, & Chung, 2012; Moyer-Guse´ & Nabi, 2010) suggested that narrative messages can obscure persuasive intent, thereby reducing reactance. In one study, Moyer-Guse´ and Nabi (2010) exposed participants to communications that included narrative (i.e., presented issues associated with teen pregnancy in the context of a popular dramatic television show) or did not (i.e., presented as news broadcast). In line with predictions, dramatic narrative served to increase participants’ identification with story characters and decreased perceptions of persuasive intent; as a result,

76

PART | 2 Freedom

reactance decreased and safe sex intentions increased. Religions can capitalize on these findings by packaging their messages in engaging narratives—for instance, embedding encouragement of church attendance in a relatable story about everyday people.

Reducing reactance arousal The strategies previously outlined focus on utilizing messages that are not controlling to avoid reactance arousal and, potentially, increase effectiveness. Despite the ability of controlling messages to induce reactance, they have several documented benefits (e.g., message clarity; Miller et al., 2007). In this vein, research details techniques for allaying reactance in circumstances when communicators benefit from controlling language. Restoration postscripts One common strategy is to include a reminder of people’s freedom to choose at the end of a threatening communication (i.e., a postscript; for review see Brehm & Brehm, 1981). The thinking here is that reinforcing people’s freedom to choose will reduce the reactance they experience in response to a controlling message (e.g., Kirchler, 1999). For instance, Bessarabova et al. (2013) examined the effect of a brief restoration postscript on participants’ reactions to a controlling pro-recycling message. The controlling message itself did not contain any freedom-enhancing language, but half of the participants were either shown a postscript that concluded by suggesting “The choice is yours. You’re free to decide for yourself” (p. 347). As predicted, reactance emerged for participants who read the controlling message only, but not among those who also received the restoration postscript. In a religious context, we see two key implications for these findings. In the most straightforward manner, organizations could provide controlling messaging (e.g., “donation required”) but avoid reactance arousal by following the message with a postscript (e.g., “donation required. . . but the choice is yours”). A second possibility is that to avoid reactance arousal from behavioral proscriptions (e.g., about what to eat and when to worship), religions have developed dogma emphasizing people’s free will. Put differently, religions suggesting that followers have free will could serve as a restoration postscript, diminishing the reactance that telling followers what to do and what not to do in almost every domain of life could arouse. As a result, rather than religions compelling people to comply with their proscriptions, people could choose to follow along as an expression of their free will and pious faith. Inoculation In contrast to message postscripts that appear after a threat occurs, other research suggests that providing forewarning (McGuire, 1961) that a threat is coming may inoculate people against its impact (e.g., Miller et al., 2013). This perspective suggests that exposing participants to a warning that they may experience reactance when reading a subsequent message (i.e., inoculating them) would decrease reactance to the ensuing message (e.g., Richards, Banas, & Magid, 2017). Data from Richards and Banas (2015) showed that an inoculation premessage decreased perceived threat, reactance, and intentions to act in opposition to an antidrinking message. The implication here is that religions could avoid reactance from controlling communications by notifying adherents that a freedom threat is coming. For example, a brief warning (e.g., “The message you see next may make you feel threatened”) could precede a stern attempt to encourage prayer (e.g., “You must pray at least once every single day”). Message sensation value According to Palmgreen et al. (1991), message sensation is “the degree to which formal and content audio-visual features of a message elicit sensory, affective, and arousal responses” (p. 219). Put differently, message sensation value is any message feature that draws people’s attention, such as audio or video effects (Morgan, Palmgreen, Stephenson, Hoyle, & Lorch, 2003). Building on this idea in the PRT realm, high sensation value messages distract the audience away from threatening features (e.g., controlling wording), thereby decreasing reactance effects (e.g., counter-argumentation). Quick (2013) conducted one of the few studies to explicitly test the relationship between perceived sensation value and reactance by comparing the effects of messages high in sensation value against ones that were low in sensation value on adolescents’ perceptions of antimarijuana ads. In support, when adolescents perceived messages as highly novel, they reported decreased perceptions of freedom threat. To utilize this research, religious groups can produce messages that engage people’s senses, such as with music and emotion-laden images or stories.

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

77

Summary: Question 3 The empirical data and theorizing outlined support the idea that an array of communication strategies allow religions to enhance the effectiveness of their messages by either avoiding (e.g., autonomy-supportive language) or reducing (e.g., narrative) reactance arousal, in addition to reducing reactance arousal by developing ideas that reinforce the sense of choice (restoration postscripts) or prepare believers for a command (inoculation). In line, we can answer Question 3 affirmatively: Yes, religions can use strategies to avoid or reduce reactance arousal. We also want to reemphasize a caveat to the above guidance—namely, that the insight provided assumes no moderators are operating in the relationship between freedom threats and reactance arousal. If the magnitude of the freedom threat differs, or if recipients of a freedom threat vary in personality traits or their state of mind at the time of threat, the relationships outlined could change. For example, if a religious adherent is high in trait reactance, a simple restoration postscript to undo a controlling faith-based restriction may not be as effective as for someone low in trait reactance. Similarly, exposing someone who is experiencing threatening uncertainty to a controlling religious message could prompt increased adherence, whereas for someone feeling certain, it would lead to oppositional behavior (Rosenberg & Siegel, 2019).

Future directions In the preceding sections, we outlined theorizing, data, and commentary aimed at answering three questions about the confluence of reactance and religious belief and behavior. We found support for using PRT as a vehicle to understand phenomena such as people’s reactions to impersonal threats to their religious freedom, the influence of invasive faithbased restrictions, and the possibility that religions can use messaging strategies to allay reactance arousal. Despite this overall backing, a key caveat to our analysis informs the future directions we outline next: Much of the evidence that formed our conclusions was indirect, as a relatively limited number of studies (e.g., Alhabash et al., 2017), reviews (e.g., Springer & Larsen, 2008), and commentaries (e.g., Braithwaite, 2011) have examined the relationship between reactance and religion. The overarching framework for future scholarship, then, is the extent to which these PRT findings are generalizable to religion and religious behavior. Along with this focus on obtaining direct evidence, we drew heavily on Rosenberg and Siegel’s (2018) review of PRT to identify three other potentially fruitful avenues of future research.

Moderators Reactance arousal does not occur in the same manner for all people in all circumstances—factors such as the importance of a freedom, personality traits (e.g., trait reactance; Kelly & Nauta, 1997), and state of mind (e.g., depressive symptomatology; Lienemann & Siegel, 2016) affect perceptions of freedom threats. It is likely that the same is true of believers’ experiences in their place of worship. For example, certain features of the worshipping experience, such as listening to a sermon (akin to a narrative message) may serve to diminish reactance arousal. Similarly, true believers often give themselves to a religion, which is a willing forfeiture of freedom of choice. It could be that because such people have already given up their freedom, subsequent threats will not carry the same weight they would otherwise. A related consideration is that feelings of uncertainty often prompt people to seek religious affiliation because if offers clear proscriptions for thought and action (e.g., Hogg, 2014; Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). Rosenberg and Siegel (2019) recently placed this finding in the context of PRT, showing that when people felt uncertain about themselves or the world around them, they exhibited less reactance to freedom threats than those who felt certain. Although untested in the religious domain, these findings seem to have clear application to the realm of religion and religious affiliation. For instance, scholars could investigate the idea that people do not meet religious mandates with opposition when they feel uncertain.

Expanding catalysts of reactance Another possibility Rosenberg and Siegel (2018) raised is that a range of experiences—not just direct threat or elimination of freedom—could arouse reactance. For instance, even positive identity categorizations (e.g., as a mother, Miron & Brehm, 2006) can threaten people’s freedom to identify as something else (e.g., a professional). This idea has rarely been directly assessed (e.g., Wicklund, 1974), but some evidence indicates that explicit threats to people’s freedom to identify with a group of their choosing can prompt reactance (Kray, Thompson, & Galinsky, 2001). A related set of

78

PART | 2 Freedom

findings shows that implicit identity threats (e.g., ingroup vs outgroup member) may also affect reactance arousal (Graupmann, Jonas, Meier, Hawelka, & Aichhorn, 2012). Placing this finding in a religious context, any implicit or explicit event that people perceive to threaten their freedom to support their chosen religion could cause reactance and consequent anger or source derogation. An interesting avenue for continued scholarship, then, is to assess the extent to which interfaith contact affects reactance arousal. A similar avenue for continued study indicates that reactance itself could beget additional reactance—a process dubbed the reactive spiral (Siegel & Rosenberg, 2019). Based on Coyne’s (1976) depressive spiral, the authors proposed that being in a state of reactance could result in increased sensitivity to subsequent freedom threats, leading people to feel more threatened, and even further sensitizing them to future threats. Initial data were supportive, showing that people primed with a freedom threat exhibited significantly greater reactance to a second threat than those in a control group (Siegel & Rosenberg, 2019). Against the current religious backdrop, researchers could explore whether multiple, closely spaced mandates to NOT engage in certain behaviors (e.g., premarital sex and alcohol consumption) will arouse greater reactance than a single mandate.

Expanding outcomes of reactance A final avenue for future scholarship is to examine the range of outcomes beyond oppositional behavior, negative cognitions, and anger that reactance arousal likely catalyzes. Akin to Brehm (1966) calling freedom restoration attempts “primitive” (p. 9), Rosenberg and Siegel (2018) argued that because reactance is a negative motivational state, people’s reactions to freedom threats likely prompt a host of goal-directed cognitions and behaviors (for discussions see Hart, 2014; Proulx et al., 2012). Negative motivational states such as reactance could arouse seemingly disparate outcomes such as increased social dominance, myopic thinking, hyperfocus on relevant stimuli, and taking a direct route to restoring freedom (Siegel, 2013; also see Rosenberg, Lewandowski, & Siegel, 2015). Through this lens, researchers might consider the range of outcomes to which religious freedom restriction could give rise. For example, anger, which is a core feature of reactance, is related to positively riskier decision-making (e.g., Baumann & DeSteno, 2010) and optimistic appraisals of stressors (e.g., Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005). It would be interesting to see which of these findings hold true in a religious context.

Conclusion In line with a host of philosophical (e.g., Sartre, 1943/1956) and psychological perspectives (e.g., Baumeister, 2005), PRT (Brehm, 1966) posits that freedom of behavior is an adaptive and essential tool for human survival. When something threatens or eliminates people’s freedom, they experience reactance, an aversive motivational state that triggers attempts to restore lost freedom (Brehm, 1966). These freedom restoration attempts can take various forms, including engaging in the threatened behavior and a range of subjective outcomes (e.g., positively evaluating the threatened behavior, anger, and source derogation; for review see Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Although PRT has received support in numerous domains (for review see Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018), its tenets have rarely been tested in religious contexts (for an exception see Alhabash et al., 2017). As such, in the current chapter we sought to answer three questions at the intersection of reactance and religious behavior. First, we asked whether social, political, or environmental threats to people’s religious freedom could arouse reactance and the variety of expected outcomes (e.g., increased religious adherence, anger and source derogation). In this case, direct (e.g., Fox & Tabory, 2008; Sajjad, Christie, & Taylor, 2017) and indirect (e.g., Gordon & Minor, 1992) evidence provided a clear affirmative answer. Second, we asked whether restrictive faith-based regulations could arouse reactance among their adherents, leading to outcomes such as heresy (i.e., holding a belief contrary to religious orthodoxy) and apostasy (i.e., renouncing religious affiliation). For this question, we again found direct (e.g., Fogel, 2004) and indirect (e.g., Crano et al., 2017) supportive evidence. Third, we asked whether religions could use strategies from communication research (e.g., autonomy-supportive language, Miller et al., 2007) to allay reactance and increase message effectiveness. The data supporting this line of thinking were entirely indirect (e.g., Kirchler, 1999); that is, to our knowledge no scholarship has directly addressed these possibilities in a religious context. The lack of direct support for our third question highlights the framing question for continued scholarship in this area—most notably, the extent to which the PRT findings outlined here are generalizable to religion and religious behavior. For instance, communication strategies aimed at avoiding (e.g., autonomy-supportive language, Miller et al., 2007) or reducing (e.g., inoculation, Richards et al., 2017) reactance arousal have rarely, if ever, received empirical support in the context of religion. Along with this overarching call for additional direct investigation of reactance and

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

79

religious behavior, we outlined three areas for continued scholarship in this fruitful area, including examination of (1) moderators of the relationship between freedom threat and religious behavior (e.g., depth of religious belief), (2) additional catalysts of reactance (e.g., interfaith contact), and (3) additional outcomes of reactance (e.g., risky decision-making). We hope that future research addresses these and other questions pertaining to the overlap between psychological reactance and religion.

References Alhabash, S., Almutairi, N., & Rub, M. A. (2017). Just add a verse from the Quran: Effects of religious rhetoric in gain- and loss-framed anti-alcohol messages with a Palestinian sample. Journal of Religion and Health, 56, 1628 1643. Allen, D. N., Sprenkel, D. G., & Vitale, P. A. (1994). Reactance theory and alcohol consumption laws: Further confirmation among collegiate alcohol consumers. Journal of Studies On Alcohol, 55, 34 40. Baumann, J., & DeSteno, D. (2010). Emotion guided threat detection: Expecting guns where there are none. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(4), 595 610. Baumeister, R. F. (2005). The cultural animal: Human nature, meaning, and social life. Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E., & DeWall, C. N. (2009). Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 260 268. Benoit, W. L. (1998). Forewarning and persuasion. In M. Allen, & R. W. Preiss (Eds.), Persuasion: Advances through meta-analysis (pp. 139 154). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Bensley, L., & Wu, R. (1991). The role of psychological reactance in drinking following alcohol prevention messages. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21(13), 1111 1124. Bessarabova, E., Fink, E. L., & Turner, M. (2013). Reactance, restoration, and cognitive structure: Comparative statics. Human Communication Research, 39, 339 364. Beutler, L. E., Edwards, C., & Someah, K. (2018). Adapting psychotherapy to patient reactance level: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74, 1952 1963. Beutler, L. E., Moleiro, C., & Talebi, H. (2002). Resistance in psychotherapy: What conclusions are supported by research? Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58, 207 217. Booth, J., & Martin, J. E. (1998). Spiritual and religious factors in substance use, dependence, and recovery. In H. G. Koenig (Ed.), Handbook of religion and mental health (pp. 175 200). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Braithwaite, J. (2011). Regulating terrorism. In B. Forst, J. Greene, & J. Lynch (Eds.), Criminologists on terrorism and homeland security (pp. 383 408). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Criminology. Brass, M., Furstenberg, A., & Mele, A. R. (2019). Why neuroscience does not disprove free will. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 102, 251 263. Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Oxford, England: Academic Press. Brehm, J. W., & Rozen, E. (1971). Attractiveness of old alternatives when a new attractive alternative is introduced. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 20, 261 266. Brehm, S. S., & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. London, England: Academic Press. Buller, D. B., Borland, R., & Burgoon, M. (1998). Impact of behavioral intention on effectiveness of message features: Evidence from the Family Sun Safety Project. Human Communication Research, 24, 433 453. Burch-Brown, J., & Baker, W. (2016). Religion and reducing prejudice. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 19, 784 807. Burgoon, M., Alvaro, E., Grandpre, J., & Voulodakis, M. (2002). Revisiting the theory of psychological reactance: Communicating threats to attitudinal freedom. In J. P. Dillard, & M. Pfau (Eds.), The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice (pp. 213 232). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cassells, N. C. L., & Ball, D. R. (2014). Reactance and dissonance may reduce vaccination rates. Anaesthesia, 69, 395. Chernyak, N., Chernyak, N., Kushnir, T., & Wellman, H. (2010). Developing notions of free will: Preschoolers’ understanding of how intangible constraints bind their freedom of choice. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 32(32). Clee, M. A., & Wicklund, R. A. (1980). Consumer behavior and psychological reactance. Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 389 405. Cottrell, C. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctional threat-based approach to “prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770 789. Coyne, J. (1976). Depression and the response of others. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85(2), 186 193. Crano, W. D., Alvaro, E. M., Tan, C. N., & Siegel, J. T. (2017). Social mediation of persuasive media in adolescent substance prevention. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 31, 479 487. Crossley, M. L. (2002). The perils of health promotion and the “barebacking” backlash. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Society of Health, Illness, and Medicine, 6, 47 68. Dillard, J. P., & Shen, L. (2005). On the nature of reactance and its role in persuasive health communication. Communication Monographs, 72, 144 168. Dunn, J., & Schweitzer, M. (2005). Feeling and believing: The influence of emotion on trust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5), 736 748.

80

PART | 2 Freedom

Engs, R., & Hanson, D. J. (1989). Reactance theory: A test with collegiate drinking. Psychological Reports, 64, 1083 1086. Feldman, G. (2017). Making sense of agency: Belief in free will as a unique and important construct. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11, e12293. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Oxford, England: Farrar & Rinehart. Fogel, J. (2004). Illegal drug use in Orthodox Jewish adolescents. Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 3, 17 31. Fox, J., & Tabory, E. (2008). Contemporary evidence regarding the impact of state regulation of religion on religious participation and belief. Sociology of Religion, 69, 245 271. Gervais, W., Shariff, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189 1206. Goldman, M., & Wallis, D. (1979). Restoring freedom when pressured not to select alternatives. Psychological Reports, 44, 563 566. Gordon, R. A., & Minor, S. W. (1992). Attitudes toward a change in the legal drinking age: Reactance versus compliance. Journal of College Student Development, 33, 171 176. Graupmann, V., Jonas, E., Meier, E., Hawelka, S., & Aichhorn, M. (2012). Reactance, the self, and its group: When threats to freedom come from the ingroup versus the outgroup. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(2), 164 173. Hart, J. (2014). Toward an integrative theory of psychological defense. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 19 39. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). London: Blackwell. (Original work published 1927). Heller, J. F., Pallak, M. S., & Picek, J. M. (1973). The interactive effects of intent and threat on boomerang attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 273 279. Hogg, M. (2014). From uncertainty to extremism: Social categorization and identity processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5). Hogg, M., Adelman, J., & Blagg, R. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, 14(1), 72 83. Hong, S. M. (1990). Effects of sex and church attendance on psychological reactance. Psychological Reports, 66, 494. Jones, R. A., & Brehm, J. W. (1970). Persuasiveness of one- and two-sided communications as a function of awareness there are two sides. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 6, 47 56. Kant, I. (1967). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of practical reason]. Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag. (Original work published 1797). Kelly, A. E., & Nauta, M. M. (1997). Reactance and thought suppression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1123 1132. Kirchler, E. (1999). Reactance to taxation: Employers’ attitudes towards taxes. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 28, 131 138. Kondaratowicz-Novak, B. B., & Zawadzka, A. M. (2018). Does belief in free will make us feel good and satisfied? Health Psychology Report, 6, 109 117. Kray, L. J., Thompson, L., & Galinsky, A. (2001). Battle of the sexes: Gender stereotype confirmation and reactance in negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 942 958. Lessne, G. J., & Notarantonio, E. M. (1988). The effect of limits in retail advertisements: A reactance theory perspective. Psychology & Marketing, 5, 33 44. Lienemann, B. A., & Siegel, J. T. (2016). State psychological reactance to depression public service announcements among people with varying levels of depressive symptomatology. Health Communication, 31, 102 116. Long, S. (1978). Political alienation: Reality and reactance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 104, 115 121. MacKenzie, M., Vohs, K., & Baumeister, R. (2014). You didn’t have to do that: Belief in free will promotes gratitude. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(11), 1423 1434. Martin, J. I. (2006). Transcendence among gay men: Implications for HIV prevention. Sexualities, 9, 214 235. Mazis, M. B. (1975). Antipollution measures and psychological reactance theory: A field experiment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 654 660. Mazis, M. B., Settle, R. B., & Leslie, D. C. (1973). Elimination of phosphate detergents and psychological reactance. Journal of Marketing Research, 10, 390 395. McCleary, R. M., & Barro, R. J. (2006). Religion and political economy in an international panel. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 45, 149 175. McGuire, W. J. (1961). The effectiveness of supportive and refutational defenses in immunizing and restoring beliefs against persuasion. Sociometry, 24, 184 197. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primacy of perception. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Miller, C. H., Ivanov, B., Sims, J., Compton, J., Harrison, K. J., Parker, K. A., . . . Averbeck, J. M. (2013). Boosting the potency of resistance: Combining the motivational forces of inoculation and psychological reactance. Human Communication Research, 39, 127 155. Miller, C. H., Lane, L. T., Deatrick, L. M., Young, A. M., & Potts, K. A. (2007). Psychological reactance and promotional health messages: The effects of controlling language, lexical concreteness, and the restoration of freedom. Human Communication Research, 33, 219 240. Miron, A. M., & Brehm, J. W. (2006). Reactance theory—40 years later. Zeitschrift Fu¨r Sozialpsychologie, 37, 9 18. Morgan, S. E., Palmgreen, P., Stephenson, M. T., Hoyle, R. H., & Lorch, E. P. (2003). Associations between message features and subjective evaluations of the sensation value of antidrug public service announcements. Journal of Communication, 53, 512 526.

Reactance and spiritual possibilities: an application of psychological reactance theory Chapter | 5

81

Moyer-Guse´, E. (2008). Toward a theory of entertainment persuasion: Explaining the persuasive effects of entertainment-education messages. Communication Theory, 18, 407 425. Moyer-Guse´, E., Jain, P., & Chung, A. H. (2012). Reinforcement or reactance? Examining the effect of an explicit persuasive appeal following an entertainment-education narrative. Journal of Communication, 62, 1010 1027. Moyer-Guse´, E., & Nabi, R. L. (2010). Explaining the effects of narrative in an entertainment television program: Overcoming resistance to persuasion. Human Communication Research, 36, 26 52. Nezlek, J., & Brehm, J. W. (1975). Hostility as a function of the opportunity to counteraggress. Journal of Personality, 43, 421 433. Palmgreen, P., Donohew, L., Lorch, E. P., Rogus, M., Helm, D., & Grant, N. (1991). Sensation seeking, message sensation value, and drug use as mediators of PSA effectiveness. Health Communication, 3, 217 227. Nichols, S. (2004). The folk psychology of free will: Fits and starts. Mind & Language, 19, 473 502. Proulx, T., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 285 291. Quick, B. L. (2013). Perceived message sensation value and psychological reactance: A test of the dominant thought disruption hypothesis. Journal of Health Communication, 18, 1024 1038. Quick, B. L., & Kim, D. K. (2009). Examining reactance and reactance restoration with South Korean adolescents: A test of psychological reactance within a collectivist culture. Communication Research, 36, 765 782. Quick, B. L., Shen, L., & Dillard, J. P. (2013). Reactance theory and persuasion. In J. P. Dillard, & L. Shen (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of persuasion: Developments in theory and practice (2nd ed., pp. 167 183). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Quick, B. L., & Stephenson, M. T. (2008). Examining the role of trait reactance and sensation seeking on perceived threat, state reactance, and reactance restoration. Human Communication Research, 34, 448 476. Quick, B. L., Bates, B. R., & Quinlan, M. R. (2009). The utility of anger in promoting dean indoor air policies. Health Communication, 24, 548 561. Rains, S. A. (2013). The nature of psychological reactance revisited: A meta-analytic review. Human Communication Research, 39, 47 73. Rains, S. A., & Turner, M. M. (2007). Psychological reactance and persuasive health communication: A test and extension of the intertwined model. Human Communication Research, 33, 241 269. Rhodewalt, F., & Comer, R. (1982). Coronary-prone behavior and reactance: The attractiveness of an eliminated choice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 152 158. Richards, A. S., & Banas, J. A. (2015). Inoculating against reactance to persuasive health messages. Health Communication, 30, 451 460. Richards, A. S., Banas, J. A., & Magid, Y. (2017). More on inoculating against reactance to persuasive health messages: The paradox of threat. Health Communication, 32, 890 902. Ringold, D. J. (1988). Consumer response to product withdrawal: The reformulation of Coca-Cola. Psychology & Marketing, 5, 189 210. Ringold, D. J. (2002). Boomerang effects in response to public health interventions: Some unintended consequences in the alcoholic beverage market. Journal of Consumer Policy, 25, 27 63. Rosenberg, B. D., Lewandowski, J. A., & Siegel, J. T. (2015). Goal disruption theory, military personnel, and the creation of merged profiles: A mixed methods investigation. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 9(1), 51 69. Rosenberg, B. D., & Siegel, J. T. (2018). A 50-year review of psychological reactance theory: Do not read this article. Motivation Science, 4, 281 300. Rosenberg, B. D., & Siegel, J. T. (2019). Threatening uncertainty and psychological reactance: Are freedom threats always noxious? Manuscript under review. Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80, 1 28. Sajjad, F., Christie, D. J., & Taylor, L. K. (2017). De-radicalizing Pakistani society: The receptivity of youth to a liberal religious worldview. Journal of Peace Education, 14, 195 214. Sartre, J. P. (1943/1956). Being and nothingness. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. Schu¨z, N., Schu¨z, B., & Eid, M. (2013). When risk communication backfires: Randomized controlled trial on self-affirmation and reactance to personalized risk feedback in high-risk individuals. Health Psychology, 32, 561 570. Shen, L. (2010). Mitigating psychological reactance: The role of message-induced empathy in persuasion. Human Communication Research, 36, 397 422. Shoham, V., Trost, S. E., & Rohrbaugh, M. J. (2004). From state to trait and back again: Reactance theory goes clinical. In R. A. Wright, J. Greenberg, & S. S. Brehm (Eds.), Motivational analyses of social behavior: Building on Jack Brehm’s contributions to psychology (pp. 167 185). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Siegel, J. T. (2013). Illuminating the psychological processes associated with renal failure diagnosis and living donation considerations: An application of goal disruption theory. Organ donation and transplantation: An interdisciplinary approach. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science. Siegel, J.T., & Rosenberg, B.D. (2019). Expanding psychological reactance theory: The reactive spiral. Manuscript under review. Smith, M. J. (1977). The effects of threats to attitudinal freedom as a function of message quality and initial receiver attitude. Communication Monographs, 44, 196 206. Springer, V., & Larsen, B. (2008). The phenomenon of xenophobic violence: A historical and social psychological review of America in the wake of terror. Journal of the Institute of Justice & International Studies, 8, 263 279.

82

PART | 2 Freedom

Steindl, C., Jonas, E., Sittenthaler, S., Traut-Mattausch, E., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Understanding psychological reactance: New developments and findings. Zeitschrift Fu¨r Psychologie, 223, 205 214. Stillman, T., Baumeister, R., & Mele, A. (2011). Free will in everyday life: Autobiographical accounts of free and unfree actions. Philosophical Psychology, 24(3), 381 394. Vohs, K., & Baumeister, R. (2004). Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications. New York: Guilford Press. Vohs, K., & Schooler, J. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1), 49 54. West, S. G. (1975). Increasing the attractiveness of college cafeteria food: A reactance theory perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 656 658. Wicklund, R. A. (1974). Freedom and reactance. Oxford, England: Erlbaum. Wiium, N., Aarø, L. E., & Hetland, J. (2009). Psychological reactance and adolescents’ attitudes toward tobacco-control measures. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39, 1718 1738.

Chapter 6

Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of self-determination theory Maria Brambilla1 and Avi Assor2 1

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy, 2Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva, Israel

In this chapter, we analyze how self-determination theory (SDT) contributed to the advancement of the psychology of religion. Since psychology of religion started to grow in the last decades and enlarged its interest to cover not only clinical and counseling psychology but also all the other subfields including basic ones (see Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003), scholars became aware of the risks of studying religiosity as a monolithic phenomenon and started to approach it in a more articulated manner, with more complex questions (Pargament, 2002). In fact, religiosity can have both positive and negative impacts on people’s lives, depending on the way it is endorsed, and a theory of human motivation such as SDT can help to disentangle the different forms of religiosity and their implications.

The core concepts of self-determination theory SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2000) offered a specific conceptualization of the different ways in which values are endorsed and behaviors regulated, investigating the question of “why” a person engages in a certain activity. The motivation for performing an activity or a behavior or for endorsing a certain belief can vary to different degrees of autonomy in a continuum from a superficial and conditional reason depending on circumstances and social pressures (heteronomy) to a personal and independent, more self-determined reason (autonomy) (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In the first pole of the continuum, we can find amotivation. On the opposite, we can find intrinsic motivation, that refers to the engagement in an activity because it is inherently interesting, enjoying, and satisfying: an activity is undertaken simply for its own sake and, hence, does not require any external reinforcements. Between the two poles are a variety of extrinsic motivations: external regulation (based on external rewards and punishments), introjected regulation (based on self-control, internal rewards, and punishments), identified regulation (based on personal importance and conscious valuing), and integrated regulation (based on congruence and synthesis with self). These different steps correspond to differences in internalization: when the reason for performing a certain behavior is internalized (as in identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic regulation), people will also perceive a sense of psychological freedom and volition and will engage in the behavior spontaneously. For example, a religious behavior can be performed under external pressures (e.g., adolescents forced by parents to go to church) or internal pressures (e.g., feelings of guilt and shame, or feeling that one is supposed to do something), or for a full identification (e.g., an individual who goes to church because he/she feels this is a very important part of his/her life). In the case of identification, the behavior is endorsed because of personal valuing. It is enacted in a more autonomous way, and it is coherent with one’s ideals and self-image. An important part of this theoretical framework is the explanation of how it is possible to promote a more autonomous (self-determined) motivation and an identified or integrated internalization of values. In particular, research demonstrated that there are two main types of behaviors that can affect the internalization of values: autonomy and control. A wide body of research in the field of SDT proved that the internalization of behaviors is strongly connected with autonomy supporting versus controlling interpersonal relationships (Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997; Ryan & Deci, 2000; The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00007-X © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

83

84

PART | 2 Freedom

Soenens & Beyers, 2012). This idea refers in particular to the family context, where autonomy supporting practices, as encouraging others to choose in accordance with their personal values or allowing the possibility to choose between different options, promote a more self-determined internalization (Grolnick et al., 1997; Soenens & Beyers, 2012). As an example, Vansteenkiste, Zhou, Lens, and Soenens (2005) showed that perceived parental autonomy support was related to an autonomous motivation to study. On the other side, a controlling interpersonal style hinders autonomous regulation of behaviors by putting pressure on others to think or act in a desired way, or by conditioning their choice by giving rewards or punishments (Assor, Roth, & Deci, 2004; Grolnick et al., 1997). This strategy can also be more subtle and manipulative, for example, when people use conditional regard, that is, withholding love when others do not behave as desired or trying to induce guilt or shame (Barber, 1996; Roth, Assor, Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009). Research showed that conditional regard leads to introjected internalization and poor well-being in different domains (Assor et al., 2004).

How self-determination theory helps us understand different forms of religiosity Within a SDT perspective, Ryan, Rigby, and King (1993) described two types of internalization of religious values that vary in their relative autonomy: introjected internalization and identified internalization. The former represents religious beliefs and behaviors that are predominantly based on social pressures, that is, a partial internalization of religious beliefs and values, associated with the seeking of approval from oneself and from others. The latter represents adoption of beliefs as personal convictions and the enactment of religious behaviors that are personally chosen and valued, that is, a more autonomous and self-determined form of religiosity. Introjected and identified internalization are measured with the Christian Religious Internalization Scale (CRIS), in which respondents indicate the reasons why they should engage in a certain religious behavior. Example items are “One reason I think it’s important to actively share my faith with others is because God is important to me and I’d like other people to know about Him too” and “When I turn to God, I most often do it because I enjoy spending time with Him” (identified items); “An important reason why I attend church is because one is supposed to go to church” and “A reason I think praying by myself is important is because if I don’t, God will disapprove me” (introjected items) (Ryan et al., 1993). These two different forms of internalization of religious values showed to be associated with different outcomes: religious introjection is connected with lower levels of psychological adjustment and well-being, whereas religious identification is linked with more personal well-being (Ryan et al., 1993). Several studies deepened the investigation of the association of the different motivations for engaging in religious behaviors with different ways of approaching religiosity and with various outcomes: we consider them later in this chapter.

Self-determination theory’s perspective compared with other conceptualizations about religiosity SDT’s view about religious motivation has been compared with other explanations of religious behaviors. The most important comparison is with the well-known and massively used concept of religious orientation introduced by Allport (Allport, 1950, 1966; Allport & Ross, 1967; Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989). This concept distinguishes between intrinsically oriented individuals, who consider religion as an end in itself and totally adhere to religious beliefs and values, and extrinsically oriented individuals, who approach religion in an instrumental way, using it to attain other ends, such as sociability, status, and social support. Example items of the scale measuring religious orientation are “My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to life” (intrinsic orientation) and “Though I believe in my religion, I feel there are many more important things in my life” (extrinsic orientation). Intrinsic orientation is similar to an autonomous form of motivation (as formulated in SDT), but distinct: both are integrated into one’s self-structure, but Allport’s intrinsic orientation refers to the internalization of religious content (e.g., a true belief in religious values), whereas autonomous motivation refers to religious behaviors (e.g., going to church because it is perceived as important) (Neyrinck, Lens, Vansteenkiste, & Soenens, 2010). On the other side, extrinsic orientation, especially in its social subcomponent (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989; Neyrinck et al., 2010) was found to correlate both with intrinsic motivation and controlled motivation, suggesting that “the pursuit of social contact through religion might be undergirded by several quite different reasons” (Neyrinck et al., 2010, p. 436). Interestingly, Flere and Lavric (2008) critique the intrinsic extrinsic orientation distinction as a “culturally specific American Protestant concept,” and they invite to consider the possible “authenticity of nonintrinsic religious orientation, including social extrinsic orientation not just as sociability, but as a legitimate path for achieving grace and salvation” (Flere & Lavric, 2008, p. 529). A deeper analysis of Allport’s operationalization of extrinsic orientation (Neyrinck, Lens, & Vansteenkiste, 2005; Neyrinck et al., 2010)

Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of self-determination theory Chapter | 6

85

noted that Allport’s operationalization fails in distinguishing the motivations for religious behaviors from the goals of religious behaviors and thus needs to be refined and relabeled in the light of the more recent theoretical evolutions in the field of motivational psychology.1

Different religious motivations correspond to different ways of approaching religious contents Neyrinck, Vansteenkiste, Lens, Duriez, and Hutsebaut (2006) investigated the relationship between different religious motivations and the way in which believers approach religious contents. They showed, in their research with a Roman Catholic sample, that a more autonomous regulation of religious activities (i.e., when one feels the personal relevance of religious activities) leads individuals to approach their religion in a more open-minded, symbolic manner, also open to other interpretations, whereas a more extrinsic motivation (i.e., people who perform their religious behaviors mainly to avoid feelings of anxiety and guilt) is associated with individuals being likely to endorse religion in a closed minded, unreflective, literal way. Different degrees of autonomy have been reported also in relation to the conception of God, which can be perceived as controlling or as autonomy supportive. For example, a perception of God as autonomy supportive is positively related to a symbolic approach to religion, and a perception of God as controlling is negatively related to a symbolic approach (Soenens et al., 2012). These two opposite ideas about God can also lead to different psychological outcomes: Costa, Gugliandolo, Barberis, and Larcan (2016) found that the idea of an autonomy-supporting God is related with vitality, via the mediation of needs satisfaction, whereas a controlling God is connected with depression, through the mediational role of frustration. In a similar way, Miner, Dowson, and Malone (2013) reported that when God is perceived as meeting needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, lower symptoms of depression and stress are reported among Christian participants.

Connection between different motivations for religious behaviors and well-being and social outcomes The different reasons for engaging in religious practices, that is, more or less autonomous motivation, have been investigated in relation to different well-being and social outcomes. O’Connor and Vallerand (1990) described four types of religious motivation that vary from amotivation (I don’t know why I practice my religion), to non self-determined extrinsic motivation (because I am supposed to do it), selfdetermined extrinsic motivation (I choose to do it for my own good), and intrinsic motivation (for the pleasure of doing it) and showed their different correlations with depression, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and meaning in life. As predicted by SDT, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and meaning in life presented negative correlation with amotivation and non self-determined extrinsic motivation and significant positive correlation with self-determined extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Depression showed positive correlation with amotivation and non self-determined extrinsic motivation and negative correlation with self-determined extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. These findings thus confirm the association between different reasons for engaging in religious behaviors and adjustment and wellbeing. Kneezel and Ryan (2004) found an association between identified regulation of religiosity and a satisfying relationship with God, which in turn contributed to enhanced well-being. A confirm of these results also comes from the study conducted by Brambilla, Manzi, and Regalia (2014), who found that, among a sample of Roman Catholic youths, identified religiosity (measured with the Italian version of the CRIS, e.g., “An important reason why I attend church is that by going to church I learn new things”) has a stronger correlation with satisfaction with life than introjected religiosity (e.g., “An important reason why I attend church is because one is supposed to go to church”). Moreover, it is possible to state that religious motivations affect not only general well-being and satisfaction with life but also religious well-being and even religious behaviors. The recent study by Brambilla et al. (2014) found that identified religiosity, compared with introjected religiosity, has a stronger correlation with subjective importance of religion, church attending, religious group attending, and religious well-being. Similarly, Assor, Cohen-Malayev, Kaplan, 1. Neyrinck et al. (2010) also compared SDT motivational framework with Batson’s Quest orientation (Batson, 1976; Batson & Schoenrade, 1991; Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993), concluding that Quest orientation is unrelated to SDT concepts in that is represents a measure of cognitive style and not a motivational construct.

86

PART | 2 Freedom

and Friedman (2005) reported a positive association between an internalized regulation of religion and the performance of religious practices in a sample of Jewish individuals. Previous research by Ryan et al. (1993) showed that identified regulation of religiosity positively predicted church attendance, and this finding was replicated by Strahan and Craig (1995) that, in addition, found positive relations between identified regulation and proportion of money donated to churches and frequency of family worship. Also Baard’s research (Baard, 1994, 2002; Baard & Aridas, 2001) showed that a more identified regulation of religiosity leads to higher frequency of church attendance and more donations to churches. Another outcome which has been investigated in relation to the different motivations for religious behavior is prejudice. A study by Brambilla, Manzi, Regalia, and Verkuyten (2013) showed that, in a sample of Italian Catholics believers, identified and introjected religiosity predict different levels of prejudice toward Muslim immigrants: people with an identified religiosity display lower levels of prejudice compared to people with an introjected religiosity. This particular achievement in this field of research suggests that SDT could contribute to solving the thorny issue of the relationship between religiosity and prejudice (see e.g., Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005). Given the importance of the different motivations for engaging in religious activities and their influence on a wide variety of outcomes, researchers started to pay attention to the ways in which religious socialization and transmission takes place. In the next section, we consider how social environments, such as family and peer groups, can facilitate or hinder the development of an intrinsic motivation.

The antecedents of religious internalization in the family In the line of research opened by SDT, an investigation of the antecedents of religious internalization explored the influence of parental practices that can promote or hinder the internalization of religious values as personal values (i.e., characterized by greater autonomy). Family is the first place where religious socialization takes place and parents’ religiosity is likely to influence children’s religiosity. For example, Kneezel and Ryan (2004) found an association between mothers’ and children’s religious identification and between fathers’ and children’s religious introjection, in a sample of Christian late adolescents. The findings of subsequent studies confirmed and expanded the known influence of autonomy-supportive versus controlling practices. Cohen, Milyavskaya, and Koestner (2009) found, with a Jewish sample, that parental support of autonomy, which involves allowing children some latitude in making decisions for themselves regarding religious issues, was associated with greater identification (where children perceive Jewish studies and Jewish culture to be an important part of their sense of self) versus introjected internalization (where children participate in Jewish studies and Jewish culture because they feel like they “ought to” or because of external pressures). Assor et al. (2005) found that religious introjection is predicted by parental controlling behaviors and in particular by conditional regard: perceived maternal and paternal conditional regard was positively correlated with introjection but not with identification, and it was unrelated to religious observance (Assor et al., 2005). On the other side, religious identification is predicted by parents’ autonomy supporting behaviors, which include not only the classic concept of autonomy support—for example providing choice, asking children’s opinion, allowing them to choose, etc.,—but also other aspects (Assor, 2012a). In particular, Assor (2012a) highlighted the importance of a behavior defined as intrinsic value demonstration (see also Assor, 2012b). This parental practice is similar to the concept of modeling, but it represents “a convincing modeling, [. . .] that naturally conveys the sense of satisfaction and growth that accompanies engagement in a behavior. Adults are likely to be convincing models of a given behavior to the extent that they do indeed fully identify with the behavior and feel content and fulfilled when engaged in the action” (Assor et al., 2005, p. 111). Similarly, Vermeer, Janssen, and Scheepers (2012) found evidence that the strongest source of influence on juvenile church attendance is parents’ church attendance. When children become adolescents and young adults, their need for autonomy could change and the role of parents may lose influence to the role of peers and religious leaders (Kneezel & Emmons, 2006; Schwartz, 2006; Schwartz, Bukowski, & Aoki, 2006). A recent study by Brambilla, Assor, Manzi, and Regalia (2015) applied SDT framework in testing and confronting the contribution of parents, peers, and religious leaders in religious internalization in a sample of Italian Catholic youth. Results confirmed the expected association between autonomy supporting practices and religious identification both in the family and in the group context. In particular, parents’ behaviors reflecting basic autonomy support [e.g., behaviors involving perspective taking, choice-provision, and control-minimization, e.g., “My mother/father is usually willing to consider things from my point of view,” “My mother/father, whenever possible, allows me to choose what to do,” and “My mother/father insists upon my doing things her way” (reversed)] and intrinsic value demonstration (e.g., “My mother/father invests time in religious activities” and “My mother/father enjoys

Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of self-determination theory Chapter | 6

87

increasing her/his knowledge and understanding in religious matters”) predicted identified internalization, whereas parents’ conditional regard (e.g., “My mother would give me more warmth and appreciation if I will take my religious duties seriously” and “If I change my religion, my father would be very disappointed with me”) predicted introjected internalization. In the group context, the autonomy support provided by the group leader (e.g., “The leader of my religious group listens to how I would like to do things” and “The leader of my religious group has provided me choices and options”) and the intrinsic value demonstration provided by group peers (e.g., “People in my religious group are consistent in how they live their faith”) predicted identified internalization. Intrinsic value demonstration by peers was the strongest factor in predicting youth’s religious identification, followed by intrinsic value demonstration by parents, group leaders autonomy support and, last, parents’ autonomy support. The results of this study, thus, add the importance of peers and not only parents in the internalization of religious values and indicate that religious leaders could promote a more autonomous religious identity by applying autonomy supporting practices in their groups.

How larger social context could predict self-determined religiosity When analyzing the influence of social context in predicting different types of religious internalization, it is worth considering also larger society and culture outside of the family’s home. It is likely that general culture, the degree of secularization, or other macro factors could also influence individual’s religiosity. A study by Sheldon (2006) investigated the possible influence of different religious denominations on the way people endorse religiosity, comparing Catholics’ and Protestants’ religious motivation. The study found mixed results, with introjected motivation that was relatively low in all groups, compared to identified and intrinsic motivations. Other scholars evoked the possible influence of a cultural characterization of certain religious denominations on personal religiosity (see also Cohen, Hall, Koenig, & Meador, 2005; Cohen, Siegel, & Rozin, 2003; Hall, Meador, & Koenig, 2008), arguing that the importance of social aspects in religion can depend on the emphasis on communitarian aspects (praying together, feeling a sense of belonging) versus individual aspects (e.g., beliefs, conversion, and personal prayer) posed by different religious denominations. A recent study by Brambilla, Manzi, Regalia, Becker, and Vignoles (2016) compared the self-categorization of personal religious identity in six countries and found that self-perception of religiosity was significantly different between countries: European participants perceived it as a social identity, whereas non-Western participants perceived it as an individual identity. This result confirms the idea that cultural context can influence the way in which people endorse religious beliefs and values.

Discussion and conclusion SDT has certainly contributed to a better disentanglement of the different ways of being religious in our time. It has shed light on the idea that “true” religiosity cannot be stated by evaluating mere practices of adherence to beliefs and dogmas, but it is necessary to go over the surface and investigate reasons, motivations, and personal involvement in a relationship with God and the transcendent and with institutionalized religions. In fact, since humans discovered the upright position and saw the starry sky for the first time, they have to deal with a transcendent dimension of reality (Ries, 2014), with “a passion for infinite” (Tillich, 1957, p. 8, cit. In Emmons, 2005), a strive for the sacred (Emmons, 2005). Emmons (2005) describes striving for the sacred as “those personal goals that are concerned with ultimate purpose, ethics, commitment to a higher power, and a seeking for the divine in daily experience. By identifying and committing themselves to spiritual goals, people strive to develop and maintain a relationship with the sacred. In other words, spiritual strivings are strivings that reflect a desire to transcend the self” (Emmons, 2005, p. 736). Institutionalized religions can facilitate this striving by being faith communities in which traditions have the purpose of enhancing the search for the sacred and teaching sacred narratives (Dollahite, 1998; Emmons, 1999); however, it could happen that they hinder the striving for the sacred. For example, when religions only answer to other needs such as sociability, status, moral guidance, or protection against fears (as they are described in Allport’s description of the extrinsic religious believer, see Allport & Ross, 1967), they do not promote a more mature religiosity. Consequently, religions risk to suffocate instead of preserving and cultivating religiosity (Petrosino, 2014). Their true function should include to invite people to continue to ask questions, to express doubts, and to continue to search a relationship with the sacred and the transcendent (in this sense, Batson’s idea of a “quest” dimension is well fitting, see Batson et al., 1993).

88

PART | 2 Freedom

In this context, the role of autonomy support as described in SDT seems to properly grasp the aims of religious development: by posing questions and giving freedom and choice, it is possible to promote a personal search for the sacred in individuals’ lives, without enclosing the striving for transcendence in a series of rules to follow. Moreover, we can be sure of the positiveness of allowing such freedom, giving autonomy and fostering intrinsic motivation, by looking at the offspring of it: the analyzed literature says that the outcomes associated with an identified or integrated religiosity are life satisfaction, health, well-being, social ties, lack of prejudice, willingness to contribute to a better world (e.g., care for the environment and interest in social justice), donations, and altruism. It is also worthy to note that spiritual striving are, with intimacy and generativity, the major categories of life meaning which are rated as more important and predict great subjective well-being (Emmons, 2005). In particular, spiritual strivings are the core of personality for a substantial percentage of the population (Emmons, 1999), and they are rated as more important, requiring more effort and engaged in for more intrinsic reasons than nonspiritual strivings, and they promote greater levels of goal integration (Emmons, 2005). The unique nature of personal strivings, with the ultimate goal being intimacy with the divine, implies that they are never fully realized, and this characteristic makes them best able to direct attention and maintain unity in personal life (Emmons, 1999). Another implication of the concept of striving is that it “implies an action-oriented perspective on human motivation” (Emmons, 2005). Thus it is worthy to continue in the way of studying religiosity in a motivational psychological framework and to enlarge its application in various fields as religious education within and outside the family.

Some practical implications It is possible to derive some practical implications from the described path. First there are implications for researchers interested in religiosity. It is important to be attentive to the complex nature of religiosity, which cannot be only labeled as group belonging or as a personal opinion. Thus it is not enough to ask research participants which is their religion, or if they are religious or belong to any religious denomination. Instead, it is necessary to choose measures tapping how people live their religiosity. What is their relationship with the institutionalized religion? What are their reasons for endorsing or not endorsing a religious belief or behavior? And finally how do they deal with the striving and search for the sacred? Second, there are implications for parents, social workers, and religious leaders. Research findings invite them to be aware that religious transmission is not a sort of concept teaching, instead it is more like giving a convincing example and letting others be free to choose. It may be scary to have and to give so much freedom but it is the only way to promote a religious faith that is not rigid and closed minded, but open, characterized by continuous striving, improvement and the pursuit of better ways to deal with the sacred part of our lives.

References Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion. New York: Macmillan. Allport, G. W. (1966). The religious context of prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5, 447 457. Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432 443. Assor, A. (2012a). Allowing choice and nurturing an inner compass: Educational practices supporting students’ need for autonomy. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), The handbook of research on student engagement. New York: Springer Science. Assor, A. (2012b). Autonomous moral motivation: Consequences, socializing antecedents, and the unique role of integrated moral principles. In M. Mikulincer, & P. Shaver (Eds.), The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and Evil. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Assor, A., Cohen-Malayev, M., Kaplan, A., & Friedman, D. (2005). Choosing to stay religious in a modern world: Socialization and exploration processes leading to an integrated internalization of religion among Israeli Jewish youth. Motivation and Religion, 14, 105 150. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-7423(05)14005-9. Assor, A., Roth, G., & Deci, E. L. (2004). The emotional costs of parents’ conditional regard: A self-determination theory analysis. Journal of Personality, 72, 47 88. Baard, P. P. (1994). A motivational model for consulting with not-for-profit organizations: A study of church growth and participation. Consulting Psychology Journal, 46(3), 19 31. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/1061-4087.46.3.19. Baard, P. P. (2002). Intrinsic need satisfaction in organizations: A motivational basis of success in for-profit and not-for-profit settings. In E. L. Deci, & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 255 275). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Baard, P. P., & Aridas, C. (2001). Motivating your church: How any leader can ignite intrinsic motivation and growth. New York: Crossroads Publishing. Barber, K. B. (1996). Parental psychological control: Revisiting a neglected construct. Child Development, 67, 3296 3319.

Understanding the psychology of religion: the contribution of self-determination theory Chapter | 6

89

Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15, 29 45. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social- psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as a quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(4), 416 429. Brambilla, M., Assor, A., Manzi, C., & Regalia, C. (2015). Autonomous versus controlled religiosity: Family and group antecedents. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 25(3), 193 210. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2014.888902. Brambilla, M., Manzi, C., & Regalia, C. (2014). Italian validation of the Christian Religious Internalization Scale. TPM—Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 21(2), 135 148. Available from https://doi.org/10.4473/TPM21.2.2. Brambilla, M., Manzi, C., Regalia, C., Becker, M., & Vignoles, V. L. (2016). Is religious identity a social identity? Self-categorization of religious self in six countries. Psicologia Sociale, 2, 189 198. Available from https://doi.org/10.1482/84098. Brambilla, M., Manzi, C., Regalia, C., & Verkuyten, M. (2013). Religiosity and prejudice: Different patterns for two types of religious internalization. The Journal of Social Psychology, 153(4), 486 498. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2013.768592. Cohen, A. B., Hall, D. E., Koenig, H. G., & Meador, K. G. (2005). Social versus individual motivation: Implications for normative definitions of religious orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 48 61. Cohen, A. B., Siegel, J. I., & Rozin, P. (2003). Faith versus practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 287 295. Cohen, L., Milyavskaya, M., & Koestner, R. (2009). The internalization of Jewish values by children attending orthodox Jewish schools, and its relationship to autonomy-supportive parenting and adjustment. Journal of Jewish Education, 75(4), 350 363. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15244110903305689. Costa, S., Gugliandolo, M. C., Barberis, N., & Larcan, R. (2016). The mediational role of psychological basic needs in the relation between conception of God and psychological outcomes. Journal of Religion and Health, 55(1), 1 15. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-014-9956-6. Dollahite, D. C. (1998). Fathering, faith and spirituality. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 7, 3 15. Emmons, R. A. (1999). Religion in the psychology of personality: An introduction. Journal of Personality, 67(6), 874 888. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1111/1467-6494.00076. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 731 745. Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 377 402. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145024. Flere, S., & Lavric, M. (2008). Is intrinsic religious orientation a culturally specific American Protestant concept? The fusion of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation among non-Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology, 530, 521 530. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp. Gorsuch, R. L., & McPherson, S. E. (1989). Intrinsic/extrinsic measurement: I/E-revised and single-item scales. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28, 348 354. Grolnick, W. S., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1997). Internalization within the family: The self- determination theory perspective. In J. E. Grusec, & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Parenting and children’s internalization of values: A handbook of contemporary theory (pp. 135 161). New York: Wiley. Hall, D. E., Meador, K. G., & Koenig, H. G. (2008). Measuring religiousness in health research: Review and critique. Journal of Religion and Health, 47, 134 163. Hunsberger, B., & Jackson, L. M. (2005). Religion, meaning, and prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 807 826. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00433.x. Kneezel, T. T., & Emmons, R. A. (2006). Personality and spiritual development. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, P. E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 266 278). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kneezel, T. T., & Ryan, R. M. (2004). Not just a reflection of parents: God as a source of support and nurturance. In Paper presented at the 2nd international conference on self-determination theory. Ottawa, Canada. Miner, M., Dowson, M., & Malone, K. (2013). Spiritual satisfaction of basic psychological needs and psychological health. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 41(4), 298 314. Neyrinck, B., Lens, W., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2005). Goals and regulations of religiosity: A motivational analysis. Advances in Motivation and Achievement, 14, 77 106. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-7423(05)14004-7. Neyrinck, B., Lens, W., Vansteenkiste, M., & Soenens, B. (2010). Updating Allport’s and Batson’s framework of religious orientations: A reevaluation from the perspective of self-determination theory and Wulff’s social cognitive model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 49(3), 425 438. Neyrinck, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., Duriez, B., & Hutsebaut, D. (2006). Cognitive, affective and behavioral correlates of internalization of regulations for religious activities. Motivation and Emotion, 30(4), 321 332. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9048-3. O’Connor, B. P., & Vallerand, R. J. (1990). Religious motivation in the elderly: A French-Canadian replication and an extension. Journal of Social Psychology, 130(1), 53 59. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1990.9922933. Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 168 181. Available from https://doi.org/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1449326. Petrosino, S. (2014). Cercare il vero. San Paolo: Cinisello Balsamo. Ries, J. (2014). La coscienza religiosa. Milano: Jaka Book. (original title: La croissance de la conscience religieuse et symbolique de l’homme durant la pre´histoire et les premie`res grandes religions).

90

PART | 2 Freedom

Roth, G., Assor, A., Niemiec, C., Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2009). The emotional and academic consequences of parental conditional regard: Comparing conditional positive regard, conditional negative regard, and autonomy support as parenting practices. Developmental Psychology, 45, 1119 1142. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist, 55(1), 68 78. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037110003-066X.55.1.68. Ryan, R. M., Rigby, S., & King, K. (1993). Two types of religious internalization and their relations to religious orientations and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(3), 586 596. Schwartz, K. D. (2006). Research: Transformations in parent and friend faith support predicting transformations in parent and friend faith support predicting adolescents’ religious faith. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327582ijpr1604, 912280237. Schwartz, K. D., Bukowski, W. B., & Aoki, W. T. (2006). Mentors, friends, and gurus: Peer and nonparent influences on spiritual development. In E. C. Roehl Kepartain, P. E. King, L. Wagner, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (pp. 310 323). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication. Sheldon, K. M. (2006). Research: Catholic guilt? Comparing Catholics’ and Protestants’ religious motivations. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 16(3), 209 223. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1603_5. Soenens, B., & Beyers, W. (2012). The cross-cultural significance of control and autonomy in parent-adolescent relationships. Journal of Adolescence, 35, 243 248. Soenens, B., Neyrinck, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Dezutter, J., Hutsebaut, D., & Duriez, B. (2012). How do perceptions of God as autonomy supportive or controlling relate to individuals’ social-cognitive processing of religious contents? The role of motives for religious behavior. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22(1), 10 30. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.634781. Strahan, B. J., & Craig, B. (1995). Marriage, family, and religion. Sydney, Australia: Adventist Institute of Family Relations. Tillich, P. (1957). Dynamics of faith. New York: Harper & Row. Vansteenkiste, M., Zhou, M., Lens, W., & Soenens, B. (2005). Experiences of autonomy and control among Chinese learners: Vitalizing or immobilizing? Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 468 483. Vermeer, P., Janssen, J., & Scheepers, P. (2012). Authoritative parenting and the transmission of religion in The Netherlands: A panel study. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22(1), 42 59. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.635055.

Chapter 7

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Ross Rogers Colby College, Waterville, ME, United States

In many ways, goals are at the core of human be-ing (Sartre, 1957/1985). An overarching ideal(s) that organizes and drives purposeful action (i.e., a goal or goals) provides a vital means for confronting “ultimate” human existential concerns regarding mortality, meaning, and individual significance (Emmons, 1999; Sullivan, Landau, & Kay, 2012; Tillich, 1952/2000). Yet simply having any goal may not be enough. As Frankl (1946/2006) argued in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, people may need more than a basic goal that motivates them to act; rather, they may desire “. . . a striving and struggling for some goal worthy of (them)” (p. 166). To put it another way, it seems to be existentially imperative to pursue goals that link actions and aspirations to some self-transcendent meaning. This might explain why goals that have a particularly religious or spiritual flavor so strongly connect to the experience of meaning in life (Emmons, 2005) and to protection from existentially relevant concerns (Vail et al., 2010). In this chapter, I briefly review work on the existential relevance of goals, in general. I then turn to discussing how viewing religiosity and spirituality through the lens of goals can inform pathways by which religion and spirituality influence significant life outcomes, such as addressing existential concerns and impacting perceptions of subjective well-being. The discussion will also include a focus on the ways that people “sanctify” the “everyday” pursuits of life, as well as a consideration of how deterrents to goal attainment contribute to religiosity. The chapter will serve as a primer of a goals perspective on religion and spirituality and offer new directions that such a perspective might inspire.

The existential relevance of goals Man is nothing else than his plan . . . Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957/1985, p. 32).

Existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s discussions of human ontology often included (at least) two kinds of being: an inert, entirely formed and defined type of being (a being that just “is”; a being-in-itself) and a dynamic, never completely defined type of being (a being that is fluid, agentic; a being-for-itself; 1943/1956). While Sartre’s complete picture of human ontology comprised a complex interplay between these two types of being (and another, being-forothers), he frequently underscored the importance of being-for-itself in human ontology, emphasizing that human beings are in a constant state of becoming or projecting (extending outward; protruding). This state of becoming is characterized, in part, by the continued responsibility to examine one’s thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors regarding one’s projects, as one’s projects, he argued, are all one is. Indeed, another translation of the quotation that opened this section reads “Man is nothing other than his own project . . .” (Sartre, 1946/2007, p. 37). A goal, broadly defined, is “an imagined or envisaged state condition toward which a person aspires and which drives voluntary activity” (Karoly, 1993, p. 274). Thus a third reading of the opening quotation could reasonably be, “human beings are nothing else than their goals.” Multiple perspectives regarding the importance of goals argue that goals serve to direct and organize people’s thoughts, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. Goal pursuit infuses existence with value, coherence, and purpose; in other words, goal pursuit infuses existence with meaning (Baumeister, 1991; Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Hicks & King, 2009; Klinger, 1998; Reker & Wong, 1988; Steger, 2012). But why is the perception that life is meaningful such a The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00008-1 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

91

92

PART | 2 Freedom

critical component of the human existential condition that it explains much of human goal pursuit? The evolution of a combination of complex cognitive capacities in Homo sapiens contributed to an unrivaled ability among other species to adapt too and control (via technological innovation) most all environmental niches on the planet (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). Such cognitive capacities include the capabilities for abstract, symbolic, and temporal thought as well as objective and subjective self-awareness. Although the combination of these cognitive capacities presumably conveys adaptive advantages, they also make humanity uniquely and acutely aware of inevitable personal mortality (all living beings inevitably die; I am a living being; therefore, I will inevitably die). From the perspective of terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), this knowledge of inevitable nonbeing, contrasted with evolved proclivities toward survival, could invoke potentially intense, if not debilitating, anxiety. However, acceptance of cultural worldviews (consensually validated symbolic constructions regarding the nature of reality) provides salves: universal meaning, guideposts for attaining individualized purpose, and opportunities to transcend death. Given this precarious human existential lot, one’s plans/projects/goals are often rooted in addressing these “ultimate” concerns regarding death transcendence (concern about “nonbeing”), meaning (concern about whether “being,” in general, is meaningful), and individual value (concern about whether “my individual instantiation of being” is significant; Emmons, 1999; Sullivan, et al., 2012; Tillich, 1952/2000). From this perspective, religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as behaviors motivated by or in accord with such beliefs, can be viewed as plans/projects/goals that attempt to grapple with ultimate existential concerns.

Religion and spirituality through the lens of goals: ultimate existential concerns and subjective well-being Emmons’ (1999) classification of religious and spiritual strivings defines them as goals concerned with transcendental sacredness “. . . that reflect a desire to transcend the self, that reflect an integration of the individual with larger and more complex units, or that reflect deepening or maintaining a relationship with a higher power” (2007, p. 796). Such self-transcendent meaning is often characterized as providing definitive meaning to life. Emmons elucidates that the goal of religious and spiritual pursuit of self-transcendent meaning is addressing ultimate human existential concerns regarding death, meaning, and personal significance (Tillich, 1957). Relatedly, others have examined Tillich’s (1952/ 2000) notion of anxiety as it pertains to ultimate concerns (Sullivan et al., 2012). Existential threat is constituted by an awareness of the fragility of (1) one’s individual existence (death), (2) one’s cultural worldviews (i.e., structures of meaning), and (3) one’s perceptions of personal significance. Blocking or otherwise threatening relatively proximal or distal goals results in temporary or ultimate anxiety, respectively. For example, anxiety of emptiness (temporary anxiety) manifests as uncertainty surrounding which goals to pursue among many, while anxiety of meaninglessness (ultimate anxiety) emerges from a nihilistic sense that the universe is chaotic, and all goal pursuit is futile. Perceived as goal-directed toward self-transcendent meaning and value, religious belief and spirituality attempt to address each ultimate concern (death, meaningless, and individual significance). Religious and spiritual striving toward selftranscendence works to nullify individual physical death, while perceived meaning in life offers a structure to which existence coheres and prescribes purposive actions that bring with them feelings of significance and value. Research suggests that people maintain strivings toward such a self-transcendental meaningful state and that these strivings are distinct compared to other goal strivings. To investigate a variety of goal content structures, Grouzet et al. (2005) surveyed participants in 15 cultures regarding 11 types of goals, including self-transcendence. Results indicated that the goals were well-organized in a circumplex model consisting of two dimensions: an intrinsic extrinsic dimension and a self-transcendence physical self-dimension. The self-transcendence end of the latter dimension featured, among other goals (e.g., community feeling), spiritual strivings for a meaning higher than what is needed simply to maintain physical survival. By striving for the sacred, people across diverse cultures seek a state of immersion with a grander meaning that transcends death and supplies indicators of individual significance.

Subjective well-being Besides self-transcendent meaning addressing ultimate concern surrounding death, meaninglessness, and personal significance, research suggests that religious and spiritual strivings are positively related to subjective well-being. In one study, Emmons, Cheung, and Tehrani (1998) sought to explore the potential relationship between spiritual strivings and subjective well-being. In assessing subjective well-being, researchers included indices of affective well-being (e.g., happiness) and cognitive well-being (e.g., satisfaction with life) as well as measures of neuroticism and depression to

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 7

93

distinguish between presence of positive well-being and the absence of negative states. Participants also completed self-report measures of importance of religion, frequency of attendance at religious services and prayer, and a measure of intrinsic religiousness. To evaluate spiritual strivings, researchers utilized a coding system developed in previous research to account for participant strivings regarding ultimate concern (Emmons, Dank, & Mongrain, 1997 as cited in Emmons, 1999). They developed these criteria for several reasons. First, such an approach can capture a broader array of behaviors than indices measuring religiousness or spirituality based on denominational affiliation or religious service attendance. Such measures, while useful, may not capture the spiritual strivings of individuals who do not view themselves as traditionally religious and may not consider how spiritual strivings are integrated into everyday behavior. Second, researchers sought to capture the multidimensionality of religious and spiritual strivings and thus classified religiosity via domains of knowledge, feeling, and practice. Strivings were coded as spiritual if, for example, participants goals suggested “increasing one’s knowledge of a higher power (Seek God’s will in my life), developing or maintaining a relationship with a higher power (Learn to tune into higher power throughout the day), attempts to live or exercise one’s spiritual belief in daily life (Treat others with compassion)” (Emmons et al., 1998, p. 408). Third, because an important component of religiousness and spirituality is self-transcendence (e.g., Tillich, 1957), strivings reflecting integration of the self with a higher power (e.g., immersion in nature/the cosmos, experience awe) were identified as spiritual. Participants were three community samples of both college-aged and older adults who completed subjective wellbeing measures some of which were completed in a single session, while other reports were compiled daily (Emmons et al., 1998). Participants also provided a list of personal strivings, which were coded by two independent coders using the four categories of spiritual goals (knowledge, feeling, practice, and transcendence). Spiritual strivings were those, including at least one of the four categories. Spousal reports of personal strivings (e.g., “What do you think your partner typically tries to do?”) were used when possible to augment self-reported data. Results indicated that the proportion of spiritual strivings within participants’ lists of strivings was positively related to intrinsic religiousness, self-reported importance of religion, frequency of religious service attendance, and frequency of prayer. Importantly, results further indicated that the proportion of spiritual strivings was positively related to subjective well-being, particularly measures of purpose in life and overall life satisfaction. In addition, compared to nonspiritual strivings, participants reported spiritual strivings to be more important, requiring more effort, and pursued for more intrinsic reasons. Finally, the proportion of spiritual strivings was negatively related to indicators of unhappiness, depression, and neuroticism. These results suggest that religious belief and spirituality, when examined from a personal strivings based approach, that is, when religiousness and spirituality are viewed as strivings toward the sacred or ultimate, are related to not only perceptions that existence is purposeful but also feelings of overall satisfaction with life.

Sanctifying the “everyday” Addressing ultimate human existential concerns and enhancing subjective well-being by striving toward selftranscendent meaning may be the overarching goals of religiosity and spirituality, but how does such pursuit typically manifest in goal-related activity? One way is through sanctifying “everyday” aspects of existence. Sanctification refers to people’s perceptions that aspects of everyday life carry with them divine significance (Emmons, 2007; Mahoney et al., 2005; Pargament, 2002). Mahoney et al. (2003) state that many aspects of life can be sanctified (perceived as sacred), including material objects (religious or lucky talismans), locations (cemeteries, battlefields, places of worship, nature landscapes that elicit awe), and activities (work, proselytizing). Sanctifying objects and locations provides tangible connections to existentially relevant, but often abstract, beliefs and values (e.g., Rank, 1932), while sanctifying behavior tightly threads everyday goal pursuit into one’s religious and spiritual framework, making perhaps otherwise mundane behavior relevant to self-transcendent meaning. Furthermore, researchers contend that sanctification may occur in two ways. People can sanctify an aspect of their life as a manifestation of a deity. In such a case, an individual may feel closer to a higher power while wearing a crucifix pendant, for example. Other sanctifications are less theistic and focus mainly on attributing everyday aspects of life with sacred qualities. In these instances, for example, the sanctification of a piece of music, an individual may feel as if she has experienced self-transcendent meaning while listening to the piece.

Sanctifying objects Possessing or touching sanctified objects can impact perceptions of one’s virtuous qualities (e.g., Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000) and attitudes regarding one’s goals to enact one’s religious and spiritual principles in everyday life (Johnson &

94

PART | 2 Freedom

Jacobs, 2001 as cited in Frazier & Gelman, 2009). Notions of psychological essentialism and contagion have been proposed as potential mechanisms underlying these effects (Gelman, 2013; Kramer & Block, 2011). People value objects for a variety of reasons, including market demand (others value the object and are willing to exchange money or other valuable goods or services for it), ownership of particular objects is a marker of high social status, or sentimentality (a threadbare rock n’ roll concert t-shirt may be worth nothing of value to others, but it may be priceless to the owner, because it is a symbol of an experience for which s/he feels nostalgic; Newman, Diesendruck, & Bloom, 2011). However, people also value particular objects based upon intuitive folk beliefs regarding psychological essentialism and contagion (Gelman, 2013; Nemeroff & Rozin, 1994, 2000). Psychological essentialism refers to the belief that particular entities possess an inner quality (an “essence”), beyond observable features, that defines the entity’s identity (Gelman, 2013). Beliefs in contagion maintain that this essence (or aspects of it) can be transferred via physical contact with the entity (Nemeroff & Rozin, 1994, 2000). Thus psychological essentialism and contagion combine to implicate the belief that essential qualities of an object’s owner (presuming the owner touched the object) can be transferred to, or “rub off on,” individuals who come into physical contact with the object. Research suggests that the notion of psychological essentialism and accompanying contagion can influence attitudes, intentions, and performance in goal-related domains. For example, in one study, participants who indicated familiarity with golf were tasked to take 10 putts on an indoor putting mat and sink as many as possible (Lee, Linkenauger, Bakdash, Joy-Gaba, & Profitt, 2011). In one condition, participants were told that the putter formerly belonged to a professional golfer who had recently had some success on the professional tour. In the other condition, no information was provided about the putter. Before making their putts, participants estimated the size of the golf hole (from a distance of about 2 m) by drawing its size on a computer screen. Results suggested an impact of psychological essentialism and contagion: participants who thought they were putting with a talented golfer’s old putter estimated the golf hole as larger and sunk more putts compared to control participants. Similarly, in a series of studies, Kramer and Block (2014) demonstrated that psychological essentialism and contagion improved task performance among participants high in experiential processing and that the positive relationship between psychological essentialism and contagion and task performance was mediated by performance expectations via confidence. For both a word association task and an ideageneration task (listing unusual uses for a paper clip), participants provided with an instruction sheet that was ostensibly given to previously high-scoring participants performed better than those either provided with a sheet ostensibly given to previously low-scoring participants or participants who received the same materials on computers. Research suggests that people report psychological essentialism and contagion effects for objects within the domains of morality and spiritual strivings, as well. For example, Johnson and Jacobs (2001, cited in Frazier & Gelman, 2009) asked children (ages 4 5 and 6 8) and adults how they might be affected by wearing a sweater that had been worn by a respected public figure, Mr. Rogers (renowned for his emphasis of teaching empathy and compassion toward others on his long-running children’s television program). Responses were compared to those from children and adults who considered the effects of wearing an identical sweater that Mr. Rogers had not worn. Adults (typically, and some older children) expressed that if able to wear the sweater that Mr. Rogers had worn, it would transfer qualities of Mr. Rogers (his essence) to them and that wearing the sweater would lead to behavioral changes, such as acting friendlier to others. Recall that a common spiritual striving is to be more compassionate toward others (Emmons et al., 1998). While Mr. Rogers’ sweater is not a sacred object per se (in that it does not have “divine” significance), the abovementioned results suggest that sacred objects retain their popular place as important components of religious or spiritual strivings, in part, due to folk beliefs in psychological essentialism and contagion. Thus possession or contact with sacred objects is believed to transfer essential qualities that aid the quest for self-transcendent meaning, the attempt to apply one’s religious or spiritual beliefs more frequently and consistently in daily life, and can even benefit goal pursuit by boosting confidence in one’s abilities. Presumably, however, most sacred objects are not believed to have come in direct contact with a higher power or a particularly righteous exemplar of cherished religious and spiritual ideals. Must sanctified objects follow the strict rules of psychological essentialism and contagion discussed earlier, that is, sanctified objects must have come into physical contact with the owner in order for essential qualities to be transferred to those who possess or come into contact with them? Nemeroff and Rozin (2000) suggest that contact with or possession of mere personifications of holy persons or tokens of sacred beliefs are often felt to augment one’s own virtuous qualities and help maximize one’s ability to successfully live one’s religious and spiritual pursuits in daily life. In other words, the simple likeness of a moral exemplar or some tangible representation (e.g., rosary beads) of important religious or spiritual qualities can and often are treated as sanctified objects that are thought to provide assistance in pursuit of both religious and more terrestrial goals. The importance of religious tokens and their treatment as sanctified objects is implicated in research derived from TMT (Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1995). Drawing from the writings of Becker (1962, 1973,

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 7

95

1975), Berger and Luckman (1967), and Rank (1932), Greenberg et al. (1995) proposed that sanctified objects serve as concrete representations of the abstract cultural worldviews that scaffold being with meaning and personal significance. Maintaining faith in and adherence to the precepts of one’s cultural worldviews provides crucial psychological equanimity in the teeth of human existential concerns (mortality, meaninglessness, and insignificance), and sanctified objects aid cultural worldview adherence by serving as tangible reminders and representations of one’s devotion to one’s worldviews. The authors paraphrase Rank (1932) stating, “. . . these symbols are essential because such allegiance could not be sustained in the absence of physical artifacts that correspond to and thereby psychologically confirm the “truth” of the prevailing cultural ideology” (Greenberg et al., 1995, p. 1222). Because sanctified objects symbolize one’s allegiance to particular cultural worldviews and because reminders of mortality motivate efforts to bolster one’s adherence to cultural worldview standards, the authors hypothesized that participants reminded of their mortality would experience difficulty using a sanctified object (relevant to their cultural worldview) in an inappropriate manner. Results bore out this prediction. Compared to participants reminded of a neutral topic, those exposed to a mortality prime took longer to complete a creative problem-solving task that required using a crucifix in a culturally inappropriate way (using the crucifix to hammer a nail into a wall so as to affix the crucifix itself to the wall). Mortality salient participants also attempted more alternative solutions before settling on the effective yet culturally inappropriate solution and reported greater tension while completing the task. Thus the previous analyses suggest that sanctified objects serve as tangible reminders of overarching religious and spiritual principles. Particularly when experiencing existential threats, such as elevated mortality concerns, such tangible reminders have the crucial power to reinforce one’s connection with one’s meaning-supplying cultural worldviews. Sanctified objects not only serve as mere reminders of one’s connection to one’s valued convictions but also inspire confidence (via psychological essentialism and contagion) that one can both behave daily in better accord with one’s religious and spiritual strivings and accomplish the variety of tasks one sets for oneself.

Sanctifying locations Like sanctified objects, sanctified locations concretely ally religious adherents with cherished values. Places of worship, burial grounds, sites of alleged miracles, monuments memorializing historically significant events within the religious tradition, among others, are considered sacred, in part, because some event occurred (or frequently occurs, in the case of places of worship) that brought/brings the ultimate meaning of the universe/higher power closer than usual to the corporeal plane. People visit such sites with the hope that they can achieve, at least somewhat, the self-transcendent goal of becoming closer to the universe/high power. The significance of sanctified sites in addressing ultimate concerns is evident when such sites are perceived to be inappropriately encroached (Cohen, Soenke, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2013). In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Ground Zero in New York City was thought of as “hallowed ground.” Due to a number of factors, including that Islamic extremists had executed the attack and that anti-Islamic fervor in the United States had persisted in the years following the attack, the proposition to build a mosque near Ground Zero was controversial. Many viewed the proposed proximity of the mosque to Ground Zero as inappropriate. The site’s sanctity within the American cultural worldview made it particularly important for addressing ultimate concerns regarding meaning and mortality. As such, when mortality concern (vs a control concern) was elevated, American participants showed less support for the mosque’s construction near Ground Zero and reported that if it was to be built, it should be built further away. Also similar to sanctified objects, visiting sanctified sites can inspire renewed efforts to incorporate one’s religious and spiritual principles into daily behavior, as when worship services end imploring congregants to leave and live in accord with the teachings of the day. A particularly timely example of how sanctification can impact behavior comes from research examining the sanctification of nature (Tarakeshwar, Swank, Pargament, & Mahoney, 2001). Tarakeshwar et al. outlined two distinct Judeo-Christian doctrines regarding nature. One perspective suggests Biblical support for human dominion over and exploitation of nature (i.e., the dominion doctrine), while another suggests that nature is imbued with sacred qualities, provides an opportunity to get closer to God, and, as such, should be revered and preserved. In a sample of Presbyterian Church members, lay leaders, and clergy in the United States, stronger support for the dominion doctrine predicted lower proenvironmental beliefs and less willingness to contribute personal funds to protect the environment. Conversely, greater sanctification of nature predicted higher proenvironmental beliefs and more willingness to contribute personal funds to protect the environment. Thus not only do sanctified locations play a critical role in buffering existential concerns, suggested by how fervently they are protected when death is made salient, but also whether a location is perceived as sacred impacts the types of goal pursuits aimed at that location.

96

PART | 2 Freedom

Sanctifying behavior While specific objects, locales, or even the whole of nature are often sanctified and thus influence attitudes and behavior, everyday strivings that may not readily come to mind as associated with the sacred can be imbued with spiritual significance through sanctification. When everyday goal strivings are sanctified, otherwise, perhaps, mundane activities are infused with self-transcendent meaning. The routine becomes an exercise in addressing ultimate concerns. Research examining the sanctification of common goal strivings suggests people treat such strivings differently compared to nonspiritual strivings and that sanctifying everyday strivings creates greater opportunities to cultivate self-transcendent meaning, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction. For example, Emmons (2007) reports research in which participants evaluated a variety of their everyday goals in terms of the extent to which each was sanctified (e.g., “This striving enables me to get closer to God”). Some goals (e.g., “not to dwell on my disability”), particularly interpersonal strivings (e.g., “help others in any way I can”), tended to be sanctified more than other strivings. These sanctified goals uniquely predicted perceptions of meaning in life and emotional well-being. Furthermore, compared to less sanctified goals, sanctified strivings were self-reported to be more meaningful and to foster greater commitment. Additional research indicates sanctified strivings are connected to feelings of transcendent purpose. Mahoney et al. (2005) surveyed 150 community adults via phone interviews and questionnaire packets regarding their personal strivings, sanctification of strivings, level of investment in strivings, and subjective well-being. During an initial phone interview, participants provided 10 personal strivings. Subsequently, participants returned a questionnaire packet that included self-report items of sanctification. Specifically, participants completed separate five-item scales rating the extent to which they perceived each striving to be an expression or manifestation of God and the extent to which they imbued each striving with qualities typically associated with transcendent meaning. The questionnaires also contained measures assessing subjective well-being, including measures of meaning, global life satisfaction, and depression symptomology, as well as measures of level of investment, including perceived subjective importance, social support, confidence, and internal locus of control. Finally, follow-up phone interviews assessed level of behavioral investment in participants’ two most and two least sanctified strivings within the past 48 hours. Results indicated that in the previous 48 hours, participants had invested more time and energy into their two most sanctified strivings compared to their two least sanctified strivings. Furthermore, sanctification of strivings was positively associated with perceived subjective importance, social support, confidence, and internal locus of control. Finally, sanctification of strivings positively predicted perceived purpose and meaning in life. Complementing the previous findings, Tix and Frazier (2005) demonstrated that sanctification of everyday strivings was negatively associated with anxiety, depression, and hostility while positively related to intrinsic religiosity. The abovementioned fact suggests that sanctifying everyday strivings helps address the ultimate concerns of existence (Tillich, 1957). Sanctified goals provide, a perhaps daily, opportunity to immerse oneself in meaning beyond the mundane (i.e., become more closely entwined with the universe or higher power) and transcend the bounds of the corporeal self. Yet recent research indicates that sanctification of personal strivings is not automatically or necessarily associated with increases in perceived self-transcendent meaning and subjective well-being. Martos et al. (2011) postulated different motivations for sanctifying personal strivings and the potential impact of such motives on selfregulation, self-actualization, perceived meaning in life, and perceived life satisfaction. The authors outlined two distinct types of reasons for sanctifying personal strivings: transcendental religious motivations and normative religious motivations. Transcendental religious motivations were defined as above: sanctified personal strivings provide an avenue by which one can become ever closer to a higher power and/or attain self-transcendent meaning. Normative religious motivations included external justifications for sanctifying personal strivings such as following the norms of the church or abiding the expectations of the religious community. While aspects of both types of motivations likely overlap to impact sanctification of personal strivings, the authors hypothesized that each type of motivation would uniquely impact self-regulation, self-actualization, perceived meaning in life, and perceived life satisfaction. Participants were asked to provide five personal projects and then to indicate why they were pursuing each project. One provided reason indicated transcendental religious motivation (Because I can experience communion with God/the transcendent through this project) while another indicated normative religious motivation (Because my denomination or church expects me to work on this project). Additional reasons (external, introjected, identified, and intrinsic) were included to assess the extent to which pursuit of personal strivings was controlled (external introjected) or autonomous (identified, intrinsic; e.g., Sheldon & Kasser, 1995) followed by measures of satisfaction with life, self-actualization, and meaning in life. Results indicated that normative religious motivation, that is, motives derived from external sources such as church norms or expectations from the religious community, for sanctifying everyday personal strivings was negatively related to indices of subjective well-being. Conversely, transcendent religious motives were positively associated with

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 7

97

subjective well-being. Importantly, these relationships were partially mediated by self-regulation type such that normative religious motivation for sanctifying everyday strivings predicted more controlled external regulation, while transcendental religious motivation predicted more autonomous regulation toward sanctified everyday goals. Building on the previous research, Martos et al. (2013) used a similar procedure to test whether emotion mediates the relationships between motives for sanctifying everyday goals and subjective well-being. More normative religious motivation for sanctified everyday goals was associated with stronger links between negative emotions (e.g., doubt, sadness) and those strivings, which subsequently predicted lower perceptions of life satisfaction, self-actualization, and meaning in life. Alternatively, everyday goals pursued for transcendental religious reasons were more strongly associated with positive emotions (e.g., gratitude and curiosity), which predicted higher perceived life satisfaction, self-actualization, and meaning in life. One particular cultural worldview, the Protestant work ethic, provides a clear example of the motivation and consequences of large-scale sanctification of everyday goals. The Protestant work ethic: sanctification of everyday goals writ large. The Protestant work ethic emerged, in part, from the notion of predestination (Weber, 1905/1930). Accepting predestination meant accepting that before one’s birth, God had determined whether one was to experience eternal bliss or eternal torment after death and that one was powerless to influence this outcome. Despite sermonizing to maintain absolute faith that they were among the heavenly chosen and that any wavering of that faith signaled that they were headed straight to hell after death, believers found the idea of unquestioningly abiding a predestined fate to be unpalatable. What believers desired was a method, in addition to faith, that foretold their fate. Yet adherence to Protestant belief systems generally eliminated utilizing what were termed “superstitious” practices (e.g., being absolved of one’s sins after confessing them to clergy; fleeting outbursts of religious fervor; such as speaking in tongues; a reclusive life dedicated to silent prayer) as indication of eternal standing. Pastoral encouragement to engage in intense worldly activity emerged: be a “tool of the divine will” (p. 114). One’s effectiveness as a tool of the divine will signaled one’s heavenly status in the afterlife. Such effectiveness was gauged by both one’s activity (i.e., working; commitment to one’s profession or “calling”; and eschewing leisure) and one’s success at acquiring and saving material wealth. However, moral proscriptions against wealth acquisition for the sole purpose of comfort, luxury, and leisure were a firm aspect of the belief system. Weber remarks: The real moral objection is to relaxation in the security of possession, the enjoyment of wealth with the consequence of idleness and the temptations of the flesh, above all of distraction from the pursuit of a righteous life. In fact, it is only because possession involves this danger of relaxation that it is objectionable at all. For the saints’ everlasting rest is in the next world; on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, “do the works of Him who sent him, as long as it is yet day.” Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God, according to the definite manifestations of His will. Waste of time is thus the first and in principle deadliest of sins (p. 157).

Thus everyday activities and goals, such as those associated with work and improving one’s financial status, took on a profound sacred significance. Enthusiastic dedicated pursuit of one’s goals and successfully achieving them indicated one’s preferred listing on the eternal docket. Contemporarily, the Protestant work ethic is a critical component of the meritocratic worldview. The Protestant work ethic combined with beliefs both in social mobility (i.e., anyone, despite institutional and social inequities, can get ahead) and in a just world (i.e., noble people/acts are rewarded; ignoble people/acts are punished by some force that maintains a universal moral balance) undergird thinking that social rewards and status reflect individual merit (McCoy & Major, 2007). Quinn and Crocker (1999) describe how the Protestant work ethic permeates meritocratic values: The Protestant ethic is an ideology that includes the belief that individual hard work leads to success and that lack of success is caused by the moral failings of self-indulgence and lack of self-discipline. Thus, those who receive positive outcomes deserve them because they worked hard and are morally superior, whereas those who receive negative outcomes deserve them because they are indulgent, lack self-discipline, and are morally flawed (p. 403).

Thus the Protestant work ethic remains influential as a belief system that, along with others, addresses ultimate concerns such as meaning and morality. Historically, of course, the Protestant work ethic, and specifically, the sanctification of everyday activities and goals, addressed the ultimate concern of death. Infusing one’s terrestrial labors with sacred significance and succeeding in those labors assured one that a blissful immortality ensued. Contemporarily, within the meritocratic worldview, one’s actions and status are sanctified as they provide the evidence of one’s moral success or failure and therefore one’s general moral character. In sum, sanctifying everyday objects, locations, and behaviors (including everyday goal pursuits) provides tangible connections to abstract existentially palliative religious and spiritual beliefs, infuses everyday activity with selftranscendent meaning and purpose, and serves to bolster confidence in everyday goal pursuit. In the course of such goal

98

PART | 2 Freedom

pursuit, however, inevitable obstacles and conflicts threaten to hinder or even terminate goal-related efforts. The next section turns to the relationship between experiences of difficulty pursuing goals and how such experiences are related to religious and spiritual conviction.

Goal frustration, conflict, and religious zeal Religious conviction and striving also is related to nonreligious or nonsanctified goals. Striving toward selftranscendent meaning can provide existence with an overarching backdrop of ultimate purpose. Sanctifying various objects, locations, and actions can infuse everyday pursuits with greater significance by connecting them to one’s ultimate purpose. Both kinds of strivings help stave off existential concerns regarding meaninglessness, insignificance, and death. However, it is not likely that all goal pursuit is thought of as work toward attaining an ultimate connection with the universe/higher power or as sacred. For example, “do well on this exam” or “get Sheila to like me” are goals that, while certainly scaffolding existence with purpose, may not take on sacred significance. The constellation of all of one’s goals, sacred or not, constitutes the “lynchpin of psychological organization” (Klinger, 1998, p. 44). But sometimes the pin works a bit loose. People experience goal frustration when they encounter obstacles to goal pursuit or fail to achieve a goal. Also, people experience goal conflict when realizing that multiple goals are inconsistent with each other and that one or more of them likely will not be achieved or will need to be abandoned. Research indicates that such goal frustration and conflict tend to elicit anxious uncertainty (McGregor, Nash, & Prentice, 2012; Nash, McGregor, & Prentice, 2011). In response, people exaggerate the certainty with which they hold their ideological convictions and are increasingly motivated to more tenaciously identify with and realize their ideological goals. In the case of religious ideologies, compensatory redoubling of one’s religious conviction serves to placate anxious uncertainty stemming from goal frustration and conflict in other domains. When goals are frustrated, spurring anxious uncertainty, zealously bolstering one’s religious conviction is particularly effective at reducing that uncertainty. For example, McGregor, Haji, Nash, and Teper (2008) demonstrated that anxious uncertainty regarding two types of goal pursuit increased two aspects of religious zeal: the conviction with which participants held their religious beliefs and derogation of dissenting religious beliefs. In one study, undergraduate participants were asked to do their best to comprehend a passage and to indicate how easy it was for them to do so (response options were phrased to imply that the passage should be easy to understand). The anxious uncertainty condition consisted of a difficult passage from a graduate statistics text taken out of context. The passage contained mathematical and statistical jargon, complex equations, and ended abruptly to ensure comprehension of the passage was essentially impossible. In the control condition, participants read a statistical passage, but one taken from an introductory undergraduate textbook. After a brief delay task, participants indicated their religious conviction via their agreement with a number of statements (e.g., “I am confident in my belief system,” “I aspire to live and act according to my belief system,” and “My belief system is grounded in objective truth”). Results indicated that participants who were frustrated by the incomprehensible statistical passage, and thus experienced anxious uncertainty in achieving a minor academic goal of understanding the passage, were more zealously convicted of their religious beliefs compared to participants in the control condition. In another study, non-Muslim participants prompted to describe an unresolved relationship dilemma they were facing currently (anxious uncertainty condition) evaluated Islam more negatively compared to participants prompted to describe a relationship dilemma a friend was facing and for which the participant was certain about how the friend should resolve the dilemma. Thus anxious uncertainty about goal achievement, in these cases, succeeding at a minor academic task and resolving a relationship dispute, increased the certainty with which one held one’s religious beliefs and increased derogation of dissident religious beliefs. Similar research also has shown that people’s inflated certainty in their convictions following goal frustration and anxious uncertainty is limited to particular types of beliefs (McGregor, Nash, & Prentice, 2010). Upon completing either the difficult or easy statistical passage exercise, participants completed items measuring beliefs common to most religious traditions that are related to death/immortality, morality, and meaning/structure (e.g., “The soul continues to exist though the body may die,” and “There is supernatural justice for evil and reward for good, e.g., heaven and hell”). Critically, participants also completed measures of the extent to which they endorsed belief in other superstitious or paranormal beliefs not particularly associated with existential concerns (e.g., predicting the future by analyzing dreams). Results revealed that anxiously uncertain participants only indicated zealous certainty of existentially related religious beliefs but not general superstitious or paranormal beliefs. Furthermore, research suggests that the extent to which people feel powerfully engaged in their personal projects, that is, their determination to accomplish the goal despite potential sacrifices, their feelings of personal control to influence the outcome, and the importance of the goal, affects the magnitude of zealous religious conviction in

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 7

99

response to an anxious uncertainty threat. Participants who self-reported feeling more powerfully engaged with their self-characterizing personal projects demonstrated less religious zealousness in response to an anxious uncertainty threat in a personal relationship compared to participants who felt less empowered. Finally, research indicates that making idealistic convictions more salient reduces the impact of goal conflicts, particularly among people with high self-esteem (McGregor & Marigold, 2003). Participants reported their self-esteem, chose a personal dilemma they currently faced, and rated how difficult they perceived the dilemma to be and the extent to which they felt uncertain, confused, and undecided about it. Subsequently, participants either chose a social issue that they felt most convicted about from a list or chose an issue they felt politicians would be most convicted about (control condition) and elaborated on their reasoning. Finally, participants completed a measure of affect and a measure of their current concern regarding their previously reported personal dilemma. Specifically, the latter assessment consisted of questions measuring how important, urgent, and easy to ignore participants felt their personal dilemma to be. Participants with high self-esteem and who were given the opportunity to choose and elaborate on an issue for which they held high conviction indicated that their personal dilemma was less important, less urgent, and easier to ignore. As discussed in previous sections, religious and spiritual strivings provide broader meaning, purpose, and structure to a fleeting and fragile existence. Because religious conviction often deals in the realm of self-transcendent meaning, such conviction is insulated from the inevitable uncertainties, anxieties, and frustrations of day-to-day living. One’s aspirations of receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, earning large sums of money, or simply arriving to work on time are subject to myriad sociocultural, political, and physical obstacles. Yet, as such goal frustrations and conflicts may expose a “harsh reality,” internal beliefs that meaning and value transcend such a reality come to the rescue. While everyday goal frustrations and conflicts could potentially mire people in anxious uncertainty, energized focus on self-transcendent religious meaning trivializes such frustrations and conflicts. By its nature, then, religious conviction transcends the limitations, frustrations, and conflicts that accompany terrestrial goal pursuit. From a meme perspective (e.g., Dennett, 2006), religious conviction is a particularly resilient and successful cultural replicator because, among other things, religious conviction tends to address existential concerns such as meaninglessness and mortality in ways that are often resistant to disconfirmation (Vail et al., 2010). Despite butting up against physical, social, political, and economic bounds that not only often comprise corporeal existence but also often hinder goal pursuit (fairly or unfairly), religious conviction offers an avenue by which people can compensate when such boundaries become insurmountable. Religiously oriented justifications for experiencing tragedy, failure, or unfair treatment at times revolve around the general maxim that the cognitive powers of mere mortals cannot hope to comprehend the fundamental workings of the universe or the motives of a higher power. This is a convenient and effective way of coping with goal frustrations, conflicts, and failures, because while people may suffer such experiences, amplifying one’s religious conviction and zealously pursuing one’s sacred strivings cloaks existence in comforting certainty, even if one cannot hope to understand or justify it.

Are religious and spiritual goals optimal for existential security? On the one hand, as discussions throughout this chapter have noted, while religiosity and spirituality typically deal in topics that go beyond the challenges of mere physical existence, religiosity and spirituality are not immune to requirements human beings make of most, if not all, their cultural worldviews (beliefs about the nature of reality and existence), goals, and actions. Of particular relevance to the current discussion are requirements that one’s religious and spiritual beliefs be validated as accurate and worthy of the goals set and activities performed in the name of those beliefs as well as some indication as to one’s progress and success at acting in accord with one’s valued religious and spiritual prescriptions. Such evidence that one’s beliefs accurately reflect the nature of reality and existence and that one is acting appropriately given one’s particular set of beliefs is especially crucial when considering existential concerns. In a sense, everything is on the line: whether one transcends death (and in the desired fashion), whether the universe is infused with some kind of meaning, and whether one’s individual existence carries with it any significance whatsoever given the vastness of time and space all hinge upon one’s religious and spiritual beliefs being metaphysically correct. The rub, of course, is that religious and spiritual beliefs (as with other cultural worldviews) cannot be objectively validated (Solomon et al., 2004). Thus the extent to which religious, spiritual, and other cultural worldviews are perceived to be valid depends upon fickle social phenomena such as consensual validation (e.g., Festinger, 1954). This suggests that religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as religious and spiritual goals, are fragile, waxing and waning in the social winds, demanding reinforcement (e.g., both biased increased positivity toward those who agree with one’s beliefs and increased negativity toward those who dissent) particularly when existential concerns, such as mortality, are elevated, as research derived from TMT has repeatedly demonstrated (e.g., Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010).

100

PART | 2 Freedom

Similarly, tangible progress toward goal attainment positively predicts facets of well-being, including perceptions of meaning in life (King, Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006). Measuring tangible progress toward attaining religious and spiritual strivings may be particularly challenging due to their oft-abstractness. Consider the religious or spiritual goals of “become more connected to the universe or higher power.” While presumably, there are tangible ways to enact such a goal (e.g., perhaps increased prayer or meditation and increased time amid awe-inspiring natural landscapes) monitoring whether one is making progress toward the desired abstract “connection” is a bit more challenging than monitoring progress regarding more concrete strivings such as “go to the gym on the way home from work at 6:30 PM and run five miles on the treadmill.” As highlighted throughout this chapter, concretizing abstract religious and spiritual goals allows for better monitoring of one’s progress. For example, recall that Emmons et al. (1998) demonstrated the proportion of people’s daily strivings that were in some way connected to spirituality positively predicted well-being, perceptions of purpose in life, and overall life satisfaction. Likewise, the Protestant work ethic emerged as a way to tangibly measure one’s status in the hereafter via one’s dedication to work and attainment of material wealth (Weber, 1905/1930). However, when abstract religious and spiritual strivings for self-transcendent meaning that shirks the bounds of terrestrial existence are concretized, they become susceptible to those very bounds, namely, the limits of human cognitive and physical functioning as well as sociocultural factors. One’s religious or spiritual goal to attain a stronger connection to the universe or higher power through increased meditation may be hampered by time constraints, physical fatigue, cognitive load (e.g., distraction), and/or other cognitive limitations (e.g., imperfect memory, restrictions on attentional capacity). Adopting the Protestant work ethic or the broader meritocratic cultural worldview and yoking one’s death transcendence and moral character to goals of attaining worldly success may be effective for those who accomplish their aims but may be existentially devastating for those who, for myriad reasons (e.g., social inequality regarding access to education and/or economic opportunities, prejudice, discrimination), do not attain the level of success they strive toward (McCoy & Major, 2007; Quinn & Crocker, 1999). On the other hand, while translating the abstractness of religious and spiritual strivings toward self-transcendent meaning into tangible pursuits presents some challenges, this very abstractness may be a critical strength of religious and spiritual goals (Dennett, 2006; Vail et al., 2010). As sketched at the outset of this chapter, goals drape existence in meaning (Baumeister, 1991; Hicks & King, 2009; Klinger, 1998; Reker & Wong, 1988; Steger, 2012). They provide an organizational framework that structures one’s thoughts and behaviors, supplying a sense of coherence, consistency, and purpose. Thus perceiving oneself as progressing toward goal attainment bolsters subjective well-being and perceptions of meaning in life (King et al., 2006). Paradoxically, however, goal attainment may actually reduce or eliminate the very meaning that goals provide. Consider an individual who has spent her entire career successfully devoted to a profession and is now on the brink of retirement. A goal that has structured much of her life, succeeding in her profession, soon will no longer be viable. Her attainment of her goal effectively eliminates it as a coherence-providing daily striving, potentially opening a void where meaning and purpose once were. The abolishment of such a meaningsupplying goal is especially relevant when existential concerns, such as death, are elevated. Given this analysis, Vess, Rogers, Routledge, and Hicks (2017) predicted that contemplating mortality would reduce perceptions of meaning in life when people perceived themselves to be near (vs far from) attaining an important personal long-term goal. To test this hypothesis, undergraduate participants identified a current long-term academic goal and were randomly assigned to write briefly about either personal mortality, feeling uncertain, or listening to music. Following a short-delay task, participants were randomly assigned to either one of two goal progress conditions (Fitzsimons & Fishbach, 2010). Participants in the “high goal progress” condition were reminded of their previously identified long-term academic goal and asked to reflect upon how much work they had done and how much progress they had made toward attaining that goal. Participants in the “low goal progress” condition were asked to reflect upon how much work remained to be done in order to achieve their goal. Finally, all participants completed items assessing the extent to which they perceived meaning in their lives (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006). Results supported predictions: perceptions of meaning in life were lower among participants who had previously contemplated mortality and who felt themselves to be near achieving an important long-term goal. Presumably, participants who felt closer to attaining their important long-term goal perceived that in short order, the goal would no longer be available as a guiding framework for action and this perception was particularly threatening to perceived meaning in life after being reminded of mortality. Critically, however, in a subsequent study the abovementioned effect was only found among participants low in locomotion (the ease with which one can transition between goals and/or adopt new goals; Higgins, Kruglanski, & Pierro, 2003). Participants who felt close to completing an important long-term goal but who easily transition between goals were relatively unaffected with regard to perceived meaning in life following a death reminder. This latter result carries significant implications for the effectiveness of religious and spiritual goals in supplying self-transcendent meaning and buffering existential concerns. The abstractness of religious and spiritual goals suggests

A goals perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 7

101

that they are difficult, if perhaps impossible, to fully attain (what would it look like to completely attain oneness with the universe or higher power or to completely attain self-transcendent meaning and decisively check it off one’s to-do list?). This may seem like a disappointing admission; however, a possible silver lining lies with the insight that because of their unattainability, religious and spiritual goals will always be available to their pursuers as sources of meaning in the face of existential concerns. No matter what other goals one achieves, transitioning to the never-ending pursuit of self-transcendent meaning via religious and spiritual goals will provide a reliable wellspring of meaning. This notion harkens back to Sartre’s (1943/1956) view that human beings are nothing but their project(s). While Sartre’s brand of existentialism was decidedly atheistic, his philosophy that human beings are responsible for continually renewing their projects (rather than being passively swept to and fro) fits well with the idea that to the extent that religious and spiritual goals address existential concerns surrounding death, meaning, and personal significance and enhance subjective well-being, they do so through continued renewed pursuit of self-transcendent purpose, not strict attainment of it.

References Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press. Becker, E. (1962). The birth and death of meaning. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press. Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor. Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155 195. Cohen, F., Soenke, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2013). Evidence for a role of death thought in American attitudes toward symbols of Islam. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 189 194. Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books. Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality in personality. New York: Guilford Press. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 731 745. Emmons, R. A. (2007). Purposeful action and the striving for the sacred. Psyke & Logos, 28(2), 794 804. Emmons, R. A., Cheung, C., & Tehrani, K. (1998). Assessing spirituality through personal goals: Implications for research on religion and SWB. Social Indicators Research, 45, 391 422. Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review of Psychology, 54(1), 377 402. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117 140. Fitzsimons, G. M., & Fishbach, A. (2010). Shifting closeness: Interpersonal effects of personal goal progress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(4), 535 549. Frankl, V.E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning (I. Lasch, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original published 1946). Frazier, B. N., & Gelman, S. A. (2009). Developmental changes in judgments of authentic objects. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 284 292. Gelman, S. A. (2013). Artifacts and essentialism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(3), 449 463. Greenberg, J., Porteus, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1995). Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(11), 1221 1228. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York, NY: Springer. Grouzet, F. M., Kasser, T., Ahuvia, A., Dols, J. M. F., Kim, Y., Lau, S., . . . Sheldon, K. M. (2005). The structure of goal contents across 15 cultures. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 89(5), 800 816. Hicks, J. A., & King, L. A. (2009). Positive mood and social relatedness as information about meaning in life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 471 482. Higgins, E. T., Kruglanski, A. W., & Pierro, A. (2003). Regulatory mode: Locomotion and assessment as distinct orientations. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 35, pp. 293 344). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press. Karoly, P. (1993). Goal systems: An organizing framework for clinical assessment and treatment planning. Psychological Assessment, 5(3), 273. King, L. A., Hicks, J. A., Krull, J. L., & Del Gaiso, A. K. (2006). Positive affect and the experience of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(1), 179. Klinger, E. (1998). The search for meaning in evolutionary perspective and its clinical implications. In P. T. P. Wong, & P. S. Fry (Eds.), Handbook of personal meaning: Theory, research, and application (pp. 27 50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Kramer, T., & Block, L. (2011). Nonconscious effects of peculiar beliefs on consumer psychology and choice. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21 (1), 101 111. Lee, C., Linkenauger, S. A., Bakdash, J. Z., Joy-Gaba, J. A., & Profitt, D. R. (2011). Putting like a pro: The role of positive contagion in golf performance and perception. PLoS One, 6(10), e26016. Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Jewell, T., Magyar, G. M., Tarakeshwar, N., . . . Phillips, R. (2005). A higher purpose: The sanctification of strivings in a community sample. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15(3), 239 262.

102

PART | 2 Freedom

Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Murray-Swank, A., & Murray-Swank, N. (2003). Religion and the sanctification of family relationships. Review of Religious Research, 44, 220 236. Martos, T., Ke´zdy, A., & Horva´th-Szabo´, K. (2011). Religious motivations for everyday goals: Their religious context and potential consequences. Motivation and Emotion, 35(1), 75 88. Martos, T., Sallay, V., & Ke´zdy, A. (2013). Everyday goals, religious motivations, and well-being: The mediating role of emotions. Studia Psychologica, 55(3), 221 226. McCoy, S. K., & Major, B. (2007). Priming meritocracy and the psychological justification of inequality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(3), 341 351. McGregor, I., Haji, R., Nash, K. A., & Teper, R. (2008). Religious zeal and the uncertain self. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(2), 183 188. McGregor, I., & Marigold, D. C. (2003). Defensive zeal and the uncertain self: What makes you so sure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 838 852. McGregor, I., Nash, K., & Prentice, M. (2010). Reactive approach motivation (RAM) for religion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (1), 148 161. McGregor, I., Nash, K. A., & Prentice, M. (2012). Religious zeal after goal frustration. In M. A. Hogg, & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and the psychology of uncertainty (pp. 147 164). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Nash, K., McGregor, I., & Prentice, M. (2011). Threat and defense as goal regulation: From implicit goal conflict to anxious uncertainty, reactive approach motivation, and ideological extremism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1291 1301. Nemeroff, C., & Rozin, P. (2000). The makings of the magical mind: The nature and function of sympathetic magical thinking. In K. S. Rosengren, C. N. Johnson, & P. L. Harris (Eds.), Imagining the impossible: Magical, scientific, and religious thinking in children (pp. 1 34). New York: Cambridge University Press. Nemeroff, C., & Rozin, P. (1994). The contagion concept in adult thinking in the United States: Transmission of germs and of interpersonal influence. Ethos (Berkeley, Calif.), 22(2), 158 186. Newman, G. E., Diesendruck, G., & Bloom, P. (2011). Celebrity contagion and the value of objects. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(2), 215 228. Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 168 181. Quinn, D. M., & Crocker, J. (1999). When ideology hurts: Effects of belief in the Protestant ethic and feeling overweight on the psychological wellbeing of women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 402 414. Rank, O. (1932). Art and artist: Creative urge and personality development. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reker, G. T., & Wong, P. T. P. (1988). Aging as an individual process: Toward a theory of personal meaning. In J. E. Birren, & V. L. Bengtson (Eds.), Emergent theories of aging (pp. 214 246). New York: Springer Publishing Co. Sartre, J. (1956). Being and nothingness: A phenomenological essay on ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. (Original work published 1943). Sartre, J. (1985). Existentialism and human emotions (B. Frechtman, Trans.). New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. (Original work published 1957). Sartre, J. (2007). Existentialism is a humanism (C. Macomber, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1946). Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. (1995). Coherence and congruence: Two aspects of personality integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 531 543. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (1, pp. 13 34). New York: The Guilford Press. Steger, M. F. (2012). Making meaning in life. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 381 385. Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80 93. Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Kay, A. C. (2012). Toward a comprehensive understanding of existential threat: Insights from Paul Tillich. Social Cognition, 30(6), 734 757. Tarakeshwar, N., Swank, A. B., Pargament, K. I., & Mahoney, A. (2001). The sanctification of nature and theological conservatism: A study of opposing religious correlates of environmentalism. Review of Religious Research, 42, 387 404. Tillich, P. (1957). Dynamics of faith. New York: Harper & Row. Tillich, P. (2000). The courage to be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1952). Tix, A. P., & Frazier, P. A. (2005). Mediation and moderation of the relationship between intrinsic religiousness and mental health. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(3), 295 306. Vail, K. E., III, Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Vess, M., Rogers, R., Routledge, C., & Hicks, J. A. (2017). When being far away is good: Exploring how mortality salience, regulatory mode, and goal progress affect judgments of meaning in life. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(1), 82 91. Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Scribner. (Original work published 1905).

Chapter 8

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Adam S. Hodge1, Courtney J. Alderson2, David K. Mosher1, Cameron W. Davis1, Joshua N. Hook1, Daryl R. Van Tongeren3, Jeffrey D. Green2 and Don E. Davis4 1

University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States, 2Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States, 3Hope College, Holland,

MI, United States, 4Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, United States

Humans regularly encounter various existential concerns. For example, people often entertain questions regarding individual identity (e.g., “Who am I?”), meaning in life (e.g., “What is the purpose of my life?”), the certainty of death (e.g., “What happens after I die?”), or one’s ability to manipulate or control their environment (e.g., “What influence do I have on other individuals or events that happen in the world?”). These existential concerns may not always be at the forefront of an individual’s thoughts but rather are often processed outside of conscious awareness (see Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Koole, & Solomon, 2010). However, these existential questions exert considerable influence on social cognition and perception. Put differently, existential concerns motivate social behavior. One such way existential concerns affect behavior is through the social motivation for meaning in life. Research suggests that people assess or seek to identify meaning in their lives by identifying connections or associations among aspects of their lives to gain a sense of coherence, significance, and purpose (Van Tongeren et al., 2018). Van Tongeren et al. (2018) provide a theoretical model for how individuals obtain and maintain meaning in their lives. First, this model posits that people have an innate drive for meaning, similar to an appetitive drive. This drive is informed by cultural standards of what makes a life meaningful, and people are motivated to meet these standards. Second, people monitor their experiences to see if their life has meaning by comparing their experiences to the cultural standards. Third, people must exhibit a sense of strength to reaffirm their meaning following a threat or feelings of meaninglessness by engaging in other behaviors. Research has also revealed that the motivation for, and the defense of, meaning in life occurs rather automatically (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010). A long line of research suggests that systems of meaning—such as religion—help address existential concerns (Van Tongeren, Davis, Hook, & Johnson, 2016; Van Tongeren, Hook, & Davis, 2013), such as the fear of death (Vail et al., 2010). Meaning is often found in culturally bound rituals, customs, or relationships. For instance, people find meaning by following ethnic cultural practices or values, engaging in work deemed important or valuable to the community, or engaging in religious practices. Research has observed that religion and spirituality often serve as a meaning-making system (Emmons, 2005; Park, 2005; Van Tongeren et al., 2013). Religion and spirituality provide goals and value systems that potentially pertain to every facet of a person’s life (Emmons, 2005). People may ask, “When should I allow my religious beliefs to guide my behavior?” or “How might I continue my religious or spiritual development and what strategies should I employ to grow in my religious or spiritual identity?” Questions such as these highlight an underlying logic implying some level of belief in free will: that is, some people believe that they can do something to address these existential concerns. (Of course, these existential concerns are unavoidable realities that all humans must face; yet, there is variation in the degree to which people believe they can alter how they react to these concerns.) Accordingly, it is important to examine how religion and spirituality are related to free will, self-regulation, and selfcontrol to better understand how individuals wrestle with existential concerns. In this chapter, we review the psychological literature on belief in free will and self-regulation as it relates to religion and spirituality. First, we provide a brief discussion of the relevant philosophical terms surrounding free will beliefs and their distinctions. Second, we review how free will beliefs may lead to (1) religious moralistic behavior and (2) social/cultural enforcement of morality through punitive judgments of transgressions against religious morals and The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00009-3 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

103

104

PART | 2 Freedom

prosocial behaviors. Third, we review the relevant behavioral effects of free will beliefs. Fourth, we review how religion and spirituality facilitate various types of motivated action control. Fifth, we conclude by discussing the role religion and spirituality play in alleviating the psychological burden of self-regulatory behavior.

What is free will? A thorough discussion of self-regulation and self-control inevitably engages the philosophical debate on free will. Indeed, if the self is not free, then what exactly does the self-control? As Baumeister (2008) noted, “Self-regulation should qualify almost by definition as at least a limited form of free will. That is, without self-regulation, the organism cannot help but act on the first or strongest impulse that arises in response to a situation” (p. 71). It is this standpoint that has garnered interest in the topic of free will among psychologists. Whereas the question of free will’s ontological status is a controversial one, and one that will not be resolved here, centuries of philosophical analysis provide us with a set of possible answers. Aided by these possibilities, psychological scientists have taken up the task of defining, assessing, and describing the psychosocial effects of free will. In this regard, the psychology of religion and spirituality is of particular interest when exploring social factors that relate to a person’s free will (Baumeister, Bauer, & Lloyd, 2010). There are many schools of thought regarding one’s ability to engage in free will, with some scholars suggesting that the subjective experience of engaging in conscious will could be an illusion (e.g., Bargh, 2008; Wegner, 2002). Free will, for this reason, is very difficult to study, as there is no clear agreement as to what free will truly entails. To provide some insight into why the field of psychology has begun to study the construct of belief in free will, rather than free will itself, we provide a brief overview of the philosophical underpinnings regarding free will and free will belief.

Philosophical terminology The philosophical literature on free will has come to distinguish between two broad possibilities regarding free will: (1) incompatibilism, the view that human freedom is incompatible with determinism and (2) compatibilism, the view that human freedom is congruent with determinism. Moreover, two very different viewpoints exist within the incompatibilist view: determinism and libertarianism. While both the determinist and the libertarian see human freedom as incompatible with a deterministic reality, they differ in their views with regard to which of the two phenomena they think actually exists. The determinist believes in the truth of determinism and the falsity of human freedom, whereas the libertarian believes in the truth of human freedom and the falsity of determinism. Regarding compatibilism the compatibilist believes in the truth of determinism and the truth of human freedom. Now on to the real point of controversy: the definition of freedom. It is important to note that there is no disagreement regarding the definition of determinism. Compatibilists and incompatibilists alike agree that determinism is the thesis that, in accordance with the laws of nature, all events are the necessary byproduct of prior conditions (Hoefer, 2016; McKenna & Pereboom, 2016). Such is the case for all physical realities, from the movement of subatomic particles to human decisions. It is critical to recognize the agreement over the definition of determinism, for no viewpoint in the free will debate augments determinism to fit with freedom. Rather, the disagreement among theorists stems from which notion of freedom one holds. The incompatibilist notion of freedom adheres to the principle of alternative possibilities (hereafter, PAP) or, as it is also known, the ability to do otherwise (hereafter, ATDO; Frankfurt, 1969; Kane, 1998; Van Inwagen, 1999). On this view of freedom, for an action to be free, one must have the ability both to perform the action in question and to refrain from the action in question (Plantinga, 1977). Given the definition of determinism, one can see this notion of freedom is incompatible with determinism. However, the compatibilist notion of freedom is quite different. On the compatibilist view an action is defined as being a free action simply if it is voluntarily performed (Dennett, 1984; Schlick & Rynin, 1939). Here, human actions are free when performed without coercion or external restraint (McKenna & Coates, 2018). When defined in that sense, freedom is indeed compatible with determinism. For example, the determinist would suggest that a person might sense or believe that their behavior is voluntary, yet hold the position that the behavior was, in fact, previously determined. Because this is incompatible with PAP/ATDO, the determinist holds that free will does not exist. However, the compatibilists, due to their notion of freedom as simple volition, can make the same statement but come to a different conclusion. For example, the compatibilist would suggest that a person might sense or believe that their behavior is voluntary, yet hold the position that the behavior was, in fact, previously determined and free. Compatibilists are quite fine with all human behavior being determined by prior causes—as long as it is enacted voluntarily, it is done so freely. Setting aside the veracity of these controverted definitions of freedom, the philosophical discourse has provided

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

105

empirical researchers with a free will lexicon from which scientific operationalizations of free will beliefs (not realities) have been formed (see, Haggard, Mele, O’Connor, & Vohs, 2014). Religious and spiritual beliefs may shape religious adherents’ beliefs about free will. For example, Calvinists believe that God ordained all events and predestined the eternal fate of all humans. That is, one’s afterlife is already determined by forces outside of their control, which may affect how they act in this world (e.g., acting in ways that seek to confirm they are chosen and saved, or feeling disempowered because one’s own actions bear no influence on the future nor have eternal consequence). Those with a strong belief in free will may place a stronger emphasis on the importance of their own actions because they believe such actions have important natural and eternal consequences. Accordingly, they may be more motivated to care for the earth, engage others with kindness and inclusion, and seek to live moral lives, because the future is malleable rather than predetermined. Thus it is critical to (1) examine free will belief among religious and spiritual individuals and (2) understand the philosophical and theoretical opinions of the individuals who conduct research in this field.

The psychological construct of free will belief As stated earlier, the psychological definition of free will is understood as one’s capacity for free action (Haggard et al., 2014). Current psychological research operationalizes free will as the construct “free will belief.” Baumeister and Monroe (2014) have distinguished two motifs of “free will belief”: (1) belief in the availability of multiple courses of action that stem from the same present and (2) belief in the human capacity to exert intentionality and rational deliberation in behavior. The first theme has conceptual overlap with the philosophical notion of freedom as PAP/ATDO, whereas the second theme has conceptual overlap with the philosophical notion of freedom as voluntary action. In reference to science, any psychological investigation into free will beliefs must assess at least one of these themes (i.e., PAP/ATDO or volition). Importantly, among laypersons, the two themes within the psychology of free will belief are often affirmed concomitantly (Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005; Paulhus & Carey, 2011; Stillman, Baumeister, & Mele, 2011); however, the two themes can also be shifted in favor of one over the other depending upon the circumstance in question (Nahmias, Coates, & Kvaran, 2007; Nichols & Knobe, 2007). Although there is no empirical research linking free will belief to specific psychosocial functions of religiosity/spirituality, a review of the existing literature on free will beliefs and their antecedents and consequences is necessary to accurately describe its relevance to person perception, moral judgments, and self-control. Future research should examine the association of religion/spirituality and free will beliefs to determine if religious/spiritual belief influences the degree to which one ascribes to a belief in free will.

The social-cognition of free will Moral judgments and responsibility Research has demonstrated that perceptions of free will can be influenced by a responsibility bias that functions to bolster inferences of moral responsibility. A study by Nichols and Knobe (2007) asked people to think about one of two possible realities. One asked people to assume to the truth of determinism, and the other asked people to assume everything except human decisions were subject to determinism (i.e., allowing for libertarian free will). Participants then read three vignettes of the same hypothetical person engaging in the following behaviors: saving a child from a burning building (i.e., morally praiseworthy action), robbing a bank (i.e., morally blameworthy action), and going for a run (i.e., morally neutral action). People were asked to state whether or not they thought the hypothetical person in each vignette had free will. In the deterministic condition, people were more likely to report that the person had free will when performing the morally blameworthy action than when they performed the morally praiseworthy or neutral actions. This tendency to report individuals as having free will while performing a morally blameworthy behavior was labeled the responsibility bias. The responsibility bias was not observed of the participants in the libertarian free will condition, wherein free will was perceived equally across the hypothetical person’s behavior (Nichols & Knobe, 2007). Other research suggests that perceptions of free will and moral responsibility are further influenced by mechanistic descriptions of human behavior (e.g., chemical reaction and genetics) versus nonmechanistic descriptions (e.g., thoughts and plans). Using a variation of the Nichols and Knobe (2007) study, Nahmias et al. (2007) assigned people to either a deterministic condition or a libertarian free will condition, and then had them read similar vignettes. Again, the hypothetical vignette person was depicted as engaging in morally praiseworthy, blameworthy, or neutral actions. However, here the actions of the person were also either framed by the use of mechanistic terms (e.g., neural processes and

106

PART | 2 Freedom

chemical reactions) or nonmechanistic terms (e.g., thoughts, desires, and plans). As before, people were asked to state whether or not they thought the hypothetical person had free will. They were also asked to state whether or not they thought the person was morally responsible for his or her actions. Regardless of the determinism versus free will conditions, people were more likely to report the hypothetical person as not having free will and not morally responsible when their actions were framed in mechanistic terms. In contrast, and regardless of the determinism versus free will conditions, people were more likely to report the hypothetical person as having free will and morally responsible for their actions when the actions were framed in nonmechanistic terms. This calls into question the responsibility bias (see Nichols & Knobe, 2007) and suggests that linguistic frames can guide inferences of free will in others. Research has yet to examine the role religion/spirituality may play in an individual’s belief of free will, and how these beliefs may impact an individual’s moral judgments or perceptions of another individual’s responsibility for their behavior. However, research has observed that views of morality are influenced by religious/spiritual beliefs (Graham & Haidt, 2010). There are several areas in which future research could examine the role of religion/spirituality in free will beliefs. For example, religion and spirituality may have direct implications on the finding from Nahmias et al. (2007) that suggests linguistic frames guide inferences of free will in others. Many world religions place an emphasis on connecting with the sacred through motivated action (Silberman, 2005), which may encourage individual responsibility to give concerted effort to pursue the Sacred. In addition, language used in sacred texts and religious/spiritual communities may be more likely to use nonmechanistic terms to describe individual behavior and lead religious/spiritual individuals to infer that others have free will and thus have greater moral responsibility for their behavior. On the other hand, if a religious/spiritual individual describes their deity as being all-knowing or outside the confines of time, a religious/spiritual individual may be more willing to accept their behavior, or the behavior of others, as being determined by the deity for some greater purpose. Thus it would be important to analyze both the language used in sacred texts to describe human behavior as well as the characteristics of the sacred to see how free will beliefs among religious/spiritual individuals may develop, and how these beliefs may impact personal functioning and interpersonal relationships.

Punishment and retributive versus restorative justice motives As free will beliefs have important implications for perceptions of moral responsibility, so too do they have important implications for justice motives and legal sanctions. A study by Rakos and colleagues (2008) assessed peoples’ belief in free will and determinism, as well as their attitudes toward punishing a moral wrongdoer. They found that as endorsement of free will increased, so too did support of punitive and retributive punishments toward the moral wrongdoer. Conversely, as endorsement of determinism increased, so too did their support for rehabilitative and less punitive forms of punishment (Rakos, Steyer, Skala, & Slane, 2008). A second study assessed peoples’ beliefs in free will and determinism and then had them consider a hypothetical vignette about a child molester (Carey & Paulhus, 2013). People were asked to recommend a prison sentence for the wrongdoer. After providing their sentence, people were informed that the wrongdoer was a victim of child abuse who was diagnosed with a psychopathological disorder and were then given the opportunity to change their sentence recommendations. The researchers found that as the endorsement of free will belief increased, so too did the length of the prison sentence. Also, as the amount of responsibility attributable to the wrongdoer decreased (due to being a victim of child abuse), so too did the recommended length of the prison sentence (Carey & Paulhus, 2013). One study manipulated free will beliefs by having participants read either pro-free-will or anti-free-will statements prior to completing a vignette task (Shariff et al., 2014). The free will statements emphasized the free will-moral responsibility link, arguing either for the existence of free will and its necessity for moral responsibility, or for free will as illusory and the impossibility of moral responsibility. People then read a vignette about a hypothetical person who beat someone to death and were asked to recommend a prison sentence. Moreover, people were informed that the perpetrator would be starting the sentence after having completed a nearly 100% effective 2-year long rehabilitation intervention. The people in the anti-free-will condition assigned shorter and less stringent prison sentences than did the people who were in the pro-free-will condition (Shariff et al., 2014). It may be that religion/spirituality can influence the processes by which one is motivated to support retributive or restorative judgments to a moral wrongdoer, although research has yet to explore this connection. There are several possible outcomes for how religion/spirituality may impact one’s desire to assign punishments. For example, a religious/ spiritual individual who believes that behavior is determined may assign a less severe retributive punishment (which would align with previous research). On the other hand, they may also desire to assign more severe retributive punishment to align with the decisions made by the sacred. However, even if the individual believes that behavior is

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

107

determined, they may perceive that the sacred has determined their own personal actions to be more prosocial, which would lead the individual to assign a less severe retributive punishment or more restorative form of punishment. Thus it may be especially important for future research to consider one’s religious/spiritual beliefs regarding free will when examining one’s tendency to support retributive or restorative judgment to better understand how religious/spiritual individuals assign punishment for moral wrongdoing.

Self-other bias in free will perceptions Research has also revealed a self-other bias in peoples’ perceptions of free will. Across four studies (and controlling for self-enhancement motives), Pronin and Kugler (2010) found that people are more likely to view the self as possessing more free will than others, evidence that people want to believe that they possess free will. In Study 1, individuals reported that their own lives were less predictable than were the lives of their roommates, indicating more possible futures perceived of the self than for others. In another study, people considered where they thought they would be in the future, as well as where they thought one of their friends would be, and they apportioned weights to several possible explanations for their (or their friend’s) future behavior. When thinking about their own future, people assigned significantly more predictive weight to their desires/intentions than they did to their personality, past behavior, or situation. In contrast, when asked to think about their friend’s future, people assigned more predictive weight to the friend’s personality, past behavior, and situation than they did for the friend’s desires and intentions. This pattern implies that people think that they possess greater free will than others, even friends. Although no research has specifically explored the relationship between religion, spirituality, and self-other bias in free will perceptions, it would be interesting to explore the extent to which religion and spirituality might influence this process. For example, it could be that strongly held religious or spiritual beliefs about the existence of free will (or not) would override the self-other bias and provide more consistency between views of self and views of others. Conversely, it could be that strongly held religious or spiritual beliefs about sin (e.g., original sin, sins of omission vs commission, venial vs cardinal sins) might bolster the self-other bias, as the self could be seen as forgiven (free from sin and its effects) and the other could be seen as wayward (bound to sin and its effects). In sum, the literature on free will inferences and person perception provides empirical support for the age-old philosophical assumption claiming that free will is an important factor when considering issues relevant to moral responsibility and moral judgments. Future research should consider how religion/spirituality influence one’s judgment of another individual’s free will to examine how religion/spirituality may influence the moral responsibility or moral judgment one places on other individuals.

Effects of free will beliefs Whereas the perception of free will in others can be argued to result in negative or unwanted consequences (e.g., harsher treatment toward wrongdoers and self-serving bias), research on the effects of free will beliefs on overt behavior tells a different story.

Prosocial behavior Vohs and Schooler (2008) used a pro-free-will prime, an anti-free-will prime, or a neutral prime to investigate the effect of free will beliefs on ethical behavior. Individuals in the pro-free-will condition read a passage arguing for the existence of free will, whereas individuals in the anti-free-will condition read a passage arguing that free will is illusory. The neutral condition presented a passage about nature. Participants then completed a series of math problems. After starting the math task the experimenter was called out of the room, leaving behind the answer sheet to the math problems in the field of view of the participant. People who experienced the anti-free-will condition were more likely than those in the other two conditions to use the answer sheet to cheat, but no difference was found between the pro-freewill and neutral conditions (Vohs & Schooler, 2008). Thus it appears that individuals who believe that they have free will are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior than individuals who believe that they do not have free will. Applying this finding to religion and spirituality, it is possible that religious and spiritual beliefs provide a framework that either supports or negates the belief in free will, and this framework may influence the way in which the adherent evaluates their own behavior and the same of others. Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall (2009) investigated the role of free will beliefs on helpfulness and aggression. The first study adapted the Vohs and Schooler (2008) free will belief prime, and then had participants rate the degree to

108

PART | 2 Freedom

which they felt they would provide help in six different socially relevant scenarios. Participants who experienced the anti-free-will condition were less likely than those in the pro-free-will or neutral conditions to say that they would provide help. As in Vohs and Schooler (2008), no difference was found between the pro-free-will and neutral conditions. This finding suggests that individuals who believe that they have free will are either (1) more likely to engage in prosocial behavior or (2) believe that they are more likely to act in an altruistic way if the situation presents itself. Perhaps people in the anti-free-will condition thought that the person in the scenario would necessarily receive or not receive help regardless of their behavior. The second study assessed participants’ preexisting belief in free will and then had them listen to what they thought was a radio broadcast of a young woman asking for help, because her parents had recently died, making her the lone caretaker of her younger siblings and resulting in her dropping out of college. Participants then had the opportunity to sign up as a volunteer to help the young woman; participants with greater endorsement of free will were more likely to volunteer to help the young woman. For people who believed in free will, it is possible that they thought it was their responsibility to help the young woman. Recognizing that there was a tangible way to actively volunteer to help the young woman, there may have been a greater sense of guilt or shame associated with individuals who thought they were responsible for the decision they made compared to individuals who did not believe in their own free will. The third study assigned individuals to either the pro-free-will or anti-free-will prime and then were made to feel socially excluded. Participants were then given the opportunity to dole out hot sauce to the person who excluded them (whom they were told hated hot sauce). People in the anti-free-will condition were more aggressive (doled out more hot sauce) than those in the pro-free-will condition (Baumeister et al., 2009). Perhaps, exploring the role of religion and spirituality in the relationship between belief in free will and prosocial behavior would help to explain some of the findings that appear to be contradictory. It is likely that there are underlying factors that motivate individuals to act in a prosocial way, and it is possible that larger cultural factors play a role in this.

Conformity Research has also examined the influence of free will belief on social conformity. In one study, participants completed the aforementioned free will belief priming technique then evaluated a series of paintings after being casually exposed to what they thought were the ratings of previous participants. People in the anti-free-will condition were more likely than those in the pro-free-will or neutral conditions to provide ratings that conformed to those of the ostensible past participants (Alquist, Ainsworth, & Baumeister, 2013). Whereas research has not yet explored the role of religion and spirituality on free will belief and conformity, there are a few ways that these processes might be related. One possibility is that religion and spirituality may encourage a type of social or cultural conformity in which religious/spiritual individuals attempt to meet the social/cultural standards and behave or make judgments similarly to others who adhere to the religious/spiritual worldview. Thus the finding that individuals who were primed with pro-free-will material were less likely to provide ratings that conformed to those of past participants may not be observed in a religious/spiritual sample, if the sample assumes that the other raters were of the same religious or spiritual background. A second possibility is that religious and spiritual individuals who believe in free will may desire to respond differently than other individuals as a means of separating their judgments about the world from others who do not necessarily adhere to their religious or spiritual viewpoint.

Gratitude A study by MacKenzie, Vohs, and Baumeister (2014) was designed to investigate the effects of free will beliefs on gratitude. Participants were first primed with pro- or anti-free-will beliefs and were then told that they would engage in a cognitively demanding task requiring significant effort. However, a second experimenter told them that they would not have to do the onerous task. Those in the anti-free-will condition expressed less gratitude to the second experimenter than did people in the pro-free-will condition (MacKenzie et al., 2014). This suggests that belief in free will aids the experience of gratitude regarding receiving undeserved benevolence from others. Research has yet to explore the role of religion and spirituality in this relationship. It would be interesting to examine whether similar results regarding gratitude would be observed in a religious/spiritual sample comparing individuals whose religious/spiritual worldview includes a high level of belief in free will compared to those whose worldview includes a low level of belief in free will. Perhaps individuals who believe that their religion/spirituality supports a high level of belief in free will experience greater gratitude toward the sacred compared to those who believe that their religion/spirituality does not support belief in free will.

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

109

Religion, spirituality, and motivated action As stated earlier, the psychological definition of free will focuses on the capacity for free action (Haggard et al., 2014). There are four main operations of this motivated action control: (1) self-control, (2) rational choice, (3) planful behavior, and (4) taking initiative (Baumeister et al., 2010). Furthermore, research has revealed that religion and spirituality can play a facilitative role in each of these behaviors (Baumeister et al., 2010).

Self-control As an important expression of free will, self-control is exhibited in “situations in which people engage in behaviors designed to counteract or override a prepotent response (e.g., a behavioral tendency, an emotion, or a motivation)” (McCullough & Willoughby, 2009, p. 72). Therefore self-control describes a restriction of a desired behavior or the enactment of an undesired behavior, rather than just willfully changing a passive, present state of being. For example, self-control is exhibited when a person works out when she does not want to, walks away from an argument rather than act on the desire to verbally attack, or says no to a tempting dessert. Regarding the relationship between self-control and religion/spirituality, research has revealed that religiosity has a small to moderate positive association with selfcontrol (McCullough & Willoughby, 2009). Previous research has also found that priming individuals with God-related words increases an individual’s ability to engage in self-control behaviors (e.g., Boytos & Pettijohn, 2017; Toburen & Meier, 2010). Research using priming methods suggests a causal link between the saliency of religion/spirituality and self-control. For example, Rounding, Lee, Jacobson, and Ji (2012) provided empirical support across four studies suggesting that priming religion (see Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) directly facilitates self-control. In one study, individuals who were primed with religious and spiritual content via a scrambled word task (e.g., spirit, divine, God) were able to endure longer at an unpleasant task of drinking unsavory juice than individuals who received a neutral prime with neutral words replacing the religious words. In another study, individuals who were primed with religious and spiritual content were able to delay gratification to receive a larger amount of money than individuals who received a neutral prime. A third study attempted to account for possible confounding variables (e.g., morality concepts and death-related concepts). This study found that individuals who were primed with religious and spiritual content showed greater self-control on an impulse task (i.e., Stroop task) than individuals who received a neutral or death-related prime. Results of these studies suggest that making religion/spirituality more salient can increase self-control, but the mechanism remains unclear. One way that religion and spirituality may influence self-control is through the provision of guidelines regarding moral behavior. For instance, religion is often conceptualized as a cultural adaptation that leads to the better survival of its adherents, as religion often promotes self-control (Baumeister & Exline, 2000). Self-control has been referred to as the “master virtue,” with virtue defined as internalizing an established acceptance of morality (Baumeister & Exline, 1999). In this context, self-control facilitates altruistic, harmonious coexistence with others by religiously sanctioning and supporting the enactment of prosocial behaviors and discouraging the enactment of selfish behaviors. Moreover, religious cognitions may help to facilitate prosocial behavior (McCullough & Carter, 2011). For example, many religious teachings often require adherents to engage in self-control by being virtuous and performing behaviors that are prosocial or desirable for the group, and to avoid behaviors that are deemed undesirable. Self-control is an important feature in facilitating meaning or purpose in life, and one pathway through which individuals may find meaning is by adhering to the established norms of the religion (Van Tongeren et al., 2018).

Rational choice A second operation of free will found in psychological literature is rational choice. The ability of an individual to make a rational choice presupposes that individuals have enough free will to alter their behavior based on what they deem to be the most effective course of action (Searle, 2001). The field of psychology lags behind other social sciences (e.g., economics, political science, and religious studies) in its study of rational choice theory and rational choice related models (Baumeister et al., 2010). However, literature on the scientific study of religion can help shed light on how religion may guide its adherents on making the most beneficial social actions aligned with that religion’s values and beliefs. A study by McCullough, Enders, Brion, and Jain (2005) demonstrated the application of rational choice theory to religion and spirituality. Religion and spirituality often guide preferential choices that inform social and personal actions (e.g., how people spend their money, where they spend their time; McCullough et al., 2005). There are numerous

110

PART | 2 Freedom

implications of religion/spirituality in an individual’s life; however, we specifically focus on the reciprocal nature of engaging in religion or spirituality (i.e., resources gained from religion/spirituality and resources provided to religious/ spiritual institutions). Specifically, religion/spirituality provides an individual with a set of approved practices (e.g., attending services, prayer, and reading religious texts) that facilitate socialization into the religion and social acceptance. Furthermore, McCullough et al. (2005) discuss how an individual’s pattern of consuming religious materials depends on personal preferences (e.g., learned religious behavior or conforming to preestablished social roles), as well as social constraints (e.g., concern for others or future utility for children). Other traits, such as agreeableness, may also influence how likely an individual is to comply with religious demands (e.g., attending church or providing financial support; McCullough et al., 2005). Adherents to religious groups are expected to perform social actions (e.g., participate in religious gatherings and practices) and provide resources (e.g., give money or time) for the institution. An interpretation of rational choice theory to this two-way relationship between consuming and providing resources within the religious institution would identify religion as a public good that benefits a community, contrasted with the viewpoint of religion as an individual or private good. Whereas many religious adherents believe they draw resources (e.g., strength and wisdom) from the sacred to help them cope (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998), it is also the religious adherent that continues to replete the religious goods for the community. In this way, religious beliefs guide an individual to make the most beneficial social action, a rational choice, which is to follow religious teachings and to promote the welfare of the group. Whereas there is a dearth of empirical research examining rational choice as an operation of free will, one may argue that the ideological and behavioral differences among religious/spiritual individuals reflect a form of rational choice. For example, research has provided conflicting evidence regarding the role of religion/spirituality in prosociality (Galen, 2012). This discrepancy may be explained by personal differences on specific religious/spiritual constructs (e.g., security vs growth orientation to religion; Van Tongeren et al., 2016), as well as ideological differences observed in broad religious groups. Considering the variability of religious/spiritual ideology between individuals and, in effect, the behavior that stems from these religious/spiritual beliefs, one is able to conceptualize these contrasting ways of thinking and acting as unique individual differences in rational thought. Given the dearth of empirical research examining the role of religion/spirituality on rational choice, future research should examine how individuals make decisions on what religious or spiritual beliefs they adhere to and also examine what factors may influence an individual’s decisions.

Planful behavior A third operation of free will found in psychological literature is when behavior is planned or altered to conform to a plan. Therefore planful behavior includes identifying a set of abstract values and long-term goals and then translating these ideas into specific behavioral intentions and judgments. Whereas planful behavior may be less often discussed in conversations surrounding free will (Baumeister et al., 2010), research suggests that religion and spirituality influences planful behavior in unique ways. In fact, we argue that research examining the relationship between religion/spirituality and values provides some of the strongest evidence that humans engage in motivated action control. Specifically, research has revealed that religion and spirituality are correlated with certain values (e.g., tradition and conformity) and long-term goals, and religion may provide a distinct setting for identity exploration and commitment that could lead to increased moral behaviors (Schwartz & Huismans, 1995).

Values There is a large body of research that suggests religion and spirituality are correlated with individual values. Much of the recent empirical research in this area employs Schwartz’s (1992) theory of value systems, which defines values as desirable goals that influence and guide individual behaviors. Schwartz and Huismans (1995) argue that religion and values influence one another bidirectionally. It is not just that religious/spiritual individuals are more likely to prescribe to a certain set of values, but also that an individual’s intrinsic values such as certainty, self-restraint, and submission to external verities make them more inclined to accept various religious or spiritual beliefs relative to individuals who intrinsically value openness to change or self-expression. Identifying the relationship between religion/spirituality and values is critical in understanding how religion/spirituality may shape or motivate an individual to change their course of behavior. Schwartz and Huismans (1995) reviewed theological, sociological, and psychological analyses on religion and found that religion/spirituality is positively associated with values that enhance transcendence, preserve the social order, and protect individuals against uncertainty,

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

111

whereas religion/spirituality is negatively associated with values that emphasize self-indulgence and favor intellectual or emotional openness to change. Moreover, a metaanalysis of 21 samples in 15 countries found that religious people, across a variety of contexts, tend to attribute high importance to conservation values (e.g., tradition and conformity) and low importance to hedonistic and openness to change values (e.g., hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction; Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004). These associations were less prominent in developed nations, suggesting that other sociocultural factors may also influence the relationship between religion/spirituality and values. It should be noted that individual differences in religion/spirituality may alter, to some degree, the values one holds (Saroglou & Mun˜oz-Garcı´a, 2008). Importantly, freely chosen values could be more strongly associated with religion than one’s genetics or personality traits, but these values may not always translate into positive affect or motivated behavioral change. The mean effect sizes of the relationship between religion/spirituality and values found in Saroglou et al. (2004) are stronger than what is observed in the relationship between religion/spirituality and personality (i.e., Big Five), a finding reported elsewhere (e.g., Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002; Saroglou & Mun˜oz-Garcı´a, 2008). This study also reported that values were only weakly related to positive affect. This could mean that values relate strongly to religion/spirituality, and that behaviors and positive affect do not necessarily result from these beliefs. The direction of causality (i.e., religion/spirituality predicting values or values predicting religion/spirituality) could also have important implications for how an individual plans their behavior. Saroglou et al. (2004) suggest that, depending on the causal direction, religion may socialize adherents to accept values based on religious doctrines, or individuals with developed value priorities may become more or less religious based on the perceived barriers to attaining these goals. Although it has been theorized that religion and values are associated in a bidirectional manner (Schwartz & Huismans, 1995), recent research tends to suggest that religion does in fact set the stage for individuals to ascribe to certain values or goals (e.g., Maio et al., 2003; Roccas, 2005). Religion and spirituality could potentially set the stage for certain values through the socialization process (e.g., gaining social capital within the religious community; Saroglou et al., 2004), or it may simply foster adherence and importance to certain values and goals (Roccas, 2005). An example of religion and spiritualty fostering adherence and importance to certain values and goals is the planful behavior of parenting through sanctification, which is defined as seeing aspects of life as having religious/spiritual significance (Mahoney, Pargament, Murray-Swank, & Murray-Swank, 2003). This sanctification process could make parenting appear more spiritually significant. However, the outcomes of this process could lead to positive or negative effects in parenting, depending on the behaviors that the parents engage in (Mahoney et al., 2003).

Behavioral change Research has also assessed how religion/spirituality fosters behavioral change. A study by King and Furrow (2004) suggests that religion/spirituality can be viewed as an ideological and social resource for certain adolescent needs. Their study found that religion/spirituality led youths to show empathy, altruism, and perspective taking, and that this relationship was mediated through trusting interaction with adults, friends, and parents who shared similar worldviews. Thus religious/spiritual behaviors and practices increased prosocial orientation via the interaction with others in the context of supportive/trusting relationships that increased moral behavior. Considering the phenomenon of adolescent egocentrism and rising narcissism (Elkind, 1967; Twenge, 2017), it may be unlikely for adolescents to identify a need to show concern for others on their own. The findings of this study may suggest that religion/spirituality allows adolescents to explore their identity, goals, and values and go beyond themselves to make the effortful choice to show concern for others and the social good. Whereas the aforementioned study examined the role of religion/spirituality in adolescent moral development, research has also outlined how religion/spirituality influences the development and formation of goals for self-regulation and influences behavior (see Silberman, 2003, 2004 for reviews). Concrete examples include prescribing appropriate action (e.g., charitable giving and prayer) while prescribing inappropriate actions (e.g., lying and cheating) (Pargament, 1997), and encouraging certain emotions (e.g., joy) while discouraging others (e.g., sadness and anger) (Silberman, 2003).

Taking initiative The fourth operation of free will observed in psychological literature is taking initiative. Initiative suggests that an individual can perform an action that is motivated from within, without prompting from an external source (Baumeister et al., 2010). In regard to religion/spirituality, research has demonstrated that religion can provide a structured system of meaning (Park, 2005). This function may underlie the perception that religion can also facilitate the fulfillment of

112

PART | 2 Freedom

many other basic human needs (Pargament, 1997). Thus religion/spirituality, as an individual or collective meaning system, provides the structure for how to behave and how to direct one’s life to experience this sense of meaning. Silberman (2005) states, “Religious systems basically encourage the ultimate motivation of connecting or adhering to the sacred” (p. 646). She suggests that all goals within religion/spirituality could take on value by guiding the adherent to connect with the sacred, providing the adherent with a sense of meaning. Furthermore, Silberman (2005) provides a comprehensive review for how religion/spirituality acts as a meaning system to include descriptions of how religion/ spirituality (1) provides meaning in a historical perspective (e.g., from birth to death and beyond), (2) proposes answers to life’s deepest questions, (3) meets the basic need for self-transcendence, (4) guides beliefs on contingencies (e.g., rewards for good deeds and punishment for wrongdoing) and outcome expectations (e.g., positive or negative outlook on the future of the world), and (5) provides explanations regarding the nature of people, the self, the world, etc. Whereas religion/spirituality is broadly understood as a meaning-making system (Park, 2005; Seifert, 2002; Silberman, 2005), less is known about how this meaning-making system directly influences motivated behavior change. Thus there appears to be little empirical evidence testing whether religion/spirituality activates individual initiative to attain various goals and find meaning. However, a study conducted by Emmons, Cheung, and Tehrani (1998), across two different samples, suggests that individuals have spiritual strivings: specific goals that are oriented toward the sacred. Spiritual strivings theory is rooted in the control theory of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Powers, 1973). These personal goals are concerned with ultimate purpose, ethics, commitment to a higher power, and a seeking of the divine in daily experience. People who adhere to these religious/spiritual goals strive to develop and maintain their relationship with the sacred. Several findings provide support for individual initiative regarding religious and spiritual strivings. First, religious/ spiritual strivings were related to low levels of intergoal conflict and greater levels of goal integration (Emmons et al., 1998). This suggests that religious/spiritual strivings may serve to consolidate and focus the attitudes and behaviors one has toward their goals. With a strong understanding of one’s goals and strivings, people can conceptualize how they may be motivated to pursue the sacred on their own initiative. Second, religious/spiritual strivings were rated as more valued, less effortful, more attainable, more likely to be engaged in for intrinsic reasons, and more instrumental for accomplishing other strivings relative to nonreligious/spiritual strivings (Emmons et al., 1998). Religious/spiritual strivings are perceived as more favorable than nonreligious/spiritual strivings, which could explain why individuals choose to engage in religion or spirituality. Whereas some individuals may see religion/spirituality as imposing restrictions or unnecessary regulation of behavior, choosing to adhere to goal-specific religious/spiritual behaviors promotes subjective well-being (Emmons, 1996). The findings of this study also support a broadly studied area of research that suggests striving to protect and preserve the sacred, a product of initiative, provides deep significance to human existence (Pargament, 1992). To better understand how religion/spirituality motivates individuals to alter their behavior, future research should expand on the findings that suggest that religion/spirituality activates an individual’s initiative to find meaning.

Religion and self-regulation Self-regulation as a limited resource Research on free will suggests that the ability to exert free will depends on expending a self-regulatory resource (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). Much like a muscle, individuals possess a limited capacity of selfregulation that can be strengthened or fatigued. By using some of this self-regulatory resource to control a response toward one target, attempting to control one’s response toward a subsequent target will result in poorer outcomes. Early conceptualization and initial empirical support for these ideas began over two decades ago (Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998). This tendency for engagement of self-control (e.g., after previous trials) to reduce one’s capacity to exert free will has been referred to as ego depletion (Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007; Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007). The theory of ego depletion has evolved over time to include ideas such as conservation processes (i.e., individuals seek to conserve self-regulatory energy once they have used some of the energy; Muraven, Shmueli, & Burkley, 2006) and factors that may ameliorate negative effects of self-regulatory depletion, such as motivation (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003) and mindfulness meditation (Friese, Messner, & Schaffner, 2012). Whereas research surrounding the strength model of self-regulation continues to flourish, with a new article relying on the construct of ego depletion published almost every day (Baumeister, Tice, & Vohs, 2018), this phenomenon has not come without its challengers. Notably, a metaanalysis by Carter, Koffler, Forster, and McCullough (2015) concluded that the true effect size of ego depletion may not be significantly different from zero. Furthermore, a multilab

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

113

study by Hagger et al. (2016) seeking to replicate results of previous studies included in an earlier metaanalysis on ego depletion (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010) found null results. Given these mixed results, we suspect that future research will need to provide a richer and more robust understanding of ego depletion, especially as it relates to religion and spirituality.

Religion’s influence in facilitating effective self-regulation As discussed earlier, religion/spirituality and self-control have been observed to be positively associated with one another (McCullough & Willoughby, 2009), and research has revealed a causal link that religion/spirituality encourages self-control (Rounding et al., 2012). Using the strength model of self-regulation, research has begun to assess the role of religion/spirituality in self-regulation processes when an individual’s initial self-regulatory stores are depleted. Moreover, religion/spirituality can help facilitate effective self-regulation through two simultaneous processes: (1) motivating people to exert their will and (2) relieving some of the psychological burden of exerting their will. Furthermore, religion/spirituality may affect self-regulation both explicitly (e.g., effortful control; Baumeister et al., 2007) and implicitly (e.g., unconscious control; Koole, McCullough, Kuhl, & Roelofsma, 2010). A study by Watterson and Giesler (2012) was one of the first studies to explore whether individuals high in religiosity/spirituality exhibit a greater ability to self-regulate. Participants were randomly assigned into two conditions: a depleted self-regulatory resource condition or a full self-regulatory resource condition. Participants assigned to the depleted self-regulatory resource condition underwent a commonly used self-regulatory resource depletion task (i.e., focusing on squeezing a handgrip for as long as possible). Then, all participants underwent a second common self-regulatory resource depletion task (i.e., attempting to solve a series of unsolvable anagrams). Participants high in religiosity/spirituality persisted at the second self-regulatory resource depletion task longer than participants low in religiosity. However, this was only observed in the depleted self-regulatory resource condition group. An alternative interpretation that religious/spiritual individuals were primed to be aware of their religiosity/spirituality and thus show more persistence on the second task can be dismissed because religiosity/spirituality was assessed at the end of the experiment. Therefore this finding may exhibit a strengthening of the self-regulation muscle or some degree of buffering from ego depletion, as religious individuals may engage in more self-regulating behaviors. In this sense, it could also be concluded that religion helped one to relieve some of the psychological burden it takes to effectively control one’s behavior (Watterson & Giesler, 2012). The underlying mechanisms for how religion may relieve the psychological burden of controlling one’s behavior are not well understood. One possible explanation is that practicing selfregulation through various religious/spiritual behaviors makes it easier for religious individuals to persist at impossible tasks with the expectation that perseverance in controlling one’s behavior leads to some form of spiritual benefit or reward. Furthermore, even if the spiritual benefit or reward is unknown, religious/spiritual individuals may find value or purpose in controlling their behavior by considering self-control to be a type of virtue or strength. Similarly, Rounding et al. (2012), as part of their multistudy project to identify a direct causal relationship between religion/spirituality and self-control, specifically assessed the strength model of self-regulation in regard to religion and spirituality in one of their studies. Participants were randomly assigned to an ego depletion task (i.e., typing a passage but omitting each e, s, and space), or a control group that performed a similar task that did not deplete self-regulatory resources (i.e., typing the passage with no limitations). Interestingly, participants in the ego depletion task also had to listen to loud music while completing the task to further deplete their mental resources (Rounding et al., 2012). The study assessed the influence of religiosity/spirituality in self-regulation by further separating the participants in the ego depletion group into either a religious-prime task or a neutral prime task (see, Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007). After the priming tasks, participants from all three groups were asked to solve impossible geometric puzzles (Quinn, Brandon, & Copeland, 1996). General results of the ego-depletion manipulation were found to be successful. Moreover, participants primed with religious/spiritual concepts seemed to have a less depleted sense of self-control as they persisted at the geometric task longer than the individuals in the depleted, nonreligious prime group. This finding expands on the literature revealing a link between religiosity/spirituality and self-control by suggesting that priming individuals with religious or spiritual concepts buffers against the ego depletion effect. Furthermore, the results of this study support the proposition that religion can motivate individuals to exert their will, while simultaneously relieving the psychological burden it takes to self-regulate effectively. Examining the effects of religion and spirituality on self-regulation in a narrower lens, Friese and Wa¨nke (2014) assessed the influence of personal prayer on the deleterious effects of self-regulation. Participants in two conditions were instructed to either engage in personal prayer, or engage in free thought (i.e., they could think about anything they wished). Then, participants watched a funny, 5-minute film clip. Participants in the control condition were asked to

114

PART | 2 Freedom

watch the clip as they normally would, whereas participants in the depletion condition were instructed to suppress all emotions and control their facial experiences. A subsequent Stroop task was then used to assess self-control, and those who had engaged in prayer showed less impairment on the Stroop task (i.e., greater self-regulation) than those who had engaged in free thought. These findings fit well with other current research that suggests religion and spirituality bolster one’s ability to self-regulate (Friese & Wa¨nke, 2014). Future research could examine how different religious/spiritual practices may bolster one’s ability to self-regulate and assess whether certain religious/spiritual practices are more helpful in self-regulating effectively. Whereas the reviewed studies suggest some sort of buffering against ego depletion or a strengthening of one’s ability to exercise self-control in the midst of a difficult task, the question as to whether there is an actual benefit of being able to persist at an impossible task has not yet been discussed. Is engaging in an impossible task for a long period of time a positive goal that people should strive toward? Furthermore, might engaging in self-regulatory behavior during an impossible task be labeled as blind perseverance or simply a lack of strong analytical reasoning? It is worth pondering the benefit or negative consequences of engaging in an impossible task. However, one possibility is that this may not be of great concern for individuals who identify as religious or spiritual. As introduced in the beginning of this chapter, Van Tongeren et al. (2018) posited that self-regulation may be part of the process in how individuals obtain and maintain meaning in their lives. Many world religions emphasize the importance of self-regulation and the studies previously described the causal relationship between religion and self-control. Perhaps engaging in self-regulation is a behavior that religious and spiritual individuals use to compare their behavior to the cultural standard to strengthen or reaffirm their sense of meaning. This may help to explain how religious content and prayer influenced a lower level of impairment on the various self-regulatory tasks in the studies described previously. Thus participants might have been comparing their experiences to the larger cultural standards of their religion and spirituality and used self-regulation to strengthen or reaffirm their sense of meaning by engaging in a behavior that is culturally valued.

Concluding remarks This chapter reviews the current empirical research regarding the relationship between religion and spirituality, free will, and self-regulation. Our chapter discussed the current philosophical underpinnings and disagreements surrounding the construct of free will and reviewed the literature regarding the influence of religion and spirituality in a separate but related construct, free will belief. Whereas there is a relative dearth of empirical research on the topic of free will belief and religiosity/spirituality, the reviewed studies suggest that belief in free will can lead to religious moralistic behavior and social/cultural enforcement of moralistic behavior change. Although philosophers and psychologists will continue to debate the existence of free will, our chapter highlights the role that religion and spiritualty have in aiding individuals to make motivated behavior change. To conclude, our chapter reviewed scientific literature that suggests that religion and spirituality are positively associated with motivated behavior change, operationalized as (1) engaging in selfcontrol, (2) using rational thought, (3) planning for future events, and (4) taking initiative. Furthermore, research also has revealed that religion and spirituality may serve to buffer against ego depletion.

References Alquist, J. L., Ainsworth, S. E., & Baumeister, R. F. (2013). Determined to conform: Disbelief in free will increases conformity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(1), 80 86. Bargh, J. A. (2008). Free will is unnatural. In J. Baer, J. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Psychology and free will. New York: Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F. (2008). Free will, consciousness, and cultural animals. In J. Baer, J. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Are we free? Psychology and free will (pp. 65 85). New York: Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F., Bauer, I. M., & Lloyd, S. A. (2010). Choice, free will, and religion. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2(2), 67 82. Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252 1265. Baumeister, R. F., & Exline, J. J. (1999). Virtue, personality, and social relations: Self-control as the moral muscle. Journal of Personality, 67(6), 1165 1194. Baumeister, R. F., & Exline, J. J. (2000). Self-control, morality, and human strength. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 29 42. Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J., & DeWall, C. N. (2009). Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(2), 260 268. Baumeister, R. F., & Monroe, A. E. (2014). Recent research on free will: Conceptualizations, beliefs, and processes, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 50, pp. 1 52). Academic Press.

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

115

Baumeister, R. F., Schmeichel, B. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2007). Self-regulation and the executive function: The self as controlling agent. In A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (2nd ed., pp. 516 539). New York: Guilford. Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Vohs, K. D. (2018). The strength model of self-regulation: Conclusions from the second decade of willpower research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 141 145. Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Tice, D. M. (2007). The strength model of self-control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(6), 351 355. Boytos, A. S., & Pettijohn, T. F., II (2017). The effects of religion and career priming on self-control during difficult tasks in college students. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 22(4), 286 293. Carey, J. M., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Worldview implications of believing in free will and/or determinism: Politics, morality, and punitiveness. Journal of Personality, 81(2), 130 141. Carter, E. C., Koffler, L. M., Forster, D. E., & McCullough, M. E. (2015). A series of meta-analytic tests of the depletion effect: Self-control does not seem to rely on a limited resource. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 796 815. Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1981). Attention and self-regulation: A control theory approach to human behavior. New York: Springer. Dennett, D. C. (1984). I could not have done otherwise - so what? The Journal of Philosophy, 81(10), 553 565, 1984. Elkind, D. (1967). Egocentrism in adolescence. Child Development, 38, 1025 1034. Emmons, R. A. (1996). Striving and feeling: Personal goals and subjective well-being. In J. A. Bargh, & P. M. Gollwizer (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking motivation and cognition to behavior (pp. 314 337). New York: Guilford. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 731 745. Emmons, R. A., Cheung, C., & Tehrani, K. (1998). Assessing spirituality through personal goals: Implications for research on religion and subjective well-being. Social Indicators Research, 45(1 3), 391 422. Frankfurt, H. G. (1969). Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility. The Journal of Philosophy, 66(23), 829 839. Friese, M., Messner, C., & Schaffner, Y. (2012). Mindfulness meditation counteracts self-control depletion. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1016 1022. Friese, M., & Wa¨nke, M. (2014). Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 56 59. Galen, L. W. (2012). Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 876 906. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Haggard, P., Mele, A., O’Connor, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2014). Appendix: Free will lexicon. In A. R. Mele (Ed.), Surrounding free will: philosophy, psychology, neuroscience (pp. 319 326). New York: Oxford University Press. Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L. D., Alberts, H., Anggono, C. O., Batailler, C., Birt, A. R., . . . . . . Zwienenberg, M. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 546 573. Hagger, M. S., Wood, C., Stiff, C., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. D. (2010). Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136(4), 495 525. Hoefer, C. (2016). Causal determinism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2016 ed.). . Retrieved from ,https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/determinism-causal/.. Kane, R. (1998). The significance of free will. Oxford University Press on Demand. King, P. E., & Furrow, J. L. (2004). Religion as a resource for positive youth development: Religion, social capital, and moral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 40(5), 703 713. Koole, S. L., McCullough, M. E., Kuhl, J., & Roelofsma, P. H. M. P. (2010). Why religion’s burdens are light: From religiosity to implicit selfregulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(1), 95 107. MacKenzie, M. J., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). You didn’t have to do that: Belief in free will promotes gratitude. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(11), 1423 1434. Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Murray-Swank, A., & Murray-Swank, N. (2003). Religion and the sanctification of family relationships. Review of Religious Research, 220 236. McCullough, M. E., & Carter, E. C. (2011). Waiting, tolerating, and cooperating: Did religion evolve to prop up humans’ self-control abilities. Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and application (pp. 422 437). New York: Guilford Press. McCullough, M. E., Enders, C. K., Brion, S. L., & Jain, A. R. (2005). The varieties of religious development in adulthood: A longitudinal investigation of religion and rational choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(1), 78 89. McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69. McKenna, M., & Coates, J. D. (2018). Compatibilism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2018 ed.). . Retrieved from ,https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/compatibilism/.. McKenna, M., & Pereboom, D. (2016). Free will: A contemporary introduction. Routledge. Muraven, M., Shmueli, D., & Burkley, E. (2006). Conserving self-control strength. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 524 537. Muraven, M., & Slessareva, E. (2003). Mechanisms of self-control failure: Motivation and limited resources. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 894 906. Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as a limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 774 789.

116

PART | 2 Freedom

Nahmias, E., Coates, D. J., & Kvaran, T. (2007). Free will, moral responsibility, and mechanism: Experiments on folk intuitions. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31(1), 214 242. Nahmias, E., Morris, S., Nadelhoffer, T., & Turner, J. (2005). Surveying freedom: Folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical Psychology, 18, 561 584. Nichols, S., & Knobe, J. (2007). Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions. Nous, 41(4), 663 685. Pargament, K. I. (1992). Of means and ends: Religion and the search for significance. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 201 229. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: The Guilford Press. Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710 724. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion as a meaning-making framework in coping with life stress. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 707 729. Paulhus, D. L., & Carey, J. M. (2011). The FAD-Plus: Measuring lay beliefs regarding free will and related constructs. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93(1), 96 104. Plantinga, A. (1977). God, freedom, and evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co. Powers, W. T. (1973). Behavior: The control of perception. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Pronin, E., & Kugler, M. B. (2010). People believe they have more free will than others. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Science, 107, 22469 22474. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Koole, S., & Solomon, S. (2010). Experimental existential psychology: Coping with the facts of life. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (pp. 724 757). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Quinn, E. P., Brandon, T. H., & Copeland, A. L. (1996). Is task persistence related to smoking and substance abuse? The application of learned industriousness theory to addictive behaviors. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 4, 186 190. Rakos, R. F., Steyer, K. R., Skala, S., & Slane, S. (2008). Belief in free will: Measurement and conceptualization innovations. Behavior and Social Issues, 17(1), 20 39. Roccas, S. (2005). Religion and value systems. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 747 759. Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H., & Knafo, A. (2002). The big five personality factors and personal values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(6), 789 801. Rounding, K., Lee, A., Jacobson, J. A., & Ji, L. J. (2012). Religion replenishes self-control. Psychological Science, 23(6), 635 642. Saroglou, V., Delpierre, V., & Dernelle, R. (2004). Values and religiosity: A meta-analysis of studies using Schwartz’s model. Personality and Individual Differences, 37(4), 721 734. Saroglou, V., & Mun˜oz-Garcı´a, A. (2008). Individual differences in religion and spirituality: An issue of personality traits and/or values. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47(1), 83 101. Schlick, M., & Rynin, D. (1939). Problems of ethics. The Journal of Philosophy, 36(23), 630 635. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1 65). New York: Academic Press. Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four western religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58(2), 88 107. Searle, J. R. (2001). Rationality in action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Seifert, L. S. (2002). Toward a psychology of religion, spirituality, meaning-search, and aging: Past research and a practical application. Journal of Adult Development, 9(1), 61 70. Shariff, A. F., Greene, J. D., Karremans, J. C., Luguri, J. B., Clark, C. J., Schooler, J. W., . . . Vohs, K. D. (2014). Free will and punishment: A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1563 1570. Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18, 803 809. Silberman, I. (2003). Spiritual role modeling: The teaching of meaning systems. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 13(3), 175 195. Silberman, I. (2004). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for pastoral care and guidance. In D. Herl, & M. L. Berman (Eds.), Building bridges over troubled waters: Enhancing pastoral care and guidance. Lima, Ohio: Windham Hall Press. Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millennium. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 641 663. Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., & Mele, A. R. (2011). Free will in everyday life: Autobiographical accounts of free and unfree actions. Philosophical Psychology, 24(3), 381 394. Toburen, T., & Meier, B. P. (2010). Priming God-related concepts increases anxiety and task persistence. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 29, 127 143. Twenge, J. M. (2017). IGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy And completely unprepared for adulthood (and what that means for us). New York: Atria Books. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Van Inwagen, P. (1999). Moral responsibility, determinism, and the ability to do otherwise. The Journal of Ethics, 3(4), 343 351. Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Security versus growth: Existential tradeoffs of various religious perspectives. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 77 88.

Religion and spirituality, free will, and effective self-regulation Chapter | 8

117

Van Tongeren, D. R., DeWall, C. N., Green, J. D., Cairo, A. H., Davis, D. E., & Hook, J. N. (2018). Self-regulation facilitates meaning in life. Review of General Psychology, 22, 95 106. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010). Combating meaninglessness: On the automatic defense of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), 1372 1384. Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., & Davis, D. E. (2013). Defensive religion as a source of meaning in life: A duel mediational model. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 227 232. Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1), 49 54. Watterson, K., & Giesler, R. B. (2012). Religiosity and self-control: When the going gets tough, the religious get self-regulating. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4(3), 193 205. Wegner, D. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Further reading Clark, C. J., Luguri, J. B., Ditto, P. H., Knobe, J., Shariff, A. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Free to punish: A motivated account of free will belief. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(4), 501. Flannelly, K. J. (2017). Religious beliefs, evolutionary psychiatry, and mental health in America. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Friese, M., Binder, J., Luechinger, R., Boesiger, P., & Rasch, B. (2013). Suppressing emotions impairs subsequent stroop performance and reduces prefrontal brain activation. PLoS One, 8(4), e60385. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Moynihan, A. B., Igou, E. R., & van Tilburg, W. A. (2017). Free, connected, and meaningful: Free will beliefs promote meaningfulness through belongingness. Personality and Individual Differences, 107, 54 65. Shariff, A. F., Schooler, J., & Vohs, K. D. (2008). The hazards of claiming to have solved the hard problem of free will. In J. Baer, J. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Are we free? Psychology and free will (pp. 181 204). New York: Oxford University Press. Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Addiction and free will. Addiction Research & Theory, 17, 231 235. Vonasch, A. J., Clark, C. J., Lau, S., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2017). Ordinary people associate addiction with loss of free will. Addictive Behaviors, 5, 56 66.

Chapter 9

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Andrew G. Christy1, Grace N. Rivera2 and Rebecca J. Schlegel2 1

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, United States, 2Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States

Concerns with personal authenticity are pervasive in modern postindustrial life. We are preoccupied with finding, knowing, and being our “real” selves, and harbor related concerns about whether we truly know others and whether they are relating authentically to us (and we to them). A recent profusion of empirical research on the psychology of authenticity and the true self has documented a number of interesting patterns in this domain, and has reinforced the notion that these issues play a central role in human psychology (for recent reviews see De Freitas, Cikara, Grossmann, & Schlegel, 2017; Schmader & Sedikides, 2018; Strohminger, Knobe, & Newman, 2017). How might the science of authenticity interface with the science of religion, spirituality, and existentialism? In an insightful article on the interplay between religion, existentialism, and psychology, (Royce, 1962, pg. 5) stated, “Perhaps the idea that all three disciplines share most completely is that for self-realization, man must live authentically.” He anticipated an increasing integration of existential and religious perspectives with mainstream psychology, in which the shared emphasis on authenticity would play an important organizing role. Today, it seems that Royce’s vision of a robust integration of these three fields has not yet come to fruition, at least in the domain of authenticity. Although recent research has made important strides in documenting and explaining experiences of authenticity and beliefs about the true self, how these phenomena may intersect with religion and spirituality has not received wide attention. However, the rich history of philosophical and theological thought on the intersection between spirituality and authenticity indicates that this is an area ripe for inquiry. In this chapter, we outline how religion and spirituality may intersect with the psychology of authenticity. As will be seen, there are many promising conceptual connections that are supported indirectly by available evidence. However, the interplay of authenticity and religion has not received systematic scientific attention, and while available evidence is consistent with many of the connections we draw here, for the most part these ideas remain to be tested directly. Accordingly, we also outline how investigations of the connections we draw might proceed.

The historical emergence of authenticity concerns and their ties to religion Historically, the emergence of personal authenticity as a central concern has been traced to cultural shifts toward individualism in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s (Baumeister, 1987; Trilling, 1972). Through a series of social, political, and philosophical movements including the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Enlightenment, medieval views of each person as a mere link in the “Great Chain of Being” gave way to views of each person as a fundamentally distinct entity with a natural right to self-determine the course of their life. Politically, these shifts ultimately resulted in the rise of constitutional democracies, aspiring to enact “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (Lincoln, 1863). Rather than representing a divinely ordained state of affairs with a designated niche for each individual, society, and its institutions increasingly came to be seen as human social constructions that could and should be responsive to the needs and desires of the individuals that comprise them. Baumeister (1987) argues that these historical shifts have contributed to the contemporary view of the “self as a problem,” in which it is commonly understood as difficult to really know oneself, while at the same time selfknowledge and authentic self-determination are nonetheless held up as keys to leading a fulfilled life. Religion, The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00010-X © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

119

120

PART | 2 Freedom

specifically Christianity, figures prominently in this analysis. Prior to the Reformation, Catholicism represented an agreed-upon worldview for virtually all of Western Europe. Both the Church itself and the broader society that was organized around it were understood to proceed quite directly from the will of God. With the advent of Protestantism, this all-encompassing worldview was cast into doubt, attention was called to the human-institutional nature of the Catholic Church, and alternative, more personally oriented models of Christian faith proliferated. Baumeister marks this as the beginning of a long, steady decline in the influence of Christianity on people’s day-to-day existence. In the absence of any broadly agreed-upon truths about God, the individual assumed increasing responsibility for deciding what, if any, version of Christianity they would adhere to. Postreformation historical trends, including industrialization and the resulting economic growth and geographic mobility, the Enlightenment’s emphasis on rational scientific inquiry as a means of gaining reliable knowledge about the universe, and the increasing democratization of governments, further contributed to the decline of Christianity (Baumeister, 1987). People simultaneously became less trusting of traditional authorities and institutions, and more oriented toward and optimistic about the attainment of this-worldly happiness and well-being. These developments led Nietzsche (1974, sec. 343) to famously declare the death of God, that “belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.” On this account, the decline of Christianity was integral to the emergence of concerns with authenticity as we now understand them. Where once the individual’s imperative was simply to assume a well-defined role in a divinely ordained social order, each individual must now actively choose how to live their life from an ever-enlarging palette of options, with guidance from an ever-shrinking set of accepted fundamental truths and values. As stated by Baumeister (1987, pg. 173, emphasis added), “In the absence of consensual, unimpeachable guidelines that are adequate for making the choices that define the self, these guidelines are presumed to exist hidden within the self”. This historical analysis highlights possibilities for both tension and harmony between religion and authenticity, both of which we will consider in this chapter. On the side of tension, if the valuing of authenticity has resulted at least in part from declines in religious belief and participation, then the quest to know and express one’s true self may be seen as a secular worldview that functions as an alternative to religion (e.g., Routledge, 2018). In other words, ascribing value to the true self and authentic living may fulfill some of the same psychological functions (e.g., meaning-making), that were historically fulfilled by religious faith, while dispensing with some of the attributes of religion that have come to be seen as undesirable (e.g., rigid and typically patriarchal authority structures) or untenable (e.g., metaphysical commitments that are not easily reconciled with a scientific worldview) in the modern era. On this view, someone who is able to achieve a sense of authenticity and self-knowledge in secular life may be particularly unlikely to make a religious commitment, or to maintain a preexisting religious faith. Adding to this potential for tension, people with religious identities may experience conflicts and threats involving those identities that contribute to experiences of inauthenticity. At the same time, this analysis suggests that religion has historically functioned to facilitate self-definition and help people navigate their particular life circumstances with a sense of purpose. Thus even it is more difficult for people to sustain religious faith in the contemporary world, people who are able to do so may still enjoy enhanced feelings of self-understanding and authenticity. This view becomes particularly plausible in light of certain findings from the psychological literature on authenticity, such as evidence that people experience authenticity when they behave morally (e.g., Christy, Seto, Schlegel, Vess, & Hicks, 2016; Gino, Kouchaki, & Galinsky, 2015) and more broadly when they act in socially valued ways (Fleeson & Wilt, 2010). Another intriguing possibility, rooted more in existential philosophic perspectives, is that living authentically may actually (for some individuals at least) result in religious faith. Before delving deeper into these possible tensions and harmonies between religion and authenticity, we first outline the major philosophical and psychological perspectives on authenticity that we will draw upon in the rest of the chapter.

The true self and authenticity: perspectives from existential philosophy and psychology The existential philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries developed varying accounts of authenticity, which share at least some key features with one another (for an in-depth review of several major perspectives, see Varga & Guignon, 2017). According to these accounts, authenticity broadly consists in owning up to the realities of life, accepting responsibility for oneself, and living in an active, engaged, self-directed manner. Freedom and choice play a central role in existential accounts of authenticity. For example, in Heidegger’s (1927) philosophy, the individual is conceptualized as a relation of being (termed Dasein, “being-there”), meaning that human existence entails having both a definite past and an indefinite future. Even though the realities of our life circumstances and history constrain our choices, we are nonetheless free to choose our course of action within these constraints. At a higher level, we also have the freedom of “choosing to choose a kind of being-one’s-self” (pg. 314); we can commit ourselves to being a certain kind of person

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

121

who values or cares about certain things. In other words, we have the freedom not only to decide what to do, but also to decide at this higher level why we do things (or what makes things worth doing). On this view, to live authentically is to understand that one possesses this freedom, to accept the responsibility for making such life-defining commitments, and finally to actually make such commitments and follow them with resolve and intention. Some existential thinkers explicitly integrated religion into their perspectives. For example, Kierkegaard (1849); see also (McDonald, 2017), whose conceptions of selfhood and authenticity anticipated Heidegger’s by nearly a century, maintained that the only way to live a meaningful, authentic human life is to commit oneself fully to something beyond oneself. Kierkegaard conceptualized the ultimate commitment a person can make as a commitment to God (specifically God as Jesus Christ). Kierkegaard acknowledged that this commitment could not be based on reason, and that the individual’s choice to have faith is thus absurd in a sense, and must be a radical, passionate commitment that is continually renewed. In some ways, this parallels the existentialist theologian Tillich’s (1957) conception of faith as ultimate concern, which he characterized as “an act of the total personality” (pg. 5) in which the person orients themselves to something they understand to be sacred. These views suggest the possibility of authenticity contributing to religious faith, which we will return to later. In the psychological literature, we can identify a few broad approaches to the idea of authenticity (Jongman-Sereno, & Leary, 2019). For example, person-centered approaches have emerged, guided by Rogerian theory (Rogers, 1959) that emphasize the conscious awareness of one’s actual deep-level cognitions and feelings, and acting according to these. Related traditions focus on the motivations underlying behavior. Perhaps the most influential of these is selfdetermination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). SDT claims that people are authentic when their behavior is autonomous and freely chosen on the basis of intrinsic desires as opposed to external pressures. Building on this definition, Kernis and Goldman (2006) developed an influential multicomponent conceptualization of authenticity that includes four components: awareness of who one is, unbiased processing (of self-relevant information), authentic behavior, and authentic relations with others. Both person-centered and intrinsic motivation approaches assume, at least to some extent, that there is a fact of the matter about whether a person is authentic and relatedly that authenticity is an objective dimension of human experience that is measurable, often at the dispositional level. Notably, however, these approaches rely on self-report measures, such as the perceived locus of causality technique in the SDT tradition (Ryan & Connell, 1989), Kernis and Goldman’s (2006) Authenticity Inventory, or Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis, and Joseph (2008) Authenticity Scale. Thus the operationalization of authenticity is frequently subjective, even within traditions taking a more objective stance. Other approaches are silent on whether authenticity is an objective phenomenon, and instead explicitly focus on subjective experiences of and judgments about authenticity (Rivera et al., 2019a; Sedikides, Slabu, Lenton, & Thomaes, 2017; Vess, 2019; see also Baumeister, 2019). In contrast to common intuitions that people will feel authentic when acting in accordance with whatever intrinsic inclinations they have, research in this area suggests that people in fact experience authenticity when behaving in ways that uphold social values. For example, Fleeson and Wilt (2010) found evidence that people felt authentic when engaging in extraverted, conscientious, agreeable, emotionally stable, and experientially open behaviors, regardless of their trait levels of these big five dimensions. Similarly, people feel more authentic when engaging in or reflecting upon moral behaviors, and less authentic when behaving or perceiving themselves immorally (Christy et al., 2016; Gino et al., 2015). Simply being in a good mood can also enhance feelings of authenticity (Lenton, Slabu, Sedikides, & Power, 2013). These findings suggest that experiencing authenticity may have less to do with expressing one’s inner self, whatever its contents, and more to do with engaging in behaviors and having experiences that are widely regarded as positive and valuable. However, it is important to note that since these findings concern people’s subjective reports of when they feel authentic, the door is left open for the claim that people are not always really being authentic in these cases. In the remainder of this chapter, we set aside the question of whether there is a fact of the matter about personal authenticity, and focus primarily on how religion and spirituality may bear on subjectively experienced authenticity. However, we also occasionally draw on the more objective accounts of authenticity from both philosophy and psychology. There are many connections that can be made between these varied conceptions of authenticity and the domain of religion and spirituality, and we do not hope to provide an exhaustive inventory here. Rather, we focus on those points of connection that seem to be the clearest and the most amenable to empirical study. We draw on published findings where they exist, and make recommendations for how research might proceed where they do not.

The interplay of religion and authenticity: conceptual and empirical considerations Drawing on existential philosophic and psychological perspectives, many connections can be drawn between religion and authenticity. Here, we consider how three components of religion might relate to authenticity and the true self, and

122

PART | 2 Freedom

where available discuss relevant empirical evidence. Following Bloom (2012), the three broad components of religion that we focus on are (1) having religious or spiritual experiences, (2) holding religious beliefs, and (3) participating in religious communities. We consider how each of these dimensions may have both positive and negative relationships with authenticity, conceived as both a subjective experience and an objective mode of human functioning.

Having religious experiences People’s capacity to have transcendent, mystical experiences has long been a topic of fascination for psychologists, being the focus of William James’s inquiry in The Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1961). While there is debate over whether there is a culturally universal “common core” of mystical experience (e.g., Ghorbani, Watson, Aghababaei, & Chen, 2014; Hood, 2006; MacLean, Leoutsakos, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2012), certain commonly identified qualities of mystical experience seem particularly relevant to authenticity. First, these experiences are commonly characterized by self-transcendence, which refers to experiencing a shift or breakdown in one’s sense of oneself as a bounded, finite entity (Yaden, Haidt, Hood, Vago, & Newberg, 2017). Second, spiritual experiences have a noetic quality, referring to a subjective sense of realness or validity; the mystical experience is felt to provide insight into a higher reality or the way things “really are” (Yaden, Le Nguyen, Kern, Wintering et al., 2017). Each of these dimensions of spiritual experience, and their combination, may plausibly bear on experiences of authenticity.

Self-transcendence in religious experience With respect to self-transcendence, to the extent that this aspect of mystical experience entails a loss of self (Yaden, Haidt et al., 2017), it has the potential to be disruptive to subjective experiences of self-knowledge and authenticity. However, analyses of mystical experience (e.g., Hood, 1975, 2002; James, 1961; MacLean et al., 2012; Stace, 1960) indicate that these states also commonly involve a sense of being at one with one’s surroundings, or even with the entire universe. Thus it does not seem that religious experiences simply dissolve the self and leave nothing in its place. The individual has an ongoing experience, but the boundaries typically demarcating their selfhood fall away or expand vastly. In James’s (1890) terms, the I (self as subject of experience) may persist, while the me (self as a perceived object) dissolves or is substantially altered (although in some cases people report quite radical self-dissolutions in which their experience of I-ness was itself suspended; Millie`re, 2017). While having the potential to disrupt a person’s sense of who they are, it is also possible that self-transcendent spiritual experiences may help people reorient to themselves in ways that ultimately facilitate authenticity and self-knowledge. This is consistent with available evidence that experiencing a “small self” is central to experiences of awe (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Preston & Shin, 2017; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007) and that inducing awe can promote humility (Stellar et al., 2018). There are clear conceptual connections between humility and authenticity; in particular both entail accuracy of self-understanding. After awe inductions, participants in Stellar et al.’s (2018) research were more likely to own up to external factors that contributed to their life successes, and placed more equal emphasis on their weaknesses and strengths in a writing task. Thus awe seems to contribute to more honest, accurate views of oneself—a dimension important to both philosophical and psychological conceptions of authenticity. Recent research has also linked awe to subjective judgments of meaning in life, an outcome positively predicted by both religiosity (e.g., Routledge, Roylance, & Abeyta, 2017) and authenticity (Schlegel, Hicks, King, & Arndt, 2011). Awe simultaneously increases and decreases meaning in life via experiences of happiness and small self respectively (Rivera, Vess, Hicks, & Routledge, 2019b). In the short term, small-self feelings appear to show a small but negative association with both meaning in life and authenticity (Rivera, Vess et al., 2019b). However, self-transcendent experiences such as awe, which diminish the self, may also invoke responses that increase experiences of authenticity, such as positive mood (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014) and prosocial behavior (Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, & Keltner, 2015). As such, self-transcendent experiences may be a unique context in which people experience both threats to “mefunctioning” (perhaps reducing momentary self-reports of self-knowledge and authenticity) and boosts to “I-functioning” (perhaps facilitating action that is authentic as conceived by the more objective psychological and philosophical theories, and which might ultimately also support subjective authenticity). The idea that self-transcendent religious experiences may facilitate authenticity is also consistent with broader theorizing about potential adaptive benefits of hypoegoic functioning, in which one’s conscious ego is “quieted” (Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006; Leary & Guadagno, 2011). According to these perspectives, actively attending to and thinking about the self can interfere with adaptive processes that are more spontaneous, outwardly oriented, or automatic in character. This is reminiscent of both humanistic and intrinsic-motivation perspectives in psychology (e.g., Deci & Ryan,

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

123

1985; Rogers, 1959; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). By allowing the individual to “forget” their habitual ways of conceiving of themselves (which may reflect internalized extrinsic messages), self-transcendent spiritual experiences may enable functioning that is actually more self-directed and authentic (in the sense of direct engagement with the world, unmediated by cognitive representations of self). This is consistent with Sartre’s (1946) view that people’s beliefs about themselves can actually be a barrier to authenticity, to the extent that they frame the self as an object with definite properties, thereby constraining free choice. It also seems to mesh well with Kierkegaard’s (1849) thought, in which living an authentic human life necessarily involves orienting and committing to something beyond oneself.

The noetic quality in religious experiences A second important aspect of religious experiences that we briefly consider here is their noetic quality, which refers to the subjective sense that these experiences are “real” or involve contact with a higher, truer reality than that of ordinary experience (Hood, 1975; Yaden, Le Nguyen, Kern, Wintering et al., 2017). This subjective experience of truth may carry over fairly directly to people’s sense of self-understanding. It is plausible that experiencing an encounter with a higher reality would contribute to feeling that one understands both the universe and oneself better than before. Consistent with this, Yaden, Le Nguyen, Kern, Wintering et al. (2017) find that the noetic quality of mystical experiences is associated with subsequent feelings of purpose in one’s life. Simply having the autobiographical memory of an experience that feels so real may be sufficient to increase the sense that one knows who one is. To some extent, mystical experiences’ noetic quality may also be related to their self-transcendent quality. Feeling in touch with a higher reality may demonstrate the inadequacy of the everyday, finite self-concept and necessitate a broader self-understanding. The noetic quality of spiritual experiences may even help buffer against their potentially disruptive effects on subjective self-knowledge. Experiencing a self-transcendent “ego death” in the absence of this quality could be extremely terrifying and disorienting, but in a noetic context the dissolution of everyday selfconceptions may be experienced as a gain in self-understanding. This may be true both during the throes of a spiritual experience, and in the wake of it.

Suggestions for future research Although existing research has established points of contact between religious experiences and aspects of self-functioning that are relevant to authenticity, to date little if any research has explicitly focused on how religious experiences bear on authenticity itself. Thus this relationship is ripe for empirical exploration. Initial investigations could simply begin to describe the overall relationship between religious experiences and authenticity. Perhaps the simplest empirical question to ask is whether those who have had religious experiences report greater subjective authenticity than those who have not. Going beyond this, with self-report measures such as the Mystical Experience Scale (Hood, 1975) and the Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire (Dittrich, Lamparter, & Maurer, 2010), specific features of recalled religious experiences, such as their self-transcendent and noetic qualities, could be correlated with self-reports of authenticity. Factors such as the frequency of people’s religious experiences, or the length of time since their last experience, could also be important moderators of religious experiences’ relationship with authenticity, or predictors of authenticity in their own right. More creative methodologies would be required to more directly investigate causal relationships between religious experience and authenticity. In “natural experiments,” researchers could collect self-reports of authenticity immediately after religious services where some congregants had religious experiences and some do not. Some devotees, such as Buddhist monks, can produce mystical experiences “at will” through meditation and other intentional practices (e.g., Benson, Malhotra, Goldman, Jacobs, & Hopkins, 1990). Within-subjects approaches with such individuals could assess how subjective authenticity varies between baseline and transcendent states, while between-subjects approaches could randomly assign some individuals to engage in transcendent practices while others do not. In addition to examining fluctuations in subjective authenticity, these studies could further attempt to track specific experiential elements that may mediate these changes in authenticity. However, these approaches require identifying specific populations in which religious experiences are relatively common or able to be reliably produced and thus may not be informative about how religious experiences affect authenticity among individuals who do not commonly have such experiences (which is arguably the majority of people). Procedures for experimentally inducing awe may be a promising avenue to examine how religious-type experiences impact subjective authenticity. Whether awe is constitutive of spiritual experiences, or a typical emotional response to those experiences, it is clearly a closely related state (e.g., Preston & Shin, 2017; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012), and thus awe inductions might fruitfully be used as a laboratory operationalization of religious experience.

124

PART | 2 Freedom

As discussed above, some aspects of awe (such as small-self feelings) may be disruptive to subjective reports of selfknowledge and authenticity during or in the immediate wake of the experience. However, the accommodation processes that awe experiences are thought to provoke (Keltner & Haidt, 2003) may contribute to longer term positive effects on people’s perceived self-knowledge and authenticity. As restrictions surrounding the use of psychedelic drugs in research relax (e.g., Millie`re, 2017), it may be increasingly possible to perform experiments in which participants are randomly assigned to either psychedelic or placebo conditions. This may be the most reliable means of inducing truly profound and encompassing mystical experiences (e.g., Yaden, Le Nguyen, Kern, Besler et al., 2017). However, it is unlikely that this means will be accessible to many researchers in the near future. Until then, laboratory awe inductions may represent the most feasible means to experimentally study the effects of religious experiences. Regardless of the particular means used to induce the experience, the basic approach of randomly assigning participants to either have or not have transcendent experiences could be extended in several ways to assess how specifically religious experiences affect subjective authenticity. First, the effects of induced experiences could be compared between religious and nonreligious individuals—does awe, for instance, affect the subjective authenticity of religious people differently than that of the nonreligious? Speculatively, religious believers may be better able to accommodate these experiences into their existing worldviews, perhaps facilitating their ability to feel they have gained in selfunderstanding from the experience. Second, explicit exposure to religious or spiritual content could be another factor that is varied in addition to whether or not a transcendent experience is induced—does the inclusion of religious content moderate the effects of transcendent experience on perceived authenticity? We might expect that this would depend on the nature of the spiritual content (e.g., whether it is content associated with a particular religion, or content that refers to nonspecific divinity and spirituality), in conjunction with participants’ own religious convictions. In sum, there are many clear conceptual connections between religious experiences and authenticity, and numerous indirect empirical findings that are consistent with these connections. However, there is a dearth of research that has directly examined how religious and spiritual experiences bear on authenticity, and more work is needed to assess the speculative connections we have drawn here. We now turn our attention to how holding religious beliefs may relate to the experience of authenticity.

Holding religious beliefs Clearly, people can hold a wide range of specific religious and spiritual beliefs. There are significant differences in the teachings of the major world religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and looking within each of these major faith traditions one finds an incredible internal diversity of theological, cosmological, and moral doctrines. Beyond the major religions, there exist innumerable local religions and traditions of supernatural belief, and many more have existed throughout human history. How does holding a particular set of religious or spiritual beliefs affect the experience of authenticity? Since an exhaustive accounting of all permutations of religious belief is beyond the scope of this chapter, we here focus on three broad aspects of religious belief that seem to have particularly clear implications for authenticity: theism or the belief in supernatural agents, body soul dualism, and simply identifying oneself as a believer in a particular religion (i.e., having a religious identity).

Theistic beliefs The belief in supernatural agents, usually identified as a God or gods, is a universal feature of religion. Psychologists’ efforts to explain why people hold these beliefs in the first place have generally approached the question from an evolutionary standpoint (e.g., Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Bloom, 2012) and have focused on the potential contributions of cognitive mechanisms, such as sensitivity to signs of agency/animacy (e.g., Boyers, 2003; Gervais, 2013), and motivational mechanisms, such as how belief in omniscient, omnipotent deities may maintain a sense of security and control (e.g., Kay, Shepherd, Blatz, Chua, & Galinsky, 2010; Vail et al., 2010) and promote prosociality and group cohesion (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Johnson, Cohen, & Okun, 2016). Each of these broad perspectives has implications for how theistic beliefs might impact experiences of authenticity. First, if normative tendencies in human cognition dispose us to believe in supernatural agents, this implies that such beliefs, even if ultimately inaccurate, contribute to the individual’s subjective sense of understanding the world. This in turn may promote a subjective sense of understanding oneself. Consistent with this possibility, Blaine, Trivedi, and Eshleman (1998) found that the strength of participants’ religious convictions (which, as operationalized, extended beyond belief in supernatural agents) was associated with greater positivity and metacognitive certainty in spontaneous

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

125

self-descriptions. More recently, Kitchens and Phillips (2018) have reported evidence that individuals with clearer beliefs about God (in the sense of stronger agreement or disagreement with statements about God’s properties) also tend to have greater self-concept clarity. While these findings are suggestive that supernatural-agent beliefs may enhance subjective self-knowledge, this remains to be tested directly with experimental methods. The idea that belief in deities functions to maintain psychological security (e.g., Vail et al., 2010) also implies that these beliefs may enhance experiences of authenticity, via mechanisms other than the promotion of perceived selfknowledge. Many theories identify a sense of security as a fundamental psychological need (e.g., Bowlby, 1969; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Hart, 2014; Maslow, 1943) and predict that experiencing insecurity will prompt compensatory responses aimed at restoring security. Various perspectives (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Maslow, 1943; Rogers, 1959) claim quite explicitly that people’s ability to act authentically is impaired when such basic needs are unmet. On these accounts the individual’s drive to satisfy basic security needs may lead them to behave in ways that are at odds with their own intrinsic inclinations (e.g., seeking to please others in order to achieve the security of belonging and inclusion). Thus if supernatural-agent beliefs contribute to a chronic sense of psychological security, these beliefs may thereby potentiate behavior that not only feels more self-directed and authentic, but actually is. On the subjective side, this is consistent with evidence that people feel more authentic when in a positive mood (e.g., Fleeson & Wilt, 2010), although this does not uniquely support the idea that feelings of psychological security per se contribute to feeling authentic. The possibility that deity beliefs contribute to prosocial behavior represents another avenue by which these beliefs may impact the experience of authenticity. According to some accounts, belief in omniscient, morally judgmental deities was selected for during cultural evolution because of its ability to promote cooperation and adherence to group norms, even in very large or geographically dispersed groups (Norenzayan et al., 2014). Consistent with these accounts, some evidence suggests that priming people with God or other religious concepts can enhance prosociality (e.g., Clobert, Saroglou, & Hwang, 2015; Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007; see Shariff, Willard, Andersen, & Norenzayan, 2016 for a metaanalytic review). In the context of the previously discussed evidence that people feel authentic when engaging in actions or having experiences that are generally regarded as valuable and positive (e.g., Fleeson & Wilt, 2010; Lenton, Slabu et al., 2013), we may clearly predict that if deity beliefs lead to prosocial behavior, this in turn should promote experiences of authenticity. We revisit these ideas later in the chapter, where we discuss the idea that the moral domain is the clearest context in which religion and authenticity can be seen to intersect. Beyond the overarching belief that a deity or deities exist, we may ask more fine-grained questions about how the specific characteristics ascribed to deities and aspects of the individual’s perceived relationship with deities might bear on authenticity. One relevant tradition in the psychology of religion has approached the individual’s image of and relationship with God through the lens of attachment theory, with the basic rationale that attachment to God may involve essentially the same processes as early attachment to one’s caregiver (Kirkpatrick, 1992, 1998). This is significant for considering how God beliefs may bear on authenticity for two reasons: first, because attachment patterns play an important role in self-concept development; people draw inferences about themselves based on how they are treated by attachment figures (Bowlby, 1969; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Shaver, Collins, & Clark, 1996). Second, because attachment plays an important role in promoting a sense of personal security (Bowlby 1969; Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005), which as discussed previously may be an important enabler of authentic functioning. A recent investigation drawing on this tradition explicitly examined the relationship between attachment to God and authenticity. In a simple cross-sectional correlational study, Counted and Moustafa (2017) examined the relationship between scores on the two-dimensional Attachment to God Inventory (Beck & McDonald, 2004) and scores on Wood et al.’s (2008) Authenticity Scale in a sample of Christian young adults living in Stellenbosch, South Africa. In general, the results indicated that a more secure pattern of attachment to God was associated with greater self-reported authenticity. In particular, anxious God-attachment was associated with lower scores on the Authentic Living component of the Authenticity Scale, and higher scores on the Self-Alienation and Accepting External Influences components. The same general pattern was observed for avoidant God-attachment, but the relationships were weaker and avoidant Godattachment was only significantly associated with Self-Alienation scores. These results are suggestive that believers’ specific conceptions of and subjective relationships with deities can bear on their experience of authenticity, but they fall well short of demonstrating a causal relationship. As such, experimental research is needed to examine how instilling certain images of the divine (e.g., through priming techniques) actually influences in-the-moment experiences of authenticity. It is plausible that individual differences in attachment to God could function either as moderators (e.g., priming God may enhance authenticity only among those with relatively secure God-attachments) or as mediators of such effects (e.g., priming a benevolent, loving God may enhance authenticity by enhancing attachment security).

126

PART | 2 Freedom

Body soul dualism In addition to a belief in deities, a belief in body soul dualism has also been identified as a ubiquitous feature of religious faith. Across many diverse religious traditions, each individual is thought to possess an immaterial, immortal soul or spirit (see Bering, 2006, and the associated commentaries). As with the belief in supernatural agents, it has been suggested that body soul dualism is the result of generalized intuitive tendencies (e.g., Bloom, 2007; Boyers, 2003), motivations to maintain security (specifically from the threat of mortality; Greenberg, Sullivan, Kosloff, & Solomon, 2006), and that body soul dualism has been selected for in cultural evolution because of its ability to promote cooperation (Bering, 2006). Thus the same considerations discussed in the preceding section on theistic beliefs bear on the relationship between soul beliefs and authenticity. Soul beliefs may facilitate authenticity in the same ways as theistic beliefs (e.g., facilitate nondefensive responding and prosociality). Having already discussed these possibilities in depth above, here we focus our discussion in more depth here on the possibility that belief in souls originates in the same cognitive tendencies that contribute to belief in true selves. The concept of the true self, which figures prominently in the folk psychology of authenticity, bears many parallels to the concept of a soul. Both seem to be understood as in some way grounding or encapsulating personal identity; the true self is “who you really are,” and in many religious traditions the fact that your soul survives your death means that you have survived (although reincarnated-soul traditions, such as those of Hinduism and Buddhism, ascribe less personal content to the soul). People typically think of both true selves and souls as nonobvious internal entities that are already present within each person at birth and are relatively immutable (Bloom, Stewart, Chang, & Banks, 2004; Landau et al., 2004; Moser, 2007; Schlegel, Vess, & Arndt, 2012; Waterman, 1984). True selves and souls are also both understood in powerfully moral terms (Bering, 2006; Strohminger & Nichols, 2014). The most prominent differences between the two concepts are the additional properties of immateriality and immortality ascribed to souls. It might even be that the concept of souls is more or less identical to that of true selves, with the exception that these additional properties are necessary features of souls (but not of true selves). In one line of our own research (Christy, Schlegel, & Cimpian, 2019; De Freitas, Cikara et al., 2017), we have drawn connections between true-self-beliefs and psychological essentialism, a broad-based cognitive tendency to make sense of the world in terms of underlying essences (Gelman, 2003). Across various conceptual domains, people seem to infer that entities have an underlying true nature that defines their identity and explains their observable properties and behavior. This tendency has been especially well-documented in people’s reasoning about categories or kinds, including gender and race (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008), and species (Sousa, Atran, & Medin, 2002), and also extends to how people understand personality traits (Haslam, Bastian, & Bissett, 2004) and even man-made artifacts (Newman, Diesendruck, & Bloom, 2011). The cross-cultural prevalence of essentialism (e.g., Astuti, 2001; Rhodes & Gelman, 2009; Waxman, Medin, & Ross, 2007; see also Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) suggests that it is a species-typical human cognitive bias. In our research, among other results, we found that experimental manipulations of essentialist thought in other domains affected the extent to which participants endorsed the explicit existence of true selves and essentialist statements about personal identity that did not explicitly refer to true selves (Christy et al., 2019). If, as these results suggest, essentialist reasoning processes contribute to the impression that each person possesses a true self, might the same cognitive tendencies also support the apparently similar belief that each person has a soul? Perhaps, as implied by some analyses (Banerjee & Bloom, 2013; Baumard & Boyer, 2013), belief in souls is simply a culturally elaborated variant on a more basic intuitive essentialist understanding of individual identity. Belief in both true selves and souls may be “self-essences,” understood as identity-conferring underlying true natures, with soul concepts being more specifically defined by religious traditions. As a simple initial test of this idea, we drew on six datasets from our prior research, in which we had included one or both of our true-self-belief measures (the explicit “belief in true selves” scale and the less-explicit “identity/selfessentialism” scale, which we hereafter label BTS and ISE, respectively) and a two-item measure of soul belief (one item expressly asking about belief in the existence of souls, and the second asking about belief in an afterlife). A total of eight effect sizes were extracted from the six data sets, and meta-analytic estimates of the correlations were computed using the meta package for R (Schwarzer, 2007). If true-self-beliefs and soul beliefs are both supported by the same cognitive tendencies, we should see an overall positive correlation between the two. This is borne out by an initial random-effects meta-analysis; the overall meta-analytic correlation between the two was positive (r 5 0.26, 95% CI [0.19, 0.32], z 5 7.76, P , .0001). The results do indicate that there was significant heterogeneity in the relationship across the eight effect sizes, which may partly be due to the use of the two different measures of true-self-beliefs (in general the ISE scale exhibited smaller relationships with soul beliefs than the BTS scale, see Fig. 9.1).

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

127

FIGURE 9.1 Meta-analytic correlation between true-self and soul beliefs belief in six datasets.

FIGURE 9.2 Meta-analytic correlation between true-self and soul beliefs among religious believers.

The idea that soul beliefs do not purely result from intuitive tendencies, but are dependent upon exposure to existing cultural traditions of soul belief (Banerjee & Bloom, 2013; Baumard & Boyer, 2013), can be roughly tested by comparing the correlation between true-self-belief and soul belief among religious people to that among nonreligious people. Presuming that true-self-belief (perhaps especially as measured by our nonexplicit ISE scale) is a more general, less culturally specified belief than the belief in souls (consistent with our previous suggestion that soul beliefs effectively are true-self-beliefs with the additional stipulations of being immaterial and immortal), we should find that true-self-beliefs and soul beliefs are more closely related among religious people than among nonreligious people. Observing this pattern would be consistent with the idea that religious traditions “channel” intuitive belief-formation processes to produce specific beliefs that would not be arrived at through intuitive processing alone. Using the same datasets, separate meta-analytic correlations between true-self-belief and soul belief were computed for nonreligious participants (those identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics) and religious participants (both those identifying with a particular religion and those identifying as “spiritual, but not religious”). These results were somewhat consistent with the foregoing analysis, with the meta-analytic correlation among religious participants being somewhat larger and much more stable (r 5 0.21, 95% CI [0.16, 0.25], z 5 8.77, P , .0001) than the estimate among nonreligious participants (r 5 0.19, 95% CI [0.04, 0.33], z 5 2.52, P 5 .0118). Since these meta-analytic results are based on a small number of studies collected by a single research group, these results should by no means be taken as conclusive. However, they are suggestive of an overall positive relationship between true-self and soul beliefs that is accentuated among religious believers (Figs. 9.2 and 9.3). This association between belief in true selves and belief in souls is broadly consistent with the idea that generalized intuitive tendencies contribute to these beliefs. Further testament to this connection is evidence people implicitly reason as if souls and true selves exist, even individuals who explicitly deny the existence of a soul or self. For example, adults who endorse the idea that the soul ceases permanently when we die also endorse the idea that a protagonist in a story knew he was dead after his physical death, implying persistent belief in a consciousness separate from the physical body (Bering, 2002). Similarly, amongst Buddhist Tibetans whose religious doctrines explicitly deny the existence of a self, there still is a tendency to say moral features are more central to personal essence than other psychological traits (Garfield, Nichols, Rai, & Strohminger, 2015), implying that belief in an essential true self may be quite intuitive and

128

PART | 2 Freedom

FIGURE 9.3 Meta-analytic correlation between true-self and soul beliefs among the nonreligious.

“hard to shake.” This might explain why belief in both true selves and souls is so pervasive despite the lack of objective evidence that either actually exists. That these beliefs are rooted in such fundamental aspects of our cognitive systems may also help explain the importance of both authenticity and religion in so many people’s lives. Future research should more directly examine the connections between true self and soul beliefs. A basic question in this research would seem to be whether individuals who endorse both true-self and soul beliefs actually distinguish between these entities. If, as we have suggested, souls are effectively religiously specified true selves, then the two concepts may be interchangeable in the minds of those who endorse both. This question could be approached in a simple fashion by asking people direct questions about how they understand the relationship between the true self and the soul. Building on this, a simple experimental procedure could be to randomly assign participants to attribute content to either the soul or the true self, and examine whether people understand these entities as having the same properties. Experimental methods could also address whether true-self and soul beliefs differ functionally for believers. For example, we have found that people report greater adherence to moral values when instructed to be authentic and consult their true selves before responding (Kim, Christy, Rivera, Schlegel, & Hicks, 2018). Would exhorting people to consult their souls yield similar effects? These and other investigations would extend our current understanding of how this ubiquitous aspect of religious belief bears on the folk psychology of authenticity.

Having a religious identity The final sense of “religious belief” that we consider here is that of identifying oneself as a believer in a certain religion. This is perhaps the most encompassing conception of what it means to hold religious beliefs, as this broad-level identification with a religion entails the acceptance of that religion’s major tenets about the nature of the divine, of persons, and the relationship between the two. For example, virtually all individuals who identify as Muslims will believe that there exists a single omnipotent God (Allah), that Muhammad was Allah’s chief prophet, and that people will be subject to a final moral judgment in which the good will be eternally rewarded in Heaven and the evil will be eternally punished in Hell. Because of this encompassing quality, and because of their status as generalized self-understandings, religious identities may have particularly strong connections to authenticity. Religious identities seem to have the potential to both enhance and detract from experiences of authenticity. At an extremely basic level, we may ask how simply having versus not having a religious identity bears on authenticity. Inasmuch as any definite identification of oneself with something can help to organize one’s self-concept (e.g., Markus, 1977), it seems clear that religious identification has at least as much potential as any other kind of selfidentification to contribute to clearly structured conceptions of self, which might contribute to a subjective sense of self-knowledge. Furthermore, having a religious identity entails not just a “self-contained” generalization about oneself (e.g., “I am an introvert.”), but endorsement of a fairly extensive worldview including metaphysical and ethical commitments (e.g., “A benevolent God exists. and “People should be loving and merciful.”). The fact that religious identification includes these broader elements may make it particularly helpful in maintaining not only a sense of selfunderstanding, but a broader sense of authentic self-direction. This is consistent with evidence of greater happiness and meaning in life among religious believers compared to nonbelievers (e.g., Ellison, 1991; Hayward, Krause, Ironson, Hill, & Emmons, 2016; Ritter, Preston, & Hernandez, 2014). However, these findings do not directly bear on authenticity, per se, and other evidence suggests that nonbelievers can also achieve high levels of well-being and be committed to similarly elaborate worldviews (e.g., Schnell, 2015; Schnell & Keenan, 2011; Shaver, Lenauer, & Sadd, 1980).

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

129

To provide some additional evidence that more directly bears on authenticity, we again drew upon datasets from our own prior work, in which participants had completed Wood et al.’s (2008) Authenticity Scale in addition to a single item measuring their degree of religiousness (“Please indicate how religious you are.”). Nine datasets that included these variables yielded a total of 11 effect sizes for the relationship between religiousness and each subscale of the Authenticity Scale (Authentic Living, Accepting External Influences, and Self-Alienation). The random-effects metaanalytic estimates of these relationships indicated that religiousness had a reliable positive association with Authentic Living (r 5 0.18, 95% CI [0.14, 0.22], z 5 8.05, P , .0001; see Fig. 9.4), no reliable relationship with Accepting External Influences (r 5 0.02, 95% CI [ 2 0.03, 0.06], z 5 0.74, P 5 .4609; see Fig. 9.5), and a reliable negative association with Self-Alienation (r 5 20.16, 95% CI [ 2 0.21, 20.10], z 5 25.31, P , .0001; see Fig. 9.6). These results indicate that a more robust religious identity is associated with feeling that one is more behaviorally authentic, as well as

FIGURE 9.4 Metaanalytic correlation between religiousness and Authentic Living.

FIGURE 9.5 Metaanalytic correlation between religiousness and Accepting External Influences.

FIGURE 9.6 Metaanalytic correlation between religiousness and SelfAlienation.

130

PART | 2 Freedom

experiencing a greater degree of self-knowledge. The lack of an overall relationship with scores on the Accepting External Influences subscale may suggest that some believers experience their religion as a constraining influence, while others do not. The possibility that religion can be an impediment to authenticity for some, but not for others, ties in very directly to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic orientations to religion (Allport & Ross, 1967), which has received a great deal of empirical attention in the psychology of religion. As stated elegantly by Allport and Ross (1967, pg. 434), “the extrinsically motivated person uses his religion, whereas the intrinsically motivated person lives his religion.” This distinction suggests that some people’s religious belief is merely instrumental (e.g., someone who identifies with a religion in order to reap the social rewards of belonging and approval) while others engage with religion for its own sake. Already, this distinction is verging on the conceptual territory of authenticity, particularly the SDT tradition of conceptualizing authenticity as intrinsically motivated action (Ryan & Deci, 2004). Consistent with the idea that an intrinsic religious orientation is associated with authenticity, numerous studies report evidence linking intrinsic religiousness with subjective well-being (e.g., Byrd, Hageman, & Isle, 2007; Donahue, 1985; Genia, 1996; Laurencelle, Abell, & Schwartz, 2002). More directly relevant to authenticity, Ghorbani et al. have consistently observed positive relationships between intrinsic religiousness and various self-related measures, including self-knowledge, among Iranian Muslims (e.g., Ghorbani, Watson, Bing, Davison, & LeBreton, 2003; Ghorbani, Watson, Chen, & Norballa, 2012; Ghorbani, Watson, Madani, & Chen, 2016; Watson et al., 2002; see also Bła˙zek & Besta, 2012). Future research can build on these findings by examining relationships between self-reported religious orientations and more explicit measures of authenticity (e.g., Kernis & Goldman, 2006; Lenton, Bruder, Slabu, & Sedikides, 2013; Wood et al., 2008). It is also plausible that people might express a more intrinsic orientation toward religion when primed with authenticity as a value or directly instructed to be authentic. Experimental tests of this prediction could provide initial evidence of a bidirectional, mutually reinforcing relationship between religious belief and authenticity. In addition to considering the intrapersonal structure and nature of religious identities, it is also important to recognize that religious identities are social identities. Thus a host of social identity based factors may bear on the relationship between religious identification and well-being. Here, we focus on the possibility that religious and nonreligious identities may be either valued or stigmatized. Recent theorizing (Schmader & Sedikides, 2018) frames state authenticity as a multifaceted fit to one’s environment, with cognitive, motivational, and social components of fit. On this model, social fit substantially boils down to whether or not one’s central social identities are accepted and valued within a given context. This highlights the potential for an individual’s religious identity to occasion both authenticity and inauthenticity, depending on whether the current social context is one in which that identity is valued versus stigmatized. This model of state authenticity can be integrated readily with evidence that the social value ascribed to religion varies substantially across cultures (Gebauer, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2012; Gebauer et al., 2017), and that both atheist and theist identities are stigmatized in some contexts (Abbott & Mollen, 2018; Doane & Elliott, 2015; Ghumman, Ryan, Barclay, & Markel, 2013; Pasek & Cook, 2017). Broadly speaking, the implication is that people will experience more authenticity in contexts where their particular religious identity is socially valued, and will experience decrements in authenticity in contexts where it is stigmatized. The exact degree of (in)authenticity that is experienced might be expected to vary continuously as a function of the degree of social value versus stigma associated with the identity in question. Inauthentic feelings may be maximized in contexts where the individual feels they have to actively deny their religious identity. These social contextual considerations lead naturally into the next section, where we consider how participation in religious communities bears on authenticity.

Participating in religious communities The fact that religions constitute distinct communities, with their own norms, practices, and sense of collective identity, is perhaps their most significant feature from a social psychological perspective (Bloom, 2012; Graham & Haidt, 2010). The community participatory elements of a given religion are certainly the most concrete behavioral manifestations of what it means to be a person of that religion. By attending communal services, engaging in acts of devotion such as prayer, and otherwise participating in the activities of a religious community, the individual is exposed to a wide range of social influences that may impact many areas of their psychology. Here, we consider how religious participation may relate to authenticity in terms of meeting belongingness needs and participation in religious worship and ritual.

Religion as a means of meeting belongingness needs Based on both SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2004) and state authenticity (Schmader & Sedikides, 2018) perspectives, a primary means by which engagement in a religious community might influence authenticity is by meeting fundamental

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

131

belongingness needs (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). According to SDT, intrinsically motivated action is potentiated by having one’s basic needs met, including the need to belong (Maslow, 1943), while as discussed previously social fit is thought to contribute to state authenticity (Schmader & Sedikides, 2018). In the context of numerous findings linking religion to experiences of belonging (Amit & Bar-Lev, 2015; Freeze, 2017; Krause, 2016; Krause & Bastida, 2011; Krause & Wulff, 2005; Zhang, Chen, & Schlegel, 2018; Zhang et al., 2018) and social support (e.g., Bradley, 1995; Ellison & George, 1994; Fatima, Sharif, & Khalid, 2018; Holt, Schulz, Williams, Clark, & Wang, 2014; Milevsky, 2017), it seems very likely that religious involvement can contribute to believers’ authenticity through these mechanisms. However, not all members of a religious community may experience full inclusion and belonging in that context. Based on Schmader and Sedikides’ (2018) predictions regarding social identity and state authenticity, we would expect that people will only experience full social fit within their religious community if all of their salient social identities (including but not limited to their religious identity) are accepted and valued. Within many religions, there are taboos and restrictions surrounding sexuality and sexual orientation, with same-sex attraction specifically frequently condemned as sinful. Thus individuals who experience same-sex attraction (particularly those who actually identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, i.e., LGB individuals) may feel inauthentic in the context of a religious community that takes this condemnatory stance. Consistent with this, research suggests that LGB individuals can experience conflict between their religious identities and their identity as a sexual minority (Garcı´a, Gray-Stanley, & Ramirez-Valles, 2008). Other evidence suggests that more religious LGB people display more signs of internalized negativity toward their LGB identities (Foster, Brewster, Velez, Eklund, & Keum, 2017; Moleiro, Pinto, & Freire, 2013), and that concealment of these identities is indeed experienced as inauthentic (Riggle, Rostosky, Black, & Rosenkrantz, 2017). Even in cases where the conflict between identities is less extreme, perceiving that one doesn’t entirely fit within one’s community in one way or another may still undermine self-certainty (Hohman, Gaffney, & Hogg, 2017). These findings suggest that religious participation can occasion situation-specific experiences of inauthenticity when certain social identities are not fully accepted by the community in question. In cases where both the stigmatized social identity and the religious identity are central and important to the individual’s global sense of self, these experiences of inauthenticity may become chronic, and take a greater toll on overall well-being.

Participation in religious rituals Beyond these general dynamics involving belonging, we may also wonder how more specific and unique aspects of religious participation bear on authenticity. Ritual practices are among the most distinctive activities of religious communities (Idler, 2013). How does engaging in religious rituals impact the experience of authenticity? Drawing on functional perspectives on religious ritual and on ideas we have outlined above, we here focus on how religious rituals might contribute to authenticity by facilitating religious experiences, strengthening religious identity, and enhancing prosociality. The ostensive purpose of many religious rituals is to orient participants actively to the divine. As stated by Idler (2013), religious rituals are “formal, invariant, elaborated, linked words and acts that refer to and enact the performer’s relationship to the sacred” (pg. 331, emphasis added). Thus ritual participation should precipitate subjective religious experiences among at least some believers, some of the time. Consistent with this, Idler maintains that all religious rituals entail at least some degree of transcendence, rituals “carry individuals through time, from one moment of takenfor-granted everyday life, to another time or place, and then back again to daily life” (pg. 332; see also Idler et al., 2009; Marshall, 2002). As we have discussed previously, there are numerous ways in which these kinds of religious experiences might contribute to authenticity, such as by diminishing defensive self-preoccupations and enhancing positive mood and prosociality. Intrapersonal identity-related mechanisms seem particularly likely to link ritual participation with authenticity. The idea that ritual participation enhances identification with the religion is consistent with both broad social psychological perspectives (e.g., Bem, 1967; Festinger, 1957) and with perspectives that emphasize the social “binding” functions of religion and ritual (e.g., Graham & Haidt, 2010; Hobson, Schroeder, Risen, Xygalatas, & Inzlicht, 2017; Watson-Jones & Legare, 2016). By enjoining their members to repeatedly engage in ritual behaviors that may serve no obvious causal function (Legare & Souza, 2012), religious communities can gradually strengthen identification with and commitment to the religion. As discussed above, a stronger religious identity may contribute to enhanced authenticity, giving the individual a clearer overall sense of self-understanding and making broader networks of beliefs and values more chronically salient. We might expect that the identity-related benefits of ritual participation are more pronounced among (or even limited to)

132

PART | 2 Freedom

individuals whose religious orientation is intrinsic. Since self-justification motives are most likely to be activated in the absence of a clear external justification for one’s behavior (Festinger, 1957; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959), those with an extrinsic orientation, who perceive clear external motives for their religious participation (e.g., to remain on good terms with the other members of the religious community), may not acquire a particularly strong religious identity. However, it could also be that repeated participation in rituals can actually shift participants’ orientation to become more intrinsic over time, even if it is initially extrinsic. We would predict that this is particularly likely to happen when the rituals in question are relatively intense or costly for the individual (e.g., Aronson & Mills, 1959; Xygalatas et al., 2013, see also Schnell & Pali, 2013). These ideas further point to possible recursive, mutually reinforcing relationships between authenticity and religious identity. An initial authentic commitment to religion (e.g., Kierkegaard, 1849) may precipitate intrinsically motivated engagement in ritual, contributing to a strengthened religious identity, in turn precipitating deeper engagement in ritual and other activities of the religious community. While we generally suggest that stronger religious identities should be positively associated with authenticity, it is important to bear in mind that these identities may also occasion experiences of inauthenticity in contexts where they are not socially valued (e.g., Gebauer et al., 2012; Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlo¨sser, 2013). A final means by which ritual participation might impact authenticity, which is related to its effects on religious experience and identity, is by promoting prosociality. There is broad consensus among theorists that this is a primary function of rituals (Idler, 2013; Hobson et al., 2017; Watson-Jones & Legare, 2016). Some evidence suggests that ritual participation primarily enhances ingroup prosociality (e.g., Greer et al., 2014; Widman, Corcoran, & Nagy, 2009), while other findings imply that engaging in religious activities can enhance prosociality more generally, including toward religious outgroups (e.g., Johnson, Li, Cohen, & Okun, 2013; Lin, Tong, Lee, Low, & Gomes, 2016; Shariff et al., 2016). Regardless of the scope of its effects, any contributions of religious participation to prosociality should also contribute to experiences of authenticity, which as we have reviewed are reliably associated with acting in socially valued and specifically moral ways (Christy et al., 2016; Fleeson & Wilt, 2010; Gino et al., 2015).

Morality: the key to understanding the relationship between religion and authenticity? In the foregoing review, we have identified a wide range of ways in which religion, construed broadly to include religious experiences, beliefs, and participation, might bear on the experience of authenticity. While it seems that religion has the potential to both enhance and detract from experiences of authenticity, the bulk of the possible connections we have drawn are positive in nature. Across the domains of our review, one of the most consistent themes that emerges is that of prosociality or morality. Thus we contend that morality is central to understanding the relationship between religion and authenticity. Prominent accounts of both religion (e.g., Bloom, 2012; Graham & Haidt, 2010) and basic self-related processes (e.g., Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995) suggest that these systems primarily function to maintain harmonious social relationships, ultimately promoting groups’ success and survival. On these accounts, our status as social beings that live collectively is fundamental to both the psychology of religion, and that of selfhood as a whole. Perhaps, we relate to ourselves and our lives with the attitude of care or concern noted by existentialist thinkers because this attitude of self-concern has enabled us to better live together with others. In the context of collective life, where the individual’s survival depends on maintaining good relations with others, being able to understand how one is seen by others may confer critical advantages (Krebs, 2008). Thus our capacity to have elaborated self-concepts and engage in selfevaluation may ultimately originate in concerns with our social reputations in our communities. On this view, our very sense of self may be said to exist for morality. This perspective is highly consistent with documented connections between authenticity and morality, such as the moral content of authentic experiences (Gino et al., 2015) and the prevalence of intuitive conceptions of the true self as morally good (Christy et al., 2016; De Freitas, Sarkissian et al., 2017). It seems that people feel most “like themselves” when they are behaving morally or otherwise upholding social values (Fleeson & Wilt, 2010; Lenton, Bruder et al., 2013). If a primary function of religion is to get people to behave in these ways, as prominent accounts suggest (e.g., Graham & Haidt, 2010), then this seems to be a fundamental link between religion and authenticity. If, as evidence suggests, religions contribute to individuals’ moral identities and actual moral behavior (e.g., Bloom, 2012; Ward & King, 2018), this in turn should enhance their experience of authenticity. While this analysis predicts a broadly positive relationship between religion and authenticity, it also suggests specific ways in which religion might engender experiences of inauthenticity. If the moral standards set by a given religious community are very high, its members might feel inauthentic when they inevitably fail to meet them. As we have previously discussed, individuals whose very identities are regarded as immoral within their religion might face

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

133

particularly pronounced challenges of this nature. As America steadily becomes more secular and individualistic (Alper, 2018; Lipka, 2015; Pew Research Center, 2012; Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, 2013), religious moralities that emphasize putting others first and submitting the self to the divine may increasingly come into conflict with these societal trends, occasioning more frequent experiences of inauthenticity among the religious (particularly in nonreligious contexts, e.g., Pasek & Cook, 2017).

Concluding thoughts: is religion uniquely relevant to authenticity? A final question that is raised by this analysis is whether there is anything unique about the relationship between religion and authenticity, or if nonreligious communities and their attendant norms and practices may affect authenticity by the same mechanisms. In brief, our answer to this is both “no” and “yes.” Because our analysis of the relationship between religion and authenticity has relied primarily on generalized mechanisms such as emotions, identification with groups, and social influence processes, in principle the same mechanisms could be activated in nonreligious contexts as well. However, what does seem unique about religions, as compared to other kinds of social structures, is their explicit emphasis on transcendence, universalism, and ultimate questions about the good and the nature of reality. While religions are communities that people may belong to and identify themselves with in much the same way as nonreligious communities, it does not seem that many other communities attempt to actively orient their members toward questions of transcendent, universal truth and value. This transcendent orientation may allow religions to exert a more global, encompassing influence on the individual’s life than other communities, perhaps making religious faith both a uniquely potent source of experienced authenticity and a uniquely appealing object of life-defining authentic commitments. While this is a plausible generalization, the relationship between religion and authenticity is very likely more complicated than this. Inasmuch as there are documented differences between specific religions’ impact on human psychology (e.g., Alferi, Culver, Carver, Arena, & Antoni, 1999; Hall, Shannonhouse, Aten, McMartin, & Silverman, 2018), and different religious communities may not all orient their members toward transcendence to the same degree. Coupled with conceptualizations of authenticity in terms of person environment fit (e.g., Schmader & Sedikides, 2018), these findings indicate that a full accounting of the relationship between authenticity and religion will require consideration of situational environmental factors (both those internal to specific religious communities and those in the broader sociocultural context), personal factors (such as individuals’ subjective orientations to their faith, and the social identities that may coexist with a religious identity), and their interaction. Pinning down the dynamics by which religion may enhance or detract from experienced authenticity, and by which authenticity may enhance or detract from religious faith, poses a fascinating challenge for psychology. We hope that some of the connections and recommendations we have developed here will provide useful guidance to researchers grappling with these questions.

References Abbott, D. M., & Mollen, D. (2018). Atheism as a concealable stigmatized identity: Outness, anticipated stigma, and well-being. The Counseling Psychologist, 46(6), 685 707. Alferi, S. M., Culver, J. L., Carver, C. S., Arena, P. L., & Antoni, M. H. (1999). Religiosity, religious coping, and distress: A prospective study of Catholic and Evangelical Hispanic women in treatment for early-stage breast cancer. Journal of Health Psychology, 4(3), 343 356. Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432 443. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212. Alper, B. (2018). Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religion. Retrieved from ,http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/08/why-americas-nones-dont-identify-with-a-religion/.. Amit, K., & Bar-Lev, S. (2015). Immigrants’ sense of belonging to the host country: The role of life satisfaction, language proficiency, and religious motives. Social Indicators Research, 124(3), 947 961. Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177. Astuti, R. (2001). Are we all natural dualists? A cognitive developmental approach. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7, 429 447. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(6), 713 730. Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2013). Would Tarzan believe in God? Conditions for the emergence of religious belief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17 (1), 7 8. Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2013). Explaining moral religions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(6), 272 280. Baumeister, R. F. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological review of historical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 163 176. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.163.

134

PART | 2 Freedom

Baumeister, R. F. (2019). Stalking the true self through the jungles of authenticity: Problems, contradictions, inconsistencies, disturbing findings—and a possible way forward. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 143 154. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497 529. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497. Beck, R., & McDonald, A. (2004). Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32(2), 92 103. Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 74(3), 183. Benson, H., Malhotra, M. S., Goldman, R. F., Jacobs, G. D., & Hopkins, P. J. (1990). Three case reports of the metabolic and electroencephalographic changes during advanced Buddhist meditation techniques. Behavioral Medicine, 16(2), 90 95. Bering, J. M. (2002). Intuitive conceptions of dead agents’ minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2(4), 263 308. Bering, J. M. (2006). The cognitive science of souls: Clarifications and extensions of the evolutionary model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 486 493. Blaine, B. E., Trivedi, P., & Eshleman, A. (1998). Religious belief and the self-concept: Evaluating the implications for psychological adjustment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(10), 1040 1052. Bła˙zek, M., & Besta, T. (2012). Self-concept clarity and religious orientations: Prediction of purpose in life and self-esteem. Journal of Religion and Health, 51(3), 947 960. Bloom, J. R., Stewart, S. L., Chang, S., & Banks, P. J. (2004). Then and now: Quality of life of young breast cancer survivors. Psycho-Oncology, 13 (3), 147 160. Bloom, P. (2007). Religion is natural. Developmental Science, 10(1), 147 151. Bloom, P. (2012). Religion, morality, evolution. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 179 199. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss v. 3 (Vol. 1). Random House. Boyer, P. (2003). Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 119 124. Bradley, E. (1995). Religious involvement and social resources: Evidence from the data set “Americans’ changing lives”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 259 267. Byrd, K. R., Hageman, A., & Isle, D. B. (2007). Intrinsic motivation and subjective well-being: The unique contribution of intrinsic religious motivation. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 17(2), 141 156. Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Why do people believe in a “true self”? The role of essentialist reasoning about personal identity and the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(2), 386 416. Christy, A. G., Seto, E., Schlegel, R. J., Vess, M., & Hicks, J. A. (2016). Straying from the righteous path and from ourselves: The interplay between perceptions of morality and self-knowledge. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(11), 1538 1550. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0146167216665095. Clobert, M., Saroglou, V., & Hwang, K.-K. (2015). Buddhist concepts as implicitly reducing prejudice and increasing prosociality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(4), 513 525. Counted, V., & Moustafa, A. A. (2017). Between God and self: Exploring the attachment to God and authenticity/inauthenticity tendencies of South African Christian youths. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 20, 109 127. De Freitas, J., Cikara, M., Grossmann, I., & Schlegel, R. (2017). Origins of the belief in good true selves. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(9), 634 636. De Freitas, J., Sarkissian, H., Newman, G. E., Grossmann, I., De Brigard, F., Luco, A., & Knobe, J. (2017). Consistent belief in a good true self in misanthropes and three interdependent cultures. Cognitive Science, 42, 134 160. Deci, E., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Springer Science & Business Media. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227 268. Dittrich, A., Lamparter, D., & Maurer, M. (2010). 5D-ASC: Questionnaire for the assessment of altered states of consciousness. A short introduction. Zurich, Switzerland: PSIN PLUS. Doane, M. J., & Elliott, M. (2015). Perceptions of discrimination among atheists: Consequences for atheist identification, psychological and physical well-being. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 7(2), 130. Donahue, M. J. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: The empirical research. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(4), 418 423. Ellison, C. G. (1991). Religious involvement and subjective well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 32(1), 80 99. Ellison, C. G., & George, L. K. (1994). Religious involvement, social ties, and social support in a southeastern community. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33, 46 61. Fatima, S., Sharif, S., & Khalid, I. (2018). How does religiosity enhance psychological well-being? Roles of self-efficacy and perceived social support. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000168. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203. Fleeson, W., & Wilt, J. (2010). The relevance of big five trait content in behavior to subjective authenticity: Do high levels of within-person behavioral variability undermine or enable authenticity achievement? Journal of Personality, 78, 1353 1382.

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

135

Foster, A. B., Brewster, M. E., Velez, B. L., Eklund, A., & Keum, B. T. (2017). Footprints in the sand: Personal, psychological, and relational profiles of religious, spiritual, and atheist LGB individuals. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(4), 466 487. Freeze, T. A. (2017). Attachment to church congregation: Contributions to well-being over and above social support. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 45(4), 304 314. Garcı´a, D. I., Gray-Stanley, J., & Ramirez-Valles, J. (2008). “The priest obviously doesn’t know that I’m gay”: The religious and spiritual journeys of Latino gay men. Journal of Homosexuality, 55(3), 411 436. Garfield, J. L., Nichols, S., Rai, A. K., & Strohminger, N. (2015). Ego, egoism and the impact of religion on ethical experience: What a paradoxical consequence of Buddhist culture tells us about moral psychology. The Journal of Ethics, 19(3 4), 293 304. Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., & Neberich, W. (2012). Religiosity, social self-esteem, and psychological adjustment: On the cross-cultural specificity of the psychological benefits of religiosity. Psychological Science, 23(2), 158 160. Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., Scho¨nbrodt, F. D., Bleidorn, W., Rentfrow, P. J., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2017). The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), e18 e39. Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press. Genia, V. (1996). I, E, quest, and fundamentalism as predictors of psychological and spiritual well-being. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 35, 56 64. Gervais, W. M. (2013). Perceiving minds and gods: How mind perception enables, constrains, and is triggered by belief in gods. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(4), 380 394. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336(6080), 493 496. Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Aghababaei, N., & Chen, Z. (2014). Transliminality and mystical experience: Common thread hypothesis, religious commitment, and psychological adjustment in Iran. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(4), 268. Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Bing, M. N., Davison, H. K., & LeBreton, D. (2003). Two facets of self-knowledge: Cross-cultural development of measures in Iran and the United States. Genetic, social, and General psychology monographs, 129(3), 238. Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Chen, Z., & Norballa, F. (2012). Self-compassion in Iranian Muslims: Relationships with integrative self-knowledge, mental health, and religious orientation. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22(2), 106 118. Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Madani, M., & Chen, Z. J. (2016). Muslim experiential religiousness: Spirituality relationships with psychological and religious adjustment in Iran. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 18(4), 300 315. Ghumman, S., Ryan, A. M., Barclay, L. A., & Markel, K. S. (2013). Religious discrimination in the workplace: A review and examination of current and future trends. Journal of Business and Psychology, 28(4), 439 454. Gino, F., Kouchaki, M., & Galinsky, A. D. (2015). The moral virtue of authenticity: How inauthenticity produces feelings of immorality and impurity. Psychological Science, 26(7), 983 996. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer. Greenberg, J., Sullivan, D., Kosloff, S., & Solomon, S. (2006). Souls do not live by cognitive inclinations alone, but by the desire to exist beyond death as well. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 474 475. Greer, C. L., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Van Tongeren, D. R., Gartner, A. L., Jennings, D. J., II, Lin, Y.,. . . Ho, M. Y. (2014). Forgiveness of in-group offenders in Christian congregations. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(2), 150 161. Hall, M. E. L., Shannonhouse, L., Aten, J., McMartin, J., & Silverman, E. J. (2018). Religion-specific resources for meaning-making from suffering: Defining the territory. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21(1), 77 92. Hart, J. (2014). Toward an integrative theory of psychological defense. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(1), 19 39. Hart, J., Shaver, P. R., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2005). Attachment, self-esteem, worldviews, and terror management: Evidence for a tripartite security system. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 999 1013. Haslam, N., Bastian, B., & Bissett, M. (2004). Essentialist beliefs about personality and their implications. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1661 1673. Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113 127. Hayward, R. D., Krause, N., Ironson, G., Hill, P. C., & Emmons, R. (2016). Health and well-being among the non-religious: Atheists, agnostics, and no preference compared with religious group members. Journal of Religion and Health, 55(3), 1024 1037. Heidegger, M. (1927 [1962]). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61 83. Hobson, N. M., Schroeder, J., Risen, J. L., Xygalatas, D., & Inzlicht, M. (2017). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317734944. Hohman, Z. P., Gaffney, A. M., & Hogg, M. A. (2017). Who am I if I am not like my group? Self-uncertainty and feeling peripheral in a group. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 125 132. Holt, C. L., Schulz, E., Williams, B. R., Clark, E. M., & Wang, M. Q. (2014). Social support as a mediator of religious involvement and physical and emotional functioning in a national sample of African-Americans. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 17(4), 421 435.

136

PART | 2 Freedom

Hood, R. W., Jr (1975). The construction and preliminary validation of a measure of reported mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 29 41. Hood, R. W., Jr (2002). The mystical self: Lost and found. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 12(1), 1 14. Hood, R. W. (2006). The common core thesis in the study of mysticism. Where God and Science Meet, 3, 119 138. Idler, E. L. (2013). Rituals and practices, . APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (1, pp. 329 347). Idler, E. L., Boulifard, D. A., Labouvie, E., Chen, Y. Y., Krause, T. J., & Contrada, R. J. (2009). Looking inside the black box of “attendance at services”: New measures for exploring an old dimension in religion and health research. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19(1), 1 20. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company. James, W. (1961). The varieties of religious experience (p. 7291411) Amazon Distribution GmbH. Johnson, K. A., Cohen, A. B., & Okun, M. A. (2016). God is watching you. . . but also watching over you: The influence of benevolent God representations on secular volunteerism among Christians. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8(4), 363. Johnson, K. A., Li, Y. J., Cohen, A. B., & Okun, M. A. (2013). Friends in high places: The influence of authoritarian and benevolent god-concepts on social attitudes and behaviors. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(1), 15. Jongman-Sereno, K. P., & Leary, M. R. (2019). The enigma of being yourself: A critical examination of the concept of authenticity. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 133 142. Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For God (or) country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 725. Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297 314. Kernis, M. H., & Goldman, B. M. (2006). A multicomponent conceptualization of authenticity: Theory and research, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 38, pp. 283 357). Academic Press. Kierkegaard, S. (1849 [1980]). The sickness unto death: The Christian psychological exposition for upbuilding and awakening (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong Trans.). Princeton University Press. Kim, J., Christy, A. G., Rivera, G. N., Schlegel, R. J., & Hicks, J. A. (2018). Following one’s true self and the sacredness of cultural values. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 100 103. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1992). An attachment-theory approach to the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(1), 3 28. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1998). God as a substitute attachment figure: A longitudinal study of adult attachment style and religious change in college students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(9), 961 973. Kitchens, M. B., & Phillips, R. E., III (2018). A curvilinear relationship between clear beliefs about God and self-concept clarity. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000181. Krause, N. (2016). Feelings of belonging in a congregation: A social psychological assessment. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 19(2), 164 177. Krause, N., & Bastida, E. (2011). Social relationships in the church during late life: Assessing differences between African Americans, Whites, and Mexican Americans. Review of Religious Research, 53(1), 41. Krause, N., & Wulff, K. M. (2005). Church-based social ties, a sense of belonging in a congregation, and physical health status”. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 73 93. Krebs, D. L. (2008). Morality: An evolutionary account. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(3), 149 172. Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Martens, A., Goldenberg, J. L., & Solomon, S. (2004). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 190 210. Laurencelle, R. M., Abell, S. C., & Schwartz, D. J. (2002). The relation between intrinsic religious faith and psychological well-being. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 12(2), 109 123. Leary, M. R., Adams, C. E., & Tate, E. B. (2006). Hypo-egoic self-regulation: Exercising self-control by diminishing the influence of the self. Journal of Personality, 74, 1803 1832. Leary, M. R., & Guadagno, J. (2011). The role of hypo-egoic self-processes in optimal functioning and subjective well-being. In K. M. Sheldon, T. B. Kashdan, & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Designing positive psychology: Taking stock and moving forward (pp. 135 146). New York: Oxford University Press. Leary, M. R., Tambor, E. S., Terdal, S. K., & Downs, D. L. (1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 518. Legare, C. H., & Souza, A. L. (2012). Evaluating ritual efficacy: Evidence from the supernatural. Cognition, 124(1), 1 15. Lenton, A. P., Bruder, M., Slabu, L., & Sedikides, C. (2013). How does ‘being real’ feel? The experience of state authenticity. Journal of Personality, 81, 276 289. Lenton, A. P., Slabu, L., Sedikides, C., & Power, K. (2013). I feel good, therefore I am real: Testing the causal influence of mood on state authenticity. Cognition and Emotion, 27(7), 1202 1224. Lin, P. K., Tong, E. M., Lee, L. N., Low, A. H., & Gomes, D. (2016). The prosocial impact of God concept priming on God believers. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3(1), 93. Lincoln, A. (1863). The Gettysburg address. The collected works of Abraham Lincoln (pp. 234 238). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP. Lipka, M. (2015). A closer look at America’s rapidly growing religious “nones”. Retrieved from ,http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/13/ a-closer-look-at-americas-rapidly-growing-religious-nones/..

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

137

MacLean, K. A., Leoutsakos, J. M. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2012). Factor analysis of the mystical experience questionnaire: A study of experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51(4), 721 737. Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1 2), 66 104. Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63. Marshall, D. A. (2002). Behavior, belonging, and belief: A theory of ritual practice. Sociological Theory, 20(3), 360 380. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370 396. McDonald, W. (2017). Søren Kierkegaard. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (2017 ed.). Winter. ,https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2017/entries/kierkegaard/.. Milevsky, A. (2017). Religiosity and social support: A mediational model of adjustment in emerging adults. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 20 (5), 502 512. Millie`re, R. (2017). Looking for the self: Phenomenology, neurophysiology and philosophical significance of drug-induced ego dissolution. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 245. Moleiro, C., Pinto, N., & Freire, J. (2013). Effects of age on spiritual well-being and homonegativity: Religious identity and practices among LGB persons in Portugal. Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging, 25(2), 93 111. Moser, K. S. (2007). Metaphors as symbolic environment of the self: How self-knowledge is expressed verbally. Current Research in Social Psychology, 12, 151 178. Newman, G. E., Diesendruck, G., & Bloom, P. (2011). Celebrity contagion and the value of objects. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(2), 215 228. Nietzsche, F. W. (1974). The gay science: With a prelude in German rhymes and an appendix of songs (Vol. 985). Vintage. Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2014). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39. Available from https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14001356. Pasek, M. H., & Cook, J. E. (2017). Religion from the target’s perspective: A portrait of religious threat and its consequences in the United States. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10, 82 93. Pew Research Center. (2012). “Nones” on the rise. Retrieved from ,http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/.. Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883. Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017). Spiritual experiences evoke awe through the small self in both religious and non-religious individuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 212 221. Rhodes, M., & Gelman, S. A. (2009). A developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts. Cognitive Psychology, 59, 244 274. Riggle, E. D., Rostosky, S. S., Black, W. W., & Rosenkrantz, D. E. (2017). Outness, concealment, and authenticity: Associations with LGB individuals’ psychological distress and well-being. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 4(1), 54. Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., & Hernandez, I. (2014). Happy tweets: Christians are happier, more socially connected, and less analytical than atheists on Twitter. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(2), 243 249. Rivera, G. N., Christy, A. G., Kim, J., Vess, M., Hicks, J. A., & Schlegel, R.J., (2019a). Understanding the relationship between perceived authenticity and well-being. Review of General Psychology, 23, 113 126. Rivera, G. N., Vess, M., Hicks, J. A., & Routledge, C. (2019b). Awe and meaning: Elucidating complex effects of awe experiences on meaning in life. European Journal of Social Psychology. Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships: As developed in the client-centered framework. McGraw-Hill. Routledge, C. (2018). Supernatural: Death, meaning, and the power of the invisible world. Oxford University Press. Routledge, C., Roylance, C., & Abeyta, A. A. (2017). Further exploring the link between religion and existential health: The effects of religiosity and trait differences in mentalizing on indicators of meaning in life. Journal of Religion and Health, 56(2), 604 613. Royce, J. R. (1962). Psychology, existentialism, and religion. The Journal of General Psychology, 66(1), 3 16. Ryan, R. M., & Connell, J. P. (1989). Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(5), 749 761. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2004). Autonomy is no illusion: Self-determination theory and the empirical study of authenticity, awareness, and will. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 449 479). New York: Guilford Press. Sartre, J-P. (1946 [2001]). The humanism of existentialism. Reprinted in C. Guignon & D. Pereboom (Eds.), Existentialism: Basic writings. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co. Schlegel, R. J., Hicks, J. A., King, L. A., & Arndt, J. (2011). Feeling like you know who you are: Perceived true self-knowledge and meaning in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(6), 745 756. Schlegel, R. J., Vess, M., & Arndt, J. (2012). To discover or to create: Metaphors and the true self. Journal of Personality, 80(4), 969 993. Schmader, T., & Sedikides, C. (2018). State authenticity as fit to environment: The implications of social identity for fit, authenticity, and selfsegregation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(3), 228 259. Schnell, T. (2015). Dimensions of Secularity (DoS): An open inventory to measure facets of secular identities. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 25(4), 272 292. Schnell, T., & Keenan, W. J. (2011). Meaning-making in an atheist world. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 33(1), 55 78.

138

PART | 2 Freedom

Schnell, T., & Pali, S. (2013). Pilgrimage today: The meaning-making potential of ritual. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 16(9), 887 902. Schwarzer, G. (2007). Meta: An R package for meta-analysis. R News, 7, 40 45. Sedikides, C., Slabu, L., Lenton, A., & Thomaes, S. (2017). State authenticity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 521 525. Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803 809. Shariff, A. F., Willard, A. K., Andersen, T., & Norenzayan, A. (2016). Religious priming: A meta-analysis with a focus on prosociality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(1), 27 48. Shaver, P., Lenauer, M., & Sadd, S. (1980). Religiousness, conversion, and subjective well-being: The” healthy-minded” religion of modern American women. The American Journal of Psychiatry. Available from https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.137.12.1563. Shaver, P. R., Collins, N., & Clark, C. L. (1996). Attachment styles and internal working models of self and relationship partners. In G. J. O. Fletcher, & J. Fitness (Eds.), Knowledge structures in close relationships: A social psychological approach (pp. 25 61). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482. Shiota, M. N., Keltner, D., & Mossman, A. (2007). The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 21 (5), 944 963. Sousa, P., Atran, S., & Medin, D. (2002). Essentialism and folkbiology: Evidence from Brazil. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2, 195 223. Stace, W. T. (1960). Mysticism and philosophy. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott. Stavrova, O., Fetchenhauer, D., & Schlo¨sser, T. (2013). Why are religious people happy? The effect of the social norm of religiosity across countries. Social Science Research, 42(1), 90 105. Stellar, J. E., Gordon, A., Anderson, C. L., Piff, P. K., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2018). Awe and humility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 258. Strohminger, N., Knobe, J., & Newman, G. (2017). The true self: A psychological concept distinct from the self. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(4), 551 560. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616689495. Strohminger, N., & Nichols, S. (2014). The essential moral self. Cognition, 131(1), 159 171. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.cognition.2013.12.005. Tillich, P. (1957). Dynamics of faith. New York: Harper. Trilling, L. (1972). Sincerity and authenticity. Harvard University Press. Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Gentile, B. (2013). Changes in pronoun use in American books and the rise of individualism, 1960 2008. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(3), 406 415. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Valdesolo, P., & Graham, J. (2014). Awe, uncertainty, and agency detection. Psychological Science, 25(1), 170 178. Van Cappellen, P., & Saroglou, V. (2012). Awe activates religious and spiritual feelings and behavioral intentions. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4(3), 223. Varga, S., & Guignon, C. (2017). Authenticity. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (2017 ed.). Fall. URL 5 ,https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/authenticity/.. Vess, M. (2019). Varieties of conscious experience and the subjective awareness of one’s “true” self. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 89 98. Ward, S. J., & King, L. A. (2018). Individual differences in reliance on intuition predict harsher moral judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(5), 825 849. Waterman, A. S. (1984). Identity formation: Discovery or creation? The Journal of Early Adolescence, 4(4), 329 341. Watson, P. J., Ghorbani, N., Davison, H. K., Bing, M. N., Hood, R. W., Jr, & Ghramaleki, A. F. (2002). Negatively reinforcing personal extrinsic motivations: Religious orientation, inner awareness, and mental health in Iran and the United States. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 12(4), 255 276. Watson-Jones, R. E., & Legare, C. H. (2016). The social functions of group rituals. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(1), 42 46. Waxman, S., Medin, D. L., & Ross, N. (2007). Folk-biological reasoning-from a cross-cultural developmental perspective: Early essentialist notions are shaped by cultural beliefs. Developmental Psychology, 43(2), 294 308. Widman, D. R., Corcoran, K. E., & Nagy, R. E. (2009). Belonging to the same religion enhances the opinion of others’ kindness and morality. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 3(4), 281. Williams, M. J., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2008). Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(6), 1033. Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Baliousis, M., & Joseph, S. (2008). The authentic personality: A theoretical and empirical conceptualization and the development of the Authenticity Scale. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55(3), 385 399. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00220167.55.3.385. Xygalatas, D., Mitkidis, P., Fischer, R., Reddish, P., Skewes, J., Geertz, A. W.,. . . Bulbulia, J. (2013). Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychological Science, 24(8), 1602 1605. Yaden, D. B., Haidt, J., Hood, R. W., Jr, Vago, D. R., & Newberg, A. B. (2017). The varieties of self-transcendent experience. Review of General Psychology, 21(2), 143.

Authenticity and the true self in religion and spirituality Chapter | 9

139

Yaden, D. B., Le Nguyen, K. D., Kern, M. L., Besler, A. B., Eichstaedt, J. C., Iwry, J.,. . . Newberg, A. B. (2017). Of roots and fruits: A comparison of psychedelic and nonpsychedelic mystical experiences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 57, 338 353. Yaden, D. B., Le Nguyen, K. D., Kern, M. L., Wintering, N. A., Eichstaedt, J. C., Schwartz, H. A.,. . . Newberg, A. B. (2017). The noetic quality: A multimethod exploratory study. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 54. Zhang, H., Chen, K., & Schlegel, R. (2018). How do people judge meaning in goal-directed behaviors? The interplay between self-concordance and performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218771330. Zhang, H., Hook, J. N., Farrell, J. E., Mosher, D. K., Van Tongeren, D. R., & Davis, D. E. (2018). The effect of religious diversity on religious belonging and meaning: The role of intellectual humility. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 10(1), 72 78.

Chapter 10

Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint Barry Schwartz Berkeley Haas, Berkeley, CA, United States

American society is guided by a set of assumptions about well-being that is so deeply embedded in most of us that we do not realize either that we make those assumptions, or that there is an alternative. The assumptions can be stated in the form of a rough syllogism: G G G

The more freedom and autonomy people have, the greater their well-being. The more choice people have, the greater their freedom and autonomy. Therefore the more choice people have, the greater their well-being.

It is hard to quarrel—either logically or psychologically—with this syllogism. The moral importance of freedom and autonomy is built into this nation’s founding documents, and the psychological importance of freedom and autonomy is now amply documented (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2002; Fischer & Boer, 2011; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Seligman, 1975). There is also no denying that choice improves the quality of people’s lives. It enables people to control their destinies and to come closer to getting exactly what they want out of any situation. Choice is essential to autonomy, which is absolutely fundamental to well-being. Healthy people want and need to direct their own lives. Furthermore, at least in a middle-class Western cultural context, choice has an important personal and social value as a route to independence, self-determination, and the construction and performance of a “good self” (e.g., Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Carey & Markus, 2016; Kitayama & Uchida, 2005; Markus & Schwartz, 2010; Snibbe & Markus, 2005; Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007). Much of what people need to flourish is highly individualized, whereas many human needs are universal. Choice is what enables each person to pursue precisely those objects and activities that best satisfy his or her own preferences within the limits of his or her resources. Any time choice is restricted in some way, there is bound to be someone, somewhere, who is deprived of the opportunity to pursue something of personal value. Choice reflects another value that might be even more important than enabling people to get what they want out of life. Freedom to choose has expressive value. Choice is what enables people to tell the world who they are and what they care about. Choices are acts of meaning (Bruner, 1990) or sign-vehicles (Goffman, 1959) that express information about the identity of choosers to themselves and to the world. Indeed, a large literature reveals that individuals, particularly those in middle class, Western cultural contexts, see their choices as expressive of their preferences, values, attitudes, and other aspects of their identities (e.g., Baran, Mok, Land, & Kang, 1989; Escalas & Bettman, 2003; Haire, 1950; Kim & Markus, 1999; Kim & Sherman, 2007; McCracken, 1986; Rosenfeld & Plax, 1977; Rubaltelli, Lotto, Ritov, & Rumiati, 2015; Schwartz & Cheek, 2017; Stephens et al., 2007; Tafarodi, Mehranvar, Panton, & Milne, 2002; Toure´-Tillery & Fishbach, 2015, 2018). People often make choices that are congruent with their self-views, whether actual or ideal (e.g., Aguirre-Rodriguez, Bosnjak, & Sirgy, 2012; Landon, 1974; Niedenthal, Cantor, & Kihlstrom, 1985; Oyserman, 2009; Sirgy, 1982), and they choose products, brands, and activities that express positive self-images, while avoiding choices that would communicate undesirable information about the self (e.g., Ariely & Levav, 2000; Ashworth, Darke, & Schaller, 2005; Berger & Heath, 2007; White, Argo, & Sengupta, 2012; White & Dahl, 2006). The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00011-1 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

141

142

PART | 2 Freedom

Similarly, research on the “extended self” (e.g., Ahuvia, 2005; Ahuvia, Garg, Batra, McFerran, & Lambert de Diesbach, 2018; Belk, 1988) suggests that people think possessions are more self-relevant when they require more time and effort to acquire. Moreover, people intuitively recognize that larger choice sets provide more unique options—when they believe that they have unique preferences, people prefer larger choice sets than when they believe that they have more common preferences (Whitley, Trudel, & Kurt, 2018). Thus larger choice sets may increase the perceived expressiveness of choices not only because they have more variety in the assortment, but because there is more eventual variety in the choices made, which then more uniquely express the chooser’s identity. And the more options people have, the more selfexpressive they think their choices are (Cheek, Schwartz, & Shafir, submitted). In sum, every choice people make is a testament to their autonomy. Almost every social, moral, or political philosopher in the Western tradition since Plato has placed a premium on such autonomy (but see Fromm, 1941). It is difficult to imagine a single aspect of collective social life that would be recognizable if this commitment to autonomy were abandoned. When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in modern consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful. And because people are free to ignore choice possibilities when they do not want them, increasing the amount of choice people have seems to be what economists call a “Pareto efficient” move: it will make some people (those who want increased choices) better off but make no one worse off. Said another way, it is reasonable to assume that the relation between choice and well-being is monotonic (Baumol & Ide, 1956; von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). In this chapter, I will argue that however reasonable the above syllogism is, and however consistent it is with past psychological research and theory, it is false. The relation between choice and well-being is nonmonotonic (see Grant & Schwartz, 2011). There can be too much freedom, too much choice. And when there is, it induces paralysis, or, when paralysis is overcome, dissatisfaction with even good choices. I will review the empirical evidence that supports this view. I will suggest that the same processes that seem to threaten well-being when people are completely free to choose what to buy also threaten well-being when people are completely free to choose how or who to be. Finally, I will suggest that constraints on freedom of choice can enhance well-being, and that religious beliefs and practices are one powerful source of such constraints.

Choice overload and paralysis The first demonstration that too many choices can induce decision paralysis was provided by Iyengar and Lepper (2000). They reported a series of studies that showed how choice can be “demotivating.” One study was set in a gourmet food store in which the researchers set up a display featuring a line of exotic, high-quality jams. Customers who came by could taste samples and then were given a coupon for a dollar off if they bought a jar. In one condition of the study, six varieties of the jam were available for tasting. In another, 24 varieties were available. In either case, the entire set of 24 varieties was available for purchase. The large array of jams attracted more people to the table than the small array, though in both cases people tasted about the same number of jams on average. When it came to buying, however, 30% of people exposed to the small array of jams actually bought a jar; only 3% of those exposed to the large array of jams did so. Since this initial demonstration, Iyengar, with various collaborators, has provided similar evidence from a wide variety of different domains, many of them were far more consequential than jams or chocolates (e.g., Botti & Iyengar, 2004, 2006; Botti, Orfali, & Iyengar, 2009; Fisman, Iyengar, Kamenica, & Simonson, 2006; Iyengar & DeVoe, 2003; Iyengar, Jiang, & Huberman, 2004; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999, 2002). For example, adding mutual fund options to a 401 (k) menu decreases the rate of participation (Iyengar et al., 2004). Participation rate drops 2% for each 10 options, even though, by failing to participate, employees pass up often significant amounts of matching money from their employers. Though there are no doubt limits to the choice overload phenomenon that remain to be determined, and conditions under which it does not seem to hold (Chernev, 2003a, 2003b; see Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010; and Chernev, Bo¨ckenholt, & Goodman, 2015; for metaanalytic reviews that come to different conclusions), it now seems clear that under a broad range of circumstances, people find a large number of options paralyzing rather than liberating. Furthermore, when people do overcome paralysis, they often end up choosing objectively worse options from larger choice sets. Research on health care and prescription drug plan choice, for example, reveals that the cognitive cost of comparing many different plans often overwhelms choosers and results in the choice of more expensive, less suitable plans (e.g., Hanoch, Rice, Cummings, & Wood, 2009; Kling, Mullainathan, Shafir, Vermeulen, & Wrobel, 2012; McWilliams, Afendulis, McGuire, & Landon, 2011; Tanius, Wood, Hanoch, & Rice, 2009; Zhou & Zhang, 2012).

Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint Chapter | 10

143

Indeed, Tanius et al. (2009) found that people were less able to identify the best prescription drug plan when choosing from a larger set of options, and this was true not only of older adults, who may have more cognitive difficulty during decision-making, but of younger adults as well. Even objectively dominant options may not be identified when choosers are overwhelmed by a large number of alternatives (Bhargava, Loewenstein, & Sydnor, 2017). Thus large choice sets can create a cognitive burden, but beyond that, large choice sets can also be demotivating when choosers feel frustrated by the difficulty of identifying the alternative they want among a large assortment of options (e.g., Botti & Iyengar, 2004; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). When people overcome paralysis and choose, it is logical to expect that when the choice set is large, chances improve that people will choose well, simply because large choice sets are more likely to include a person’s most desirable option. The question is, how will people feel about how they do; that is, will better objective decisions produce better subjective results? Schwartz (2004); see also, Schwartz et al. (2002) have argued that large choice sets actually undermine satisfaction, even with good decisions. Empirical evidence bears this hypothesis out. Larger choice sets can also lead to negative subjective consequences during and after decision-making. Choosing from too many options increases regret, creates unrealistically high expectations, and reduces satisfaction with the chosen option (e.g., Chernev, 2003b; Diehl & Poynor, 2010; Hafner, White, & Handley, 2012; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Szrek, 2017). Regret and dissatisfaction increase when people choose from many different options in part because there is a greater opportunity for counterfactual thinking (Hafner et al., 2012; Landman, 1993; Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2007). Moreover, having more to choose from gives people more responsibility when decisions go poorly and regret and dissatisfaction set in (Schwartz, 2004, 2010). Larger choice sets also afford more comparison among different alternatives, and comparison generally makes options look worse by making trade-offs between better and worse attributes salient (i.e., comparative loss aversion; Brenner, Rottenstreich, & Sood, 1999). Because of loss of aversion, the weaknesses of an option relative to its competitors weighs more than its relative advantages (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Rozin & Royzman, 2001), leaving people feeling less positively about their chosen alternative, even if it is preferred overall. There is one more effect of large choice sets on satisfaction that should be discussed. Suppose one devotes a great deal of time and energy to making a decision, and then, because of some combination of regret and high expectations, one ends up disappointed with the results. The questions this person might ask are “Why?”, “What went wrong?”, and “What did I do wrong?”. And what are the likely answers to these questions? When the choice set is small, it seems natural and straightforward to blame the world for disappointing results. “They only had three styles of jeans. What could I do? I did the best I could.” However, when the choice set is large, blaming the world is a much less plausible option. “With so many options available, success was out there to be had. I have only myself to blame for a disappointing result.” In other words, self-blame for disappointing results becomes more likely as the choice set grows larger. And because large choice sets increase the chances of disappointing results (because of regret and raised expectations), selfblame becomes a common occurrence. In sum, a growing body of work in the last two decades has continued to investigate the negative consequences, both behavioral and subjective, of too much choice (e.g., Botti et al., 2009; Chernev, 2003a, 2003b; Diehl & Poynor, 2010; Hadar & Sood, 2014; Hafner et al., 2012; Inbar, Botti, & Hanko, 2011; Mick, Broniarczyk, & Haidt, 2004; Mogilner, Rudnick, & Iyengar, 2008; Schwartz, 2000, 2004; Schwartz et al., 2002; Townsend & Kahn, 2014; White & Hoffrage, 2009). This work suggests that having too many options can overwhelm consumers, producing choice paralysis, objectively worse choices, and subjectively less satisfying choices marred by feelings of confusion and regret. Landman (1993, p. 184) sums it up this way: “[R]egret may threaten decisions with multiple attractive alternatives more than decisions offering only one or a more limited set of alternatives. . . Ironically, then, the greater the number of appealing choices, the greater the opportunity for regret.”

“Freedom,” “choice,” “autonomy,” and the “self” Virtually all the empirical evidence on choice overload and its effects comes from contexts in which people are choosing goods. In a consumer society like ours, the importance of contexts like these should not be dismissed. Yet, they seem to pale to insignificance when compared with decisions involving core aspects of one’s identity and mode of being in the world. “What should I buy?” does not amount to much when compared with “What should I do with my life?” or “Who should I be?”. Moreover, it is in connection with these identity-shaping decisions that the benefits of freedom and autonomy (i.e., choice) loom largest. And there is little doubt, as I have previously argued (Schwartz, 2000, 2004, 2010), that freedom of choice in these self-defining domains has expanded along with freedom of choice in the world of goods. Young people find themselves with relatively unconstrained choices when it comes to where they live, what they study, what kind of work they do, what religion they practice and how they practice it, what kind of

144

PART | 2 Freedom

intimate relations they will enter into, and what kind of family commitments they will make. People are free to decide matters of identity, of who they will be in the world. They are no longer stuck with identities they inherit from family and community. And having made the decision about who they are, people are also free to change it (see Gilbert & Ebert, 2002; for evidence that reversibility of decisions decreases people’s satisfaction with them). One plausible view of the modern explosion of choice is that though it does produce the negative effects I have described previously in the world of goods, it also produces significant positive effects with respect to the things that really matter. No longer are people “stuck” with the identities and life paths that accidents of birth, or the views of others, have imposed on them. Selfinvention and reinvention is now a real option. And occasional paralysis in the cereal aisle of the supermarket is a small price to pay for this kind of liberation. As I say, this is a plausible view. Nonetheless, I think it is mistaken. Philosopher Taylor (1989, 1992a, 1992b) points out that over the last 500 years, self-understanding has been moving in a more or less straight line from “outside-in,” through participation in larger entities (the divine order, the “great chain of being,” nation, community, family, etc.) to “inside-out,” with purpose discovered from within each individual and the notion of “authentic” self-expression as the supreme aspiration. We in the West have seen this evolution as progress, each step enhancing freedom. And like fish who do not know they live in water, we find it hard to imagine thinking about our lives in any other way. But Markus and collaborators (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991), in research on East Asian versus Western cultures, have shown that this movement from “outside-in” to “inside-out” is not universal: most East Asians still define themselves in terms of their relations to others (and some of Markus’ more recent research suggests that this “inside-out” view may be limited to the educated elite; see Markus & Schwartz, 2010; Schwartz, Markus, & Snibbe, 2006; Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Further, choice does not have the same significance for East or South Asians as it seems to have for Westerners (Iyengar & Devoe, 2003; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004). This research does not challenge the notion that within Western culture, more freedom—more “inside-out”—is better. However, the Iyengar and Lepper (2000) jam study and its companions suggest that perhaps more “inside-out” is not better, that it is not all just a matter of cultural preferences. East Asians may know something that Westerners have forgotten. Consistent with this possibility, there is good evidence that the most significant determinant of our well-being is our network of close relations to other people (e.g., Diener, 2000; Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995; Diener & Suh, 2001; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Lane, 2000; Myers, 2000). The more connected we are, the better off we are. The thing to notice about close relations, in connection with freedom, choice, and autonomy, is that close relations constrain, they do not liberate. When people have responsibilities and concerns about other people, they cannot just do anything they want. Until now, the thought has been that this constraint is perhaps just a price worth paying for rich social ties. What the choice overload research suggests is that in modern society, with overwhelming choice in every aspect of life, the constraints of close relations with others may actually be part of the benefit of those relations rather than being a cost. And like close relations to others, “outside-in” definitions of the self provide significant constraints on what is possible, constraints that, in modern Western societies, may be desperately needed (see Markus & Nurius, 1986; Schlenker, 1985; for a discussion of social and cultural constraints on self-definition found at other times and in other cultures). The assumption that modern Westerners may make is that by being maximally flexible, they can be prepared for anything. What I am speculating is that to be “prepared for anything” is to be prepared for nothing. What is the evidence that modern Westerners are suffering from this lack of constraint? First, there has been a significant rise in the incidence of clinical depression and suicide, both of which are befalling people at younger and younger ages (e.g., Angst, 1995; Eckersley, 2002; Eckersley & Dear, 2002; Lane, 2000; Myers, 2000). Second, there is a substantial increase in the rate at which college students are flocking to counseling centers (Kadison & DiGeronimo, 2004). Third, there is a palpable unease in the reports of young college graduates, who seem to lack a clear idea of what they are meant to do in their lives (Robbins & Wilner, 2001). And finally, in upper class adolescents, whose family affluence makes anything possible, there are the same levels of drug abuse, anxiety disorder, and depression as there are in the children of the poor (Luthar & Latendresse, 2005).

Sincerity and authenticity Almost 50 years ago, literary critic Trilling (1972) made a distinction that may have greater resonance now than it had when he made it. The distinction is between “sincerity” and “authenticity,” the two terms that many of us probably use interchangeably. “Sincerity” is about meaning what one says. Sincere people are honest—true to the cognitive and emotional content of their beliefs. Authentic people are also honest, but they are honest to themselves. So not only do authentic people mean what they say, but what they say, and mean, is a deep reflection of who they are.

Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint Chapter | 10

145

Trilling suggests that the threat of modernity is that “the center will not hold,” so that people increasingly have no self to be true to. They settle for sincerity—in themselves and in those close to them—because it is the best they can hope for. In a world of uncertain, completely chosen, and easily altered selves, the distinction between sincerity and authenticity vanishes, because the very idea of authenticity is inapplicable. What can it mean to be “authentic” to a self that can turn on a dime? All it can mean is that one means what one says at the moment one says it. Others do not know what to expect from such a malleable self. Indeed, even the possessor of such a self does not know what to expect. The problems to self and others of this kind of malleability are, I think, quite significant. Others lose the ability to depend on such a malleable self. There is no assurance that such a person will wake up as the same person who went to sleep. But perhaps more troubling, the self starts to lose a grasp of who it is. In Hochschild’s (1983) study of flight attendants, she observed that what competing airlines had to sell at that time was service quality, and what service quality often meant was the service provided by flight attendants. What mattered to that service was not how many drinks, snacks, and pillows attendants brought, but rather how much they really “cared” about the passengers’ welfare. In other words, what the flight attendants were “selling” was sincerity (“I really want you to be comfortable. I really want you to be able to relax and not be anxious. I’ll be here if there are any problems.”). The performance of their jobs required flight attendants to have training in what Hochschild called “deep acting.” After all, the best way to feign genuine concern is actually to feel genuine concern (as a famous disk jockey is reported once to have said, “the secret to success in this business is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”). And flight attendants became very skilled at deep acting. But what they reported to Hochschild was that they were experiencing real difficulty distinguishing the emotional attachments they displayed at work from their real emotional attachments, to friends and the loved ones at home. That is, it became increasingly difficult for flight attendants to discern what they “really felt.” The price of all this sincerity was a loss of authenticity. That was 30 years ago, when selves were not as malleable as they are now. It seems to me quite likely that the flight attendants’ problem has only become more acute, both because more people than ever earn a living providing services, and because with a malleable, chosen self, people may not be anything other than what they are saying and feeling at the moment. “Who am I” was never an easy question to answer. It may now be an impossible question to answer.

From “You Are What You Do” to “You Are What You Own” The modern explosion of choice has another consequence for the self that is worth discussing. Imagine buying a pair of jeans 30 years ago. The options were relatively sparse. Because the options were sparse, your choice of jeans could not be much of a reflection of who you were. There was not just enough variety for jean choice to capture your uniqueness. The same was true of virtually every aspect of consumer culture: enough variety to satisfy diverse tastes, but not enough for consumer choices to be self-defining. In the modern world, the set of possibilities is so large that it has become plausible for people to think that what they buy does reflect who they are. There are several possible consequences of this exaltation of consumer goods to the status of self-definition. First, it raises the stakes of even trivial decisions, perhaps increasing the likelihood of paralysis. If jeans are just jeans, then choosing—even choosing poorly—has little consequence. But if jeans tell the world something significant about the person inside them, mistakes matter. Second, it enables a shift in the focus of self-definition from what one does to what one owns, thus feeding into a materialism that is by all accounts already excessive among Americans. Kasser (2002) has shown that well-being is not well served by materialism. He reviews a substantial body of evidence that indicates that the more materialistic people are, the less satisfied they are with their lives. And Van Boven and Gilovich (2003) have shown that people get more satisfaction, in general, out of activities than out of ownership. So, any social influence that shifts one’s focus from doing to owning is likely to decrease life satisfaction. “Self as owner,” rather than “self as doer,” made possible by the explosion of consumer choice, is thus likely a recipe for unhappiness, even when people make good choices. In support of this possibility, Cheek et al. (submitted) reported a series of studies (total N 5 6544) that explored the effect of choice set size on perceived self-expression. The studies showed that both choosers and observers think that choices are more self-expressive when made from larger choice sets, and that this effect is driven by the fact that larger choice sets tend to (1) have more variety among options, (2) require greater investment of time and energy, and (3) produce more distinct or unique choices. Increases in perceived self-expression increased decision difficulty. Taken together, their findings revealed that having more options may change not only the experience of choice, but its very meaning as well.

146

PART | 2 Freedom

Freedom, choice, and welfare: a nonmonotonic relation I acknowledged at the beginning of this chapter that freedom, autonomy, and choice are essential to well-being. I then proceeded to argue that there can be too much of a good thing. The question I address now is how can choice be good and bad. My answer to this question is that expanded choice sets can have both positive and negative effects, both of which have been described earlier. The positive effects begin when any degree of choice is introduced and continue to increase in curvilinear fashion as choice set size increases. That is, there are diminishing marginal benefits to increasing choice set size. The negative effects are negligible when choice set size is small but then increase as choice set size increases. And though there is diminishing marginal utility to added options, there is increasing marginal disutility to added options (see Coombs & Avrunin, 1977; for a rationale for this claim; see, also, Rozin & Royzman, 2001). The net effect of a given amount of choice is the algebraic sum of these two different sets of processes. If the choice set is large enough, the negative effects may dominate the positive, leaving people worse off with lots of options than they are with only a few. This “two-process” depiction of choice implies that the curve relating choice set size to welfare is nonmonotonic (Grant & Schwartz, 2011). The positive aspects of choice dominate the negative until a point is reached where the negative ones overtake the positive and the curve relating choice set size to well-being changes its direction. It is, then, a significant practical task to locate the “sweet spot,” the point along the choice axis where well-being is the highest. This is likely to vary from person to person and from situation to situation.

Religion, spirituality, freedom, and choice I have tried to argue that, whereas there is no denying that choice is good, it is not always and only good. Further, the relation between choice and freedom is also complex. Though one cannot be free without choice, it is arguable that choice-induced paralysis is a sign of diminished rather than enhanced freedom. The scope and limits of the negative effects of choice remain to be determined. Most of the research to date has involved consumer goods, and usually trivial ones at that. My effort to extend the conclusions of that research to significant nonconsumption domains, including the choice of a self is somewhat speculative (but see Cheek et al., submitted, for empirical support). But given the amount of dissatisfaction that choice overload seems to cause, and given the large-scale dissatisfaction in the midst of plenty that seems to characterize modern American society, the stakes are high. What, then, is to be done? It is difficult to come up with a straightforward answer to this question. First, for those committed to the moral/philosophical view that “freedom” is the highest good, and that more choice always means more freedom, evidence that (some) people suffer from choice overload is unfortunate, perhaps, but irrelevant. A little bit of paralysis or regret is a small price to pay for freedom. Nobody said being free was easy. Second, and even more challenging, how, where, and by whom is freedom of choice to be restricted? Modern American political culture is a battle between two ideologies, both of which are incoherent. Liberalism advocates freedom of choice in the domain of life style and culture, but regulation and control in the material world of market goods and services. Conservatism advocates unbridled freedom in the market, but stringent regulation and control in life style and culture. Conservatives are appalled by the “anything goes” attitude on college campuses, and liberals are appalled by the “gangster capitalism” of our speculative financial markets. It is hard to see making much headway on the “choice problem” in an atmosphere as polarized as this one. Perhaps more challenging, if we were able to find a way to rein in choice, there is no avoiding the fact that some people would suffer—some people’s lives would get worse. It is hard to convince someone who has just been deprived of life style options that feel absolutely central to life as they want to live it that they have actually been made better off. Because of these difficulties, it seems to me that the best route to eliminating some of the negative effects of choice overload without also eliminating the liberating effects of choice is voluntary—through a change in awareness, sensibility, and aspiration on the part of individuals. If people can come to see that sometimes, unfettered choice is paralyzing while constrained choice may be liberating, they may seek and embrace constraints in their own lives instead of avoiding them. Helpful here, I think, is a classic distinction made many years ago by philosopher Berlin (1958). Berlin distinguished between what he called “negative and positive liberty”—freedom from and freedom to. The primary focus of the American embrace of freedom has been “freedom from.” The Bill of Rights is all about freedom from, as it limits the power of the state to intrude in the lives of its citizens. With the meddling of the state kept at bay, “freedom to” is

Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint Chapter | 10

147

pretty much up to each of us. That is, there are no guarantees that the conditions needed for Americans to live rich, meaningful, and satisfying lives will be present. But if we pay more attention to “freedom to”—to the conditions that enable the living of good lives, it may turn out that there can be too much “freedom from.” That is, a good life may require constraints, whether imposed by the state, by the family, by the school, or by religious institutions. Greater willingness on the part of psychologists to determine what the constituents of a good life are may embolden them to offer suggestions about which kinds of constraints are needed, and why. Sociologists have long distinguished between what they call “achieved status” and “ascribed status” (Foladare, 1969; Linton, 1936). Achieved status is earned by how one makes one’s way in the world; ascribed status is largely the result of one’s inherited social position. The United States has long prided itself as the place in which where one starts life does not determine where one finishes it. As far as I know, there is no similar distinction in psychology between “achieved selves” and “ascribed selves.” However, I think a lesson of the research reviewed here is that this distinction requires theoretical elaboration and empirical investigation. Essentially unlimited choice may turn us from creatures whose selves are ascribed into creatures whose selves are achieved (Cheek et al., submitted). And if Grant and Schwartz’s (2011) argument that well-being is an inverted-U shaped function of many variables that benefit us in moderation but not in extreme can be applied to choice and the self, then a little more ascription may serve people well. In many respects, this idea of an achieved self is liberating. Many of us welcome the opportunity to invent or reinvent who we are and how we will be in the world. But it seems as though these kinds of opportunities for reinvention, without limit, can be perilous. Gelfand (2018) as well as Harrington, Boski, and Gelfand (2015) have characterized a large number of different societies (and also different states within the United States) in terms of the “tightness” or “looseness” of their social organization and related this characterization to various measures of well-being. What they found is that societies can be both too tight and too loose, and that if they are, one sees decreased happiness, increased dysthymia, increased suicide, increased cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and decreased life expectancy. In other words, there may be an optimum amount of freedom to define the self, and increases beyond that amount may not be life-improving (Grant & Schwartz, 2011). Relatedly, Dweck (2006) has done a great deal of research demonstrating the benefits of “incremental” rather than “entity” theories of various psychological attributes. Thinking that they can get smarter, more socially aware, more empathetic, and more moral empowers people to indeed improve themselves on all these dimensions. I have no quarrel with these important findings. But, I want to suggest the possibility that here, too, there can be too much of a good thing. Too much incrementalism may induce people to take on more personal responsibility than they can handle and to blame themselves when they fall short. There are, no doubt, many ways that individuals can choose to constrain their freedom of choice, but perhaps the most obvious place to look for such constraint is in religious beliefs and practices. Religion is full of both prescriptions and proscriptions and by choosing to embrace a religious path, one can be simultaneously choosing to limit the domains in life in which one is free to choose. Choosing a religious path is, then, a kind of “metachoice”—one that precludes many, many other choices. Consistent with this view, Gelfand (2018), in her discussion of “tight” and “loose” cultures within the United States, reports that those states that are the tightest also report the highest rate of church membership and religious observance. And since Gelfand observes that maximal well-being seems to reside in the “sweet spot” between extreme tightness and extreme looseness, a case could be made that a moderate dose of religious commitment can help people mitigate the disorienting effects of otherwise unlimited choice in every area of life. To conclude, I think the research discussed here raises the possibility that the relation between freedom, autonomy, personal responsibility, and well-being may be more complicated than psychology has realized. Being able to create the self we want may be very much a mixed blessing. Perhaps paradoxically, by making one choice—the choice to see the virtue in constraints—people may be choosing to live happier, more fulfilling, and even freer lives.

References Aguirre-Rodriguez, A., Bosnjak, M., & Sirgy, M. J. (2012). Moderators of the self-congruity effect on consumer decision-making: A meta-analysis. Journal of Business Research, 65, 1179 1188. Ahuvia, A. (2005). Beyond the extended self: Loved objects and consumers’ identity narratives. Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 171 184. Ahuvia, A., Garg, N., Batra, R., McFerran, B., & Lambert de Diesbach, P. B. (2018). Pride of ownership: An identity-based model. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 3, 216 228. Angst, J. (1995). The epidemiology of depressive disorders. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 5, 95 98.

148

PART | 2 Freedom

Ariely, D., & Levav, J. (2000). Sequential choice in group settings: Taking the road less traveled and less enjoyed. Journal of Consumer Research, 27, 279 290. Ashworth, L., Darke, P. R., & Schaller, M. (2005). No one wants to look cheap: Trade-offs between social disincentives and the economic and psychological incentives to redeem coupons. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15, 295 306. Baran, S. J., Mok, J. J., Land, M., & Kang, T. Y. (1989). You are what you buy: Mass-mediated judgments of people’s worth. Journal of Communication, 39, 46 54. Baumol, W. J., & Ide, E. A. (1956). Variety in retailing. Management Science, 3, 93 101. Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 139 168. Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and collectivism in American life. New York: Harper & Row. Berger, J., & Heath, C. (2007). Where consumers diverge from others: Identity signaling and product domains. Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 121 134. Bhargava, S., Loewenstein, G., & Sydnor, J. (2017). Choose to lose: Health plan choice from a menu with dominated options. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132, 1319 1372. Botti, S., & Iyengar, S. S. (2004). The psychological pleasure and pain of choosing: When people prefer choosing at the cost of subsequent outcome satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 312 326. Botti, S., & Iyengar, S. S. (2006). The dark side of choice: When choice impairs social welfare. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 25, 24 38. Botti, S., Orfali, K., & Iyengar, S. S. (2009). Tragic choices: Autonomy and emotional response to medical decisions. Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 337 352. Brenner, L., Rottenstreich, Y., & Sood, S. (1999). Comparison, grouping, and preference. Psychological Science, 10, 225 229. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Carey, R. M., & Markus, H. R. (2016). Understanding consumer psychology in working-class contexts. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26, 568 582. Cheek, N., Schwartz, B., & Shafir, E. Having more options raises the stakes of choice: Self-expression, maximizing, and choice overload. Manuscript under review. Chernev, A. (2003a). Product assortment and individual decision process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 151 162. Chernev, A. (2003b). When more is less and less is more: The role of ideal point availability and assortment in consumer choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 30, 170 183. Chernev, A., Bo¨ckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. (2015). Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 333 358. Coombs, C. H., & Avrunin, G. S. (1977). Single-peaked functions and the theory of preference. Psychological Review, 84, 216 230. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227 268. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.), (2002). Handbook of self-determination research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Diehl, K., & Poynor, C. (2010). Great expectations?! Assortment size, expectations, and satisfaction. Journal of Marketing Research, 47, 312 322. Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55, 34 43. Diener, E., Diener, M., & Diener, C. (1995). Factors predicting the subjective well-being of nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 851 864. Diener, E., & Suh, E. M. (Eds.), (2001). Subjective well-being across cultures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276 302. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. New York: Random House. Eckersley, R. (2002). Culture, health, and well-being. In R. Eckersley, J. Dixon, & B. Douglas (Eds.), The social origins of health and well-being (pp. 51 70). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Eckersley, R., & Dear, K. (2002). Cultural correlates of youth suicide. Social Science and Medicine, 55, 1891 1904. Escalas, J. E., & Bettman, J. R. (2003). You are what they eat: The influence of reference groups on consumers’ connections to brands. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13, 339 348. Fischer, R., & Boer, D. (2011). What is more important for national well-being: Money or autonomy? A meta-analysis of well-being, burnout, and anxiety across 63 societies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 164 184. Fisman, R., Iyengar, S. S., Kamenica, E., & Simonson, I. (2006). Gender differences in mate selection: Evidence from a speed dating experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 673 697. Foladare, I. (1969). A clarification of “ascribed status” and “achieved status. Sociological Quarterly, 10, 53 61. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Gelfand, M. (2018). Rule makers, rule breakers: How tight and loose cultures wire our world. New York: Scribners. Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and revisions: The affective forecasting of changeable outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 503 514. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Grant, A. M., & Schwartz, B. (2011). Too much of a good thing: The challenge and opportunity of the inverted-U. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 61 76.

Freedom as a cross to bear: choice overload, the burdens of freedom, and the benefits of constraint Chapter | 10

149

Hadar, L., & Sood, S. (2014). When knowledge is demotivating: Subjective knowledge and choice overload. Psychological Science, 25, 1739 1747. Hafner, R. J., White, M. P., & Handley, S. J. (2012). Spoilt for choice: The role of counterfactual thinking in the excess choice and reversibility paradoxes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 28 36. Haire, M. (1950). Projective techniques in marketing research. The Journal of Marketing, 14, 649 656. Hanoch, Y., Rice, T., Cummings, J., & Wood, S. (2009). How much choice is too much? The case of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Health Services Research, 44, 1157 1168. Harrington, J. R., Boski, P., & Gelfand, M. J. (2015). Culture and national well-being: Should societies emphasize freedom or constraint? PLoS One, 10, e0127173. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127173]. Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling (1983). Berkeley: University of California Press. Inbar, Y., Botti, S., & Hanko, K. (2011). Decision speed and choice regret: When haste feels like waste. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 533 540. Iyengar, S. S., & DeVoe, S. E. (2003). Rethinking the value of choice: Considering cultural mediators of intrinsic motivation. In V. Murphy-Berman, & J. Berman (Eds.), Cross-cultural differences in perspectives on the self (49, pp. 129 174). London: University of Nebraska Press. Iyengar, S. S., Jiang, W., & Huberman, G. (2004). How much choice is too much: Determinants of individual contributions in 401K retirement plans. In O. S. Mitchell, & S. Utkus (Eds.), Pension design and structure: New lessons from behavioral finance ( (pp. 83 95). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. (1999). Rethinking the value of choice: A cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 349 366. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995 1006. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2002). Choice and its consequences: On the costs and benefits of self-determination. In A. Tesser (Ed.), Self and motivation: Emerging psychological perspectives (pp. 71 96). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Kadison, R. D., & DiGeronimo, T. F. (2004). The college of the overwhelmed: The campus mental health crisis and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrika, 47, 263 291. Kasser, T. (2002). The high price of materialism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kim, H., & Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 785 800. Kim, H. S., & Sherman, D. K. (2007). “Express yourself”: Culture and the effect of self-expression on choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1 11. Kitayama, S., Snibbe, A. C., Markus, H. R., & Suzuki, T. (2004). Is there any “free” choice?: Self and dissonance in two cultures. Psychological Science, 8, 527 533. Kitayama, S., & Uchida, Y. (2005). Interdependent agency: An alternative system for action. In R. M. Sorrentino, D. Cohen, J. M. Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Culture and social behavior: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 10, pp. 137 164). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kling, J. R., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., Vermeulen, L. C., & Wrobel, M. V. (2012). Comparison friction: Experimental evidence from Medicare drug plans. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127, 199 235. Landman, J. (1993). Regret: The persistence of the possible. New York: Oxford University Press. Landon, E. L., Jr. (1974). Self concept, ideal self concept, and consumer purchase intentions. Journal of Consumer Research, 1, 44 51. Lane, R. (2000). The loss of happiness in market democracies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Linton, R. (1936). The study of man: An introduction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Luthar, S. S., & Latendresse, S. J. (2005). Children of the affluent: Challenges to well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 49 52. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41, 954 969. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224 253. Markus, H. R., & Schwartz, B. (2010). Does choice mean freedom and well-being? Journal of Consumer Psychology, 37, 344 355. McCracken, G. (1986). Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods. Journal of Consumer Research, 13, 71 84. McWilliams, J. M., Afendulis, C. C., McGuire, T. G., & Landon, B. E. (2011). Complex medicare advantage choices may overwhelm seniors— Especially those with impaired decision making. Health Affairs, 30, 1786 1794. Mick, D. G., Broniarczyk, S. M., & Haidt, J. (2004). Choose, choose, choose, choose, choose, choose, choose: Emerging and prospective research on the deleterious effects of living in consumer hyperchoice. Journal of Business Ethics, 52, 207 211. Mogilner, C., Rudnick, T., & Iyengar, S. S. (2008). The mere categorization effect: How the presence of categories increases choosers’ perceptions of assortment variety and outcome satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 202 215. Myers, D. (2000). The American paradox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Niedenthal, P. M., Cantor, N., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1985). Prototype matching: A strategy for social decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 575 584. Oyserman, D. (2009). Identity-based motivation and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19, 276 279. Robbins, A., & Wilner, A. (2001). Quarterlife crisis: The unique challenges of life in your twenties. New York: Putnam. Rosenfeld, L. B., & Plax, T. G. (1977). Clothing as communication. Journal of Communication, 27, 24 31.

150

PART | 2 Freedom

Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296 320. Rubaltelli, E., Lotto, L., Ritov, I., & Rumiati, R. (2015). Moral investing: Psychological motivations and implications. Judgment and Decision Making, 10, 64 75. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68 78. Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can there ever be too many options? A meta-analytic review of choice overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 409 425. Schlenker, B. R. (1985). Identity and self-identification. In B. R. Schlenker (Ed.), The self and social life (pp. 65 100). New York: McGraw-Hill. Schwartz, B. (2000). Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. American Psychologist, 55, 79 88. Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Ecco Press. Schwartz, B. (2010). Be careful what you wish for: The dark side of freedom. In R. M. Arkin, K. C. Oleson, & P. J. Carroll (Eds.), Handbook of the uncertain self: Perspectives from Xsocial and personality psychology (pp. 62 77). New York: Psychology Press. Schwartz, B., & Cheek, N. N. (2017). Choice, freedom, and well-being: Considerations for public policy. Behavioural Public Policy, 1, 106 121. Schwartz, B., Markus, H. R., & Snibbe, A. C. (2006). Is freedom just another word for many things to buy? New York Times Magazine, 14 15. Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002). Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1178 1197. Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman. Sirgy, M. J. (1982). Self-concept in consumer behavior: A critical review. Journal of Consumer Research, 9, 287 300. Snibbe, A. C., & Markus, H. R. (2005). You can’t always get what you want: Social class, agency, and choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 703 720. Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Townsend, S. S. M. (2007). Choice as an act of meaning: The case of social class. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 814 830. Szrek, H. (2017). How the number of options and perceived variety influence choice satisfaction: An experiment with prescription drug plans. Judgment and Decision Making, 12, 42 59. Tafarodi, R. W., Mehranvar, S., Panton, R. L., & Milne, A. B. (2002). Putting oneself in the task: Choice, personalization, and confidence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 648 658. Tanius, B. E., Wood, S., Hanoch, Y., & Rice, T. (2009). Aging and choice: Applications to Medicare Part D. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 92 101. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1992a). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1992b). Multiculturalism and the “politics of recognition.”. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Toure´-Tillery, M., & Fishbach, A. (2015). It was(n’t) me: Exercising restraint when choices appear self-diagnostic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 1117 1131. Toure´-Tillery, M., & Fishbach, A. (2018). Three sources of motivation. Consumer Psychology Review, 1, 123 134. Townsend, C., & Kahn, B. E. (2014). The “visual preference heuristic”: The influence of visual versus verbal depiction on assortment processing, perceived variety, and choice overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 40, 993 1015. Trilling, L. (1972). Sincerity and authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1193 1202. von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1944). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. White, C. M., & Hoffrage, U. (2009). Testing the tyranny of too much choice against the allure of more choice. Psychology & Marketing, 26, 280 298. White, K., Argo, J. J., & Sengupta, J. (2012). Dissociative versus associative responses to social identity threat: The role of consumer self-construal. Journal of Consumer Research, 39, 704 719. White, K., & Dahl, D. W. (2006). To be or not be? The influence of dissociative reference groups on consumer preferences. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 16, 404 414. Whitley, S. C., Trudel, R., & Kurt, D. (2018). The influence of purchase motivation on perceived preference uniqueness and assortment size choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 45, 710 724. Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2007). A theory of regret regulation 1.0. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17, 3 18. Zhou, C., & Zhang, Y. (2012). The vast majority of Medicare Part D beneficiaries still don’t choose the cheapest plans that meet their medication needs. Health Affairs, 31, 2259 2264.

Chapter 11

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Andrew H. Hales1, Eric D. Wesselmann2 and Kipling D. Williams3 1

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States, 2Illinois State University, Normal, IL, United States, 3Purdue University, West Lafayette,

IN, United States

Social ostracism (being ignored and excluded), rejection, and other threats to interpersonal relationships are hurtful and surprisingly common experiences (Nezlek, Wesselmann, Wheeler, & Williams, 2012; Wesselmann, VanderDrift, & Agnew, 2016). These social threats have many negative consequences for individuals, including the general feeling that one’s existence does not matter to others—that for all intents and purposes they may as well be invisible (Williams, 2001, 2009). In this chapter, we explore the interplay between ostracism, existential concerns, and religion. We begin by briefly reviewing research on ostracism through the lens of the temporal need-threat model (Williams, 2009) and then considering research on ostracism and religion from three different perspectives. First, we consider religion as a source of ostracism, in which people may find themselves on the outside of certain religious groups or even feel ostracized by their deity. Second, we consider religion as a potential coping response to the pain of ostracism. Finally, we consider what happens when this tendency to respond to ostracism with religion—or indeed any ideology that can satisfy belonging, self-esteem, and a sense of meaning—is taken to an extreme.

Temporal need-threat model of ostracism Williams (2009) developed a theoretical positing that responses to ostracism unfold in three sequential stages. First, in the reflexive stage, the individual notices that they are being ostracized and experiences immediate pain, negative affect, and threats to four basic psychological needs: belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. Second, in the reflective stage, the individual considers the potential causes and ramifications of the ostracism episode and seeks to recover their threatened psychological needs. Finally, if individuals experience continued ostracism, they enter the final resignation stage where persistent threats to their four basic needs succumb to feelings of alienation, unworthiness, helplessness, and depression (e.g., Riva, Montali, Wirth, Curioni, & Williams, 2017).

Reflexive stage Social belonging is critical to survival and successful reproduction. It follows that humans who were oblivious to cues that they were being ostracized would have had a distinct evolutionary disadvantage (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995; Wesselmann, Nairne, & Williams, 2012). Therefore social psychologists have argued that humans have evolved to detect ostracism quickly, perhaps even to be oversensitive to cues that they do not belong. Just as a functioning fire alarm is biased in favor of falsely detecting fires that do not exist (a relatively low-cost error) rather than missing fires that do exist (a high-cost error), so too are humans prone to react to subtle cues of ostracism (e.g., Williams, 2009). This high-sensitivity hypothesis is supported by research findings from a variety of methods. One common and illustrative research method is Cyberball, an experimental paradigm for studying the effects of ostracism (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000). In Cyberball, participants are led to believe that they will be playing a short online ball-tossing game with two other players (actually virtual confederates), for the purpose of practicing their mental visualizing skills. In a typical inclusion condition the participant will receive a fair 33% of the ball tosses. In a typical ostracism condition the participant will receive a few ball tosses at the beginning of the game but will be ignored by the other players The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00012-3 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

153

154

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

thereafter. Despite its deliberately minimal nature, Cyberball reliably induces pain, negative affect, and threat to the four basic psychological needs (for a metaanalysis, see Hartgerink, van Beest, Wicherts, & Williams, 2015). Rationally, one would expect this sort of cyber-ostracism not to hurt, given that the other players are remote strangers who the participant will never meet. To the contrary, however, this type of ostracism hurts, even when the participants know the other players are not real (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004), when the players are thought to be members of a despised outgroup (e.g., the Klu Klux Klan; Fayant, Muller, Hartgerink, & Lantian, 2014; Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007), and when being included carries financial cost (van Beest & Williams, 2006) or can lead to other negative outcomes like increasing one’s risk of being kicked out of a game (Van Beest, Williams, & Van Dijk, 2011). Ostracism does appear to hurt relatively less, however, when specific norms are constructed in which throwing the ball to a player signals dislike (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016). But, in general, it does still hurt. As a whole, these findings support the hypothesis that people are sensitively tuned to signals of ostracism.

Reflective stage Although the pain of ostracism is strong and relatively indiscriminate, it does not last forever. People quickly begin recovering their basic psychological needs as they reflect on the episode and make attributions for why they were not included. While the immediate pain of ostracism tends to be reflexive and relatively less discriminate, following a delay in which people are able to reflect, situational and individual differences can have an effect on the degree to which people are able to recover. For example, people recover more quickly from ostracism when it is based on a temporary group membership, rather than a permanent group membership (Wirth & Williams, 2009), or when they think about the event from a third-person perspective (Lau, Moulds, & Richardson, 2009). Reflections are not universally beneficial; their outcomes depend upon how the individual thinks about the ostracism. Early ostracism research found that people high in social anxiety recovered significantly less following a delay compared to their less anxious counterparts, likely because those high in social anxiety ruminated on the event more (Zadro, Boland, & Richardson, 2006). Subsequent research provided more evidence for the rumination-delay hypothesis and found that there are other ways to reduce rumination and encourage recovery (e.g., distraction, self-affirmation; Hales, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016; Wesselmann, Ren, Swim, & Williams, 2013). Finally, ostracized individuals can recover by thinking about their other satisfying relationships (e.g., Gardner, Pickett, & Knowles, 2005; Twenge et al., 2007). These findings offer a hint as to which intervention strategies are most likely to be effective. While it is possible to numb the reflexive effects of ostracism, the known methods to effectively do so tend to be rather extreme, involving chemical or neural intervention (e.g., Deckman, DeWall, Way, Gilman, & Richman, 2014; DeWall et al., 2010; Hales, Williams, & Eckhardt, 2015; Riva, Romero Lauro, DeWall, & Bushman, 2012). Further, even if these interventions were easy and safe to implement, it is important to remember that the reflexive pain of ostracism serves a key function by signaling that one’s inclusion status is threatened, and that they must seek restored inclusion or else seek new social bonds. Therefore a wiser approach seems to be intervening to speed recovery from ostracism, rather than numbing its immediate effects. Later we discuss how religion can be harnessed to promote a speedy recovery from ostracism.

Resignation stage Finally, if individuals experience continued ostracism and are unable to restore their basic needs satisfaction, they enter the third stage and become resigned to the ostracism. Because of the ethical and practical constraints inherent in examining the effects of long-term ostracism in humans, this stage has received less empirical attention than the others. However, existing research suggests that long-term ostracism produces serious negative effects. The temporal need threat model (Williams, 2009) outlines the long-term consequences of threat to these four basic needs: alienation (belonging), self-esteem (depression), control (helplessness), and meaningful existence (unworthiness). While experimental research is lacking, existing studies drawing on a variety of methods triangulate on the conclusion that chronic ostracism produces these negative consequences. For example, in qualitative interviews, targets of long-term ostracism expressed themes of resignation and helplessness (Zadro, 2004). Also, animal research has experimentally isolated prairie voles and observed behavioral indicators of depression and helplessness (e.g., Grippo, Wu, Hassan, & Carter, 2008). Finally, in the prison system, incarcerated individuals who are solitarily confined are more depressed and show other signs of negative mental health (Haney, 2003; see Wesselmann, Williams, Ren, & Hales, 2014).

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

155

Other research seeking to understand the likely effects of long-term ostracism has directly measured alienation, worthlessness, helplessness, and depression. People with chronic experiences of ostracism report higher levels of these four outcomes compared not only to healthy control participants but also to participants with chronic physical ailments (Riva et al., 2017). Importantly, a single episode of ostracism was not found to significantly induce these outcomes; rather, it seems that ostracism has the potential to produce resignation but only if prolonged. Similar effects of longterm ostracism producing negative mental health outcomes have been documented in studies of military veterans, in which ostracism predicts posttraumatic stress symptoms and distress (Wesselmann, Ispas, Olson, Swerdlik, & Caudle, 2018); and women rejected from sororities, in which rejection predicts depressive symptoms (Martin, Smart Richman, & Leary, 2018).

Religion and ostracism According to Allport (1966, pp. 447), “There is something about religion that makes for prejudice, and something about it that unmakes prejudice.” The same could be said of religion and ostracism; religion can both lead to ostracism and help people undo its negative effects. Religions are rich sources of cultural and social information that connect people in intricate and complex ways. Concepts such as sacred rituals, eternal souls, and powerful deities clearly have the potential to raise the stakes of social interactions and thus play a major role in how ostracism can unfold. In the following sections, we consider religion first as a source of ostracism, then as a source of potential healing following ostracism (from any source). And later, we return to the idea of prejudice and consider the interplay between ostracism, religion, and prejudice itself.

Religion as a potential source of ostracism Daily diary studies indicate that ostracism is common, with people reporting either experiencing it or using it about once per day on average (Nezlek et al., 2012; Nezlek, Wesselmann, Wheeler, & Williams, 2015). Given its prevalence and harms, it is important to ask why ostracism occurs in the first place (e.g., Wirth, LeRoy, & Bernstein, 2019; Wirth & Wesselmann, 2018; Zadro & Gonsalkorale, 2014). Ostracism can arise from a wide array of motives, ranging from sheer obliviousness, all the way to a desire to punish (Williams, 1997). One way to conceptualize these wide ranges of motives is by considering three ultimate reasons why a group might use ostracism: to protect, to correct, and to eject (Hales, Ren, & Williams, 2017). That is, groups can ostracize outsiders to protect their members from symbolic or real threats, can ostracize problematic insiders to motivate them to correct their behavior, and failing this, they can ostracize stubbornly problematic insiders to permanently eject them from the group. These three uses of ostracism can help explain the ways in which religion can serve as a vehicle for ostracism.

Ostracism for religious protection First, members of a religious group can ostracize outsiders to protect the religious group from ideologies that pose threats to the group. These threats may be real or imagined/symbolic (Jackson, 1993; Stephan & Stephan, 2000). While often studied at the individual level, ostracism can and does occur between groups (e.g., Betts & Hinsz, 2013). Humans are coalitional animals, even when the stakes are low (e.g., Sherif, 1966). As coalitions go, however, it is hard to imagine higher stakes than religion. Religions take positions on questions of literally eternal significance: the status of souls, the meaning of sinful behaviors, the morality of punishment/justice, and the primary meaning of existence (both for an individual person and for all of creation). Humans have a moral sense that is capable of treating certain positions as sacred, that is, containing infinite value (Haidt, 2012; Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000). From this perspective, it is rational to ostracize outsiders who harbor ideas that could threaten cherished values and beliefs because these outsiders offer a divergent view—and thus a threat—to the social reality the in-group’s views provide (e.g., Festinger, 1950). It follows that interreligious contexts would be rife with opportunities for this sort of defensive ostracism. As just one example of this dynamic, consider the phenomenon of antiatheist prejudice. Research shows that much of the prejudice toward atheists is due to a tendency to distrust them (as they are presumably not accountable to a watchful god; Gervais, 2013). Research on the factors that precipitate ostracism has shown that distrust is an important factor (Hales, Kassner, Williams, & Graziano, 2016). It follows from this that atheists would be especially likely to be ostracized. And indeed, various indices find a general reluctance to fully include atheists in all social activities (e.g., reluctance to vote for an atheist candidate or disapproving of one’s child marrying an atheist; Edgell, Gerteis, & Hartmann, 2006).

156

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

History is replete with examples of religious intolerance of this sort. Consider, for example, the eventual migration of English Puritans—tellingly also known as Separatists. Or, more dramatically, hostilities against the early Mormon church, culminating in an 1838 extermination order issued by the state of Missouri (Hartley, 2001). Even today religions often encourage members to marry within the faith and to maintain some separation from outsiders—as in the admonition to be in the world, but not of the world (derived from the biblical passage in John 15:19). This happens most extremely among certain groups that society colloquially terms “fundamentalist” (Grainger, 2008; Herriot, 2009). We are not aware of research directly testing the role of religion in producing ostracism; however, extrapolation of classic psychological theory on intergroup relations, and the presence of historical examples, both strongly suggest that religion can play an important role in the implementation of ostracism.

Ostracism for religious correction and (if necessary) ejection Second, members of a religious group can ostracize their fellow ingroup members in order to encourage them to correct any deviant behavior and (if necessary) to eject those who tarnish the reputation of the group. By correct, we are referring to situations where the ostracism is relatively less severe and serves to alert targets that their behavior is unwelcome. In contrast, by eject, we are referring to situations where the ostracism is intended to be relatively permanent. It is likely that religious groups use ostracism in an escalating fashion, with corrective and less severe ostracism being used first, and more permanent and irreversible forms of ostracism being reserved for target’s whose behavior does not improve following the less severe initial ostracism. Whether to correct or eject, abundant experimental evidence shows that ostracism—or the threat of ostracism—can be a powerful agent in promoting cooperation and observation of group norms (e.g., Feinberg, Willer, & Schultz, 2014; Kerr et al., 2009; Riva, Williams, Torstrick, & Montali, 2014). For example, groups respond negatively to anyone who deviates from the group norm, both when this deviation directly harms group functioning (e.g., Wesselmann, Wirth, Pryor, Reeder, & Williams, 2013) and when it does not (Schachter, 1951; Wesselmann et al., 2014). Indeed, individuals who initially deviate from group norms but then conform are responded to positively, rewarded for their “rehabilitation” (Schachter, 1951; Wesselmann, 2011; Wesselmann et al., 2014). Sometimes these rehabilitated individuals are treated more positively than individuals who were always in step with group norms (Schachter, 1951). In the religious context, there are examples of religious-based practices of ostracism, such as the Amish practice of shunning (i.e., Meidung), and the Catholic’s and Jehovah’s Witness’s practice of excommunication. Similar dynamics were documented in Jim Jones’s People’s Temple Full Gospel Church (Scheeres, 2011). Research on the black sheep effect attests to the tendency for people to socially reject members of their own group in situations where those group members’ behavior reflects negatively on the group as a whole (Marques & Paez, 1994). If members of religious groups use ostracism to enforce norms, it follows that people who are ostracized by religious ingroup members should express greater adherence to central tenets of the faith. Experimental evidence for this process was identified by Schaafsma and Williams (2012). Participants were randomly assigned to be either included or ostracized in Cyberball, either by members of one’s own religion or an outgroup religion. Those who were ostracized reported higher endorsement of fundamentalist beliefs (such as “There is a religion on this earth that teaches, without error, God’s truth”; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Importantly, this was only the case when people were ostracized by fellow members of their own religion, not the outgroup. This suggests that ingroup ostracism represents a threat to one’s acceptance (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999), to which people respond by conforming to presumed group norms (in this case, rigid fundamentalist belief). Additional evidence that ostracism can produce extremism is presented below, and we consider what happens when the tendency to respond to ostracism by turning to religion is taken to an extreme.

Ostracism and God Finally, ostracism can also arise in a religious context in one other way that does not fit cleanly into the categories identified previously: God can ostracize individuals, and individuals can ostracize God. (Or more specifically, believers can feel ostracized by God, and feel that they are ostracizing God.) It has been proposed that the concept of God can serve as an important attachment figure (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004; Kirkpatrick, 2005) and that religious participants’ perception of their personal relationship to their deity bears similarity to interpersonal relationships (Wesselmann et al., 2016). Provided that people have a sense that they are in a relationship with God, it is reasonable to ask what happens when they feel that the relationship is being neglected. van Beest & Williams (2011) answered this question by randomly assigning people to read either typical passages from the bible or passages suggesting social exclusion by God

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

157

(specifically, Mark 15:34, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” and Samuel 18:22, “Then Saul became afraid, because he noticed the LORD had abandoned him.”). These passages tended to produce the same psychological effects as ostracism (i.e., threat to basic needs), with some evidence that this was especially true for people who were especially high in intrinsic religiosity—those individuals for whom religion was central to their self-concept (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993). Similarly, when individuals are reminded that certain aspects of themselves might cause God to lose respect for them or love them less, they respond by increasing their reported closeness to human partners, in an apparent effort to seek satisfaction of social needs elsewhere (Laurin, Schumann, & Holmes, 2014). Although it has not been tested, to our knowledge, it seems likely that these sorts of reminders could also induce the corrective responses outlined above—that is, causing people to more closely endorse and adhere to the tenets of their faith to restore their standing in the eyes of God. Just as it is possible for religious people to feel ostracized by God, it may be possible for them to want to ostracize God, at least if one conceptualizes God as a partner with whom relationships, or at least parasocial relationships (Horton & Wohl, 1956), are possible. One way they may do this is by decreasing the amount they pray. Social scientists of religion argue that a study of prayer is central to understanding how individuals establish and maintain a relationship with their deity (e.g., Luhrmann, 2012; Spilka & Ladd, 2013). Just as communication is critical to maintaining romantic relationships (e.g., Meeks, Hendrick, & Hendrick, 1998), we suggest that it is also to maintaining one’s perceived relationship with God. One of the final stages of romantic relationship dissolution is withdrawing communication from a partner, sometimes called “stonewalling” (Gottman, 1994) or the silent treatment (Williams, 2001; Zadro, Arriaga, & Williams, 2008). One’s commitment to their deity can fluctuate over time, and a continual decrease in commitment can lead someone to discontinue their belief in that deity entirely (Wesselmann et al., 2016). The specific ways in which this process may occur are understudied, but just as interpersonal relationships can become entrenched in a cycle of reciprocal negative behaviors (e.g., Fincham & Beach, 1999; Gottman, 1994), it is possible that this could play out in one’s transition from believer to nonbeliever. For example, cognitive interpretations (and their resulting effects on affect and behavior) can be important for longevity in both interpersonal relationships (Holtzworth-Munroe & Jacobson, 1985) and relationships to one’s deity (Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey, 2011). If a religious person prays for something and does not receive it, they may interpret this “unanswered prayer” as God ignoring (i.e., ostracizing) them. They may then choose to withdraw from God momentarily to deal with their feelings of anger and betrayal. If this happens continually over time, they may eventually withdraw entirely from the relationship, either changing their concept of God (e.g., God is no longer considered benevolent but rather judgmental and punitive) or discontinuing their belief entirely. This is only one possible theoretical model that we could devise based on combining the ostracism and interpersonal relationships literature. Future research should consider testing this and other potential models. From this perspective, atheism itself, or at least turning from religion to atheism (apostasy), could be viewed as a form of ostracizing God. Conceptually it is an interesting and open question whether to ostracize requires that one endorses belief in the presumed target. On the one hand, it seems odd to say that today people are “ostracizing” the gods of Zoroastrianism, simply because one might be ignorant or incredulous of them in the first place. Rather, it is more likely that people have simply never taken seriously the idea that those gods could be real. On the other hand, ostracism is often painful precisely because it communicates to the target that they are so unimportant as to not warrant attention or consideration. From the target’s perspective, we know that ostracism is hurtful even if the target believes that the source is not real (Zadro et al., 2004). Similarly, it may be appropriate to say that someone can ostracize God, even if the manifestation of their ignoring and excluding is a simple expressed disbelief.

Religion as a potential response to ostracism Although religion can lead to ostracism, it also has several properties that make it especially well-suited to help people positively respond to the pain of ostracism (Wesselmann & Williams, 2010). Thinking back to the four basic needs threatened by ostracism, we see that religion can address all of them. Religions can promote literal belonging by embedding individuals into a community that meets regularly, sharing clear and common values (Wesselmann et al., 2016). It can also promote a more symbolic/vicarious belonging by granting people a perceived close and meaningful relationship with God (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 2005). Just as individuals can promote their belonging needs through reminders of connections to close others (Gardner et al., 2005), they should also be able to do so through reminders of their connection to God and/or other spiritual figures. Religions can also promote self-esteem. A common theme of religious teachings is that humans hold unique and important status in the eyes of a Creator, and reminders of this status ought to help bolster people’s self-esteem. For example, the teaching that God created the universe for the purpose of allowing humans to exist is quite a self-flattering

158

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

worldview. Whether self-esteem is ultimately motivated by awareness of one’s own mortality (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004) or is a gauge of one’s belongingness (Leary et al, 1995), religion can be an important bolstering agent. Religions can also promote control, both literally and figuratively. They can connect individuals to a network that can band together in times of stress and provide assistance through life’s many challenges. Further, the practice of praying may help offer a sense of vicarious control over life’s many uncertain events by petitioning God or trusting in a divine plan (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1998; Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982). Even without prayer, the mere knowledge that an active, benevolent God is operating should help people to feel less helpless. Finally, religion can be a source of meaningful existence. People have a general desire to understand the world, locate themselves within it, and take meaningful steps to personal significance. Religions offer comprehensive world views that are ideal for satisfying this desire (Spilka, Shaver, & Kirkpatrick, 1985). Longitudinal daily diary research finds that daily fluctuations in religiosity predict meaning in life, especially for people who tend to be more religious overall (Kashdan & Nezlek, 2012). Further, the influence of religion on meaning in life can be intensified by feelings that one’s deity directly intervenes in life, at least for certain religious groups (e.g., Christians; Jung, 2015). Ostracism reliably threatens the need for meaningful existence (Hartgerink et al., 2015). For example, loneliness predicts lower feelings of meaning in life, as does experimentally induced ostracism (Stillman et al., 2009; see also Riva et al., 2017). Ostracism can also cause reactions reminiscent of those to the awareness and/or contemplation of death (Case & Williams, 2004; Steele, Kidd, & Castano, 2015). In addition, Hales (2018) proposed that death itself could be a useful metaphor for ostracism. For example, death is universal (we all die), total (the dead cannot experience or do anything), and irreversible. Ostracism certainly does not always have these properties, but in cases where it does, its effects can be especially potent. In summary, it follows from these lines of research, theorizing that religion would be well suited to address this threatened need. In the light of these characteristics, it is reasonable to expect that religion is a powerful tool for coping following ostracism (though of course it may not always prevent ostracism in the first place). Research tends to support this conclusion, with studies showing (1) that people are especially likely to turn to religion in times of ostracism and (2) that when they do so, they experience more favorable outcomes. Experimental research has shown a tendency for those who are experiencing a variety of social disruptions (i.e., ostracism, exclusion, rejection, and loneliness) to seek out religion. For example, in an experiment with 50 believers and 49 nonbelievers (based on yes no responses to the question of whether they believe in God), when people were led to believe (based on false personality test feedback) that they are likely to end up alone later in life, overall they subsequently report greater belief in God (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). Interestingly, this effect did not vary significantly based on one’s prior belief in God; the prospect of future isolation was sufficiently strong to produce greater belief in a benevolent attachment figure to a roughly equal extent for believers and nonbelievers alike. Similarly, when people were experimentally assigned to vividly recall a time they were socially excluded, they reported higher levels of religiosity (Burris, Batson, Altstaedten, & Stephens, 1994), and greater intention to engage in religious behaviors both privately (such as praying) and publicly (such as communicating with religious leaders; Aydin, Fischer, & Frey, 2010). Not only does the social exclusion increase belief in God, it also causes people to feel closer to God. For example, when people are reminded that their close romantic partner has a private/secret self (suggesting distance from the individual), they report greater closeness to God, and greater willingness to maintain their relationship with God (Laurin et al., 2014). Finally, religion appears to be an effective strategy to respond to the pain of ostracism directly. Experiments have shown that, among other activities, the religious act of praying can help people recover their four basic psychological needs following ostracism (Hales et al., 2016). Specifically, people were either ostracized or included in Cyberball. Those who were randomly assigned to pray showed significantly greater recovery of basic needs. Further, those who were highly committed to their relationship with God showed especially high recovery in the prayer condition, suggesting that prayer may be less effective for more casual observers of the religion (although not futile). Not only can religion promote recovery of basic needs following ostracism, it has also been shown to reduce the aggression that typically follows ostracism (Aydin et al., 2010; Study 5). Participants who imagined themselves being excluded by colleagues at a new job subsequently recommended that a target be made to keep their hand in ice water for significantly longer (an unpleasant task often used as a measure of displaced aggression). However, this effect was eliminated among participants who were also given the opportunity to reflect on how their faith has affected their life, even though they imagined the same rejection experience. The preceding discussion has focused on religion (i.e., organized and culturally shared forms of belief) and its tendency to promote recovery following ostracism. But it is important to note that these findings likely apply to spirituality

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

159

more generally (Wesselmann & Williams, 2010). For example, participants who practiced mindful meditation showed greater recovery following ostracism (Molet, Macquet, Lefebvre, & Williams, 2013). Similarly, exposure to nature has also been shown to temper ostracism’s negative effects (Poon, Teng, Wong, & Chen, 2016). Both meditation and closeness to nature are common components of many spiritual traditions. In sum, both theory and research support the notion that religion can be a powerful balm to help promote recovery from ostracism. While this is generally a positive and adaptive process, it is also possible for people to become overly reliant on ordinary religious groups, or even to turn to extremism in the face of ostracism.

Ostracism and extremism . . .many paths toward radicalization emerge from an individual’s fundamental human search for identity, community, and a sense of individual purpose gone wrong. . .The allure of power, identity, and purpose is inherent in extremist cultures. Picciolini, 2017a; pp. xxiii xxiv.

Ostracism research demonstrates that individuals are more susceptible to social influence (i.e., compliance, conformity, and obedience) tactics after they have been ostracized (Carter-Sowell, Chen, & Williams, 2008; DeWall, 2010; Riva et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2000). Further, they also show interest in joining new groups (Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, & Schaller, 2007). As such, individuals who feel chronically ostracized may become attractive targets for groups that exploit those feelings to advance extremist religious ideologies (or other types of world views) (Wesselmann & Williams, 2010). Psychologists and other social scientists who have studied these groups argue that members do not willingly join groups that they suspect will exploit them and demand blind obedience; rather they join groups that look attractive on the surface because these groups advertise a way of fulfilling psychological needs (e.g., a sense of belonging and meaningful existence) that are not being met otherwise (Isser, 1991; MacHovec, 1991; Miller, Veltkamp, Kraus, Lane, & Heister, 1999; Parsons, 1986; Stein, 2017; Venter, 1998; Zimbardo, 1997). Once these groups recruit individuals, they will often keep the individual committed by showering the members with affection when they are conforming with group norms, but punishing or even temporarily ostracizing the members when they diverge from norms (similar to the processes outlined above) and creating a cycle of psychological satisfaction and threat in which the group provides the sole source of safety and belonging (sometimes called “love bombing;” Parsons, 1986; Venter, 1998); this is akin to the destructive dependence often found in abusive relationships (Stein, 2017). There is unfortunately little empirical evidence of this harmful pattern aside from interview data from people who have left these groups. However, a recent experimental study provides causal evidence supporting this assertion. Participants who first experienced ostracism by a group and subsequently included by that same group reported finding the group more attractive, identified more with the group, and were more willing to engage in greater risk taking for the group than individuals who were included by the group from the beginning (Dahl, Niedbala, & Hohman, 2019). Further, another experiment found that religious individuals who were ostracized by fellow religious in-group members showed increased endorsement of fundamentalist beliefs, likely as a way to ensure their reinclusion (Schaafsma & Williams, 2012). Finally, participants who were experimentally ostracized reported greater willingness to attend a meeting of a group that uses extreme means to promote its goals (i.e., blockading a college campus) and also greater openness to the idea of gang membership (Hales & Williams, 2018). This argument may be extended to other groups, such as extremist political movements and terrorist organizations. These groups in particular may provide chronically ostracized individuals, who may be feeling helpless, a way to reassert control and be acknowledged even if it is through extreme antisocial methods (Williams & Wesselmann, 2011). For example, Knapton (2014) argued perceived ostracism to be a way of understanding how Muslim immigrants may become susceptible to radicalization in non-Muslim countries. One experiment on ostracism supports this argument: religious participants (whether they were Muslim or Christian) responded to being ostracized by religious out-group members with increased hostility toward that religious group broadly (Schaafsma & Williams, 2012). The ostracism may not need to be interpersonal directly, but rather the perception that one’s social group is ignored by the broader society. One experiment found that when participants witnessed an in-group member ostracized, they vicariously experienced feelings of anger, humiliation, and powerlessness (Veldhuis, Gordijn, Veenstra, & Lindenberg, 2014). Although these data do not directly address extremist behavior, they fit within the general framework of understanding extremist aggression. Of course much of this work is theoretical because of the inherent difficulties in recruiting participants affiliated with extremist groups for surveys or other laboratory-based research methods (Ginges, Atran, Sachdeva, & Medin, 2011). However, some research has been conducted that suggest that terrorists are attracted to extremism as a way to

160

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

reestablish a sense of meaning and social control that have been threatened by feeling humiliated or otherwise ostracized by larger communities (Kruglanski, Chen, Dechesne, Fishman, & Edward, 2009; Kruglanski & Orehek, 2011; Sixta Rinehart, 2013; Webber et al., 2018). Experimental studies provide causal evidence that ostracism can make individuals more open to radical opinions, extreme behaviors in support of their in-group, and political actions against groups that have previously ostracized them (Ba¨ck, Ba¨ck, Altermark, & Knapton, 2018; Knapton, Ba¨ck, & Ba¨ck, 2015; Pfundmair & Wetherell, 2018). Much of the psychological research on ostracism and extremism has focused on Muslim immigrants or religious minority groups in European countries. However, there are certainly examples of people who commit acts of domestic terrorism and cite their Christian beliefs as motivation for the violence (e.g., attacks on abortion providers; Willis, 2011), and scholars have discussed the similarities and differences of extremism across Islam, Christianity, and other religious groups (Clarke, 2017; Pratt, 2010). In addition, both the historical and modern versions of the Ku Klux Klan often justified their activities using arguments derived from American Protestant Christian ideologies (Baker, 2011; Fry, 1969; Schmitz, 2016). As such, we argue that research on ostracism and extremism should be extended to look at other forms of religious extremism, whether the groups inherently are religious in nature or simply weaponize religious beliefs as a recruitment or justification tool. Case study: White extremist groups. One example of extremist groups that often utilize religious beliefs in their rhetoric are white extremist organizations. Certain groups such as the Aryan Nations and the Christian Identity movement are white supremacist groups with religious beliefs that are loosely based on select aspects of Christian theology, often melded with racist ideologies (Berlet & Vysotsky, 2006; Dobratz, 2001; Freilich, Chermak, & Caspi, 2009; Tourish & Wohlforth, 2000). The loose Christian framework of these groups likely provide a feeling of legitimacy for their racist beliefs (e.g., Castle, Kristiansen, & Shifflett, 2018; Schmitz, 2016). In some cases, it is the religious trappings that provide the hook to recruit members that would not otherwise join (Schafer, Mullins, & Box, 2014). However, sometimes groups will adopt aspects of alternative, neopagan religious systems when they become aware of certain parts of mainstream religions such as Christianity prove incompatible with their racist ideologies (e.g., Creativity, Odinism; Berlet & Vysotsky, 2006; Dobratz, 2001; Schafer et al., 2014). Various public watchdog organizations (e.g., Anti-Defamation League, 2018; Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d.) have noted the rise in white extremist activity in the United States over the last half decade. The reasons for this increase are undoubtedly complex, but perceived ostracism may be at least one reason why these groups are attractive to some people. Picciolini (2017a, 2017b), a former leader in the US Neo Nazi “skinhead” movement, argued one of the reasons he was recruited and radicalized was because he was a lonely, disenchanted youth who was looking for a place to belong and provide him with meaning and purpose. Picciolini’s self-description sounds similar to the outcomes experienced by people who experience chronic ostracism (Riva et al., 2017; Williams, 2001, 2009). The extant literature on recruitment and radicalization for white extremists also provide converging support for a connection between perceived ostracism and vulnerability. One ethnographic study (Blazak, 2001) of skinhead recruitment processes found that a common target group was young people (mostly male) who felt socially isolated and were searching for meaning or direction in a world that seemed to be shifting chaotically around them, a world in which they felt socially and economically devalued. We see elements of both a need for belonging and meaningful existence in these themes. In addition, some participants felt that the skinhead movement gave them a way to strike back the social threats they perceived around them. We interpret this as being related to a thwarted need for control, in which aggression may seem to be an attractive way to fortify this need if no other way seems viable (Williams, 2009; Williams & Wesselmann, 2011). Other studies of virtual communities’ web postings and rhetoric (Bowman-Grieve, 2013; Vysotsky & McCarthy, 2017) suggest that white extremist groups provide a way to connect socially with other like-minded individuals (belonging), and often emphasize the focus is to present a sense of pride in one’s race (esteem). As scholars of radicalization have noted, the shift to extremism is a process rather than a dichotomous state (e.g., Stein, 2017; Zimbardo, 1997). White supremacists themselves seem to have recognized that explicit hateful rhetoric is unacceptable to mainstream society, making it difficult for them to reach a broader audience outside the margins, and thus have shifted their rhetoric to emphasized racial pride rather than outright supremacy (e.g., Schafer et al., 2014; Vysotsky & McCarthy, 2017). They also focus on a perceived threat from the general social movement toward diversity and multiculturalism, recasting this change in terms of “white genocide” and “white victimization” (Berlet & Vysotsky, 2006; Bowman-Grieve, 2013; Castle et al., 2018; Schafer et al., 2014). This rhetorical focus on threat is important because perceived threat is an important component in understanding the psychological dynamics of prejudice and intergroup conflict (Brewer, 1999; Schaller & Neuberg, 2012). This rhetoric is intensified when religious/apocalyptic beliefs are attached to the perception of threat; many of these groups espouse beliefs in an approaching (or ongoing) race war that threatens the existence of “white culture” and the literal survival of the racial group (Dobratz, 2001;

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

161

Schafer et al., 2014). When these beliefs occur within a religious-esqe framework, they take on Armageddon-like properties: an existential conflict imbued within the context of Good and Evil (Berlet & Vysotsky, 2006; Schmitz, 2016; Tourish & Wohlforth, 2000; White, 2001). These connections between religious beliefs and ostracism may offer some suggestions for how scholars, clinicians, and policy-makers interested in deradicalization may attempt to combat recruitment practices and assist individuals who may be interested in leaving the movement but may not have the knowledge of how to satisfy their psychological needs elsewhere. Breaking the hold a group has on someone who has already been radicalized is difficult so ideally interventions could be implemented early on in the radicalization process. Successful interventions would likely involve both interpersonal and societal changes, each of which focused on addressing the factors that are most likely to lead to radicalization. In the case of psychological factors, interventions should focus on individuals’ unsatisfied psychological needs, such as social marginalization, loneliness/ostracism, and perceived lack of meaning (e.g., Knapton, 2014; Kruglanski & Orehek, 2011; Stein, 2017). Picciolini (2017a, 2017b); (https://www.christianpicciolini.com/), a former leader of a white supremacist group in the United States, has spent the last several years leading efforts to help people deradicalize and leave various types of extremist hate groups (e.g., the Free Radicals Project; https://www.freeradicals. org/). Many of Picciolini’s anecdotes resonate with psychologists’ recommendations; most of the people he has helped noted that they entered these groups because of the belonging the groups provided, rather than the group’s ideology. The factors that helped these individuals leave the groups were things such as compassion and positive interactions with others (especially members of the groups they were radicalized against but ultimately knew little about). We argue that social inclusion is one way to provide some of the compassion and social support that Picciolini suggests, and through social inclusion the other threatened needs may also be satisfied.

Concluding remarks Ostracism, and social exclusion more generally, is a painful experience. In this chapter, we have reviewed research relevant to the interplay between ostracism and religion. Religion can be a source of ostracism, but it can also be a helpful source of recovery for those who have been ostracized. Finally, ostracism may leave people vulnerable to radicalization into extreme groups of all types.

References Allport, G. (1966). The religious context of prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5, 447 457. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113 133. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5. Anti-Defamation League. New hate and old: The changing face of American white supremacy. (2018). ,https://www.adl.org/media/11894/download. Accessed 23.02.19. Aydin, N., Fischer, P., & Frey, D. (2010). Turning to God in the face of ostracism: Effects of social exclusion on religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 742 753. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167210367491. Ba¨ck, E. A., Ba¨ck, H., Altermark, N., & Knapton, H. (2018). The quest for significance: Attitude adaption to a radical group following social exclusion. International Journal of Developmental Science, 12, 25 36. Baker, K. J. (2011). Gospel according to the Klan: The KKK’s appeal to Protestant America (pp. 1915 1930). Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Berlet, C., & Vysotsky, S. (2006). Overview of U.S. white supremacist groups. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 34, 11 48. Betts, K. R., & Hinsz, V. B. (2013). Group marginalization: Extending research on interpersonal rejection to small groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 355 370. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868313497999. Blazak, R. (2001). White boys to terrorist men. American Behavioral Scientist, 44, 982 1000. Bowman-Grieve, L. (2013). A psychological perspective on virtual communities supporting terrorist & extremist ideologies as a tool for recruitment. Security Informatics, 2, 9. Available from https://doi.org/10.1186/2190-8532-2-9. Branscombe, N. R., Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (1999). The context and content of social identity threat. In N. Ellemers, R. Spears, & B. Doosje (Eds.), Social identity: Context, commitment, content (pp. 35 58). Oxford: Blackwell. Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love and outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55, 429 444. Burris, C., Batson, C., Altstaedten, M., & Stephens, K. (1994). “What a Friend. . .”: Loneliness as a motivator of intrinsic religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33, 326 334. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1386492.

162

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Carter-Sowell, A. R., Chen, Z., & Williams, K. D. (2008). Ostracism increases social susceptibility. Social Influence, 3, 143 153. Case, T. I., & Williams, K. D. (2004). Ostracism: A metaphor for death. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 336 351). New York: Guilford Press. Castle, T., Kristiansen, L., & Shifflett, L. (2018). White racial activism and paper terrorism: A case study in far-right propaganda. Deviant Behavior, 1 16. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1557380. Clarke, S. (2017). ). Competing fundamentalisms: Violent extremism in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Westminster John Knox Press. Dahl, E., Niedbala, E. M., & Hohman, Z. P. (2019). Loving the group that denies you first: Social identity effects of ostracism before inclusion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45, 284 299. Deckman, T., DeWall, C. N., Way, B., Gilman, R., & Richman, S. (2014). Can marijuana reduce social pain? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 131 139. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613488949. DeWall, C. N. (2010). Forming a basis for acceptance: Excluded people form attitudes to agree with potential affiliates. Social Influence, 5, 245 260. DeWall, C., MacDonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C. L., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C., . . . Eisenberger, N. I. (2010). Acetaminophen reduces social pain: Behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological Science, 21, 931 937. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610374741. Dobratz, B. A. (2001). The role of religion in the collective identity of the white racialist movement. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 287 301. Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Hartmann, D. (2006). Atheists as “other”: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review, 71, 211 234. Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). Creating social connection through inferential reproduction: Loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and greyhounds. Psychological Science, 19, 114 120. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02056.x. Exline, J. J., Park, C. L., Smyth, J. M., & Carey, M. P. (2011). Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 129 148. Fayant, M. P., Muller, D., Hartgerink, C. H. J., & Lantian, A. (2014). Is ostracism by a despised outgroup really hurtful? A replication and extension of Gonsalkorale and Williams (2007). Social Psychology, 45, 489 494. Available from https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000209. Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Schultz, M. (2014). Gossip and ostracism promote cooperation in groups. Psychological Science, 25, 656 664. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613510184. Festinger, L. (1950). Informal social communication. Psychological Review, 57, 271 282. Fincham, F. D., & Beach, S. R. (1999). Conflict in marriage: Implications for working with couples. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 47 77. Freilich, J. D., Chermak, S. M., & Caspi, D. (2009). Critical events in the life trajectories of domestic extremist white supremacist groups: A case study of four violent organizations. Criminology & Public Policy, 8, 497 530. Fry, H. P. (1969). The modern Ku Klux Klan. New York, NY: Negro Universities Press. Gardner, W., Pickett, C. L., & Knowles, M. (2005). Social snacking and shielding: using social symbols, selves, and surrogates in the service of belonging needs. In K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, & W. Von Hippel (Eds.), The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying (pp. 227 242). New York: Psychology Press. Gervais, W. (2013). In godlessness we distrust: Using social psychology to solve the puzzle of anti-atheist prejudice. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 366 377. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12035. Ginges, J., Atran, S., Sachdeva, S., & Medin, D. (2011). Psychology out of the laboratory: The challenge of violent extremism. American Psychologist, 66, 507 519. Gonsalkorale, K., & Williams, K. D. (2007). The KKK won’t let me play: Ostracism even by a despised outgroup hurts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1176 1186. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.392. Gottman, J. M. (1994). What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Grainger, B. (2008). In the world but not of it: One family’s militant faith and the history of fundamentalism in America. New York: Walker & Company. Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Religious conversion and perceived childhood attachment: A meta-analysis. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 223 250. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1404_1. Grippo, A. J., Wu, K. D., Hassan, I., & Carter, C. S. (2008). Social isolation in prairie voles induces behaviors relevant to negative affect: Toward the development of a rodent model focused on co-occurring depression and anxiety. Depression and Anxiety, 25, E17 E26. Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind. New York: Random House, Inc. Hales, A. H. (2018). Death as a metaphor for ostracism: Social invincibility, autopsy, necromancy, and resurrection. Mortality, 23, 366 380. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2017.1382462. Hales, A. H., Ren, D., & Williams, K. D. (2017). Protect, correct, and eject: Ostracism as a social influence tool. In S. J. Harkins, J. M. Burger, & K. D. Williams (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of social influence (pp. 205 217). New York: Oxford University Press. Hales, A. H., Kassner, M. P., Williams, K. D., & Graziano, W. G. (2016). Disagreeableness as a cause and consequence of ostracism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 782 797. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216643933. Hales, A. H., Wesselmann, E. D., & Williams, K. D. (2016). Prayer, self-affirmation, and distraction improve recovery from short-term ostracism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 64, 8 20. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.01.002. Hales, A. H., & Williams, K. D. (2018). Marginalized individuals and extremism: The role of ostracism in openness to extreme groups. Journal of Social Issues, 74, 75 92. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12257.

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

163

Hales, A. H., Williams, K. D., & Eckhardt, C. I. (2015). A participant walks into a bar. . .: Subjective intoxication buffers ostracism’s negative effects. Social Psychology, 46, 157 166. Available from https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000235. Haney, C. (2003). Mental health issues in long-term solitary and “supermax” confinement. Crime & Delinquency, 49, 124 156. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128702239239. Hartgerink, C. J., van Beest, I., Wicherts, J. M., & Williams, K. D. (2015). The ordinal effects of ostracism: A meta-analysis of 120 Cyberball studies. PLoS One, 10. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127002. Hartley, W. G. (2001). Missouri’s 1838 extermination order and the Mormon’s forced removal to Illinois. Mormon Historical Studies, 2, 5 27. Herriot, P. (2009). Religious fundamentalism: Global, local, and personal. London: Routledge. Holtzworth-Munroe, A., & Jacobson, N. S. (1985). Causal attributions of married couples: When do they search for causes? What do they conclude when they do? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1398 1412. Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social relationships. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 19, 215 229. Isser, N. (1991). Why cultic groups develop and flourish: A historian’s perspective. Cultic Studies Journal, 8, 104 121. Jackson, J. W. (1993). Realistic group conflict theory: A review and evaluation of the theoretical and empirical literature. The Psychological Record, 43, 395 413. Jung, J. H. (2015). Sense of divine involvement and sense of meaning in life: Religious tradition as a contingency. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54, 119 133. Kashdan, T. B., & Nezlek, J. B. (2012). Whether, when, and how is spirituality related to well-being? Moving beyond single occasion questionnaires to understanding daily processes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1523 1535. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167212454549. Kerr, N. L., Rumble, A. C., Park, E. S., Ouwerkerk, J. W., Parks, C. D., Gallucci, M., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2009). “How many bad apples does it take to spoil the whole barrel?”: Social exclusion and toleration of bad apples. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 603 613. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.017. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. New York: The Guilford Press. Knapton, H. (2014). The recruitment and radicalisation of western citizens: Does ostracism have a role in homegrown terrorism? Journal of European Psychology Students, 5, 38 48. Knapton, H. M., Ba¨ck, H., & Ba¨ck, E. A. (2015). The social activist: Conformity to the ingroup following rejection as a predictor of political participation. Social Influence, 10, 97 108. Kruglanski, A. W., Chen, X., Dechesne, M., Fishman, S., & Edward, O. (2009). Fully committed: Suicide bombers’ motivation and the quest for personal significance. Political Psychology, 30, 331 357. Kruglanski, A. W., & Orehek, E. (2011). The role of the quest for personal significance in motivating terrorism. In J. P. Forgas, A. W. Kruglanski, & K. D. Williams (Eds.), The psychology of social conflict and aggression (pp. 153 164). New York: Psychology Press. Lau, G., Moulds, M. L., & Richardson, R. (2009). Ostracism: how much it hurts depends on how you remember it. Emotion, 9, 430 434. Laurin, K., Schumann, K., & Holmes, J. G. (2014). A relationship with God? Connecting with the divine to assuage fears of interpersonal rejection. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 777 785. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614531800. Leary, M. R., Tambor, E. S., Terdal, S. K., & Downs, D. L. (1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 518 530. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.3.518. Luhrmann, T. M. (2012). When God talks back: Understanding the American evangelical relationship with God. Vintage. MacHovec, F. J. (1991). Cults, personality, and pathology. Psychotherapy in Private Practice, 8, 77 85. Maner, J. K., DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., & Schaller, M. (2007). Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the “porcupine problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 42 55. Marques, J. M., & Paez, D. (1994). The “black sheep effect”: Social categorization, rejection of ingroup deviates, and perception of group variability. European Review of Social Psychology, 5, 37 68. Martin, J. L., Smart Richman, L., & Leary, M. (2018). A lasting sting: Examining the short-term and long-term effects of real-life group rejection. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 21, 1109 1124. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430217695443, 136843021769544. Meeks, B. S., Hendrick, S. S., & Hendrick, C. (1998). Communication, love and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 755 773. Miller, T. W., Veltkamp, L. J., Kraus, R. F., Lane, T., & Heister, T. (1999). An adolescent vampire cult in rural America: Clinical issues and case study. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 29, 209 219. Molet, M., Macquet, B., Lefebvre, O., & Williams, K. D. (2013). A focused attention intervention for coping with ostracism. Consciousness and Cognition, 22, 1262 1270. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.010. Nezlek, J. B., Wesselmann, E. D., Wheeler, L., & Williams, K. D. (2012). Ostracism in everyday life. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 16, 91 104. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028029. Nezlek, J. B., Wesselmann, E. D., Wheeler, L., & Williams, K. D. (2015). Ostracism in everyday life: The effects of ostracism on those who ostracize. The Journal of Social Psychology, 155, 432 451. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2015.1062351. Parsons, A. S. (1986). Messianic personalism: A role analysis of the Unification Church. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 25, 141 161.

164

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Pfundmair, M., & Wetherell, G. (2018). Ostracism drives group moralization and extreme group behavior. The Journal of Social Psychology, 1 13. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2018.1512947. Picciolini, C. (2017a). White American youth: My descent into America’s most violate hate movement and how I got out. New York: Hachette Book. Picciolini, C. (November 2017b). My descent into America’s neo-Nazi movement [TEDxMileHigh]. Retrieved from: ,https://www.ted.com/talks/ christian_picciolini_my_descent_into_america_s_neo_nazi_movement_and_how_i_got_out.. Poon, K. T., Teng, F., Wong, W. Y., & Chen, Z. (2016). When nature heals: Nature exposure moderates the relationship between ostracism and aggression. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 48, 159 168. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.10.002. Pratt, D. (2010). Religion and terrorism: Christian fundamentalism and extremism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 22, 438 456. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1998). A terror management perspective on the psychology of control: controlling the uncontrollable. In M. Kofta, G. Weary, & G. Sedek (Eds.), Personal control in action (pp. 85 108). New York: Plenum Press. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 435 468. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.3.435. Riva, P., Montali, L., Wirth, J. H., Curioni, S., & Williams, K. D. (2017). Chronic social exclusion and evidence for the resignation stage: An empirical investigation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 34, 541 564. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407516644348. Riva, P., Romero Lauro, L. J., DeWall, C., & Bushman, B. J. (2012). Buffer the pain away: Stimulating the right ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex reduces pain following social exclusion. Psychological Science, 23, 1473 1475. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612450894. Riva, P., Williams, K. D., Torstrick, A. M., & Montali, L. (2014). Orders to shoot (a camera): Effects of ostracism on obedience. The Journal of Social Psychology, 154, 208 216. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2014.883354. Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 5 37. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.5. Rudert, S. C., & Greifeneder, R. (2016). When it’s okay that I don’t play: Social norms and the situated construal of social exclusion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 955 969. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216649606. Schaafsma, J., & Williams, K. D. (2012). Exclusion, intergroup hostility, and religious fundamentalism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 829 837. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.015. Schachter, S. (1951). Deviation, rejection and communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46, 190 207. Schafer, J. A., Mullins, C. W., & Box, S. (2014). Awakenings: The emergence of white supremacist ideologies. Deviant Behavior, 35, 173 196. Schaller, M., & Neuberg, S. L. (2012). Danger, disease, and the nature of prejudice(s). In J. M. Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 46, pp. 1 54). Burlington: Academic Press. Scheeres, J. (2011). A thousand lives: The untold story of Jonestown. New York: Free Press. Schmitz, R. M. (2016). Intersections of hate: Exploring the transecting dimensions of race, religion, gender, and family in Ku Klux Klan Web sites. Sociological Focus, 49, 200 214. Sherif, M. (1966). Group conflict and cooperation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sixta Rinehart, C. (2013). Volatile social movements and the origins of terrorism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Southern Poverty Law Center. (n.d.) Hate map. ,https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map. Accessed 23.02.19. Spilka, B., & Ladd, K. L. (2013). The psychology of prayer: A scientific approach. New York: Guilford. Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. (1985). A general attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24, 1 20. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1386272. Steele, C., Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2015). On social death: Ostracism and the accessibility of death thoughts. Death Studies, 39, 19 23. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2013.844746. Stein, A. (2017). Terror, love & brainwashing: Attachment in cults and totalitarian systems. New York: Routledge. Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (2000). An integrated threat theory of prejudice. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp. 23 46). New York: Taylor and Francis. Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., DeWall, N. C., & Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and without purpose: Life loses meaning following social exclusion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 686 694. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jesp.2009.03.007. Tetlock, P. E., Kristel, O. V., Elson, S. B., Green, M. C., & Lerner, J. S. (2000). The psychology of the unthinkable: Taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 853 870. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.78.5.853. Tourish, D., & Wohlforth, T. (2000). Prophets of the Apocalypse: White supremacy and the theology of Christian Identity. Cultic Studies Journal, 17, 15 41. Twenge, J. M., Zhang, L., Catanese, K. R., Dolan-Pascoe, B., Lyche, L. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Replenishing connectedness: reminders of social activity reduce aggression after social exclusion. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46, 205 224. van Beest, I., & Williams, K. D. (2006). When inclusion costs and ostracism pays, ostracism still hurts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 918 928. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.918. van Beest, I., & Williams, K. D. (2011). “Why hast thou forsaken me?” The effect of thinking about being ostracized by God on well-being and prosocial behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 379 386. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550610393312.

Social ostracism, religion, and existential concerns Chapter | 11

165

Van Beest, I., Williams, K. D., & Van Dijk, E. (2011). Cyberbomb: Effects of being ostracized from a death game. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14, 581 596. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430210389084. Veldhuis, T. M., Gordijn, E. H., Veenstra, R., & Lindenberg, S. (2014). Vicarious group-based rejection: Creating a potentially dangerous mix of humiliation, powerlessness, and anger. PLoS One, 9(4), e95421. Venter, M. A. (1998). Susceptibility of adolescents to cults. Southern African Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 10, 93 106. Vysotsky, S., & McCarthy, A. L. (2017). Normalizing cyberracism: A neutralization theory analysis. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40, 446 461. Webber, D., Babush, M., Schori-Eyal, N., Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, A., Hettiarachchi, M., Be´langer, J. J., . . . Gelfand, M. J. (2018). The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114, 270 285. Wesselmann, E. D. (2011). Rehabilitation and protection: Beneficial uses of ostracism in groups. Purdue University. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Wesselmann, E. D., Grzybowski, M. R., Steakley-Freeman, D. M., DeSouza, E. R., Nezlek, J. B., & Williams, K. D. (2016). Social exclusion in everyday life. In P. Riva, & J. Eck (Eds.), Social exclusion: Psychological approaches to understanding and reducing its impact (pp. 3 23). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33033-4_1. Wesselmann, E. D., Ispas, D., Olson, M. D., Swerdlik, M. E., & Caudle, N. M. (2018). Does perceived ostracism contribute to mental health concerns among veterans who have been deployed? PLoS One, 13, e0208438. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208438. Wesselmann, E. D., Nairne, J. S., & Williams, K. D. (2012). An evolutionary social psychological approach to studying the effects of ostracism. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 6, 308 327. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/h0099249. Wesselmann, E. D., Ren, D., Swim, E., & Williams, K. D. (2013). Rumination hinders recovery from ostracism. International Journal of Developmental Science, 7(1), 33 39. Wesselmann, E. D., VanderDrift, L. E., & Agnew, C. R. (2016). Religious commitment: An interdependence approach. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 35 45. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000024. Wesselmann, E. D., & Williams, K. D. (2010). The potential balm of religion and spirituality for recovering from ostracism. Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, 7, 31 49. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/14766080903497623. Wesselmann, E. D., Williams, K. D., Pryor, J. B., Eichler, F. A., Gill, D. M., & Hogue, J. D. (2014). Revisiting Schachter’s research on rejection, deviance, and communication (1951). Social Psychology, 45, 164 169. Available from https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000180. Wesselmann, E. D., Wirth, J. H., Pryor, J. B., Reeder, G. D., & Williams, K. D. (2013). When do we ostracize? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 108 115. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550612443386. Wesselmann, E. D., Williams, K. D., Ren, D., & Hales, A. H. (2014). Ostracism and solitude. In R. J. Coplan, & J. C. Bowker (Eds.), The handbook of solitude: Psychological perspectives on social isolation, social withdrawal, and being alone (pp. 224 241). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. White, J. R. (2001). Political eschatology: A theology of antigovernment extremism. American Behavioral Scientist, 44, 937 956. Williams, K. D. (1997). Social ostracism. In R. Kowalski (Ed.), Aversive interpersonal behaviors (pp. 133 170). New York: Plenum. Williams, K. D. (2009). Ostracism: Effects of being excluded and ignored. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 41, pp. 275 314). New York: Academic Press. Williams, K. D. (2001). Ostracism: The power of silence. New York, NY: Guilford. Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. T., & Choi, W. (2000). Cyberostracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748 762. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.748. Williams, K. D., & Wesselmann, E. D. (2011). The link between ostracism and aggression. In J. P. Forgas, A. W. Kruglanski, & K. D. Williams (Eds.), The psychology of social conflict and aggression (pp. 37 51). New York: Psychology Press. Willis, L. (Ed.), (2011). Extremism. Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press. Wirth, J. H., LeRoy, A. S., & Bernstein, M. J. (2019). “You’re such a pain!”: Investigating how psychological pain influences the ostracism of a burdensome group member. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 1368430219844312. Wirth, J. H., & Wesselmann, E. D. (2018). Investigating how ostracizing others affects one’s self-concept. Self & Identity, 17, 394 406. Wirth, J. H., & Williams, K. D. (2009). ‘They don’t like our kind’: Consequences of being ostracized while possessing a group membership. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 111 127. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430208098780. Zadro, L., Boland, C., & Richardson, R. (2006). How long does it last? The persistence of the effects of ostracism in the socially anxious. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 692 697. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2005.10.007. Zadro, L. (2004). Ostracism: Empirical studies inspired by real-world experiences of silence and exclusion. Sydney: University of New South Wales. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Zadro, L., Arriaga, X. B., & Williams, K. D. (2008). Relational ostracism. In J. P. Forgas, & J. Fitness (Eds.), Social relationships: Cognitive, affective, and motivational processes (pp. 305 320). New York: Psychology Press. Zadro, L., & Gonsalkorale, K. (2014). Sources of ostracism: The nature and consequences of excluding and ignoring others. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 93 97. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413520321. Zadro, L., Williams, K. D., & Richardson, R. (2004). How low can you go? Ostracism by a computer is sufficient to lower self-reported levels of belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 560 567. Available from https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.11.006. Zimbardo, P. (1997). What messages are behind today’s cults? American Psychological Association Monitor, 28, 14.

166

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Further reading Branch, S. E., Wilson, K. M., & Agnew, C. R. (2013). Committed to Oprah, homer, or house: Using the investment model to understand parasocial relationships. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2, 96 109. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030938. DeWall, C. N., Pond, R. J., Carter, E. C., McCullough, M. E., Lambert, N. M., Fincham, F. D., & Nezlek, J. B. (2014). Explaining the relationship between religiousness and substance use: Self-control matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 339 351. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036853. Friese, M., & Wa¨nke, M. (2014). Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 56 59. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.11.006.

Chapter 12

The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion Elizabeth C. Pinel, Geneva C. Yawger and Young Chin Park University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States

Religion has the power to unite people profoundly, and to divide them just the same. Some of this power derives, no doubt, from the interpersonal function served by religion. Classic and contemporary researchers alike have suggested that many of religion’s positive effects stem from its interpersonal offerings, such as widened social networks and social support within the congregation (Freud, 1930; Durkheim, 1951; Idler, 1987; Glik, 1990; Idler & Kasl, 1992; Lim & Putnam, 2010). Perhaps, for this reason, people who feel interpersonally lonely tend to gravitate toward religion (Epley, Waytz, Akalis, & Cacioppo, 2008; Burris, Batson, Altstaedten, & Stephens, 1994; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990). In addition to serving an interpersonal function, religion serves multiple existential ones. Here we concentrate on the theme of existential isolation. We propose that religious practices across a wide range of faiths offer experiences of existential connectedness and can account for people’s profound allegiances to their faith. Drawing from research on I-sharing and existential isolation (Pinel, Long, Landau, & Pyszczynski, 2004; Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006; Pinel, Bronson, Zapata, & Bosson, 2018), we propose that cultivating moments of existential connectedness (i.e., I-sharing) across the faith divide can facilitate interfaith harmony. We begin with a primer on existential isolation.

Existential isolation When we experience any stimulus—internal or external, simple or complex—we experience it through our senses. The sense organs, these doors of perception (Huxley, 1954), cannot be shared or traded with others and thus have existential significance. They make it so that humans cannot know firsthand (i.e., through their sense organs) how another person experiences a stimulus. Instead, humans wanting to know the experience of another must infer it based on what the other person says and does, and inference, as we know, often falls short of the truth (Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, 1977; Ross & Nisbett, 1991; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). In sum, the fundamental reality of how humans experience stimuli paves the way for feelings of existential isolation: feelings of being alone in one’s phenomenological experience (Pinel et al., 2004; Pinel, Long, Murdoch, & Helm, 2017; Yalom, 1980). Existential isolation differs from interpersonal isolation, which represents the more commonly accepted understanding of “social isolation” and often manifests as spending a lot of time alone or having a dearth of meaningful relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Helm, Greenberg, Park, & Pinel, 2018; Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017). Importantly, people can feel existentially isolated even when interpersonally connected: for example, in the context of long-term romantic relationships or other loving relationships with friends, parents, and other family members. Looking at the orthogonality between existential and interpersonal isolation from the other perspective, people can feel existentially connected even while physically alone or with a group of strangers, such as at a political march, during a musical performance or a frighteningly turbulent airplane ride, or in a place of worship (more on this soon). With the development of the Existential Isolation Scale (Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017), we now have empirical evidence for the distinction between existential isolation and interpersonal isolation. The Existential Isolation Scale contains six items measuring the extent to which people feel as though they regularly differ from others with regard to their own subjective experience of stimuli. Example items include “Other people usually do not understand my experiences” and “People around me tend to react to things in the environment in the same way I do” (R). Correlations between scores on the Existential Isolation Scale and scores on a variety of interpersonal The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00013-5 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

167

168

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

isolation measures speak to the distinctness of the two constructs. In the validation paper of the Existential Isolation Scale, Pinel et al. (Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017) note that it does not correlate with the Need to Belong Scale (Leary, Kelly, Cot Leary trell & Schreindorfer, 2013) and that it correlates only moderately with the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, 1996). In a South Korean sample the Korean version of the Existential Isolation Scale correlated moderately with three separate measures of interpersonal isolation (r’s , .52), and all three interpersonal isolation measures correlated strongly with one another (r’s..80; Park & Pinel, 2019a). In the United States, researchers repeatedly observe gender differences in existential isolation, with men reporting higher levels than women (Helm et al., 2018; Park & Pinel, 2019a; Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017); despite this, men report lower levels of loneliness than do females (Helm et al., 2018). If the two constructs were identical, one would expect men to report higher levels of both existential isolation and interpersonal isolation (in this case, loneliness). An experimental manipulation of existential isolation further distinguishes the construct from interpersonal isolation. In one study (Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017; study 3), participants wrote either about a time when they were physically alone (interpersonal isolation condition), a time when no one understood how they saw things or were feeling (existential isolation condition), or a time when people understood and saw things in the same way that they did (existential connection condition). As predicted, this manipulation—particularly the existential isolation condition—increased scores on the Existential Isolation Scale, but not on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, attesting to the distinction between these two constructs. Epistemic and affiliative consequences of existential isolation. Existential isolation poses challenges for a species that relies on others to develop an understanding of reality (Echterhoff, Higgins, & Levine, 2009; Hardin & Higgins, 1996). To achieve a modicum of certainty regarding one’s experience and interpretation of a stimulus (e.g., Is that a rat or a “possum?”; Is she trying to break up with me gently?; and Did that llama just spit at me?), one seeks input from others. To the extent that people feel existentially isolated, they will have a hard time achieving confidence that others understand, share, and corroborate their experiences. In short, existential isolation has epistemic implications; it calls into question our entire belief system by confronting us with the prospect that—because no one can understand our experience firsthand—no one can validate and thus confirm its existence. These epistemic implications of existential isolation can explain why existential isolation correlates negatively with a sense of meaning or why African-American participants who score high on existential isolation are less certain of their racism judgments (Pinel, Long, Yawger, & Park, 2019). They also shed light on why people who belong to nondominant cultural groups and thus do not have a voice in the dominant version of reality exhibit higher levels of existential isolation than people who belong to dominant cultural groups (Yawger, Pinel, Scharnetzki, Helm, & Miller, 2019).1 Existential isolation also has affiliative implications. As a species with a fundamental need to belong, we generally satisfy this need with meaningful relationships characterized by mutual concern and an expectation of relationship longevity (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When we feel existentially isolated, however, we feel as though no one can truly understand us at our core, at the level of experience; this can make us feel as though our interpersonal connections lack substance or meaning, at best, and emotionally harm us, at worst. These affiliative implications of existential isolation can explain why people high in existential isolation are more likely to conform than those low in existential isolation (Pinel, Long, & Crimin, 2010), and why people with interdependent self-construals have lower existential isolation levels than people with independent self-construals (Park & Pinel, 2019a). They also shed light on why people with an insecure attachment profile have higher levels of existential isolation than their securely attached counterparts (Helm, Lifshin, & Greenberg, 2016; Helm, Lifshin, & Greenberg, 2017). In the words of the late Robin Williams, “the worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.” Both the epistemic and affiliative consequences of existential isolation combine to help us understand the allure of experiences that promote feelings of existential connection. We have examined the impact of these experiences primarily in our work on I-sharing, which we describe next.

I-sharing I-sharing gets its name from the distinction James (1890) famously made between the Me (the self-as-object) and the I (the self-as-subject). Whereas the Me refers to the sum total of all that one would say when asked to describe oneself, the I refers to one’s moment-to-moment phenomenological experience. In a metaphorical mirror the Me represents the reflection in the mirror, and the I represents the experience of standing in front of the mirror. Although the image in the 1. Males represent the one exception to this phenomenon. Data indicate that gender differences in communal values and self-construal account for the gender difference in existential isolation (Helm et al., 2018; Park & Pinel, 2019a).

The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion Chapter | 12

169

mirror remains more or less stable, the I will undoubtedly flitter from one experience to the next, some having to do with the reflection (What’s that on my chin?) and some not (My feet hurt). So it goes with the literal Me and I. We can update our Me with time, but all that came before still remains. The I, however, shifts from moment-to-moment, as one’s experience shifts, and once one experience transforms into another, the supplanted experience falls by the wayside. For this reason, James referred to as the I as a stream of consciousness, with each state of consciousness taking the place of the one that came before. When people believe that they have had an identical, phenomenological, in-the-moment experience as at least one other person, they believe that they have I-shared. Importantly, to I-share is to experience existential connection; I-sharing with someone means feeling like you have successfully bridged the experiential chasm, if only for that one I-sharing moment. Research supports the theoretical proposition that existential isolation at least partially accounts for the allure of I-sharers. In one study in which we experimentally manipulated existential isolation (Pinel et al., 2006), participants in the existential isolation condition demonstrated a preference for an I-sharer over a Me-sharer. Participants in a comparison condition demonstrated the classic tendency for people to like objectively similar others (Byrne, 1971). In other studies, participants who score high on the Existential Isolation Scale (Pinel, Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017) show an especially strong liking for the I-sharer over the Me-sharer (Pinel & Long, 2012; Pinel, Long, Johnson, & Yawger, 2018). Moreover, mediational analyses reveal that feeling existentially connected to the I-sharer partially mediates the moderating effect of existential isolation on liking for I-sharers (Pinel, Long et al., 2018). Finally, these findings extend to other dependent variables, such as helping and humanizing out-group members (Pinel, Long et al., 2018; Pinel, Yawger et al., 2017). If I-sharing offers an antidote to existential isolation, it would be good to know what makes people feel like they I-share. Generally, people believe they have I-shared when they react simultaneously and identically to the same stimulus (Pinel, Long, & Huneke, 2015). When two or more people synchronously coo at the same baby, curse at the same world leader, or sob at the same news, they will likely infer that they I-share. Although the most compelling cues consist of simultaneous and identical observable responses to the same stimulus (Pinel, Bernecker, & Rampy, 2015), people also infer I-sharing from objective indices of similarity (Pinel, Bernecker et al., 2015; Pinel, Long et al., 2015; Long, Pinel, & Yawger, 2017). Two people who identify as Orthodox Jews, or vegans, or city folk, or lovers of Italian wines from the Piedmont region, can infer that these similarities in objective features of the self-reflect an underlying similarity of the existential variety. Two Orthodox Jews might infer, for example, that they both will experience the sanctity of the Sabbath when next Saturday roles around. Likewise, two city folk might expect that they both will cringe at a third party’s suggestion that all three spend some time camping in the country. As we will discuss in a later section of this paper, the tendency to infer I-sharing from objective indices of similarity (what we call Me-sharing) has implications for intergroup outcomes in general (Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Bronson et al., 2018; Pinel & Long, 2012; Pinel, Long et al., 2018), and interfaith tensions in particular. Before looking across faiths, however, let us consider what role I-sharing may play in cementing connections within faiths of different kinds.

Faith-based practices and existential connection A variety of faith-based practices could address people’s feelings of existential isolation, both by promoting I-sharing within the congregation and by facilitating the experience of having the I—and thus the perceived boundary between the self and everything else—dissolve. Consistent with this theorizing, people who identify as embracing a religion report lower levels of existential isolation than those who do not (Yawger et al., 2019). Our most recent research examines whether meditation—because it allows individuals to transcend the feeling of being an individual “I” (Dalai Lama, 1995; Goleman, 1988)—also mitigates feelings of existential isolation. We have completed two studies in the United States and one in South Korea, all three of which yielded significant effects of mindfulness meditation on existential isolation (Park & Pinel, 2019b). For example, in our South Korea study, we investigated the effects of a 7-day intensive silent meditation training on feelings of existential isolation and interpersonal isolation. We compared people who completed the meditation training to those who did not. Participants completed questionnaires at two time points (before and after the training, for the meditation group). We found that whereas the existential isolation levels of the control group did not change from Time 1 to Time 2, the existential isolation levels of the meditation group decreased significantly during this time period. Importantly, we did not observe the same effect of meditation on interpersonal isolation. Further, the meditation program did not allow verbal communication or social interaction among meditators (meditators received explicit instruction to focus on their own state of mind through a silent meditation practice and to avoid

170

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

interacting with others); therefore this effect cannot be attributed to I-sharing or interpersonal connections formed over the course of the 7-day temple stay. Notably, we also recruited meditators who participated in a self-isolated version of the meditation retreat, which consisted of meditating alone in a solitary room without leaving the room for seven days. Participants in the selfisolated meditation group also showed a reduction in existential isolation, even though they had just spent an entire week completely isolated from outside world—in other words, wholly and unarguably interpersonally isolated. These results not only further differentiate the two forms of isolation, but they also suggest that meditation practice may reduce existential isolation by dissolving the boundary between self and all else, thus allowing people to transcend the self. Our research on meditation highlights the existential implications of one practice common to many faiths. Although the concept of meditation generally brings to mind Eastern religious traditions (i.e., Buddhism and Hinduism), these are not the only faiths to utilize such practices; indeed, something akin to meditation exists even within faiths more commonly embraced by people in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2015). Consider the use of rosaries in Catholicism and the role of repetitive “chanting” in the Hasidic community, both practices with Eastern equivalents (e.g., mala beads and kirtan), all practices intended to pave a path toward the experience of whatever that particular faith calls the divine. Islam also has its equivalent of meditation, referred to as Muraqabah. A variety of religious traditions, then, encourage meditative practices, and our data suggest that meditation can significantly decrease feelings of existential isolation (Park & Pinel, 2019b). Whether identified with a particular faith or not, not everyone enjoys or readily engages in meditative techniques. Luckily, many other faith-based practices have the potential to ease existential isolation by fostering self-transcendence either through I-sharing with one another or by fostering an experience of communion with the divine. Notably, the same practices may promote either or both of these outcomes. Consider the prominent role that music (e.g., chanting and singing) plays across different faith-based traditions. As Trotter (1987) wrote, music “springs out of the very speech and soul of a person or a community”; in all its different forms, music offers a highly evocative and deeply personal way to connect subjectively with fellow worshippers as well as with one’s version of the divine. Music can inspire members of a congregation to join together in song; as voices blend into one another, broad swaths of people I-share through this simple and common practice. One of the authors attended a Catholic Church service in which a rock band inspired the whole congregation—numbering in the thousands—to groove to contemporary musical renditions of common Christian prayers. Similar moments of existential connection arise from the chanting of the Hindus, Hasids, and Navajo (Beck, 2014; Karp, 2003; Moulton, 2011), as well as from gospel music in Christianity (Jackson, 1995). Singing and experiencing music together can promote self-transcendence through a feeling of I-sharing, but it can also promote self-transcendence through a feeling of accessing the divine. For example, gospel music often follows a certain structure meant to have this effect—as famous gospel singer Isaac Freeman put it, “go slow, rise high, catch on fire, sit down.” In other words, songs start low and lay a foundation; the emotion gradually builds with the addition of increasing volume and rhythm; the intensity peaks at the point where the “spirit takes over,” a period during which members of the congregation often stand, dance, clap, stomp, and shout in exuberant worship; and finally, the congregation sits and reflects upon the experience (Nierenberg, 1982). In Sufism, music is used to a similar end; many Sufis attend Sama assemblies during which they listen to emotionally evocative poetry set to music as a way to reach a state of ecstatic communion with God (Schimmel, 2001). In the same way that music appears as a religious, self-transcending tool across a variety of faiths, so too does the practice of altering one’s state of consciousness. Some engage in this practice through the use of psychoactive, mindaltering ingestibles (known as entheogens). We see this in the Native American Church through the use of peyote, in the Uniao do Vegetal through the use of ayahuasca, in Vajrayana Buddhism through the use of cannabis and datura, and in the Bwiti faith through the use of iboga. The use of entheogens not only can promote I-sharing across individuals, but putting them in identical states of consciousness, but also can dissolve the perceived boundary between the self and all else (Pollan, 2018). Not surprisingly, some faith-based traditions either actively frown on the use of entheogens or simply do not utilize them in their rituals and practices, but this does not mean that they do not have their own means of altering their state of consciousness. Consider the practice of whirling, originating in Sufism, in which the dancer spins on their axis to access the divine. Although, on the decline, the practice of snake handling used by certain denominations of Christianity (e.g., Pentecostals), because of the adrenaline rush that it presumably triggers, could have a similar effect. When viewed from one perspective, the practices characterizing one faith (e.g., snake handling) may seem radically different and even offensive to members of a different faith (e.g., Jainists, who practice ahimsa, or “nonharm”).

The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion Chapter | 12

171

At face value, this contradiction would appear to—and likely does—create and perpetuate conflict between religions. However, when one considers the intended purposes of all of these seemingly different practices, their similarity in terms of their capacity to ease existential isolation moves to the foreground. The question becomes, then: how can we harness people’s universal desire for existential connection in a way that promotes harmony across faiths? To answer this question, we turn to the work on I-sharing and intergroup outcomes.

I-sharing, intergroup outcomes, and faith Intergroup tensions have existed for as long as groups of humans have crossed paths with groups of other, unfamiliar humans (Fox, 1992). These tensions manifest across the range of group divides, from race and ethnicity (see Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986) to sexual orientation (Herek, 1986, 2000) to weight classification (Puhl & Brownell, 2001; Puhl & Heuer, 2009) to art preferences (Tajfel, 1974; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971) and, most relevant here, to religion (Cohen, Jussim, Harber, & Bhasin, 2009; Greenberg et al., 1990; Lo´pez, 2011). From an I-sharing perspective, people favor those who embrace identical social identities and react negatively to those who do not, partly because of the significance of those objective dimensions for underlying feelings of existential isolation. To date, the research on I-sharing unequivocally supports this perspective. In a classic intergroup study from the I-sharing tradition, researchers orthogonally manipulate I-sharing and Mesharing (operationalized in these studies as identifying with the same social group) to disentangle how each form of similarity independently contributes to liking for members of the out-group. In many I-sharing studies, participants have two online interaction partners. They learn that they have multiple, identical, in-the-moment reactions to novel stimuli as one of their interaction partners, but that they do not share an important group membership with them. With their other partner, they learn that they share an important group membership, but that they have different in-themoment reactions to novel stimuli. Time after time, in study after study, participants favor the interaction partner with whom they I-share over the interaction partner with whom they Me-share (Long et al., 2017; Pinel, Bronson et al., 2018; Pinel & Long, 2012; Pinel, Long et al., 2018). We have observed this finding across a wide range of group divisions, including race (Pinel & Long, 2012; Pinel, Long et al., 2018), gender (Pinel & Long, 2012), sexual orientation (Pinel & Long, 2012; Pinel, Long et al., 2018), weight (Pinel, Long et al., 2018), and socioeconomic status (Pinel, Long et al., 2018). Importantly, we have also pitted I-sharing against value-sharing, which has been shown to counteract preferences in-group members (Insko & Robinson, 1967; Rokeach, 1973) and which, from our perspective, represents one of the most potent forms of objective similarity in existence. Participants who identified as White interacted online with two ostensible partners: one of whom identified as White and the other of whom identified as Black. Pinel and Long (2012, Study 3) manipulated both I-sharing and value-sharing such that one interaction partner I-shared with participants but did not value-share with them and the other value-shared with participants but did not I-share with them. Results revealed that even in the face of value-sharing, participants high in existential isolation preferred the I-sharer—the one who shared their gut reactions to nonsensical, meaningless stimuli—over the I-sharer. Race of the interaction partner did not moderate this effect. The findings from the I-sharing and values study hold special significance for a discussion on I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion, because they suggest that I-sharing may offer a way for the existentially isolated to accept people who embrace faiths that differ from their own. Although people’s religions are social identities, they also are often inextricably linked to people’s values and systems of meaning (Greenberg et al., 1990; Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010). That I-sharing cuts through both social identities and values points to its promise to improve negative attitudes and behaviors across the faith divide. To our knowledge, no study yet examines whether I-sharing can improve the attitudes of followers of one religion toward people who represent a religious-relevant out-group (either because they follow a different religion or no religion or because they have historically come into conflict with members of that religion). It remains to be seen, for example, whether the average attitude of Israeli Jews toward Palestinians (or vice versa) would improve if members of the two groups had the occasion to I-share. Given the robustness of the I-sharing intergroup effect, we have confidence that I-sharing would yield have positive interfaith outcomes. We acknowledge, of course, that the consequences of intergroup tensions, including those based on differences in faith/religion, run the gamut in terms of seriousness as well as in terms of the number of people they directly affect. Although hurtful in their own way, scoffing at the faith-based traditions of one’s neo-pagan classmate or at the side curls of a Hasidic Jew on a city street seems quite benign and inconsequential compared to suicide-bombings that massacre thousands. Disowning one’s son for marrying outside of the faith impacts the family members involved, but not a

172

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

whole nation. These differences in degree and dispersal will be important to consider as potential moderators of any efforts (whether inspired by I-sharing research or not) to improve tensions across the faith divide. Keeping in mind the more complicated nature of the world outside of the lab, some real-world efforts to promote peace across racial and religious divides involve practices that arguably harness the power of I-sharing. For example, the leaders of the Islamic, Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Jewish communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a “Statement of Shared Moral Commitment” in Sarajevo on 9 June 1997, agreeing to work together on peace education (Clark, 2010). The agreement underscores similarity in beliefs which, in turn, signify I-sharing. Specifically, it states: . . .each of our traditional Churches and Religious Communities recognizes that the dignity of man [sic] and human value is a gift of God. Our faiths and religions, each in its own way, call us to recognize the fundamental human rights of each person. Violence against persons or the violations of their basic rights are for us not only against man-made laws, but also breaking God’s law. We jointly, in mutual recognition of our religious differences, condemn all violence against innocent persons and any form of abuse or violation of fundamental human rights. (Statement of Shared Moral Commitment, 1997, p. 1)

Another example comes by way of the “Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage,” a 12-month journey organized by a Buddhist nun and an African-American activist, with the intent to heal the spiritual wounds of slavery. Roughly 50 people who differed with regard to race (Blacks, Whites, Asians) and faith (Buddhists, Jews, Baptists)—marched in the pilgrimage, which traced the path of slavery in the United States, starting in Massachusetts and ending in South Africa. This program included interfaith practices and undoubtedly fostered a deep sense of I-sharing among its participants, despite their objective differences in faith and race. One participant captures the self-transcendent unity that resulted from the pilgrimage, “. . . we seem to be carried along by a spirit larger than ourselves here (D’Souza, 2004).”

Summary The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different. Mahatma Gandhi.

Here we have proposed that the desire for existential connection undergirds religious practices that unite people to each other and to their version of the divine; this existential function of faith at least partially accounts for people’s allegiance to a particular faith and for the animosity that can result when people of different faiths come into contact. At the same time, peacemakers can harness the desire for existential connection to promote harmony across faiths. In the same way that I-sharing with people who have different values or who identify differently with respect to race, gender, or sexual orientation can promote intergroup harmony, so too can I-sharing with people who embrace different faiths. By encouraging practices that foster the experience of oneness, we can slowly chip away at the existential isolation that unites us all.

References Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497 529. Beck, G. L. (2014). Hinduism and music. In J. B. Brown (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of religion and the arts. London: Oxford University Press. Burris, C. T., Batson, C. D., Altstaedten, M., & Stephens, K. (1994). What a friend. . .”: Loneliness as a motivator of intrinsic religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 326 334. Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York and London: Academic Press. Clark, J. (2010). Religion and reconciliation in Bosnia & Herzegovina: Are religious actors doing enough? Europe-Asia Studies, 62(4), 671 694. Cohen, F., Jussim, L., Harber, K. D., & Bhasin, G. (2009). Modern anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 290 306. Dalai Lama. (1995). The path to enlightenment. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion. Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. D’Souza, D. (2004). Creating spaces: Interreligious initiatives for peace. In H. Coward, & G. S. Smith (Eds.), Religion and peacebuilding (pp. 169 190). Albany: State University of Durkheim New York Press.

The holy grail of connection: I-sharing, existential isolation, and religion Chapter | 12

173

Durkheim, E. (1897). Suicide: A study in sociology. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1951. Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., & Levine, J. M. (2009). Shared reality: Experiencing commonality with others inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(5), 496 521. Epley, N., Waytz, A., Akalis, S., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). When we need a human: Motivational determinants of anthropomorphism. Social Cognition, 26(2), 143 155. Fox, R. (1992). Prejudice and the unfinished mind: A new look at an old failing. Psychological Inquiry, 3, 137 152. Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. Oxford: Hogarth. Goleman, D. (1988). The meditative mind: The varieties of meditative experience. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 308. Glik, D. C. (1990). Participation in spiritual healing, religiosity, and mental health. Sociological Inquiry, 60(2), 158 176. Hardin, C. D., & Higgins, E. T. (1996). Shared reality: How social verification make the subjective objective. In R. M. Sorrentino, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 28 84). New York: Guilford Press. Helm, P. J., Greenberg, J., Park, Y. C., & Pinel, E. C. (2018). Feeling alone in your subjectivity: Introducing the State Trait Existential Isolation Model (STEIM). Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, Advance online publication. Helm, P. J., Lifshin, U., & Greenberg, J. (January 2016). Existential isolation, attachment, and death-thought accessibility. San Diego, CA: Poster presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Helm, P. J., Lifshin, U., & Greenberg, J. (January 2017). Existential isolation: Antecedents, consequences, and future directions. San Antonio, TX: Poster presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Herek, G. M. (1986). On heterosexual masculinity: Some psychical consequences of the social construction of gender and sexuality. American Behavioral Scientist, 29, 563 577. Herek, G. M. (2000). Sexual prejudice and gender: Do heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men differ? Journal of Social Issues, 56(2), 251 266. Huxley, A. (1954). The doors of perception. New York: Harper & Brothers. Idler, E. L., & Kasl, S. V. (1992). Religion, disability, depression, and the timing of death. American Journal of Sociology, 97(4), 1052 1079. Idler, E. L. (1987). Religious involvement and the health of the elderly: Some hypotheses and an initial test. Social Forces, 66(1), 226 238. Insko, C. A., & Robinson, J. E. (1967). Belief similarity versus race as determinants of reactions to Negroes by southern White adolescents: A further test of Rokeach’s theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 216 221. Jackson, J. M. (1995). The changing nature of gospel music: A Southern case study. African American Review, 29(2), 185 200. James, W. (1890/1918). Principles of Psychology. Toronto: General Publishing Company. Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1 24. Karp, J. (2003). Performing Black-Jewish symbiosis: The “Hassidic Chant” of Paul Robeson. American Jewish History, 91(1), 53 81. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Attachment theory and religion: Childhood attachments, religious beliefs, and conversion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 315 334. Leary, M. R., Kelly, K. M., Cot Leary trell, C. A., & Schreindorfer, L. S. (2013). Construct validity of the need to belong scale: Mapping the nomological network. Journal of Personality Assessment, 95(6), 610 624. Long, A. E., Pinel, E. C., & Yawger, G. C. (2017). When shared group membership signifies shared subjective experience: I-sharing and the minimal group paradigm. The Journal of Social Psychology, 157(4), 389 406. Lo´pez, F. B. (2011). Towards a definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the early twentieth century. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34, 556 573. Moulton, P. F. (2011). Restoring identity and bringing balance through Navajo healing rituals. Music and Arts in Action, 3(2), 79 94. Nierenberg, G. T., (Director) (1982). Say amen, somebody. United States of America: GTN, [Motion picture]. Park, Y. C., & Pinel, E. C. (2019a). Existential isolation and cultural orientation: Collectivism as a buffer against existential isolation. Manuscript submitted for publication. Park, Y. C., & Pinel, E. C. (2019b). The effects of meditation on existential isolation and mental health. Portland, OR: Data blitz presentation at the 2019 Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention (Existential Psychology preconference). Pew Research Center. America’s changing religious landscape. (2015). Retrieved from ,http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changingreligious-landscape/.. Pinel, E. C., Bernecker, S. L., & Rampy, N. (2015). I-sharing on the couch: On the clinical implications of shared subjective experience. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 25, 59 70. Pinel, E. C., Bronson, C. A., Zapata, J., & Bosson, J. (2018). I-sharing after a gender status threat increases liking for a gay man and decreases defensiveness. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 20(3). Pinel, E. C., & Long, A. E. (2012). When I’s meet: Sharing subjective experience with someone from the outgroup. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(3), 296 307. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., & Huneke, M. (2015). In the blink of an I: On the time sensitivity of shared subjective experience. Journal of Social Psychology, 155, 605 616. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Johnson, L. C., & Yawger, G. C. (2018). More about when I’s meet: The intergroup ramifications of I-sharing, part II. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(11), 1601 1614.

174

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., & Crimin, L. A. (2010). I-sharing and a classic conformity paradigm. Social Cognition, 28(3), 277 289. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Landau, M. J., Alexander, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 243 257. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Landau, M. J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). I-sharing, the problem of existential isolation, and their implications for interpersonal and intergroup phenomena. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, L. Sander, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology (pp. 352 368). New York: Guilford. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Murdoch, E. Q., & Helm, P. (2017). A prisoner of one’s own mind: Identifying and understanding existential isolation. Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 54 63. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Yawger, G. C., & Park, Y. C. (2019). Epistemic implications of existential isolation. Manuscript in preparation. Pinel, E. C., Yawger, G. C., Long, A. E., Rampy, N., Brenna, R., & Finnell, S. (2017). Human like me: Evidence that I-sharing humanizes the otherwise dehumanized. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(4), 689 704. Pollan, M. (2018). How to change your mind: What the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence. New York: Penguin Press. Puhl, R. M., & Brownell, K. D. (2001). Bias, discrimination and obesity. Obesity Research, 9(12), 788 804. Puhl, R. M., & Heuer, C. A. (2009). The stigma of obesity: A review and update. Obesity, 17(5), 941 964. Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press. Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173 220). New York: Academic. Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA loneliness scale (version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20 40. Schimmel, A. (2001). The role of music in Islamic mysticism. In A. Hammarlund, T. Olsson, & E. Ozdalga (Eds.), Sufism, music and society in Turkey and the Middle East (pp. 9 18). London: Routledge. Statement of Shared Moral Commitment. (1997). Retrieved from ,http://www.mrv.ba/upload/attachments/statement_DjE.pdf.. Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behavior. Social Science Information, 13, 65 93. Tajfel, H., Billig, M., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1, 149 178. Trotter, F.T. (1987). On being alive to the arts in music and religion: Music. Excerpted from Trotter, FT (1987). Loving God with one’s mind. Nashville: Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. Available online: http://www.religion-online.org/ showarticle.asp. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124 1131. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books. Yawger, G. C., Pinel, E. C., Scharnetzki, L., Helm, P. J., & Miller, C. T. (2019). Feeling out of (existential) place: On the cost of non-dominant group membership. Manuscript submitted for publication. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60 71.

Chapter 13

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Pehr Granqvist1, Mario Mikulincer2 and Phillip R. Shaver3 1

Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, 2Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel, 3University of California, Davis, CA, United States

In his exposition of attachment theory, Bowlby (1973, 1980, 1982) emphasized the importance of socio-emotional bonds with available, sensitive, and supportive others in times of need (attachment figures) for effective emotion regulation, mental health, and psychosocial functioning. Originally, Bowlby (1982) focused on the quality of the infant parent relationship and its anxiety-buffering and growth-promoting functions in a person’s early phases of development. However, based on Bowlby’s (1979, p. 129) claim that the attachment system is active “from the cradle to the grave,” Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw (1988) proposed that romantic relationships in adulthood can also be conceptualized as involving attachment bonds that help one to regulate distress and provide a secure base for continued psychological growth and increasing maturity and autonomy. Following similar reasoning, other researchers (e.g., Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2013, 2016; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990, 1992) have claimed that a person’s relationship with God can be conceptualized in attachment terms and that God can serve as a protective and supportive attachment figure. Supporting this line of theorizing, a large number of studies conducted during the past 25 years have examined both normative and individual-difference aspects of what Kirkpatrick (2005) called the religion-as-attachment model and the impact of relationships with human attachment figures on the development of religious beliefs and attachment to God. In this chapter, we focus on the religion-as-attachment model and argue that attachment theory and research provide a useful framework for studying and understanding core aspects of religion, particularly believers’ perceptions of God or other supernatural beings and their own private relationships with these figures. We open with a brief outline of attachment theory and research, focusing on both normative processes and individual differences. We then review research showing that a believer’s perceived relationship with God meets the defining criteria for attachment relationships and hence functions psychologically like other attachments. Then, we review research on connections between particular religious phenomena and attachment-related individual differences in the “earthly” realm of interpersonal relationships.

Attachment theory: basic concepts Bowlby (1982) proposed that human infants are born with an innate psychobiological system (the attachment behavioral system), which motivates them to seek proximity to supportive others (attachment figures) as a means of protecting themselves from physical and psychological threats while promoting affect regulation, greater well-being, and increasing self-efficacy. The main goal of the attachment system is to sustain a sense of safety or security [called felt security by Sroufe and Waters (1977)], based on beliefs that the world is generally safe, that the self is competent and lovable, and that key others will be available and supportive in times of need. This system is activated by events that threaten the sense of security, such as encountering actual or symbolic threats or noticing that an attachment figure is not sufficiently near, interested, or responsive. In such cases, a person is automatically motivated to seek and reestablish actual or symbolic proximity to an attachment figure (the attachment system’s primary operating strategy). These bids for proximity persist until protection and security are attained. The attachment system is then deactivated and the person can calmly and coherently return to other activities, which Bowlby thought were motivated by other behavioral systems such as exploration and affiliation. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00014-7 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

175

176

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Beyond describing universal aspects of the attachment system, Bowlby (1973) described individual differences in the system’s functioning. Interactions with attachment figures who are generally available in times of need, and who are sensitive and responsive to bids for proximity and support, promote a stable sense of attachment security and result in the construction of positive mental representations of self and others (Bowlby, 1973). But when a person’s attachment figures are not reliably available and supportive, proximity seeking fails to relieve distress, felt security is undermined, negative models of self and others are formed, and the likelihood of establishing insecure orientations toward attachment figures and relationships increases. Research indicates that these attachment insecurities can be measured in adulthood in terms of two independent dimensions: attachment-related anxiety and avoidance (e.g., Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). A person’s position on the anxiety dimension indicates the degree to which he or she worries that a partner will not be available and responsive in times of need. A person’s position on the avoidance dimension indicates the extent to which he or she distrusts relationship partners’ goodwill and strives to maintain behavioral independence, self-reliance, and emotional distance. The two dimensions are associated in theoretically predictable and frequently replicated ways with measures of relationship quality and adjustment (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016; for a review). According to attachment theory, it is important to distinguish between close relationships in general and attachment relationships in particular, and between relationship partners, on one hand, and attachment figures, on the other. Attachment figures are not just ordinary relationship partners; they are special individuals to whom a person turns when protection and support are needed. Bowlby (1982) specified the provisions that a relationship partner should supply, or the functions this person should serve, if he or she is to be viewed as an attachment figure (see also Hazan & Zeifman, 1994). First, attachment figures are targets of proximity maintenance. Humans of all ages tend to seek and enjoy proximity to their attachment figures in times of need and to experience distress upon separation from them. Second, attachment figures provide a physical and emotional safe haven; they facilitate distress alleviation and are a source of support and comfort. Third, attachment figures provide a secure base from which people can explore and learn about the world and develop their own capacities and personal traits. By accomplishing these functions, a relationship partner becomes a source of attachment security, and one’s relationship with him or her becomes an attachment bond. During infancy, primary caregivers (usually one or both parents, but in many cases other relatives and daycare providers instead or as well) are likely to serve attachment functions. In later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, a wider variety of relationship partners can serve as attachment figures, including siblings, other relatives, familiar coworkers, teachers or coaches, close friends, and romantic partners. They form what Bowlby (1982) called a person’s hierarchy of attachment figures. There may also be context-specific attachment figures, such as therapists in therapeutic settings or leaders in organizational settings. Moreover, groups and noncorporeal personages (e.g., God) can become targets of proximity seeking and sources of safety (e.g., Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010; Rom & Mikulincer, 2003). Numerous experimental studies have confirmed the anxiety-buffering and growth-promoting functions of attachment figures in adulthood. For example, following threats that activate the attachment system (e.g., mortality reminders, separation threats), Mikulincer, Gillath, and Shaver (2002) found an increase in the cognitive accessibility of mental representations (e.g., names) of participants’ attachment figures. Similarly, just as the actual presence of security-enhancing attachment figures facilitates emotion regulation, exploration, and prosocial development in childhood (see Cassidy & Shaver, 2016; for reviews), experimental priming of mental representations of these figures in adulthood (a procedure that Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; called security priming; e.g., repeated presentations of the name or picture of one’s primary attachment figure) increases positive mood (e.g., Mikulincer, Hirschberger, Nachmias, & Gillath, 2001), reduces stress-related brain responses (e.g., Karremans, Heslenfeld, van Dillen, & Van Lange, 2011), improves creative problem solving (Mikulincer, Shaver, & Rom, 2011), heightens compassionate, altruistic behavior (e.g., Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005), and decreases intolerance toward out-group members (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001). In the present chapter, we focus mainly on a believer’s relationship with God and the extent to which it can be conceptualized as an attachment bond. In the next section, we review evidence supporting this conceptualization and indicating that God can serve safe haven and secure-base functions and thereby function as a security-enhancing attachment figure.

Religion and attachment: normative aspects The idea that core aspects of religious experience and behavior can be understood within an attachment framework was pioneered by Kirkpatrick (Kirkpatrick, 1994, 2005; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990; for a review, see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016). In particular, Kirkpatrick proposed that believers’ perceived relationships with God tend to meet the

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 13

177

defining criteria for attachment relationships and hence function psychologically like other attachments (e.g., providing a safe haven in times of threat or distress and serving as a secure base for risky or challenging goals and plans). Here, we highlight evidence concerning normative aspects of attachment-like relationships with God.

Points of departure The most obvious starting point for the attachment religion connection is that of relationality. Monotheistic religions, particularly protestant Christianity, have at their core a belief in a personal God with whom adherents have some kind of personal, interactive relationship (see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Indeed, the term religion stems from the Latin “religare” or “relegere,” meaning “being bound” (Ferm, 1945). This relationship connotation corresponds with how people evaluate their own faith. For example, when asked to answer a forced-choice question about what is most central to their own view of “faith”—“a set of beliefs, membership in a church or synagogue, finding meaning in life, or a relationship with God”—the majority of an American Gallup sample chose “a relationship with God” (Gallup & Jones, 1989). A second point of departure for conceptualizing the attachment religion link is the centrality of “love” in people’s perceived relationships with God (e.g., James, 1902). This centrality of love is also found in the process of sudden religious conversion, which has frequently been likened to falling in love (James, 1902; Thouless, 1923). Based on one of the best religious conversion studies yet conducted, Ullman (1982, p. xvi) concluded from her in-depth interviews with converts that “What I initially considered primarily a change of ideology turned out to be more akin to a falling in love . . . [C]onversion pivots around a sudden attachment, an infatuation with a real or imagined figure which occurs on a background of great emotional turmoil.” A third and again related starting point for an attachment perspective on religion pertains to believers’ images of God as something like a parental figure. One can find these images in religious writing and songs (e.g., Bosworth, 2015). Wenegrat (1989) noted, for example, a remarkable degree of attachment imagery in the Psalms (e.g., Psalm 27: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”). Accordingly, factor analytic studies of people’s God images consistently reveal a large main factor laden with attachment-related descriptors, such as comforting, loving, protective, and caring (e.g., Gorsuch, 1968; Spilka, Armatas, & Nussbaum, 1964; Tamayo & Desjardins, 1976). Of course, neither Kirkpatrick (2005) nor we claim to have invented the idea that images of God and images of parents are similar. This was one of Freud’s (1927/1961) legacies to the psychology of religion. However, rather than viewing God as an exalted father figure, as Freud did, we concur with Kirkpatrick (2005) that it is more reasonable to view God as an exalted attachment figure, because God seems to capture the essence of a protective other and includes as many maternal as paternal characteristics. As Kaufman (1981), an important American theologian, said, “The idea of God is the idea of an absolutely adequate attachment-figure. . . God is thought of as a protective and caring parent who is always reliable and always available to its children when they are in need” (p. 67).

Seeking and maintaining proximity to God Believers’ relationships with God generally meet the first criterion for defining God as an attachment figure—believers seek to maintain proximity to God. Although it is of course impossible to ascertain with any certainty that believers obtain or maintain actual proximity to God (because God is conceptualized as invisible), central to most theistic religions is the idea that God is omnipresent; thus one is always “in proximity” to God. Moreover, religions provide a variety of ways of enhancing proximity to God, such as by singing (e.g., “Nearer, my God, to thee”), visiting “God’s home” (e.g., a cathedral or temple), or praying (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016). In fact, there are several types of prayers that are clearly related to proximity maintenance, such as “contemplative” prayer (“attempts to relate deeply to one’s God”), “meditational” prayer (“concerned with one’s relationship to God”), and “petitionary” or help-seeking forms of prayers (Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009). These forms could all be placed into Spilka and Ladd’s (2012) larger category of “upward” prayer (i.e., human-divine connection), which resemble secure-base behaviors in young children—an intermittent checking back to make sure the attachment figure is attentive and accessible (e.g., Campos & Stenberg, 1981), looking up, reaching up—although petitionary prayers have more in common with the safe-haven function of attachment. Related to proximity maintenance is the inclination on the part of an attached individual to resist separation from his or her attachment figure and experience protest and despair following loss of this figure. Determining whether God meets these criteria is difficult, because one does not become physically separated from, or lose an observable

178

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

relationship with, God as one might lose a human relationship partner, at least not in this life. It is noteworthy, however, that people regularly consider some objects, artifacts, and practices as representative of God or their relationship with God, and they try to keep them close and will protest and despair the loss of those objects or practices—for example, religious texts and devotionals, literal idols (e.g., figurines and colorful paintings of Hindu gods), necklace symbols (e.g., Star of David, Jesus on the cross), and holiday rituals (e.g., salutations, decorations, and services/reenactments). Moreover, there are instances in some believers’ religious lives when they are unable to experience a previously felt communion with God, and these episodes are portrayed as mentally torturous and essentially the same as hell. In the religious and mystical literature, such states are often referred to as a “wilderness experience” or a “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross, 1990). The best known example is when Jesus, nailed to the cross, cried out: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” In an experimental paraphrase of the situation in which Jesus found himself, Birgegard and Granqvist (2004) subliminally exposed theistic (mostly Christian) believers to either a separation prime (“God has abandoned me”) or attachment-neutral control primes (“People are walking,” “God has many names”), and examined whether their wish to be close to God increased as expected from pre- to postpriming. Although modest support was obtained for the prediction of an increased wish to be close to God, there were individual differences, similar to the ones seen in infant attachment assessments, that strongly moderated (or qualified) the effects of attachment activation on religious outcomes, as we will discuss later.

God as a safe haven Regarding the safe-haven aspect of attachment, people are most likely to turn to God or other supernatural figures when they face situations that Bowlby (1982) believed activate the attachment system, such as illness, injury, or fatigue; frightening or alarming events; and separation or threat of separation from the loved ones (Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 1996). Research has consistently shown that religious individuals tend to turn to God particularly when faced with threats and loss of a loved one (Bjorck & Cohen, 1993; McCrae, 1984), and the more distressing the situation is, the more likely they are to do so (Pargament, 1997; Sibley & Bulbulia, 2012). In fact, in highly distressing situations, the most likely religious/spiritual response is to pray to God (Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975), suggesting that private prayer in these situations may function as an analog to attachment behavior (calling, crying, and pleading). In studying religious coping strategies, Pargament (1997) outlined several strategies that resemble attachment-related responses, such as: “experiencing God’s love and care,” “realized God was trying to strengthen me,” and “letting God solve my problems for me.” With regard to frightening and alarming events, empirical research suggests that people often respond to tough times by reaching up to their God, seeking a safe haven. For example, combat soldiers do pray frequently before, during, and after battle (Stouffer, 1949). Accordingly, in a prospective study of Louisiana flood survivors, Davis et al. (2018) reported that survivors who were directly personally affected by the flooding were more prone to describe their personal relationships with God using safe-haven terms (e.g., God as a source of protection and comfort) 1 month postdisaster as compared to predisaster descriptions. In addition, more than a century of research supports the claim that sudden religious conversions are most likely during times of severe emotional distress and crisis (see Kirkpatrick, 2005; for review). According to Strickland (1924), the turning point of the sudden religious conversion process comes when one surrenders oneself to God and places one’s problems in God’s hands. Experimental studies suggest that appraisal of threat does not require conscious processing to result in increased God-related thoughts (Birgegard & Granqvist, 2004; Granqvist, Mikulincer, Gewirtz, & Shaver, 2012). For example, in a Jewish sample of Israeli college students, Granqvist et al. (2012) found increased mental access to the concept of God in a lexical-decision task following subliminal exposure to threat-related words, such as “failure” and “death” (but see Gruneau Brulin, Hill, Laurin, Mikulincer, & Granqvist, 2018; for a failed replication in a Christian sample). Studies have also shown that prayer tends to be a common coping strategy in the context of many kinds of serious physical illnesses (see Koenig, King, & Carson, 2012; for a review). For example, O’Brien (1982) observed that many renal-failure patients saw God as providing comfort and as a source of personal strength for getting through the illness. Cassibba et al. (2014) observed that among patients with a serious disease, perceptions of God as consistently available and supportive were found to sustain a “fighting spirit.” Other studies have shown religion to be particularly helpful to people who cope with chronic rather than acute illnesses (e.g., Mattlin, Wethington, & Kessler, 1990). Research also suggests that religiousness and prayer increase following the death of or (threat of) separation from loved ones, and that religious beliefs are correlated with successful coping at these times (see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016; for a review). In a prospective survey study of elderly Americans, the importance of religious/spiritual beliefs (but not church attendance) increased for the recently widowed as compared with a matched group of nonwidowed

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 13

179

elders (Brown, Nesse, House, & Utz, 2004). Moreover, Brown et al. (2004) found that grief over the loss decreased specifically as a function of the increased significance of the bereaved individual’s religious beliefs, consistent with the idea that it may be the attachment component of the individual’s religiousness that is activated in such situations and contributes to a more favorable outcome. An experimental study conducted by Birgegard and Granqvist (2004) corroborated some of the conclusions drawn in Brown et al.’s (2004) correlational research. Theistic believers experienced an increase in their wish to be close to God when primed with a subliminal separation threat (“Mother is gone”) targeting their relationships with mother (i.e., usually the principal attachment figure in childhood) compared with participants in an attachment-neutral condition.

God as a secure base Another defining characteristic of an attachment figure is that the figure provides a secure base for exploration and, relatedly, a sense of felt security. Religious literature is again replete with examples. Perhaps the best known example is the 23rd Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” However, in their eagerness to study religious outcomes in reaction to stressful events, researchers have unfortunately paid less attention to the question of how religious beliefs and experiences affect behavior and cognition in the absence of stressors. Thus there is less direct evidence for a secure-base function of religion than for a safe-haven function. Nevertheless, there is initial support for a secure-base function too. A recent set of studies has found that reminders of God (compared with neutral material) cause religious participants to be more willing to take recreational (i.e., exploratory) risks, such as scuba diving (Kupor, Laurin, & Levav, 2015; see also Granqvist et al., 2012). These studies also indicate that reminders of God cause people to view these risks as less dangerous, via a sense of being protected by God.

The attachment figure is perceived to be stronger and wiser Bowlby (1982) said that children regard their attachment figures as “stronger” and “wiser” than themselves, making them especially appropriate as safe havens in times of need and secure bases from which to explore the world. Concerning a believer’s perceived relationship with God, it almost goes without saying that believers typically do perceive God as very much stronger and wiser than themselves. In fact, according to much theological doctrine, God is supposedly omnipotent (can do anything), omniscient (knows everything), and omnipresent (is everywhere), in addition to being omnibenevolent (all good). That is not to say that every religious believer always represents God in all of these charitable ways at the same time. If they did, they would probably shrug their shoulders at the eternal and pervasive problem of theodicy—the existence of suffering (or evil) in spite of God’s “super traits.” Instead, this problem is at least as real for religious believers as it is for nonbelievers, although believers to a larger extent than nonbelievers tend to blame suffering/evil on human ignorance or wickedness (Furnham & Brown, 1992). When the believer is faced with adversity, God will not just know (omniscience) and will not just be able to help (omnipotence), but will also want to help the believer overcome that adversity (benevolence).

Summary In sum, a considerable body of theory and evidence supports Kirkpatrick’s (2005) idea that believer God relationships meet the defining criteria for attachment relationships. This is not to say that there are no important differences between God and other attachment figures. Indeed, unlike God, other attachment figures are visible and audible. Also, attachment relationships with other human beings have a history of potentially observable interaction episodes. However, rather than invalidating an attachment conceptualization of religion, these differences partially reflect cognitive development. A developing child acquires a capacity for symbolic thinking and for what developmental psychologists call a “theory of mind” (an ability to imagine and conceptualize other people’s mental states), which jointly set the stage for attributing agency to unseen others (e.g., God; see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Nevertheless, such differences between God and human attachment figures may make it advisable to consider religious relationships as forming a special subclass of noncorporeal attachment relationships rather than attachments proper.

180

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Religion as attachment: individual differences We turn next to the topic of individual differences in attachment as they relate to religion. Just as individual differences in attachment security often modulate the output of the attachment system in actual, mundane relationships, they can also modulate the effects of attachment processes in the context of believers’ perceived relationships with God. Two general hypotheses have been suggested—the correspondence hypothesis and the compensation hypothesis—which are seen as delineating two distinct developmental pathways to religion (see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016). One of these paths is related to experiences with sensitive, religious caregivers and with the sense of attachment security (correspondence), and the other is related to regulation of distress and attachment insecurities following experiences with insensitive caregivers (compensation).

The correspondence pathway According to Bowlby (1973), continuity of attachment patterns across time is attributable, at least in part, to internal working models (IWMs) of self and others that guide behavioral, emotional, and cognitive responses in social interactions over the life span. This continuity of working models across relationships leads to a set of predictions, which we refer to as the IWM-aspect of the correspondence hypothesis: Individual differences in religious beliefs and experience should correspond with individual differences in IWMs and attachment orientations. Individuals who possess “secure” working models of self and others are expected to view God and other religious entities or agencies as securitysupporting. Likewise, an avoidant attachment orientation is expected to manifest itself in the realm of religion as agnosticism or atheism, or in a view of God as remote and inaccessible. Finally, a preoccupied or anxious attachment orientation may find expression in a deeply emotional, all-consuming, and clingy, grasping relationship with God. A socially based aspect of religion (and religious membership) has been added to the IWM-aspect featured in the correspondence hypothesis (see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016; for the rationales for this addition). Besides reflecting correspondence in IWMs, the religious beliefs of people who are securely attached are expected, in part, to reflect their sensitive attachment figure’s (usually parents’) religious standards. In contrast, insecure offsprings are expected to be less likely to adopt their relatively insensitive attachment figure’s religious standards (social correspondence; Granqvist, 2002). Based on adding the notion of social correspondence to the idea of correspondence in working models, securely attached individuals are expected to become actively religious insofar as their parents were, and in this case their perceived relations with God are expected to exhibit the attributes of security through IWM correspondence. Social correspondence hypothesis. In-line with the social correspondence hypothesis, individuals reporting more experiences of being sensitively cared for by parents score higher on measures of religiousness, but only insofar as their parents also displayed high levels of religiosity (e.g., Granqvist, 1998, 2002, 2006; Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990; Reinert & Edwards, 2009). In addition, such people score higher on a scale created to assess religiosity as socially rooted in the parental relationship (Granqvist, 2002; Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999). Both sets of findings were also supported in a study conducted by Granqvist, Ivarsson, Broberg, and Hagekull (2007) with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003). Similarly, in the case of attachment orientations in close relationships, secure attachment has been associated with higher scores on the socialization-based religiousness scale (Granqvist, 2002; cf. Greenwald, Mikulincer, Granqvist, & Shaver, 2018). The socialized correspondence hypothesis has been supported not just in cross-sectional and quasi-experimental studies but also in a real-time prospective longitudinal study with American adolescents about to undergo a Young Life Evangelical summer camp (Schnitker, Porter, Emmons, & Barrett, 2012). Findings indicated that secure attachment with parents prospectively predicted an at-camp reaffirmation of the faith they had been brought up with. There is also evidence that increases in religiosity among people reporting a secure attachment history tend to be gradual (rather than sudden), to occur at a comparatively young age, and not to be preceded by emotional turmoil (e.g., Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999, 2001; Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007; Schnitker et al., 2012). More important, secure individuals’ increases in religiosity tend to reflect the positive influence of close relationships—labeled by Granqvist and Hagekull (1999) as “themes of correspondence.” These themes include the socializing influence of exposure to other people’s religious beliefs and behaviors, with for example, new friendships with religious peers and the parents’ religious beliefs becoming influential (Granqvist, 2002; Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999, 2001; Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007; Halama, Gasparikova, & Sabo, 2013). In a recent study, Greenwald et al. (2018) reported that regardless of the form of religious change (i.e., apostasy or conversion), attachment security in close relationships during adulthood was related to gradual changes and themes of correspondence, indicating the importance of both socialization and exploration motives.

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 13

181

According to the social correspondence hypothesis, the religiosity of individuals cared for by relatively sensitive attachment figures is grounded in primary socialization processes, causing it to be relatively stable and unlikely to undergo radical fluctuations over time. Several studies have supported this hypothesis (e.g., Granqvist, 1998, 2002; Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999, 2001; Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007). In an intriguing quasi-experimental study, Wright (2008) even documented some “immunity” to being persuaded by a “foreign” proselytizing message of ministry among secure participants raised by religious caregivers. He concluded that “securely attached individuals with religious caregivers are socialized into their caregiver’s religious system and are thus unlikely to express interest in other religious organizations” (p. 75). However, these findings do not mean that secure individuals cannot undergo religious changes. There is evidence that they can undergo transformations, but their spiritual change tends to increase rather than decrease the similarity with parental religious standards (Greenwald et al., 2018; Pirutinsky, 2009). IWM-correspondence hypothesis. Evidence supporting the IWM-correspondence hypothesis has accrued in relation to a person’s attachment history. First, the Swedish AAI study mentioned earlier revealed that independently coded estimates of experiences with loving parents were associated with participants’ reports of a loving, as opposed to a distant, God image (Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007). Conversely, inferred experiences with rejecting and role-reversing parents were associated positively with a distant God image and negatively with a loving image of God. Moreover, using a “Religious Attachment Interview” (Granqvist & Main, 2017)—modeled on the AAI—coded estimates of probable experiences with sensitive parents and coherence of mind (a primary indicator of security) on the AAI were associated with participants coherently representing God as benevolent (Nkara, Main, Hesse, & Granqvist, 2018). Similar findings have been reported in an Italian AAI study with Catholic priests and other religious professionals (novices and seminarists) and a comparison group of lay Catholic believers (Cassibba, Granqvist, Costantini, & Gatto, 2008). The study is especially important theoretically because members of the former group are not only likely to experience an attachment-like relationship with God, but this relationship (unlike in the latter group) is probably their principal attachment (because their lives are to be “lived in Christ,” and they are required to abstain from “earthly” attachments). In further support of the IWM-correspondence hypothesis, the group of Catholic priests and religious professionals was coded significantly higher on loving experiences with mother on the AAI. Moreover, across study groups, AAI-based maternal loving scores were positively linked to a loving God image whereas corresponding scores of parental rejection were correlated in the opposite direction. Regarding self-reports of attachment orientations in close relationships in adulthood, Kirkpatrick and Shaver (1992) found that people with a secure attachment displayed higher perceptions of God as a loving, benevolent, and approving figure than insecure people. This finding has since been conceptually replicated in a large number of studies, in many countries, using different measures of God images, and across faith traditions (see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2016; for a review). Importantly, this association has also been replicated in a study using a less explicit measure of God images. Granqvist et al. (2012) found that more secure participants reacted to subliminal exposure to the word “God” (as compared to a neutral word) with faster reactions to positive traits (e.g., loving and caring) in a lexical-decision task and slower reactions to negative traits (e.g., rejecting and distant) than insecure participants. This suggests that attachment security is associated with quicker cognitive access to positive mental representations of God, and that working models forged in human relationships get transferred to God. The IWM-correspondence hypothesis has also received strong support in studies that have assessed people’s attachment orientations toward God. Specifically, several studies have found that more secure participants in human relationships are more likely to have a secure attachment to God (e.g., Beck & McDonald, 2004; Granqvist et al., 2012; McDonald, Beck, Allison, & Norsworthy, 2005; Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002). However, we should not necessarily expect that an insecure attachment orientation will always correspond with an insecure attachment to God. In fact, some insecure individuals may—because of God’s unique characteristics as a noncorporeal attachment figure—be able to establish a reparative, secure relationship with God (see the next section). Besides the correlational studies just reviewed, there is experimental evidence examining the ways in which participants’ attachment history and orientations moderate the effects of attachment-system activation in the lab (Birgegard & Granqvist, 2004; Cassibba, Granqvist, & Costantini, 2013; Granqvist et al., 2012; see Granqvist, Ljungdahl, & Dickie, 2007; for analogous studies of children). Across the three experiments conducted by Birgegard and Granqvist (2004) in Sweden, an increase in the use of God to regulate distress was observed following subliminal separation primes mainly among adult believers who had reported sensitive experiences with parents. These findings strongly support the IWMcorrespondence hypothesis. Because indirect assessments of religiosity (i.e., regression residuals from pre- to postpriming) were used in the context of subliminal priming, participants were unaware of attachment activation. These conditions may have undermined the possibility of a “higher order” compensatory use of religion in individuals who had experienced parental insensitivity, thus resulting in their withdrawal from God or, put differently, their defensive

182

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

shift of attention away from attachment (e.g., Main, 1991). Conversely, presumably via automatic activation of IWMs, individuals with more sensitive experiences with caregivers drew upon God in this situation or turned their attention to attachment. This distinction may also tie in with Bowlby’s (1973, 1980), and later Main’s (1991), proposal that a singular (coherent) set of working models underlies secure attachment, whereas multiple (incoherent) working models underlie insecure attachment (i.e., there may be structural incoherence between implicit/automatic and explicit/controlled levels of working models’ operation). In-line with these speculations, the increase in psychological accessibility of God concepts following subliminal threat primes, observed by Granqvist et al. (2012), was particularly notable in participants with a secure romantic attachment orientation. In a second experiment, Granqvist et al. (2012) showed that participants with a secure attachment orientation, but not those with more insecure orientations, implicitly reacted with more positive effect following subliminal exposure to religion-related pictures (compared to neutral pictures). Cassibba et al. (2013) have extended these findings in a study using the AAI in an Italian sample for studying the IWM-correspondence hypothesis across generations. Specifically, they found that maternal security on the AAI strongly predicted a higher degree of proximity in their children’s God symbol placements vis-a`-vis a fictional child. These findings are theoretically important in illustrating— perhaps for the first time—that mothers’ working models generalize to the next generation’s perceptions of the availability of another attachment figure (i.e., God) besides the mother. In summary, substantial empirical support has been obtained for the idea that the developmental pathway to religion for individuals who are secure with respect to attachment runs through extensive experience with sensitive, religious caregivers and leads to the development of a security-supporting image of a loving God. Moreover, in such cases God, like other good attachment figures (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016), is implicitly seen as available in times of need, although secure individuals are unlikely to need to habitually use the perceived relationship with God to regulate distress. Indeed, many of the attributes of this correspondence pathway were anticipated by William James (1902) in his description of “healthy-minded” religion (Granqvist, 2003).

The compensation pathway According to Bowlby (1982), the attachment system continually monitors whether an attachment figure is sufficiently near, attentive, responsive, and approving (Hazan & Shaver, 1994; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016). The unavailability of an attachment figure, according to the theory, activates attachment behavior intended to restore an adequate degree of proximity. Under certain conditions, however, the individual may anticipate that efforts to achieve adequate proximity and comfort from the primary attachment figure are unlikely to be successful. What is likely to happen in such cases was aptly described by Bowlby (1982, p. 313): Whenever the “natural” object of attachment behavior is unavailable, the behavior can become directed towards some substitute object. Even though it is inanimate, such an object frequently appears capable of filling the role of an important, though subsidiary, attachment “figure.” Like the principal attachment figure, the inanimate substitute is sought especially when a child is tired, ill, or distressed.

People should also be more likely to turn to God as a (substitute) attachment figure under such conditions. In our review of the normative aspects of the religion-as-attachment model (previously), we noted a number of such situations, including loss of and separation from a primary attachment figure, warfare, and other extreme environmental conditions. In this section, we are concerned with the degree to which experiences with insensitive caregivers and resulting attachment insecurities are associated with the use of God and religion to regulate attachment-related distress. Many studies using self-report assessments of attachment history with parents support the compensation hypothesis (e.g., Granqvist, 1998, 2002; Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999, 2003; Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004; Halama et al., 2013; Pirutinsky, 2009; Schnitker et al., 2012). Perhaps most notably, sudden religious conversions, the most dramatic of religious experiences, are associated with parental insensitivity. This connection was reported in the first study of attachment and religion (Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990) and has been supported by a metaanalysis of 11 studies conducted up to 2004, including almost 1500 participants (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004). Specifically, participants reporting an insecure attachment history with mother (9.3%) or father (8.5%) were almost twice as likely to have experienced a sudden conversion at some point in their lives, compared with participants reporting a secure attachment history with mother (5.7%) or father (4.8%). Moreover, sudden converts scored lower than both nonconverts and gradual converts on attachment security with both mother and father (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2004). Also, in a study based on the AAI, participants whose parents were estimated by an independent coder to have been relatively less loving reported more sudden and intense increases in religiousness (Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007). Importantly, although most of

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 13

183

these studies were conducted in Protestant Christian samples, similar findings have been obtained in samples of Catholic and Jewish converts (Halama et al., 2013; Pirutinsky, 2009). Several studies have shown that the increases in religiousness reported by individuals whose parents are low in sensitivity were precipitated by significant emotional turmoil (“themes of compensation”), which was often relationshiprelated (e.g., Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999; Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007). These studies assessed religious changes retrospectively, but Granqvist and Hagekull (2003) showed that reports of parental insensitivity prospectively predicted increased importance of the perceived relationship with God following the breakup of a romantic relationship. Paralleling the research just reviewed, attachment insecurities in close relationships in adulthood can reliably predict essentially the same kinds of religious changes. For example, Kirkpatrick (1997) found that, over a 4-year period, women with anxious romantic attachments established a new relationship with God and reported dramatic religious experiences, such as being “born again” and speaking in tongues, more often than securely attached women. These findings were conceptually replicated in a second study by Kirkpatrick (1998), this time over a 5-month period, and in both men and women. Although the effect sizes were modest in the latter study, when a romantic relationship breakup was considered in another sample, insecure romantic attachment prospectively predicted increases in aspects of religiousness more strongly (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2003). Accordingly, in their recent study of Israeli Jewish converts, Greenwald et al. (2018) reported that attachment anxiety in close relationships was associated with reports of more sudden religious changes and more compensation themes. It seems that people who view themselves as unworthy of human love and care (i.e., who harbor “negative” working models of self) may turn to God because of unique characteristics of God as compared with other relationship partners. First, turning to God is comparatively risk-free because a noncorporeal figure’s responsiveness can always be imagined as benevolent and need never be experienced as disconfirmed. Also, in many religious belief systems, God’s love is unconditional, so one need not be “worthy” of love to receive it. Alternatively, God’s love may be available through particular courses of action (e.g., good deeds and prayer), which can allow an otherwise “unworthy” person to “earn” God’s love and forgiveness when it is most needed. The studies reviewed thus far might seem to suggest that individuals with insecure attachment-related experiences in the past or insecure attachment patterns at present become increasingly religious over time. However, it should be recalled that increased religiousness is expected primarily in the context of a need to regulate intense distress. Accordingly, religiousness may also decrease for such individuals (Granqvist, 2002). This might happen under conditions where the need to regulate distress through attachment surrogates is comparatively low, such as after establishing a new intimate relationship with another person (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2003). Interestingly, Greenwald et al. (2018) found that apostasy (i.e., leaving the religion one grew up with) converges in intriguing ways with religious conversion. In their study, anxious romantic attachment was also related to sudden apostasy, rejection of parents’ religiosity, and compensation themes. In summary, the developmental pathway to religion in the case of parental insensitivity and insecure attachment is one marked by attachment-system activation (or hyperactivation; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016), under conditions where a perceived relationship with God helps to regulate a believer’s distress, only to wane when the need to regulate distress subsides. Although this contention may be criticized for being a “deficiency approach” to religion (e.g., Noller, 1992), the perceived believer God relation may also be functional in promoting earned security, thus setting the stage for a complementary “growth approach” to religion. Findings from the AAI-based study mentioned earlier (Granqvist, Ivarsson et al., 2007) are in-line with this speculation. Whereas AAI coders’ estimates of parental insensitivity during interviewees’ childhoods did predict the interviewees’ history of using religion to regulate distress, classifications of the interviewees’ current attachment state of mind were generally unrelated to such compensatory uses of religion. Hence, some individuals who suffered attachment-related adversities in the past may have “earned” a certain degree of attachment security from their perceived relationship with God (cf. the idea of “reparative” effects from other relationship experiences, such as with a good therapist or a secure romantic partner; e.g., Bowlby, 1988; Main et al., 2003).

Coda In this chapter, we have reviewed evidence examining both the normative and individual-differences aspects of the religion-as-attachment model. In closing, however, we emphasize a few issues that continue to warrant special attention. For example, the time is ripe to examine the presumed effects of various kinds of God-related priming and the extent to which these effects are moderated by individual differences in attachment security in relation to God, parents, or close relationship partners. The research reviewed here is focused mainly on religious samples or, when from the general community, samples where religiosity is overrepresented by design. Therefore, future studies should focus on less

184

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

religious populations and explore whether secular symbolic figures or institutions fill similar attachment functions as religion (see Gruneau Brulin et al., 2018; for an examination of the welfare state among secular participants). More research should also be conducted on the religion-as-attachment model in nontheistic (e.g., Buddhist, Daoist) religious groups. However, despite many unanswered questions and the possible conceptual limits of attachment theory, the study of attachment-related dynamics underlying religious experiences and practices has proven very fruitful for the psychology of religion.

References Argyle, M., & Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1975). The social psychology of religion. London: Routledge & Kegan. Beck, R., & McDonald, A. (2004). Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, Tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 92 103. Birgegard, A., & Granqvist, P. (2004). The correspondence between attachment to parents and God: Three experiments using subliminal separation cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1122 1135. Bjorck, J. P., & Cohen, L. H. (1993). Coping with threats, losses, and challenges. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12, 56 72. Bosworth, D. A. (2015). Ancient prayers and the psychology of religion: Deities as parental figures. Journal of Biblical Literature, 134, 681 700. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1979). The making and breaking of affectional bonds. London: Tavistock. Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss. Vol. 3. Loss. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson, & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46 76). New York & London: Guilford. Brown, S. L., Nesse, R. M., House, J. S., & Utz, R. L. (2004). Religion and emotional compensation: Results from a prospective study of widowhood. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1165 1174. Campos, J. J., & Stenberg, C. (1981). Perception, appraisal, and emotion: The onset of social referencing. In M. E. Lamb, & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations (pp. 273 314). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cassibba, R., Granqvist, P., & Costantini, A. (2013). Mothers’ attachment security predicts their children’s sense of God’s closeness. Attachment and Human Development, 15, 51 64. Cassibba, R., Granqvist, P., Costantini, A., & Gatto, S. (2008). Attachment and God representations among lay Catholics, priests, and religious: A matched comparison study based on the Adult Attachment Interview. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1753 1763. Cassibba, R., Papagna, S., Calabrese, M. T., Costantino, E., Paterno, L., & Granqvist, P. (2014). The role of attachment to God in secular and religious/spiritual ways of coping with a serious disease. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 17, 252 261. Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.), (2016). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Davis, E. B., Kimball, C. N., Aten, J. D., Andrews, B., Van Tongeren, D. R., . . . Park, C. L. (2018). Religious meaning making and attachment in a disaster context: A longitudinal qualitative study of flood survivors. Journal of Positive Psychology, 14, 659 671. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1080/17439760.2018.1519592, Advance online publication. Ferm, V. (1945). The encyclopedia of religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar. Freud, S. (1927/1961). The future of an illusion. (J. Strachey, Trans.). New York: Norton. Furnham, A., & Brown, L. B. (1992). Theodicy: A neglected aspect of the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 37 45. Gallup, G., Jr., & Jones, S. (1989). One hundred questions and answers: Religion in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Religious Research Center. Gorsuch, R. L. (1968). The conceptualization of God as seen in adjective ratings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7, 56 64. Granqvist, P. (1998). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment: On the question of compensation or correspondence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 350 367. Granqvist, P. (2002). Attachment and religiosity in adolescence: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 260 270. Granqvist, P. (2003). Attachment theory and religious conversions: A review and a resolution of the classic and contemporary paradigm chasm. Review of Religious Research, 45, 172 187. Granqvist, P. (2006). On the relation between secular and divine relationships: An emerging attachment perspective and a critique of the depth approaches. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 16, 1 18. Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (1999). Religiousness and perceived childhood attachment: Profiling socialized correspondence and emotional compensation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38, 254 273. Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (2001). Seeking security in the new age: On attachment and emotional compensation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 527 545. Granqvist, P., & Hagekull, B. (2003). Longitudinal predictions of religious change in adolescence: Contributions from the interaction of attachment and relationship status. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20, 793 817.

An attachment theory perspective on religion and spirituality Chapter | 13

185

Granqvist, P., Ivarsson, T., Broberg, A. G., & Hagekull, B. (2007). Examining relations between attachment, religiosity, and new age spirituality using the Adult Attachment Interview. Developmental Psychology, 43, 590 601. Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Religious conversion and perceived childhood attachment: A meta-analysis. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 223 250. Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2013). Religion, spirituality, and attachment. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol. 1): Context, theory, and research (pp. 139 155). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2016). Attachment and religious representations and behavior. In J. Cassidy, & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (3rd ed., pp. 917 940). New York: Guilford Press. Granqvist, P., Ljungdahl, C., & Dickie, J. R. (2007). God is nowhere, God is now here: Attachment activation, security of attachment, and perceived closeness to God among 5- to 7-year-old children from religious and non-religious homes. Attachment and Human Development, 9, 55 71. Granqvist, P., & Main, M. (2017). The religious attachment interview: Coding and classification system. Berkeley, CA: Stockholm University, Sweden, and University of California, Unpublished manuscript. Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., Gewirtz, V., & Shaver, P. R. (2012). Experimental findings on God as an attachment figure Normative processes and moderating effects of internal working models. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 804 818. Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 49 59. Greenwald, Y., Mikulincer, M., Granqvist, P., & Shaver, P. R. (2018). Apostasy and conversion: Attachment orientations an individual difference in the process of religious change. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000239, Advance online publication. Gruneau Brulin, J., Hill, P. C., Laurin, K., Mikulincer, M., & Granqvist, P. (2018). Religion vs. the welfare state—The importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 10, 276 287. Halama, P., Gasparikova, M., & Sabo, M. (2013). Relationship between attachment styles and dimensions of the religious conversion process. Studia Psychologica, 55, 195 207. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 1 22. Hazan, C., & Zeifman, D. (1994). Sex and the psychological tether. In K. Bartholomew, & D. Perlman (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships: Attachment processes in adulthood (Vol. 5, pp. 151 177). London: Jessica Kingsley. Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (4th ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Hood, R. W., Jr., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Longmans. Karremans, J. C., Heslenfeld, D. J., van Dillen, L. F., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2011). Secure attachment partners attenuate neural responses to social exclusion: An fMRI investigation. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 81, 44 50. Kaufman, G. D. (1981). The theological imagination: Constructing the concept of God. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1994). The role of attachment in religious belief and behavior. In D. Perlman, & K. Bartholomew (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships (Vol. 5, pp. 239 265). London: Jessica Kingsley. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1997). A longitudinal study of changes in religious belief and behavior as a function of individual differences in adult attachment style. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 207 217. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1998). God as a substitute attachment figure: A longitudinal study of adult attachment style and religious change in college students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 961 973. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. New York: Guilford Press. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Attachment theory and religion: Childhood attachments, religious beliefs, and conversion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29, 315 334. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1992). An attachment theoretical approach to romantic love and religious belief. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 266 275. Koenig, H. G., King, D. E., & Carson, V. B. (2012). Handbook of religion and health (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Kupor, D. M., Laurin, K., & Levav, J. (2015). Anticipating divine protection? Reminders of God can increase non-moral risk taking. Psychological Science, 26, 374 384. Main, M. (1991). Metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive monitoring, and singular (coherent) vs. multiple (incoherent) models of attachment: Findings and directions for future research. In C. M. Parkes, & J. Stevenson-Hinde (Eds.), Attachment across the life cycle (pp. 127 159). London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge. Main, M., Goldwyn, R., & Hesse, E. (2003). Adult attachment scoring and classification systems. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Unpublished manuscript. Mattlin, J. A., Wethington, E., & Kessler, R. C. (1990). Situational determinants of coping and coping effectiveness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 31, 103 122. McCrae, R. R. (1984). Situational determinants of coping responses: Loss, threat, and challenge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 919 928.

186

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

McDonald, A., Beck, R., Allison, S., & Norsworthy, L. (2005). Attachment to God and parents: Testing the correspondence vs. compensation hypotheses. Journal of Psychology & Christianity, 24, 21 28. Mikulincer, M., Gillath, O., & Shaver, P. R. (2002). Activation of the attachment system in adulthood: Threat-related primes increase the accessibility of mental representations of attachment figures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 881 895. Mikulincer, M., Hirschberger, G., Nachmias, O., & Gillath, O. (2001). The affective component of the secure base schema: Affective priming with representations of attachment security. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 305 321. Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2001). Attachment theory and intergroup bias: Evidence that priming the secure base schema attenuates negative reactions to out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 97 115. Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Boosting attachment security to promote mental health, prosocial values, and inter-group tolerance. Psychological Inquiry, 18, 139 156. Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment patterns in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., Gillath, O., & Nitzberg, R. E. (2005). Attachment, caregiving, and altruism: Boosting attachment security increases compassion and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 817 839. Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., & Rom, E. (2011). The effects of implicit and explicit security priming on creative problem solving. Cognition and Emotion, 25, 519 531. Nkara, F., Main, M., Hesse, E., & Granqvist, P. (2018). Attachment to deities in light of attachment to parents: The Religious Attachment Interview. Manuscript in preparation. Noller, P. (1992). Religion conceptualized as an attachment process: Another deficiency approach to the psychology of religion? International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 29 36. O’Brien, M. E. (1982). Religious faith and adjustment to long-term hemodialysis. Journal of Religion and Health, 21, 68 80. Pargament, K. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford Press. Pirutinsky, S. (2009). Conversion and attachment insecurity among Orthodox Jews. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19, 200 206. Reinert, D. F., & Edwards, C. E. (2009). Attachment theory, childhood mistreatment, and religiosity. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 1, 25 34. Rom, E., & Mikulincer, M. (2003). Attachment theory and group processes: The association between attachment style and group-related representations, goals, memories, and functioning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1220 1235. Rowatt, W. C., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2002). Two dimensions of attachment to God and their relation to affect, religiosity, and personality constructs. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41, 637 651. Schnitker, S. A., Porter, T. J., Emmons, R. A., & Barrett, J. L. (2012). Attachment predicts adolescent conversions at Young Life religious summer camps. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22, 216 230. Shaver, P. R., Hazan, C., & Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment: The integration of three behavioral systems. In R. J. Sternberg, & M. Barnes (Eds.), The psychology of love (pp. 68 99). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sibley, C. G., & Bulbulia, J. (2012). Faith after an earthquake: A longitudinal study of religion and perceived health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake. PLoS One, 7, e49648. Spilka, B., Armatas, P., & Nussbaum, J. (1964). The concept of God: A factor-analytic approach. Review of Religious Research, 6, 28 36. Spilka, B., & Ladd, K. L. (2012). The psychology of prayer: A scientific approach. New York: Guilford Press. Sroufe, L. A., & Waters, E. (1977). Attachment as an organizational construct. Child Development, 48, 1184 1199. St. John of the Cross. (1990). Dark night of the soul. New York: Doubleday. Stouffer, S. A. (1949). The American soldier: Vol. 2. Combat and its aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strickland, F. L. (1924). Psychology of religious experience. Studies in the psychological interpretation of religious faith. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Tamayo, A., & Desjardins, L. (1976). Belief systems and conceptual images of parents and God. Journal of Psychology, 92, 131 140. Thouless, R. H. (1923). An introduction to the psychology of religion. New York: Macmillan. Ullman, C. (1982). Change of mind, change of heart: Some cognitive and emotional antecedents of religious conversion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 183 192. Wenegrat, B. (1989). The divine archetype: The socio-biology and psychology of religion. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Wright, P. J. (2008). Predicting reaction to a message of ministry: An audience analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47, 63 81.

Chapter 14

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Kenneth I. Mavor1 and Renate Ysseldyk2 1

University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom, 2Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Religion—that is, the organizational and belief-based aspects of religious group affiliation—is often a defining feature of both personal and collective selves. From the individual perspective, religious beliefs and practices can prominently influence complex self-conceptions and existential queries, as well as more tangible facets of health and well-being. In the collective realm, religious group ties can provide support for both material and epistemic needs, while also inciting group divisions. Indeed, religious group identity—and the spirituality therein—can simultaneously impact collective social functioning and personal existential concerns. Historically, one of the persistent questions in the social psychology of religion (particularly in a western, Christian context) has been the bewildering association between religious belief and various forms of prejudice. Throughout the last 70 years, attempts to address this question have predominantly involved individual differences in the form and motivation of religious belief. Allport (1950, 1954) and Allport and Ross (1967) introduced a distinction between intrinsic motivation (religion as a central motive that underpins other aspects of the self) and extrinsic motivation (where religion is practiced superficially and is subsidiary to other motives of personal and social comfort or advantage). Other researchers (e.g., Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982; Fulton, Gorsuch, & Maynard, 1999; Herek, 1987; Hunsberger, 1995; Kirkpatrick, 1993; Kojetin, McIntosh, Bridges, & Spilka, 1987) subsequently focused on measures of specific belief content (e.g., orthodoxy, fundamentalism). Taken together, we could argue that religion-based prejudice has usually been seen as a form of individual expression with collective outcomes. Contrasting with this is literature examining the role that religious beliefs and identity can play in the health and well-being of adherents, in part through imbuing life with meaning and helping to alleviate existential anxiety (e.g., Van Tongeren, Davis, Hook, & Johnson, 2016). For the most part the research literature overwhelmingly supports the idea that highly religious individuals enjoy greater health and happiness (Green & Elliott, 2010; Haney & Rollock, 2018; King, Topalian, & Vidourek, 2019; Koenig, King, & Carson, 2012) and that this is especially the case when those individuals highly identify with and capitalize on both the personal (beliefs) and social (group ties) aspects of their religiosity (Lim & Putnam, 2010; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010; Ysseldyk, McQuaid, McInnis, Anisman, & Matheson, 2018). In this way, religion can also be seen as a form of collective expression with individual outcomes. While this reciprocal relationship between personal and social aspects of identity is likely to be true in a number of contexts, we argue that it is particularly potent in the case of religious identities, by their potentially all-encompassing nature. Indeed, although both personal and social identities can be complex and multifaceted (Linville, 1987; McConnell, 2011; Roccas & Brewer, 2002; Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2012), the strengths (and weaknesses) of religious identities in particular are derived not only from their dual nature as individual and collective but also from the set of guiding beliefs on which the identity is founded (Ysseldyk, 2017; Ysseldyk et al., 2010, 2018). We also note the context of this chapter as part of a larger collection around the theme of religion and existentialism. From a social psychological perspective, there are a number of problematic assumptions about the nature of the The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00015-9 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

187

188

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

individual and the collective that are part of the history of existentialist thought. Historically, the existentialist focus on the agentic individual meaning-maker in opposition to externally imposed collective concepts (e.g., social roles, category memberships, stereotypes, and deindividuating crowds) is also reflected in similar debates in social psychology. The self-categorization and social identity theory (SIT) perspectives that we explore here (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) address these issues by arguing that both the personal self and collective self are legitimate and psychologically real (authentic) aspects of an individual. We also distinguish the “individual in the group,” wherein we imagine interacting physical entities and material social constraints that impose upon individual existence, and the “the group in the individual,” which captures the psychological implications of our personal and social self-conceptions (e.g., Hogg & Abrams, 1988). As we elaborate later, the psychological individual draws upon their own remembered self-conceptions, as well as physical and social constraints, in construing the context in which they seek to exist or act. However, the physical individual need not exist or act alone, as the possibility of construing situations in a collective context allows individuals to also be agentic and authentic through collective action as well. Ultimately, therefore, the idea that both personal and collective selves can be authentic ways though which the existential individual can act and be in the world, either alone or as part of a collective, lies at the heart of our analysis. In this chapter, we explore some of the qualities and implications of placing religion at the nexus point between the personal and collective self. We will explore the history of the individual differences approach to religious orientation and ideology, and subsequently connect this with more recent work in the social identity tradition where shared opinions (such as ideological views) can be the basis for social categorization and social identity formation. Indeed, a main theme of the chapter is to illuminate both personal and social religious selves in the context of one another. With selfcategorization theory (SCT) (Turner et al., 1987) and SIT (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) framing in mind, we then explore more concrete implications for collective expressions of religiosity, the broader self-concept and meaning-making, and for person-level outcomes such as health and well-being.

Religion, prejudice, and collective action We start our discussion with two ostensibly disparate literatures: (1) the religiosity and prejudice literature, which has focused on individual difference explanations for negative forms of religious behavior (e.g., Allport & Ross, 1967; Duck & Hunsberger, 1999; Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2009; Herek, 1987; Kirkpatrick, 1993; Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990; Laythe, Finkel, & Kirkpatrick, 2001) and (2) the social identity and collective action literature, which has more recently focused on understanding the basis of collective action on behalf of prosocial change (e.g., Becker & Tausch, 2015; Drury & Reicher, 2000; Greenaway, Cichocka, van Veelen, Likki, & Branscombe, 2016; Louis, 2009; McGarty, Lala, & Thomas, 2012; Smith, Thomas, & McGarty, 2015; Sweetman, Leach, Spears, Pratto, & Saab, 2013). In the prejudice and stereotyping literature, social categories are often seen as problematic, on the assumption that prejudice arises when people are not seen as individuals (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000; Pendry & Macrae, 1994); in the social-change literature, religiosity is relatively rarely studied as a basis of collective action, with attention focused on national, ethnic, and shared human identities (e.g., Bain, 2013; Bliuc, McGarty, Hartley, & Muntele Hendres, 2012; Haslam, Loughnan, Kashima, & Bain, 2008; Morton, Hornsey, & Postmes, 2012; Morton & Postmes, 2011), or politically oriented activist identities (e.g., Blackwood & Louis, 2012; Louis, Amiot, Thomas, & Blackwood, 2016; Simon & Klandermans, 2001; Turner-Zwinkels, van Zomeren, & Postmes, 2017). The following sections review the relevant aspects of these largely disconnected literatures with an emphasis on some preliminary points of engagement. In the Christian West, prejudice as a negative aspect of religiosity has been a source of consternation and considerable research effort. The modern attempt to address this question in the social psychology of religion owes much to the work of Allport (1950, 1954). In his treatise on prejudice, Allport (1954) reviewed many possible sources of prejudice, including both personality and intergroup conflict around ideology. Although there were large sections of this work that formed the basis of much subsequent intergroup conflict research, the emphasis with regard to understanding the role of religion focused on personality and individual differences—that is, religious orientations (Allport, 1966; Allport & Ross, 1967).

Religious orientations The individual differences approach to understanding religiosity initially focused on differentiating competing motivations and styles of religious involvement and expression. Allport (1950) originally described a mature versus immature

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

189

approach to religion, which was recast as intrinsically motivated versus extrinsically motivated orientations and codified as a scale (the Intrinsic-Extrinsic or IE scale; Allport & Ross, 1967). In theory, intrinsically motivated religious individuals were more committed to the sacred aspects of the religion (e.g., prayer) and living these out in their lives; in contrast, extrinsically motivated individuals were more interested in superficial personally or socially advantageous forms of religious practice (e.g., status and self-justification), and therefore increasingly susceptible to the more profane influences of society, including prejudice. However, in practice, it was often found that those highest on intrinsic motivation showed the greatest prejudice and that extrinsic motivation had quite a weak relationship to prejudice (Donahue, 1985; Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989). Criticisms of the IE distinction continued to mount (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989; Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990). In particular, the measure of intrinsic orientation could be seen simply as a measure of religious commitment, and the extrinsic scale as a measure of the extent to which things other than religion were actually important. One alternative offering that attempted to stay within the motivational approach was the quest orientation (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a, 1991b; Batson & Ventis, 1982). Quest was seen as an alternative to the IE distinction such that that those who were not “true believers” but who approached religion in a quest to address existential concerns were more likely to be low in prejudice (Burris, Jackson, Tarpley, & Smith, 1996). In practice, however, it was found to be very difficult to turn that idea into a scale that measured an orientation to religion (e.g., “Religious doubt allows us to learn”), without including specific statements about belief [e.g., “My religious beliefs are far too important to me to be jeopardized by a lot of scepticism and critical examination” (reversed)]. The presence of the belief content in the scale created a strong negative association with fundamentalism scales (e.g., r 5 20.62 in Mavor & Gallois, 2008; r 5 20.79 in Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) and suggests that it is better seen as an ideological variable rather than a motivation or orientation. Therefore, initially, quest (and fundamentalism) were also considered as orientations; we argue later that it is helpful to distinguish measures that try to capture orientations in a content-free way, compared to those approaches that focus on specific belief content.

Religious ideology: orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and components of right-wing authoritarianism In parallel with approaches based on motivation and orientation, researchers have also included measures of belief content to examine whether particular clusters of beliefs are associated with prejudice. In the Christian context these have included measures of orthodoxy [assumed to represent a set of core beliefs shared by most traditional Christians (Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982; Kirkpatrick, 1993; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004)] and fundamentalist ideology [representing an identifiable subset of beliefs commonly held by a more restrictive subset of Christians (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Fulton et al., 1999; Hunsberger, 1995; Kellstedt & Smidt, 1991; Phillips & Ano, 2015)]. These ideology-based individual differences variables have often been more predictive of particular prejudices than the orientation-based variables. For example, fundamentalism often has a stronger association with generalized discrimination toward several groups on the basis of race, gender, and sexual orientation than an intrinsic orientation (Herek, 1987; Kirkpatrick, 1993; Mavor & Gallois, 2008; McFarland, 1989) and the same pattern emerges (though more weakly) on some implicit measures of prejudice (e.g., Rowatt & Franklin, 2004). The consistency of the relationship between prejudice and these ideology variables, coupled with concerns about IE scales effectively measuring commitment (Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990), led some researchers to drop orientation/commitment variables from their studies and concentrate on ideology variables such as orthodoxy and fundamentalism, and this set of ideology-based explanations was subsequently expanded to include right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1996; e.g., Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Laythe, Finkel, Bringle, & Kirkpatrick, 2002; Laythe et al., 2001). However, even in these studies, the notion of commitment is implicit; since orthodoxy is seen as capturing a generalized acceptance of broad-based traditional views, it becomes a stand-in variable for religious commitment. On this basis, Laythe et al. (2002) argued that fundamentalism involves two components: (1) orthodoxy, which reflects broad shared belief content and (2) RWA, which captures the aggressive, prejudiced component of fundamentalism. Moreover, Laythe et al. (2001) argued that fundamentalism would actually be associated with reduced prejudice after controlling for RWA. Indeed, Laythe et al. (2002) showed that orthodoxy was associated with reductions in racial prejudice, but that fundamentalism, orthodoxy, and authoritarianism variables were all associated with homosexual prejudice. The apparent reduction in prejudice associated with fundamentalism and orthodoxy in these studies was challenged by Mavor et al. (Mavor, Louis, & Laythe, 2011; Mavor, Louis, & Sibley, 2010; Mavor, Macleod, Boal, & Louis, 2009), who argued that the reduction in prejudice was the result of statistical suppression. Rather than fundamentalism having RWA as a component, Mavor et al. showed that RWA was best understood as three components, aggression,

190

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

submission, and conventionalism (see also the discussion later) and that conventionalism is measured in a way that is closely associated with fundamentalism. Thus fundamentalism might be better understood as a component of RWA rather than RWA being a component of fundamentalism, and regressions incorporating both fundamentalism and RWA predicting prejudice are statistically problematic (Mavor et al., 2009, 2011). Nonetheless what these studies illustrate is the important move toward using ideological variables in preference to content-free orientation variables when predicting group outcomes such as prejudice.

Specificity of prejudice targets and social identity The findings that both ideology and commitment variables have complex relationships with different targets of prejudice (Kirkpatrick, 1993) led to the notion of proscribed versus nonproscribed prejudices (Batson & Burris, 1994; Batson, Shoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Duck & Hunsberger, 1999; Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005)—that is, some groups are seen as (so-called) “legitimate” targets of discrimination by some religious groups, whereas others are not. Typically, homosexual prejudice is used as an example of “legitimate” discrimination, whereas racial prejudice is an example of unacceptable “proscribed” prejudice (Laythe et al., 2001, 2002). Fundamentalism tends to be associated with both forms of prejudice, whereas those high in intrinsic religiosity and orthodoxy dutifully abstain from proscribed prejudices and tend to show only the nonproscribed sort of prejudices (Laythe et al., 2002; Mavor & Gallois, 2008). We argue that these differences in patterns of response to different target groups often function as meaningful fault lines between particular groups within the broader religious domain. Within the individual differences literature on religiosity, there have been repeated calls and suggestions for a complementary approach based on social identity processes (Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005; Jackson & Hunsberger, 1999; Kirkpatrick, 1993; Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990). In effect, this literature has come full circle: it started out looking for individual orientations that define committed adherents who had more in common across denominations than with less committed members within the same denominations (Donahue, 1985; Gorsuch & Aleshire, 1974); however, it ended up returning to the central importance of shared content and meaning (such as orthodoxy and fundamentalism), both in the experience of the members, and in how they respond to various target groups. The social identity tradition is thus well placed to provide a useful framework for understanding these more complex group processes. In the next section we explore the core concepts of the social identity perspective and implications for understanding ideology-based groups.

Social identity and the religious self The social identity approach incorporates SIT (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and SCT (Turner et al., 1987; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). Together they can be referred to as the social identity approach, or as SIT/SCT. This approach has not only been highly influential in better understanding intergroup relations and stereotyping but has also had increasing impact in the study of organizations, leadership, obedience, justice, health, and education (e.g., Haslam, 2004; Haslam, Reicher, & Platow, 2010; Huddy, 2001; Jetten, Haslam, & Haslam, 2012; Mavor, Platow, & Bizumic, 2017; Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, 2008). A key feature of these theories is that they assert the fundamentally social nature of the self. That is, the self is argued to include personal selves but also social selves. Personal selves are those that derive from individual-level (interpersonal) comparisons. Social selves derive from group-level comparisons: from the things we share with others in some form of a collective and that differentiate us from other collectives. A particular social identity represents the importance of that collective self and the relative value we place on that identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Traditionally, the personal and social selves are sometimes thought of as psychologically antagonistic. When interpersonal comparisons are most relevant, we are more likely to see the situation in those terms and respond on the basis of our personal identities, but when collective comparisons are most relevant our collective social selves are likely to be the basis of our experience and response (Turner et al., 1987, 1994). This antagonistic definition will often seem to apply because, in practice, we are frequently interested in contexts in which the two identities might lead to different predictions about our behavior. We often pay more attention to times when individuals act against their own (personal) self-interest by acting on behalf of the collective or judge others on the basis of their collective category membership instead of giving preference to forming impressions on the basis of “more accurate” information about the individual (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; but see Skorich & Mavor, 2013). This can make it seem like the personal/social antagonism is a defining feature of the theory; however, more recent descriptions of the theory have taken an increasingly relaxed view (Abrams & Hogg, 2004). It can also be understood

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

191

as a rhetorical way of making the point that social selves are real elements of the broader self and will be crucial in collective contexts. This more rhetorical approach to thinking about the personal and collective distinction is important for us here because religious identities are particularly likely to be ones that can be understood both as personal and social elements of self. Many traditions see religious practice as a personal expression with religious choices having important implications for the personal story of the adherent. Allport, for example, saw personal religious orientations as important individual differences in a similar way to other personality approaches to the self (Allport, 1950, 1954; Allport & Ross, 1967). However, it is also equally clear that religion is a form of social expression; that is, it is also fundamentally a collective experience. For example, in traditions that involve conversion experiences, the conversion may be experienced in a collective context and have implications for group memberships but may be framed as a decision point of accepting a very personal relationship with God that brings personal change in the moment as well as creating a very different individual pathway in life. The personal and social selves in this context might be expected to be in alignment, not in conflict, within one’s religious self.

Social identity and religious opinion based groups The social identity approach was developed in the postwar context of the Holocaust and Cold War conflict, and thus intergroup relations were a key catalyst in the early theory development (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). This heritage also means that the theory has often been applied to large-scale social collectives involved in broad social conflict or social change (such as race, gender, class, and similar sociological distinctions). When religion is implicated in these larger scale conflicts, it might similarly be seen in a rather sociological form as conflict between large-scale religion-based social collectives, such as conflict between the Christendom and the Islamic world, or between historical schisms (e.g., Catholicism vs Protestantism, Shiite vs Sunni). While these schisms are often understood as being derived from largescale social and political conflicts, in the case of religion-based conflict, they are often portrayed as being based on differences in orthodoxies (e.g., heresies; or social changes such as the ordination of women; see Sani & Reicher, 1999, 2000) or practices (orthopraxies). While the social identity tradition can be commonly applied to large-scale sociological categories, the theory is intended to apply more broadly to the process of categorization on any meaningful basis and is therefore well placed to consider the subtleties of conflict in religious settings where complex group distinctions are often framed in terms of belief and practice. Indeed, Bliuc, McGarty et al. (Bliuc, McGarty, Reynolds, & Muntele, 2007; McGarty, Bliuc, Thomas, & Bongiorno, 2009; Thomas, McGarty, & Mavor, 2009a) have argued that categorization based on beliefs (what they call opinion-based groups) is essential to most forms of political conflict and social change. For our purposes here, we note the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the religious context, but we can argue that, theoretically, these are both examples of opinion-based groupings. In some cases the practices arguably derive from more abstract beliefs (such as Catholic vs Protestant communion practices based on beliefs about transubstantiation; worship and baptismal practices based on beliefs about the first Pentecost and the nature of the Holy Spirit). Even in cases where the practice aspect is highly salient, such as the Appalachian snake handlers (Hood & Williamson, 2008) or the “whirling dervishes” of Sufi Islam (Friedlander, 1975), the practice is closely tied to specific beliefs about their meaning. We argue that in most cases, it is belief in the meaning of the practice that is psychologically potent rather than the practice as a thing in itself and that therefore we can subsume both orthodoxy and orthopraxy under the banner of “opinion-based” systems. The flip side of seeing religious groups as essentially based on shared beliefs is that practices are arguably a central focus both at the social and personal levels. Religious groups then are potentially very powerful as the basis of collective action but also personal action. Although the full literature on collective action is beyond the scope of this chapter, in the following section we will consider three closely related models of collective action to illustrate how they might apply with religion-based groups and associated identities.

SIMCA and EMSICA models of social identity and collective action Many researchers have now argued for the central role of social identity in facilitating collective action for social change. To illustrate how this might operate for religious identities, we draw upon a popular model derived from a metaanalysis of social identity and social change, known as the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA; van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008) and the closely related encapsulation model of social identity in collective action (EMSICA; Thomas, Mavor, & McGarty, 2012; Thomas et al., 2009a; Thomas, McGarty, & Mavor, 2016).

192

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

These models incorporate social identity, collective self-efficacy, and collective emotion as predictors of collective action. The shared identity is often in itself a key driver for collective action, but this is increased through collective self-efficacy and shared emotions, both of which are likely to be particularly potent in a religious context. Collective self-efficacy is the belief that the group can achieve their goals by acting together or that our own efficacy is enhanced by acting collectively, which may be particularly empowered by the possibility of divine support (Pargament, 2002). Collective emotions are theorized as having a similar appraisal process to those of individual-level emotions, but the appraisals are based on perceptions at the group level (Smith, 1993). Collective anger (or outrage), for example, is often seen as particularly associated with collective action, involving appraisals that a negative outcome for the group is illegitimate and driven by a third party or system; rendering the disadvantaged and advantaged groups into a common moral ingroup; and driving social and political action to subvert the offending system, motivated by moral rhetorical superiority (Thomas, McGarty, & Mavor, 2009b). These models could apply to forms of action with very different political and social evaluations. Religiously identified prolife protestors, for example, may be more likely to engage in various forms of action (from political protests to blockading clinics, etc.) driven by a strong identity, a sense of the collective efficacy of such action, and the sense of shared emotion around the issue. The nature of the chosen action might be determined by whether the collective emotion is outrage against the system, empathy, guilt, or other emotions. We could also imagine protestors with a strong religious identity engaging in collective action in support of refugees; they may be simultaneously driven by a religious mandate to show hospitality to “newcomers,” and collective outrage that political systems often treat refugees so poorly. Indeed, that the main offenders are often those that claim to also be religious may intensify the outrage (see also the section later on the permeability of group boundaries). Again in such cases, shared outrage may facilitate action aimed toward the system. However, strong collective emotions of empathy may lead to action such as hosting asylum seeker families or advocating on their behalf.

The normative alignment model of social action and opinion-based group interventions The SIMCA and EMSICA models show how religious social identities might play a key role alongside experiences of shared emotion and efficacy leading to social action. However, it is also possible to imagine that the call to action is itself a defining feature of the social identity rather than being an outcome alone. This is certainly the case within some religious traditions, wherein such calls to action are not only facilitated by fellow group members but also encouraged (or even mandated) by the sacred texts themselves (e.g., commands to love one another and care for those in need). The third closely related model we will consider then is the normative alignment model (Thomas et al., 2009a). This model describes well situations where emotion, efficacy, and call to action all align as defining qualities of the group. These kinds of identities may be a particularly common feature of religious identities. Noting work by Sani and Reicher (1999, 2000) on religious schisms, Thomas et al. argued that nominal categories can split if there is no consensus on what defines the group. They argued that sustainable collective identities require consensus about the beliefs and feelings that drive action (Thomas et al., 2009a). While we must refer rhetorically to specific religious group labels when discussing them, the point is that the psychologically meaningful religious identities tend to incorporate some or all of these normative elements. Religious messages explicitly create norms for efficacy both through the examples of the deep conviction of religious heroes and leaders, and the ultimate action of God(s) intervening on their behalf (Pargament, 2002; Pargament et al., 1988; Ysseldyk et al., 2010). They also include specific calls to action at both personal and collective levels; for example, the Christian benediction is often both a blessing and a call to action (go into the world . . .). Adherents not only engage in specific rituals (actions) to reinforce their group membership but are also expected to act in certain ways in the world. These might include showing “fruits of the spirit” (Galatians 5:22 23; New International Version), acting in accord with Sharia law (Islam), acting in accord with the Torah and the mitzvot (Judaism), and following the eightfold path (Buddhism). As well as these general norms of action, religious leaders may make more specific calls to action for their followers. Finally, religious identities are designed to engage with emotion in many ways. Worship rituals may evoke many particular emotions (joy, guilt, outrage, humility, empathy, etc.) and the collective environment means that these emotions will be experienced as collectively shared, and normative (Livingstone, Spears, Manstead, Bruder, & Shepherd, 2011; Thomas et al., 2009b; Ysseldyk, 2017). Given these examples, we would expect religious identities to be particularly effective in creating sustained action.

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

193

Ideology-based social identities With these models in mind we can now return to the important role of ideology models discussed earlier, and particularly RWA, religious orthodoxy, and fundamentalism. Although RWA is not in itself a model of religious ideology, it does incorporate elements of religiosity in the conventionalism component (Duckitt & Fisher, 2003; Funke, 2005; Mavor et al., 2010) and has been included alongside fundamentalism and orthodoxy in models of religious prejudice (Johnson, Labouff, Rowatt, Patock-Peckham, & Carlisle, 2012; Johnson et al., 2011; Laythe et al., 2001, 2002; Mavor et al., 2011). There is also additional relevance of RWA to our discussion, in that there is already a social identity model of authoritarianism (Duckitt, 1989), which might act as a partial template for considering how fundamentalism and orthodoxy might also fit into a social identity approach to religiosity. Duckitt (1989) was struck by a possible link between individual difference variables such as authoritarianism and the social identity approach. He set out a model in which the three components of RWA might actually represent the action of social identity processes, arguing for an “alternative conceptualization of authoritarianism as the normatively held conception of the appropriate relationship between group and individual member, determined primarily by the intensity of group identification and consequent strain toward cohesion” (Duckitt, 1989, p. 63). One of the key observations that Duckitt (1989) makes is that RWA scales (such as Altemeyer, 1981) contain belief items that are not just attitudes but express shared values and norms: “more than half these items pertain to beliefs about how people should, must, or ought to behave or think, that is, normative beliefs” (Duckitt, 1989, p. 70). He therefore argues that a strong commitment to the group will lead to an emphasis on conformity to group norms for beliefs and actions (conventionalism), obedience to ingroup authorities (authoritarian submission), and punitive intolerance to those who do not conform to the group norms (authoritarian aggression). The implication, therefore, is that authoritarianism is an example of a more general set of social identity processes, and social identity is the construct that forms the basis of the covariation of these three RWA dimensions. Duckitt’s (1989) view suggests that this pattern of high social identity in combination with normative metabeliefs about obedience to group norms and leaders, along with a willingness to act punitively toward those who do not conform, is at the heart of authoritarianism. However, this simple picture is muddied because the scales not only refer heavily to the nation as the source of leadership and norms but also refers to religion as a base of authority and convention. For example, in Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1992) scale, there is a clear focus on the nation (e.g., “Our country will be great if . . .,” “. . . respect our flag, our leaders . . .,” “What our country really needs . . .,” “. . . proper authorities in government”). In addition, there are also references to religion as the source of conventions (e.g., “. . . attention to the Bible and other traditional forms of religious guidance . . .,” “. . . rebelled against the established religions . . .”). There is mention of other social norms that do not specifically reference religion, but where religious attitudes are strongly inferred (e.g., “. . . perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs,” and specific references to nudity, homosexuality, and premarital sexuality). A similar mix is present in other versions of the scale (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996). So, far from capturing a general psychological construct of authoritarian thinking, existing scales assume a very specific construction of country, nation, and tradition. This measurement problem is arguably why this insightful analysis from Duckitt (1989) has been rarely used in the authoritarianism literature (for one of the few examples, see Stellmacher & Petzel, 2005), and Duckitt, Bizumic, Krauss, and Heled (2010) eventually developed a more balanced multidimensional scale closely tied to the traditional RWA formulation. With the spirit of Duckitt’s (1989) model in mind then, in combination with the models of social identity and collective action discussed previously, we can now set out a conceptually similar, but more specific model of how religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism might operate in terms of a social identity analysis.

A tripartite social identity normative model of religious fundamentalism Our first observation is that, similar to RWA measures, typical measures of Christian fundamentalism contain not just specific belief items, but expressly normative items. If we consider Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1992) fundamentalism scale, we do find items of more straightforward belief content [e.g., “The basic cause of evil in this world is Satan,” “No single book of religious writings contains all the important truths about life” (reversed)], but much more common are items that specify the norms for fundamentalist Christians (e.g., “God’s true followers must remember that he requires them to constantly fight Satan and Satan’s allies on this earth”). We also find these normative items in McFarland’s (1989) fundamentalism scale (e.g., “It is very important for true Christians to believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God,” “Christians must try hard to know and defend the true teachings of God’s word”). In addition, we note that some items are particularly focused on the boundary of the group: what social identity researchers refer to

194

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

as permeability beliefs (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and what religion scholars think of as separatism (e.g., Kellstedt & Smidt, 1991). These boundary defining issues can already be seen in some of the abovementioned items but are very explicit in others (e.g., “When you get right down to it, there are only two kinds of people in this world: the Righteous, who will be rewarded by God; and the rest, who will not”; “Whenever science and sacred scripture conflict, science must be wrong”; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). With the previous discussions in mind, we can see that these examples of fundamentalism items are not just expressions of individual belief but rather are statements of normatively shared attitudes and behavior, and shared understandings about group boundaries, including what will happen to those who fall outside the group. We therefore argue that, like authoritarianism, fundamentalism can be seen as based on a foundation of social identity and expressed in three ways: 1. Conventionalism: defining features of the collective in terms of beliefs, attitudes, and practices. These can be things that members might agree are associated with the group, but with which they can express more or less agreement. Fundamentalism is often defined by belief in the literal truth of the Bible and the power of Satan; for example, “I am sure the Bible contains no errors or contradictions” (McFarland, 1989, p. 328), “The basic cause of evil in this world is Satan, who is still constantly and ferociously fighting against God” (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992, p. 130). This is similar to the conventionalism component of RWA because it represents how many of the conventions of the group the individual accepts. 2. Authoritarian submission: the permeability of the group boundary. This is a focus on how vital compliance with the defining conventions is to being accepted as group members. Those who see the group boundaries as less permeable argue that members must adhere to the shared conventions to be included—people are either in or out. Others would accept some fuzziness in the boundaries. In fundamentalism scales this might be captured by items such as “Christians must try hard to know and defend the true teachings of God’s word” or “The long established traditions in religion show the best way to honor and serve God, and should never be compromised.” Thus this is similar to the authoritarian submission component of RWA, though RWA items tend to articulate this primarily in terms of obedience to the leaders. Thinking more generally, obedience to leaders is just one way in which the permeability of the boundary is indicated: the more that obedience is required, the less permeable the boundaries. In the case of fundamentalism, the leaders may be religious authorities or specific religious figures (Jesus, Buddha, etc.). However, this could also be indicated by members excluding themselves from behaviors or situations that are marginal to the group (e.g., avoiding dancing or certain styles of music and avoiding certain types of employment). An example item of this kind might be “Christians should not let themselves be influenced by worldly ideas” (McFarland, 1989). Importantly, although obedience to group leaders might be seen as an indication of this component, the concept of submission can be seen as much richer than the often-related idea of conformity. In religious traditions, submission is often seen as a positive and active aspirational internal process, rather than being imposed from without. Indeed several social identity researchers have recently revisited the classic conformity/obedience studies of Milgram (1963) and Zimbardo (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973) and argue for a richer understanding of these seminal studies based on the idea of “engaged followership” (Haslam & Reicher, 2017). We think this more active understanding of followership will be particularly pertinent to this dimension of religious normative processes. 3. Authoritarian aggression: outgroup member intolerance. The third component of our model relates to intolerance toward those who are placed outside the group boundary and beliefs about the appropriate treatment to be meted out, similar to the authoritarian aggression component of RWA. In the case of RWA, this aggression is expressed as approval when authorities “get rid of,” “crush,” “smash,” “crack down,” or “enforce without mercy” upon those who rebel (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). In the case of fundamentalism, this is expressed as those who will not be rewarded by God, and “God will punish most severely . . ..” There are also those who are ousted by implication: wrong, evil, and allies of Satan. In the latter cases, no explicit mention of punishment is needed—it is fairly clearly implied. While we have focused here on Christian fundamentalism as a detailed case in point, we note that this tripartite model of fundamentalism would also apply more broadly. A Wahhabist/Salafist approach to Islam might be seen to have some or all of the same dimensions that we have identified here. The defining features of Wahhabism are an emphasis on the strong oneness of God (e.g., the rejection of the worship of saints); literal belief in the Qurʾ¯an; and the establishment of a Muslim state under Islamic law. The Wahhabist/Salafist movement is also very clear on the (im)permeability of boundaries. Those who participated in nontraditional practices or disagreed with this definition of Islam were considered outsiders. However, many do not meet or only partly meet the third criterion in terms of the level of

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

195

intolerance of outgroup members. Members of Jihadi Salafist movements, and groups such as ISIS, have clearly demonstrated extreme forms of intolerance to those they deem outside of the pure version of Islam (those considered outside include the vast majority of more moderate Muslims). Other subgroups such as the “purist” Salafis focus on nonviolent preaching and education in their desire for reform. They fit the first two components but not the third (Commins, 2006, 2015; Geaves, 2013; Macris, 2016). We can also see how this tripartite approach can help unpack some of the complex nature of fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Measures of both constructs tend to be collections of normative content beliefs; but fundamentalism scales tend to also include measures tapping into boundaries and consequences for outsiders. However, typical belief content items in both orthodoxy and fundamentalism scales (and beliefs) often represent traditional creedal statements that leave little room for interpretation of sacred texts with consideration to the time and context in which they were written, or the possibility that science and religion need not be mutually exclusive (Gould, 1999; Lessl, 2012). By taking this social identity approach to the belief content of specific “opinion-based groups” within larger faith communities, it becomes possible to address the impact and interaction of these identity components, and to avoid overinterpreting certain category labels.

Summary of group-based models We argued at the start of this chapter that we believe religious identity to be potent because it lies at the nexus between social and personal identities. We have asserted that both personal and social identities are elements of the larger social identity approach, but, like the social identity literature itself, we have focused so far on the way social identities operate and have applied that to religion as a social identity. This allowed us to start with individual difference models of religion that had social outcomes (such as prejudice) but to reframe those individual difference measures as capturing constructs understood from a social identity perspective. We also examined the role of social identities in collective action that involves collective emotions and efficacy and offered some examples of how those models might operate around religious identities. Finally, we linked these collective action models to religious ideology variables such as orthodoxy and fundamentalism, arguing that these can also be seen as capturing constructs that can be understood from a social identity perspective. These collective action and ideology approaches are meant to be overlapping but complementary ways of applying social identity ideas to religious collective identity: the collective action approach particularly focuses on the normative qualities of the ingroup that focus toward action, such as shared beliefs about the nature of the group, the effectiveness of the group (efficacy), the shared emotional experience, and shared calls to action. The ideology model also focuses on shared beliefs but with emphasis on beliefs about the group boundaries and relationships between the ingroup and outgroup. The focus of the chapter thus far, therefore, was to establish the value of thinking about the collective nature of religious experience to self-definition—not in the sense of the external impact of religious institutions, but on the basis that collective identities are fundamental components of the existential self.

Religion, self-structure, and personal well-being We now return to the idea that the social identity approach can also help us think about how religion can operate as an element of personal identity, how aspects of the self might align in the context of religious identities, and the implications this might have for individual-level outcomes (such as well-being). Although the social identity approach has traditionally emphasized the collective aspects of self, the model recognizes the distinctive role of personal identity but argues that personal and social identities operate in the same ways psychologically (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Reynolds et al., 2010; Skorich & Mavor, 2013). Therefore this can be a useful model from which to also explore the personal nature of religion and the alignment between the personal and collective.

The salience model of self-categories In the first half of the chapter we discussed the traditional antagonism between personal and social self-categories. This possible antagonism between self-defining categories is part of a larger process model of category salience, considered a key element of SCT (Turner et al., 1987). The salience model argues for the role of three contributing factors that determine which self-category might emerge as the most meaningful in a given context. The three elements are typically labeled as perceiver readiness (also known as accessibility), comparative (structural) fit, and normative fit. An understanding of these three factors will help us think about how elements of the self may align in religious contexts.

196

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Perceiver readiness captures the idea that on the basis of expectations (partly derived from the memory system), goals, and subjective theories, certain self-categories may be seen as more likely to be meaningful and will be more available for use. Comparative fit captures the idea that a categorization that correlates with patterns of differentiation in the current context will more likely be meaningful. Finally, normative fit adds the qualifying factor that the direction of differentiation should fit with expectations or it will be discounted as an explanation. The most meaningful construal of a situation will be when these factors all come together (Haslam, Oakes, Reynolds, & Turner, 1999; Turner et al., 1994). With this model in mind, let us consider how religious self-categories might be salient in situations that could be at a collective or individual level. For a collective example, consider a dinner party where the topic of discussion can be construed as relevant to the religious self, whether it be “gay marriage,” treatment of refugees, putting aside some of one’s personal income for the community (i.e., “tithing”), and so on. There might be several competing categories for salience in such a context: political party association, personal experience with marginalized groups, current or aspirational wealth, for example. How these rank as potentially useful interpretations of the topic (expectations and subjective theories), pertaining to the notion of perceiver readiness. Religious individuals may rank religious identity high in this list as potentially meaningful, given the centrality of the identity—and the belief system that guides such interpretations—within the self-concept. When considering religious identity as a possible categorization, we can imagine a number of ways in which a religious category might offer comparative meaning on these topics. It might be one religious group verses another (including denominations, or traditional vs evangelical); a religious perspective versus a secular one; at the intrapersonal level, perhaps the view over time (prior to conversion compared to after); or at the interpersonal level (the way individuals consistently represent their religious identity relative to each other). Downplaying normative fit for the sake of the example, let us assume that these various possible perspectives might all make sense to some degree. A key point here is that, as the dinner party discussion evolves, it might be easier to slide between these different levels of construal (intergroup, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) to the extent that the features associated with the different levels have some commonalities. That is, to the extent that religious identity is constructed as being somewhat consistent across these levels then the categorization process can slide between the levels more fluidly.

Convergent perspectives from theories of the personal self To explore this further, we can look for some convergent perspectives on this process from several literatures that have been much more focused on the interplay of personal selves. In the 1980s views of the (personal) self were emerging as involving more complex representations and more dynamic processes (e.g., Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). Markus et al. elaborated a model of the self that was dynamic and incorporated self-conceptions that were core or peripheral; positive or negative; possible, actual, or ideal selves; and so on (Markus, 1977; Markus & Kunda, 1986; Markus & Nurius, 1986). There are certainly key differences between these self-schema perspectives and the self-categorization approach. Self-schema perspectives tend to assume a more static underlying set of representations for each of the possible selves, so the dynamic nature came from switching between selves, rather than switching the construals (see Onorato & Turner, 2004). Nonetheless, what we can see in this work is a progression of thinking that moves toward more complex and dynamic personal self-conceptions.

Self-complexity and the multiple self-aspects model One useful development in this line comes from the work of Linville (1987). Linville argued that a feature of the selfsystem that might be important in determining how it responds to stimuli is its overall complexity. Linville represented the self as made up of a number of self-aspects, each of which might be associated with a set of attributes. Attributes are often assumed to be descriptive adjectives like those sometimes associated with personality characteristics. Selfaspects capture different contextual profiles for the (personal) self, such as “at work,” “with friends,” “as a sister,” and “at synagogue”. Conceptually, these self-aspects are broadly similar to the different self-schemas in Markus’ (1977) model. Linville (1987) argued that when represented in this way, one could capture the overall complexity of the selfsystem. More complex systems might have more self-aspects, but the self-aspects would vary more widely in the patterns of associated attributes. Lower complexity self-systems would have fewer self-aspects and these might overlap with each other more. Linville proposed the buffering hypothesis—that those with higher complexity could deal with a

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

197

threat in one aspect of self by emphasizing the positive elements of a distinct self-aspect. Those lower in self-complexity would potentially carry over the threat from one part of the system to other elements if they were all more closely connected. The buffering hypothesis is an elaboration of a more general concept of affective extremity (Linville, 1985), where lower complexity self-systems will be more extreme in affective response, whereas higher complexity self-systems will have more attenuated responses. McConnell (2011) developed the complexity model further and put forward the multiple self-aspects framework. Like Linville (1987), this framework is based on the idea of self-aspects consisting of a number of attribute descriptions. McConnell (2011) elaborates the implications of this model more fully in terms of how overlaps between the patterns of descriptors would allow the self-system to move more easily from one self-aspect to another, consistent with our earlier examples. Whereas work derived from Linville’s approach tends to focus on measures of overall selfcomplexity, McConnell’s model is less concerned with complexity as an individual differences variable and focuses more on the implications of local as well as global interconnectedness in the self-structure. McConnell (2011) also tries to think about how social identities might fit into such a model, and it is instructive that he uses a religious example to discuss how important social identities might be integrated into the self: “For instance, highly accessible identities (e.g., one’s religious or cultural heritage) are likely to be reflected in one’s self-aspects (e.g., being Jewish)” (McConnell, 2011, p. 18). Although there are important distinctions in how the different theories see self-aspects (self-categories) as “represented” in memory and within the self-concept, each of these perspectives include a role for the memory system but vary in the extent to which information in that system operates more passively or dynamically (see Turner et al., 1994). With that caveat in mind, our purpose here is to highlight that while different perspectives have been developed with a focus on collective identities or personal identities, both collective and personal selves can be imagined in each perspective and therefore there is no hard wall between the levels of self-category.

Complexity versus coherence We note one final complementary approach to the personal self, which is also implicated in the relationship between self-structure and well-being. Several authors have argued that a coherent self-system is best for general well-being (Campbell, 1990; Donahue, Robins, Roberts, & John, 1993). Without going into too much detail, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that on one level the implications of Linville’s (1987) complexity approach (where complexity moderates the impact of threats) seem in conflict with approaches that argue for the benefits of a stable and coherent self. Our goal here is not to resolve this in general terms but we note that, at least in the case of religious identity, the implications may be in alignment. One of the potent features of religious identities is their aspiration for coherence at different levels of identity. Religious groups typically create norms for operation at the group level (shared worship practices or shared social and political opinions) as well as shared expectations for personal behavior (whether it is purity, obedience, self-control, forgiveness, graciousness, and so on). The implication is that those who identify highly with their religious identity are likely to aspire toward a positive, powerful, and all-encompassing identity (Ysseldyk et al., 2010). When under more general identity threats (not specifically aimed at the religious aspects of self), this coherent and positive religious identity is likely to be a key psychological resource aligned with the idea that coherence is good for well-being. This is also consistent with the buffering hypothesis (Linville, 1987), particularly as elaborated in McConnell’s (2011) framework, because the religious selves will provide an alternate self-construal to the threatened aspects. However, if the threat is to religious identity, then the effect may be to amplify the emotional response to the threat (Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2011).

Convergent perspectives of the self from social identity theorizing Bridging with the alignment of personal and collective selves noted earlier, and analogous to the notion of complexity versus coherence within personal self-structure, theorizing based in the social identity tradition has also offered some insight into how we might conceptualize our personal selves given an array of social group identities, including religion. Congruent with the work noted earlier (Linville, 1987; McConnell, 2011), numerous studies have provided evidence that having multiple social identities (i.e., not putting all of one’s identity eggs in the same proverbial basket), in general, can buffer threats to the self. This has been demonstrated with regard to enhanced social support and mental health (Steffens, Jetten, Haslam, Cruwys, & Haslam, 2016) more positive intergroup and social justice attitudes (GrahamBailey, Richardson Cheeks, Blankenship, Stewart, & Chavous, 2018; Levy, van Zomeren, Saguy, & Halperin, 2017),

198

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

and fewer repercussions of stereotype threat (Rydell & Boucher, 2009). Of particular interest here, however, is the role that religious identity may play among these multiple identities—in this regard, high levels of religious identification have been shown to buffer daily stress among ethnically diverse young adults (Yip, Kiang, & Fuligni, 2008) and also to promote greater well-being among older adults through maintaining multiple (nonreligious) group memberships (Ysseldyk, Haslam, & Haslam, 2013). Successful navigation of these multiple group identities, however, may be rooted in the complexity (Miller, Brewer, & Arbuckle, 2009; Roccas & Brewer, 2002; Ysseldyk et al., 2010) and compatibility (Cruwys et al., 2016; Iyer, Jetten, Tsivrikos, Postmes, & Haslam, 2009) of one’s social identity map, analogous to the idea of a coherent self-system (Linville, 1985). Here, “it is not just the composition and quantity of group memberships, but also their organisation, structure, and interrelations that may be important factors” (Miller et al., 2009, p. 712). When such social identity networks encompass a great degree of overlap, the social identity structure is relatively simple compared to when those identities diverge or are incompatible (Roccas & Brewer, 2002). Given the often all-encompassing nature of religious identity and the belief system therein, it may be especially apt to conflict with other social identities (e.g., as a scientist; Ecklund & Park, 2009), to dominate them (e.g., ethnicity; van Dommelen, Schmid, Hewstone, Gonsalkorale, & Brewer, 2015), or to moderate how other social identities interact (e.g., nationality and ethnicity; Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2012). From this perspective, having established how religious identity spans the collective/personal-self divide, we can turn our attention to the collective consequences of religious identity for personal well-being, taking into account what is known about the benefits of group memberships for well-being, and the way in which the collective level of identity can also impact on person-level outcomes, including personal well-being, and personal forms of action.

Religious identity and personal well-being Much like the health benefits derived from other social identities—in line with theorizing and empirical research that has come to be known as the “social cure” (see Jetten et al., 2012 for an overview)—religious identification can have numerous benefits for personal well-being. The health advantages of religiosity, more generally, have been demonstrated repeatedly in studies linking religious belief and attendance at worship services to fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues, while correlating positively with a sense of hope and life purpose (e.g., Bonelli & Koenig, 2013). Likewise, physical health outcomes, including healthier behaviors as well as reduced risk or enhanced recovery from coronary artery disease and cancer, have been reported among those who are more religious (e.g., Hemmati et al., 2018; Koenig et al., 2012; Shen, 2018). Interestingly, however, in a large American sample, fundamentalist religious beliefs were associated with poorer self-reported health compared to those with more liberal religious beliefs; but fundamentalism was also associated with greater happiness, conceivably as a result of decreased uncertainty regarding existential matters (Green & Elliott, 2010). Like the health benefits of religiosity itself, the advantages of having a strong sense of group belonging are farreaching among a variety of group types, ranging from fixed identities such as ethnicity (e.g., C ¸ elebi, Verkuyten, & Bagci, 2017), to more permeable identities such as sports teams (e.g., Wann, Polk, & Franz, 2011). Importantly, these groups also include many nonreligious individuals, and there is some evidence to suggest that a firm belief in any worldview (religious or secular) is linked to positive well-being, but especially when that worldview is accompanied by a social component (even among atheists; e.g., humanist or free-thought organizations; Galen, 2015; Galen & Kloet, 2011). We argue, however, that it is the potent combination of an internalized religiosity (i.e., centrality of the guiding belief system) along with “social cure” effects (i.e., strong group ties inherent in many organized religious groups) that makes religious identification so significant for well-being, even when compared to other groups (see Ysseldyk, 2017; Ysseldyk et al., 2010; Ysseldyk, Talebi, Matheson, Bloemraad, & Anisman, 2014). Indeed, as political scientist Putnam et al. (Lim & Putnam, 2010; Putnam & Campbell, 2010) have also asserted, communities of faith—rather than faith alone or communities alone—have the greatest impact on a range of social and health-related phenomena, therein again pointing to religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective selves, in terms of both antecedents and outcomes. Where the well-being benefits of religious identification (and religiosity) might be undermined is in the case of prejudice or discrimination against one’s religious group. Despite the long-standing rejection-identification model (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999), some studies have illustrated that when one’s religious group is targeted, impacts on emotional responses, coping strategies, and well-being often suffer to a greater extent than is experienced upon threats to other group identities (Branscombe et al., 1999; Ysseldyk et al., 2010, 2014). Interestingly, however, these impacts on well-being might also depend upon whether the discrimination is targeted at the interpersonal

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

199

(i.e., individual) or systemic (i.e., collective) level, as shown among Muslims in Australia and New Zealand (Every & Perry, 2014; Stuart & Ward, 2018). Likewise, the benefits of religious identity for health and well-being also become less clear, and less advantageous, in the case of religious existential struggles. Analogous to the aforementioned (and often abandoned) quest orientation, religious doubt has been associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, aggression, and sleep disturbances (Haney & Rollock, 2018; Magyar-Russell et al., 2014). Indeed, spiritual struggles have even been linked to greater preoperative proinflammatory cytokines (specifically, IL-6; Ai, Seymour, Tice, Kronfol, & Bolling, 2009), suggesting that religious existential crises can be detrimental to health at both psychological and physiological levels. Nonetheless, in the context of acute health crises or life span considerations, mortality salience may also impact the roles of religious struggles, beliefs, and identity (Routledge, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2018). In particular, in contrast to emerging adults who often question religious and existential matters in the course of normal identity development (Haney & Rollock, 2018), older adults tend to be more religious overall (Pew Research Center, 2018) perhaps as a result of cohort effects or greater mortality salience with increasing age. As such, religious identification (as well as struggles) may be especially important to consider in palliative care settings (Okon, 2005), wherein individuals might receive some comfort from existential understandings of the afterlife as the ultimate well-being outcome.

Summary of person-based models We started this section with an elaboration of the SCT model of category salience as an approach that could be applied to both collective and personal categories. We then explored a number of models of complex self-structure that have tended not only to focus on self-aspects (personal self-categories) but which could also be seen as part of the broader social identity approach. To the extent that self-categories can operate at the collective and personal level, and similar models can apply to both levels, then the social identity approach offers a way of thinking about how religious identities can operate across several levels of self-construal (intrapersonal, interpersonal, and collective). While there are important differences between the social identity approach and some of the specific personal-self models discussed earlier, we have shown how these models support an integrated understanding of religious identity across these levels of self.

Final summary and conclusion We have bookended this chapter by starting with a literature on personal religious orientations that had collective outcomes (such as prejudice), and ending with a focus on the impact that religion as a collective experience can have on personal outcomes (such as well-being). In between, we discussed some of the possible affordances of a social-identity/ SCT model of religious identity at both personal and collective identity levels. We considered the historical move toward ideology measures when understanding collective outcomes, but how those ideological individual difference measures might be recast in terms of the defining boundaries of religious categories. We also considered the role of collective self-efficacy and collective emotion in supporting collective action on the basis of religious identity, where the nature of the action taken may also depend on the defining features of the identity or the shared emotions. To put religious identity into a broader model of self-aspects, we drew upon specific models of (personal) selfstructure and complexity, but put such models into the context of the SCT of self, which incorporates both collective and personal selves, and emphasize a dynamic and contextual process of self-construal and meaning-making from moment to moment. With this in mind, we painted a picture of how religious identities might be particularly likely to cut across the personal-collective boundary and to provide both a coherent and affectively intense basis for the self. With this integrated model of personal and collective self in mind, the final section considered how group memberships in general facilitate individual well-being outcomes, but how religious groups may lead to both positive and negative outcomes depending on the nature of the threats to self. Our goal throughout the chapter was to highlight the importance of seeing religion not just as either a question of personal faith experience or as immersed in the social structures that arise from religion as a collective activity, but as vital to linking the individual and social self. We argue that a social-identity/SCT model of the religious self allows for both personal and collective meaning-making as part of the religious existential experience. With that in mind, we see the religious self as inextricably at the nexus between the personal and collective, needing both layers to tell the full story of what it means to be religious.

200

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

References Abrams, D., & Hogg, M. A. (2004). Metatheory: Lessons from social identity research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(2), 98 106. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0802_2. Ai, A. L., Seymour, E. M., Tice, T. N., Kronfol, Z., & Bolling, S. F. (2009). Spiritual struggle related to plasma interleukin-6 prior to cardiac surgery. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 1(2), 112 128. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015775. Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion: A psychological interpretation. New York: MacMillan. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge: Addison-Wesley. Allport, G. W. (1966). The religious context of prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5(3), 448 451. Allport, G. W., & Ross, M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432 443. Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113 133. Bain, P. G. (2013). The structure and content of the human category, and its implications for understanding dehumanization. Humanness and dehumanization (pp. 227 255). Taylor & Francis. Batson, C. D., & Burris, C. T. (1994). Personal religion: Depressant or stimulant of prejudice and discrimination? The Psychology of Prejudice: The Ontario Symposium, 7, 149 169. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991a). Measuring religion as quest: I. Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(4), 416 429. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991b). Measuring religion as quest: II. Reliability concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(4), 430 447. Batson, C. D., Shoenrade, P., & Ventis, L. (1993). Religion and the individual. New York: Oxford University Press. Batson, C. D., & Ventis, W. L. (1982). The religious experience: A social psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Becker, J. C., & Tausch, N. (2015). A dynamic model of engagement in normative and non-normative collective action: Psychological antecedents, consequences, and barriers. European Review of Social Psychology, 26(1), 43 92. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10463283.2015.1094265. Blackwood, L. M., & Louis, W. R. (2012). If it matters for the group then it matters to me: Collective action outcomes for seasoned activists. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51(1), 72 92. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2010.02001.x. Bliuc, A. M., McGarty, C., Hartley, L., & Muntele Hendres, D. (2012). Manipulating national identity: The strategic use of rhetoric by supporters and opponents of the ‘Cronulla riots’ in Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(12), 2174 2194. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01419870.2011.600768. Bliuc, A. M., McGarty, C., Reynolds, K., & Muntele, D. (2007). Opinion-based group membership as a predictor of commitment to political action. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(1), 19 32. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.334. Bonelli, R. M., & Koenig, H. G. (2013). Mental disorders, religion and spirituality 1990 to 2010: A systematic evidence-based review. Journal of Religion and Health, 52(2), 657 673. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9691-4. Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Harvey, R. D. (1999). Perceiving pervasive discrimination among African Americans: Implications for group identification and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 135 149. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.77.1.135. Burris, C. T., Jackson, L. M., Tarpley, W. R., & Smith, G. J. (1996). Religion as quest: The self-directed pursuit of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(10), 1068 1076. Campbell, J. D. (1990). Self-esteem and clarity of the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(3), 538 549. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.3.538. C ¸ elebi, E., Verkuyten, M., & Bagci, S. C. (2017). Ethnic identification, discrimination, and mental and physical health among Syrian refugees: The moderating role of identity needs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(7), 832 843. Pew Research Center. The age gap in religion around the world. (2018). Retrieved from ,http://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/the-age-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/.. Commins, D. (2006). The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia. New York: I.B. Tauris. Commins, D. (2015). From Wahhabi to Salafi. Saudi Arabia in transition: Insights on social, political, economic and religious change (pp. 151 166). Cambridge University Press. Cruwys, T., Steffens, N. K., Haslam, S. A., Haslam, C., Jetten, J., & Dingle, G. A. (2016). Social identity mapping: A procedure for visual representation and assessment of subjective multiple group memberships. British Journal of Social Psychology, 55(4), 613 642. Available from https://doi. org/10.1111/bjso.12155. Donahue, E. M., Robins, R. W., Roberts, B. W., & John, O. P. (1993). The divided self: Concurrent and longitudinal effects of psychological adjustment and social roles on self-concept differentiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(5), 834 846. Available from https://doi. org/10.1037//0022-3514.64.5.834. Donahue, M. J. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: Review and meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(2), 400 419.

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

201

Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2000). Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39(4), 579 604. Available from https://doi.org/10.1348/014466600164642. Duck, R. J., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1999). Religious orientation and prejudice: The role of religious proscription, right-wing authoritarianism and social desirability. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9(3), 157 179, URLJ: www erlbaum com/Journals/journals/IJPR/ijpr htm. Duckitt, J. (1989). Authoritarianism and group identification: A new view of an old construct. Political Psychology, 10(1), 63 84. Duckitt, J., Bizumic, B., Krauss, S. W., & Heled, E. (2010). A tripartite approach to right-wing authoritarianism: The authoritarianism-conservatismtraditionalism model. Political Psychology, 31(5), 685 715. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00781.x. Duckitt, J., & Fisher, K. (2003). The impact of social threat on worldview and ideological attitudes. Political Psychology, 24(1), 199 222. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00322. Ecklund, E. H., & Park, J. Z. (2009). Conflict between religion and science among academic scientists? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48(2), 276 292. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01447.x. Every, D., & Perry, R. (2014). The relationship between perceived religious discrimination and self-esteem for Muslim Australians. Australian Journal of Psychology, 66(4), 241 248. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12067. Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 23, 1 74. Friedlander, S. (1975). The whirling dervishes: Being an account of the Sufi order, known as the Mevlevis, and its founder, the poet and mystic, Mevlana Jalaluʼddin Rumi. New York: Macmillan. Fullerton, J. T., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1982). A unidimensional measure of Christian orthodoxy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 21, 317 326. Fulton, A. S., Gorsuch, R. L., & Maynard, E. A. (1999). Religious orientation, antihomosexual sentiment, and fundamentalism among Christians. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(1), 14 35. Funke, F. (2005). The dimensionality of right-wing authoritarianism: Lessons from the dilemma between theory and measurement. Political Psychology, 26(2), 195 218. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00415.x. Galen, L. (2015). Atheism, well-being, and the wager: Why not believing in God (with others) is good for you. Science, Religion and Culture, 2(3), 54 69. Galen, L. W., & Kloet, J. D. (2011). Mental well-being in the religious and the non-religious: Evidence for a curvilinear relationship. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 14(7), 673 689. Geaves, R. (2013). ‘That which we have forgotten’: The emergence of ‘Traditional Islam’ as a new movement in global Muslim religious contestation. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 26(1), 29 50. Available from https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.v26i1.29. Gorsuch, R. L., & Aleshire, D. (1974). Christian faith and ethnic prejudice: A review and interpretation of research. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13(3), 281 307. Gorsuch, R. L., & McPherson, S. E. (1989). Intrinsic/extrinsic measurement: I/E-Revised and single-item scales. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28(3), 348 354. Gould, S. J. (1999). Rocks of ages: Science and religion in the fullness of life. Ballantine Books. Graham-Bailey, M., Richardson Cheeks, B. L., Blankenship, B. T., Stewart, A. J., & Chavous, T. M. (2018). Examining college students’ multiple social identities of gender, race, and socioeconomic status: Implications for intergroup and social justice attitudes. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000098, No Pagination Specified-No Pagination Specified. Green, M., & Elliott, M. (2010). Religion, health, and psychological well-being. Journal of Religion and Health, 49(2), 149 163. (1573-6571 (Electronic)). Greenaway, K. H., Cichocka, A., van Veelen, R., Likki, T., & Branscombe, N. R. (2016). Feeling hopeful inspires support for social change. Political Psychology, 37(1), 89 107. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12225. Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2009). Why don’t we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 126 139. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352179. Haney, A. M., & Rollock, D. (2018). A matter of faith: The role of religion, doubt, and personality in emerging adult mental health. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000231. Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology & Penology, 1(1), 69 97. Haslam, N., Loughnan, S., Kashima, Y., & Bain, P. (2008). Attributing and denying humanness to others. European Review of Social Psychology, 19 (1), 55 85. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10463280801981645. Haslam, S. A. (2004). Psychology in organizations: The social identity approach. SAGE Publications Inc. Haslam, S. A., Oakes, P. J., Reynolds, K. J., & Turner, J. C. (1999). Social identity salience and the emergence of stereotype consensus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(7), 809 818. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167299025007004. Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2017). 50 Years of “obedience to authority”: From blind conformity to engaged followership. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 13(1), 59 78. Available from https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113710. Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Platow, M. J. (2010). The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power. Psychology Press. Hemmati, R., Bidel, Z., Nazarzadeh, M., Valadi, M., Berenji, S., Erami, E., . . . Seghatoleslam, T. (2018). Religion, spirituality and risk of coronary heart disease: A matched case control study and meta-analysis. Journal of Religion and Health. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943018-0722-z.

202

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Herek, G. M. (1987). Religious orientation and prejudice: A comparison of racial and sexual attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13 (1), 34 44. Hogg, M. A., & Abrams, D. (1988). Social identifications: A social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. Florence, KY: Taylor & Frances/Routledge. Hood, R. W., & Williamson, W. P. (2008). Them that believe: The power and meaning of the Christian serpent-handling tradition. University of California Press. Huddy, L. (2001). From social to political identity: A critical examination of social identity theory. Political Psychology, 22(1), 127 156. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00230. Hunsberger, B. E. (1995). Religion and prejudice: The role of religious fundamentalism, quest, and right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 51(2), 113 129. Hunsberger, B. E., & Jackson, L. M. (2005). Religion, meaning, and prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 807 826. Iyer, A., Jetten, J., Tsivrikos, D., Postmes, T., & Haslam, S. A. (2009). The more (and the more compatible) the merrier: Multiple group memberships and identity compatibility as predictors of adjustment after life transitions. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 707 733. Jackson, L. M., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1999). An intergroup perspective on religion and prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(4), 509 523. Jetten, J., Haslam, C., & Haslam, S. A. (2012). The social cure: Identity, health and well-being. Taylor & Francis. Johnson, M. K., Labouff, J. P., Rowatt, W. C., Patock-Peckham, J. A., & Carlisle, R. D. (2012). Facets of right-wing authoritarianism mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and attitudes toward Arabs and African Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51(1), 128 142. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01622.x. Johnson, M. K., Rowatt, W. C., Barnard-Brak, L. M., Patock-Peckham, J. A., LaBouff, J. P., & Carlisle, R. D. (2011). A mediational analysis of the role of right-wing authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in the religiosity-prejudice link. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 851 856. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.010. Kellstedt, L., & Smidt, C. (1991). Measuring fundamentalism: An analysis of different operational strategies. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(3), 259 278. Kihlstrom, J. F., & Cantor, N. (1984). Mental representations of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 1 47. King, K. A., Topalian, A., & Vidourek, R. A. (2019). Religiosity and adolescent major depressive episodes among 12 17-year-olds. Journal of Religion and Health. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00766-1. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1993). Fundamentalism, Christian orthodoxy, and intrinsic religious orientation as predictors of discriminatory attitudes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 32(3), 256 268. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Hood, R. W. (1990). Intrinsic-extrinsic religious orientation: The boon or bane of contemporary psychology of religion? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29(4), 442 462. Koenig, H. G., King, D. E., & Carson, V. B. (2012). Handbook of religion and health (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Kojetin, B. A., McIntosh, D. N., Bridges, R. A., & Spilka, B. (1987). Quest: Constructive search or religious conflict? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 26(1), 111 115. Laythe, B., Finkel, D. G., Bringle, R. G., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2002). Religious fundamentalism as a predictor of prejudice: A two-component model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41(4), 623 635. Laythe, B., Finkel, D. G., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2001). Predicting prejudice from religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism: A multiple regression approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 1 10. Lessl, T. M. (2012). Science and religion: A rhetorical perspective. In S. M. Croucher, & T. M. Harris (Eds.), Religion & communication: An anthology of extensions in theory, research, and method. New York: Peter Lang. Levy, A., van Zomeren, M., Saguy, T., & Halperin, E. (2017). Intergroup emotions and gateway groups: Introducing multiple social identities into the study of emotions in conflict. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(6), e12320. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12320. Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. American Sociological Review, 75(6), 914 933. Linville, P. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don’t put all of your eggs in one cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3, 94 120. Linville, P. W. (1987). Self-complexity as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(4), 676. Livingstone, A. G., Spears, R., Manstead, A. S. R., Bruder, M., & Shepherd, L. (2011). We feel, therefore we are: Emotion as a basis for selfcategorization and social action. Emotion, 11(4), 754 767. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023223. Louis, W. R. (2009). Collective action—And then what? Journal of Social Issues, 65(4), 727 748. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404560.2009.01623.x. Louis, W. R., Amiot, C. E., Thomas, E. F., & Blackwood, L. (2016). The “activist identity” and activism across domains: A multiple identities analysis. Journal of Social Issues, 72(2), 242 263. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12165. Macrae, C. N., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2000). Social cognition: Thinking categorically about others. Annual Review of Psychology, 93 120. Macris, J. R. (2016). Investigating the ties between Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, early Wahhabism, and ISIS. Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 7(3), 239 255. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2016.1227929. Magyar-Russell, G., Brown, I. T., Edara, I. R., Smith, M. T., Marine, J. E., & Ziegelstein, R. C. (2014). In search of serenity: Religious struggle among patients hospitalized for suspected acute coronary syndrome. Journal of Religion and Health, 53(2), 562 578. Available from https://doi. org/10.1007/s10943-013-9713-2.

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

203

Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63 78. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.2.63. Markus, H., & Kunda, Z. (1986). Stability and malleability of the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(4), 858 866. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.4.858. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954 969. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0003066X.41.9.954. Mavor, K. I., & Gallois, C. (2008). Social group and moral orientation factors as mediators of religiosity and multiple attitude targets. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47(3), 361 377. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2008.00415.x. Mavor, K. I., Louis, W. R., & Laythe, B. (2011). Religion, prejudice, and authoritarianism: Is RWA a boon or bane to the psychology of religion? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(1), 22 43. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2010.01550.x. Mavor, K. I., Louis, W. R., & Sibley, C. G. (2010). A bias-corrected exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of right-wing authoritarianism: Support for a three-factor structure. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(1), 28 33. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j. paid.2009.08.006. Mavor, K. I., Macleod, C. J., Boal, M. J., & Louis, W. R. (2009). Right-wing authoritarianism, fundamentalism and prejudice revisited: Removing suppression and statistical artefact. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(5 6), 592 597. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j. paid.2008.12.016. Mavor, K. I., Platow, M. J., & Bizumic, B. (Eds.), (2017). Self and social identity in educational contexts. Abingdon: Routledge. McConnell, A. R. (2011). The multiple self-aspects framework: Self-concept representation and its implications. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(1), 3 27. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868310371101. McFarland, S. G. (1989). Religious orientations and the targets of discrimination. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28(3), 324 336. McGarty, C., Bliuc, A. M., Thomas, E. F., & Bongiorno, R. (2009). Collective action as the material expression of opinion-based group membership. Journal of Social Issues, 65(4), 839 857. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01627.x. McGarty, C., Lala, G., & Thomas, E. (2012). Opinion-based groups and the restoration of civil society. Restoring civil societies: The psychology of intervention and engagement following crisis (pp. 250 264). John Wiley and Sons. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371 378. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1037/h0040525. Miller, K. P., Brewer, M. B., & Arbuckle, N. L. (2009). Social identity complexity: Its correlates and antecedents. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12(1), 79 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430208098778. Morton, T. A., Hornsey, M. J., & Postmes, T. (2012). Humanizing others without normalizing harm: The role of human concepts and categories in intergroup reconciliation and forgiveness. Restoring civil societies: The psychology of intervention and engagement following crisis (pp. 156 174). John Wiley and Sons. Morton, T. A., & Postmes, T. (2011). What does it mean to be human? How salience of the human category affects responses to intergroup harm. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(7), 866 873. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.831. Oakes, P., Haslam, S. A., & Turner, J. C. (1994). Stereotyping and social reality. Oxford: Blackwell. Okon, T. R. (2005). Spiritual, religious, and existential aspects of palliative care. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 8(2), 392 414. Available from https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2005.8.392. Onorato, R. S., & Turner, J. C. (2004). Fluidity in the self-concept: The shift from personal to social identity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34(3), 257 278. Pargament, K. I. (2002). God help me: Advances in the psychology of religion and coping. Archiv fu¨r Religionspsychologie/Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 24, 48 63. Pargament, K. I., Kennell, J., Hathaway, W., Grevengoed, N., Newman, J., & Jones, W. (1988). Religion and the problem-solving process: Three styles of coping. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27(1), 90 104. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1387404. Pendry, L. F., & Macrae, C. N. (1994). Stereotypes and mental life: The case of the motivated but thwarted tactician. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30(4), 303 325. Available from https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1994.1015. Phillips, R. E., III, & Ano, G. G. (2015). A re-examination of religious fundamentalism: Positive implications for coping. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 18(4), 299 311. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2015.1022521. Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010). American grace: How religion divides and unites us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Reynolds, K. J., Turner, J. C., Branscombe, N. R., Mavor, K. I., Bizumic, B., & Subasic, E. (2010). Interactionism in personality and social psychology: An integrated approach to understanding the mind and behaviour. European Journal of Personality, 24(5), 458 482. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1002/per.782. Roccas, S., & Brewer, M. B. (2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(2), 88 106. Available from https://doi. org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0602_01. Routledge, C., Abeyta, A. A., & Roylance, C. (2018). Death and end times: The effects of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on apocalyptic beliefs AU—Routledge, Clay. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 21 30. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1238840. Rowatt, W. C., & Franklin, L. M. (2004). Christian orthodoxy, religious fundamentalism, and right-wing authoritarianism as predictors of implicit racial prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14(2), 125 138. Rydell, R. J., & Boucher, K. L. (2009). Capitalizing on multiple social identities to prevent stereotype threat: The moderating role of self-esteem. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(2), 239 250. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209355062.

204

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Sani, F., & Reicher, S. (1999). Identity, argument and schism: Two longitudinal studies of the split in the church of England over the ordination of women to the priesthood. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2(3), 279 300. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430299023005. Sani, F., & Reicher, S. (2000). Contested identities and schisms in groups: Opposing the ordination of women as priests in the Church of England. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39(1), 95 112. Available from https://doi.org/10.1348/014466600164354. Shen, A. (2018). Religious attendance, healthy lifestyles, and perceived health: A comparison of baby boomers with the silent generation. Journal of Religion and Health. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-018-0736-6. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56(4), 319 331. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.4.319. Skorich, D. P., & Mavor, K. I. (2013). Cognitive load privileges memory-based over data-driven processing, not group-level over person-level processing. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52(3), 469 488. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2012.02099.x. Smith, E. R. (1993). Social identity and social emotions: Toward new conceptualisations of prejudice. In D. M. Mackie, & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect, cognition and stereotyping. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Smith, L. G. E., Thomas, E. F., & McGarty, C. (2015). “We must be the change we want to see in the world”: Integrating norms and identities through social interaction. Political Psychology, 36(5), 543 557. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12180. Steffens, N. K., Jetten, J., Haslam, C., Cruwys, T., & Haslam, S. A. (2016). Multiple social identities enhance health post-retirement because they are a basis for giving social support. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. Available from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01519. Stellmacher, J., & Petzel, T. (2005). Authoritarianism as a group phenomenon. Political Psychology, 26(2), 245 274. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00417.x. Stuart, J., & Ward, C. (2018). The relationships between religiosity, stress, and mental health for Muslim immigrant youth AU—Stuart, Jaimee. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21(3), 246 261. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2018.1462781. Sweetman, J., Leach, C. W., Spears, R., Pratto, F., & Saab, R. (2013). “I have a dream”: A typology of social change goals. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 1(1), 293 320. Available from https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v1i1.85. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin, & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33 37). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Thomas, E. F., Mavor, K. I., & McGarty, C. (2012). Social identities facilitate and encapsulate action-relevant constructs: A test of the social identity model of collective action. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15(1), 75 88. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430211413619. Thomas, E. F., McGarty, C., & Mavor, K. I. (2009a). Aligning identities, emotions, and beliefs to create commitment to sustainable social and political action. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 194 218. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309341563. Thomas, E. F., McGarty, C., & Mavor, K. I. (2009b). Transforming “apathy into movement”: The role of prosocial emotions in motivating action for social change. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(4), 310 333. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309343290. Thomas, E. F., McGarty, C., & Mavor, K. I. (2016). Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 19(2), 137 151. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1368430215612217. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M., Oakes, P., Reicher, S., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, J. C., Oakes, P. J., Haslam, S. A., & McGarty, C. (1994). Self and collective: Cognition and social context. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 454 463. Turner-Zwinkels, F. M., van Zomeren, M., & Postmes, T. (2017). The moral dimension of politicized identity: Exploring identity content during the 2012 Presidential Elections in the USA. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(2), 416 436. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12171. van Dommelen, A., Schmid, K., Hewstone, M., Gonsalkorale, K., & Brewer, M. (2015). Construing multiple ingroups: Assessing social identity inclusiveness and structure in ethnic and religious minority group members. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(3), 386 399. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2095. Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Security versus growth: Existential tradeoffs of various religious perspectives. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8(1), 77 88. van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134(4), 504 535. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.4.504. Verkuyten, M., & Martinovic, B. (2012). Social identity complexity and immigrants’ attitude toward the host nation: The intersection of ethnic and religious group identification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1165 1177. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212446164. Wann, D. L., Polk, J., & Franz, G. (2011). Examining the state social psychological health benefits of identifying with a distant sport team. Journal of Sport Behavior, 34(2), 188 205. Wenzel, M., Okimoto, T. G., Feather, N. T., & Platow, M. J. (2008). Retributive and restorative justice. Law and Human Behavior, 32(5), 375 389. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-007-9116-6. Yip, T., Kiang, L., & Fuligni, A. J. (2008). Multiple social identities and reactivity to daily stress among ethnically diverse young adults. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(5), 1160 1172. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2008.03.005. Ysseldyk, R. (2017). Communicating religious identities. Oxford research encyclopedia of communication. Oxford University Press. Ysseldyk, R., Haslam, S. A., & Haslam, C. (2013). Abide with me: Religious group identification among older adults promotes health and well-being by maintaining multiple group memberships. Aging and Mental Health, 17(7), 869 879. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13607863.2013.799120.

A social identity approach to religion: religiosity at the nexus of personal and collective self Chapter | 14

205

Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60 71. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2011). Coping with identity threat: The role of religious orientation and implications for emotions and action intentions. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 3(2), 132 148. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021599. Ysseldyk, R., McQuaid, R. J., McInnis, O. A., Anisman, H., & Matheson, K. (2018). The ties that bind: Ingroup ties are linked with diminished inflammatory immune responses and fewer mental health symptoms through less rumination. PLoS One, 13(4), e0195237. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195237. Ysseldyk, R., Talebi, M., Matheson, K., Bloemraad, I., & Anisman, H. (2014). Religious and ethnic discrimination: Differential implications for social support engagement, civic involvement, and political consciousness. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2(1), 2014.

Chapter 15

Religion and the construction of identity Roman Palitsky, Daniel Sullivan, Isaac F. Young and Harrison J. Schmitt University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

An existential perspective on religion and the construction of identity Religious traditions exhibit careful attention to identity, whether by cultivating spiritual formation, organizing polity, professing theology, or outlining soteriological projects. Nevertheless, much of contemporary psychological research on religion elides matters of identity, focusing instead on cognitive, behavioral, social, or affective variables in discrete, unidimensional operationalizations. This has created a situation in which the majority of psychological studies speak to disparate aspects of “religiosity” rather than to the religious identity in its full existential complexity. In neglecting the construction of identity, we risk an incomplete psychological study of religion; and by neglecting the widespread and historical importance of religious beliefs, practices, and communities in the construction of the self, we risk an incomplete existential psychology of identity. Existential psychology is positioned to provide a corrective influence, in that it is concerned with the person holistically and must therefore address the matter of identity. Conversely, the study of identity in religion naturally brings existential matters to light. The point of departure for existential psychology is that humans lead a life within limits or boundaries (Jaspers, 1919). These include concrete limitations like the membranes of the body and the sensory horizons. They also extend toward the end of memory, the limits of epistemology, our boundedness in time, and mortality. Human lives are lived within boundaries and—more importantly—within a symbolically grounded awareness of those boundaries. People mount psychological responses to the limitations they face in a way that marks every event they encounter and anticipate. For instance, death is an ever-present horizon at the edge of a person’s life. People respond to death, and to the awareness of that horizon, in different ways. To deny, enshrine, transcend, or extend, all of these acts take place on the foothold of initial cognizance of a boundary. When we apply this perspective to religion, we find that the boundaries of the self are continuously delineated and constructed in religious life. Religion arises in response to the range of existential limits individuals encounter (Berger, 1967), which have also been described as existential threats because the recognizable self, in one way or another, ceases to exist beyond those limits. Culture—and specifically, religion—mitigates such threats by respectively pointing toward ultimate meaning, purpose, and belonging. It imbues the person, society, and history with a coherent structure that provides orientation and motivation. For this reason, we speak of religion as a worldview—it is a way that schemata of the world are shaped from the vantage point of one’s identity, in response to an encounter with limiting circumstances. As Eliade (1987) observed, religion enables the process whereby haphazard experience becomes a cosmos: an adequately ordered domain with a place for a person, in a way that is integrated with their identity. The making of the worldview and the construction of the identity are complementary parts of one process. Therefore religion cannot be a superficial element of identity. Rather, it comprises multiple aspects of its formation in accordance with the boundaries that a person encounters in life.

Existential perspectives on identity and religion An existential perspective on identity Existentialism is first and foremost concerned with the person and their experience in the world. Existentialist accounts of religion are typically predicated on an understanding of identity and personhood and, for this reason, any existential account of religion must first address identity. In the psychological literature, identity is a moving target. It may refer to The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00016-0 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

207

208

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

a group or the role a person is identified within a social milieu (for instance, an early-career psychologist might strategically carve an identity as a scholar of a particular discipline or method). Identity also sometimes refers to a person’s private understanding of herself, in which case the term is used almost interchangeably with other social cognitive terms such as self-concept. Alternately, identity may be something that unfolds over time, and which is not wholly transparent to the individual, following dynamic and developmental theories of identity. Existentialism’s focus on human being-toward-limits portrays personal identity as a site of becoming, a “work-inprogress” whose incompleteness is both tragic and redemptive (Camus, 1955/1991). It is tragic because, confronted with the unchanging past and an uncertain future, people form ultimately unanswerable desires to transcend these limits. Guilt is a dominant affective mode when the immutability of one’s past becomes oppressive; a fear of emptiness or chaotic indeterminacy arises when the unstable future bears down upon a person. The rapprochement with these anxieties results in a state of tension, and a desire to transcend them through securing meaning, purpose, and immortality. Nevertheless, the response to this tragic state is also redemptive, in that it can result in the elevation of the human condition through qualities such as love, faith, charity, and pity (Unamuno, 2013). Because the individual is a tensionsystem perpetually oscillating between a past and future orientation, the poles of guilt and emptiness, the concreteness of commitment, and the abstraction of possibility, she is both always underdetermined (free) and perennially constrained by fear (threatened). The authors of this chapter could radically change their lives at any moment: we could leave academia and become Tibetan Buddhist monks or criminals. But such decisions, like the many more minor decisions we make daily, have consequences, and regardless of the course our lives take, we will always live with the anxiety of uncertain choice and the guilt of prior action. Sartre (1968) described human existence as the continual enactment of a “progressive regressive method.” Persons are continually involved in the pursuit and actualization of projects (meaningful goals). The person is defined by what they can and cannot do in relation to a project at a given moment. All activity is, at one and the same time, progression toward an as-yet unrealized (but envisioned) prospect, and a simultaneous regression to a preexisting “field of possibilities” set by one’s cultural and material circumstances. In his earlier work, Sartre (1943/1993) discussed this progressive regressive method in terms of the lived dialectic between facticity—aspects of a person’s personal identity as it has been shaped up to the present moment, such as social background, socialization experiences, ascribed roles, environmental constraints, and past decisions and commitments—and transcendence—the person’s perennial freedom and potential to shape and alter their identity in radically discontinuous ways (cf. Sullivan, Landau, & Kay, 2012). The tense circle of this dialectic illuminates why Sartre said we are “condemned to be free.” Symbolic consciousness engenders the constant phenomenological experience of choice, binding us to felt anguish and responsibility for the construction of our identity even if the materials for that construction are in fact constrained by cultural material circumstances outside our influence. Although we (the authors) could theoretically become Tibetan Buddhist monks, in the actual pursuit of this prospect we would be limited by aspects of our prior history and cultural position. With each step toward the mountaintop, we would be not only negating other possibilities (e.g., becoming Amsterdam sex workers) but also enacting a culturally determined reality of being Western-academics-cum-Tibetan-monks. This does not mean that we are not free to pursue this project, but it does mean that our freedom is inscribed in a network of limited, temporally bound possibilities. Sartre’s analysis throws into relief not only the importance of identity as a construct for existentialism but also the unique manner in which existentialism approaches this construct. Indeed, it could be argued that the contemporary existential philosophy which laid the foundation for experimental existential psychology (XXP) was born out of Kierkegaard’s insistence—in defiance of the grand historical systems of thinkers such as Hegel—that personal identity and the self must be the center from which philosophical thought expands (Barrett, 1962). For the existentialists, identity is intensively conceptualized as both open and problematic: Every one of our actions is contributing to the constitution of our lives as a whole, right up to the end. In each thing I do, I am shaping the unique configuration of roles and traits I am becoming throughout the course of my life. . . This is the identity I am assuming for myself, regardless of what sorts of intentions I might have. For existentialists, then, we are what we do in the course of living out our active lives. We are self-creating or self-fashioning beings. We define our being through our ongoing choices in dealing with the world (Guignon & Pereboom, 1995, p. xx).

Existential philosophy adopts a highly situational stance to identity: the individual struggles to create a coherent identity over and against the limits they face throughout life, drawing on the efforts of those who have gone before them in the construction of the social world; identity inheres in those struggles as they accumulate across the lifespan. This is why, strangely, Nietzsche proclaims that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming ‘the doer’ is

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

209

merely a fiction added to the deed the deed is everything” (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 45) and that the purpose of life is, “You shall become the person you are” (Nietzsche, 1974, p. 219). Thus from an existential perspective, identity is understood as a shifting stratum of plural and dynamic modes of being. Specifically, existential phenomenology (e.g., May, Angel, & Ellenberger, 1958) proposes that human existence is distributed simultaneously across three “worlds” or planes of existence: the Umwelt (material world), the Mitwelt (social world), and the Eigenwelt (personal world; cf. Pyszczynski, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2015). Humans are driven to create and exist in these plural worlds because the symbol-mediated awareness of our finitude in the material world is psychologically unacceptable (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). The three phenomenological worlds thus give rise to our primary existential resources but are simultaneously the source of the existential threats we experience. Because our being inheres not only corporeally in the material world but also symbolically in the social world of cultural meanings and the personal world of a coherent, valued self-narrative, we experience threats not only to our physical bodies but to the resources which come to symbolize our transcendence over mortality. In accordance with terror management theory, these resources can be understood as meaning (internalized from a cultural worldview) and value (indexed by self-esteem; Greenberg et al., 1986). The material world is the geographic and historical matrix in which our physical being is instantiated; but it also threatens our being with the contingency of fate and ultimately engulfs us in the materiality of death (Tillich, 1957/2009). The social world offers us the categories of meaning through which we interpret materiality, as well as the relationships which allow us to influence it (via strength in numbers); but it also threatens our value with the ever-present possibilities of guilt, condemnation, and ostracism. It is within the matrix of the personal world that we develop our unique sense of value; but the personal world is also the wellspring of emptiness, our experienced disconnection from material and social domains, which threatens our sense of meaning with meaninglessness. The possibility of nihilistic despair—the complete loss of value—arises when the personal world is overwhelmed by the social; the possibility of nihilistic disorientation—the complete loss of meaning—arises when the personal world is unmoored from the social (Sullivan, 2016). In the end, death must collapse the fragile social and personal worlds back into the swirling chaos of materiality.

An existential perspective on religion Although religion is also a moving target, one of its necessary (if not sufficient) conditions is that it mitigates existential anxieties. As the future spreads out in branching variations and alternatives before her, a person is always, to an extent, oriented toward seemingly infinite possibilities. However, these possibilities must nevertheless be anchored to the self in order to mitigate emptiness and despair. As Sartre stipulates, one must be able to recognize oneself in one’s future. Therefrom arises a need to weave a consistent thread of meaning through the landscape of possibilities. As the thread is carried into all conceivable possibilities, it attains the quality of infinitude. And, because there is a need to conserve the meaning across changing circumstances, it is attributed the quality of ultimacy. The Kena Upanishad illustrates this principle in its discussion of Brahman: He is above the known and he is above the unknown. Thus have we heard from the sages who explained this truth to us. . . What cannot be seen with the eye, but that whereby the eye can see: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit; and not what people here adore. (trans. Mascaro, 1965)

Brahman inheres throughout the varied content of experience and assumes ultimacy within it. If this ultimacy is undermined (for instance, if Brahman is suddenly denigrated to being the product of a provincial superstition), the ordered system of meanings that make both possibility and contingency coherent threatens to fall apart. Tillich used the term “faith” to describe the response to existential constraints through a concern with ultimate things, stating that one is “driven toward faith by his awareness of the infinite to which he belongs, but which he does not own like a possession.” Faith, in turn, concerns the entire person: it “is a total and central act of the personal self, the act of unconditional, infinite and ultimate concern” (Tillich, 2009). To this expression we add a caveat derived from existential-phenomenological anthropology (Jackson, 2002): the self is not a bounded sack of skin looking out at the world through its senses but is continuously negotiated intersubjectively with others, and across time between the future and the past. This is the sense in which we refer to religion: those phenomena that derive from and contribute to total and central acts of the self, which are oriented toward the ultimate. Such a definition will include phenomena that are not-quite religion. However, our primary interest in this chapter is in providing an account that is useful for understanding religion, rather than providing boundary conditions delimiting religion from not-religion. In light of the existential perspective we have thus far laid out, identity is an inextricable aspect of religion.

210

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

In contrast, most psychological accounts examine religion and identity as two distinct entities. One may identify with a religion, forming a religious identity. Or religion may contribute to altruistic or authoritarian qualities in identity formation. Examinations of religion and identity as separate constructs have produced a great deal of useful information. In order to provide an existential psychological account of religion and identity, we now turn to some of the most influential psychological research on this subject. We offer a way of thinking about this scholarship that (1) allows for its integration within an existential psychological perspective and (2) corresponds with existential dimensions along which identity formation takes place.

Psychological approaches to the relation between religion and identity Religious thought has long been concerned with identity—far longer than psychologists have been thinking about religion. After all, religion is concerned with the whole person. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest known written text (approximately 2100 BCE), is an expression of Babylonian religious traditions that pertains to identity in several ways. Like most epics from the ancient world, it is simultaneously story and religious canon (Adluri, 2012; Alter, 2011; George, 2003). It describes a king’s personal development, from hubris to humility, through the loss of love and acceptance of mortality. References to the epic in other ancient near-Eastern texts indicate that the tale was employed to define and delimit Babylonian and Assyrian collective identities (Barjamovic & Ryholt, 2016). But it is also a personal story concerned with the development of (primarily male) character within Mesopotamian society, and not merely with separating insiders from outsiders. Religious intellectual history is replete with further examples of the centrality of identity formation across traditions. Pope Gregory I issued Pastoral Care, an influential text on spiritual formation, in the 6th century CE. The text identified a range of spiritual struggles across the lifespan, as well as instructions for appropriate ministry (Gregory I, 590/2013). In Sufi traditions within Islam the concept of tar¯ıq, or a spiritual path, has been a long-standing foundational element (Al-Ghazali, 2001; Ibn ’Ata’ All¯ah & Al-Iskandari, 1309/2005; Knysh, 2010). Indeed, it is difficult to find a religious tradition that does not place great importance on spiritual formation. In contrast to the nuanced, holistic view of identity adopted within most religious traditions, work in the psychology of religion has employed various approaches for understanding the relationship between religion and identity formation, many of which can be classified using the categories of “outside-in” and “inside-out.” Outside-in approaches tend to describe religion in terms of factors external to the person, including social relationships, group dynamics, and societal trends. An important trailblazer of this approach, Durkheim (1915/1995) emphasized the social nature of religion, explaining individuals’ religious experiences as manifestations or reflections of societal forces. Excellent contemporary research implementing outside-in approaches may be found in studies of religion and health, which evaluate the influence of attributes like affiliation and church attendance on outcomes such as health behavior and risk (McCullough, Hoyt, Larson, Koenig, & Thoresen, 2000). Similarly, studies of religion and politics (Fastnow, Grant, & Rudolph, 1999), or religion and consumer behavior (Benjamin, Choi, & Fisher, 2010) obtain valuable data by examining how religious belonging influences relevant behaviors. On the other hand, inside-out approaches regard religion as ultimately derivative of private experience. A classical theorist in the study of religion, Otto (1958) laid the groundwork for subsequent research that privileged private dimensions of religion. His work identifies the phenomenology of religious experience—the experience of the Holy—as the source of personal and, by extension, collective expressions of religion. Twentieth-century humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Erich Fromm extend this view, arguing that personal religious experience is originary to all religion; they contend that without grounding in individuals’ private experiences, religion becomes detrimental to human development. Contemporary research examining religious orientations (e.g., Hui & Fung, 2008), religious coping (Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000), and various aspects of religious importance or belief (e.g., Walsh, King, Jones, Tookman, & Blizard, 2002) has applied inside-out approaches to great effect. Despite this excellent work, it is also the case that the relationships between religion and identity cannot be reduced only to outside-in or inside-out mechanisms. In many ways recapitulating the person-situation debate in social psychology, there is adequate research to establish that religion cannot be adequately understood solely in terms of internal or external factors. Existential psychology has the potential to circumvent overt reduction of religion to either social or private domains. Terror management theory (Vail et al., 2010), for example, provides an account of religion as derivative from the individual’s ability to be aware of one’s own death. However, it pivots to the social domain in observing that the response to this awareness is the construction of culture, which in turn mitigates private anxieties about death. In this chapter we extend the existential position to religious identity by proposing that the construction of religious identity is (1) a dialectical response to existential dilemmas that is (2) not located within the individual or society, but

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

211

FIGURE 15.1 Triaxial model of religion.

rather through the interplay of individual, social, and historical domains, and (3) is therefore instantiated differently across distinct cultural contexts.

A triaxial model We propose a model, rooted in the framework of cultural-existential psychology (Sullivan, 2016), for conceptualizing the different ways in which the religion-identity formation dialectic can be understood. This model integrates different approaches to the study of religion by describing three axes: the private/individual y, the public/cultural x, and the temporal z (Fig. 15.1). This model, to which we will refer as the triaxial model, recognizes that identity formation occurs within a person’s experience (y-axis), takes place through interactions between a person and their social environment (x-axis), and proceeds developmentally over time (z-axis). From an existential perspective, these three axes correspond with central domains in which individuals pursue psychological resources and experience psychological threats. Emphasizing the private dimension of religion, the y-axis is the dimension along which the individual may develop a deep sense of personal value, but they may also experience emptiness anxiety and concerns with meaninglessness as they struggle to understand their place in the cosmos. The interpersonal x-axis, on the other hand, is the wellspring of the individual’s sense of socially validated meaning, and different (religious) cultures and communities provide the individual with different tools and support for navigating life’s trials. At the same time, however, life along the x-axis is fraught with possible threats of guilt and condemnation if the individual fails to sustain successful relationships with others and their community. Finally, the z-axis, which concerns time, represents the ever-developing material world in which the individual finds herself “thrown” into ever-expanding contingencies, proceeding slowly and steadily toward her likewise contingent death. The attributes of religion examined within a particular investigation may be located along their relevant axes—when multiple aspects of religion are examined, multiple axes are involved.1 Importantly, this model offers a way to organize approaches to religion, rather than to separate attributes of religion itself. All three axes are always simultaneously relevant (as they would be in any three-dimensional space), even though for the sake of research and control, distinctions and concentrations along one axis may be drawn. From an existential perspective, however, a full understanding of the identity of the religious individual is incomplete without attending to the distribution and movement of identity along all three dimensions. The triaxial model therefore furthers two related aims: first, it presents an existential framework for understanding the interrelation of religion and identity within a person’s actual experience. Second, it uses this framework to provide a map for distinguishing and integrating existing approaches in the scientific study of religion. We turn now to the axes themselves. The y-axis comprises private dimensions of religion. This includes existential dilemmas and their private resolutions, such as responding to reminders of death by affirming one’s religious beliefs (Jong, Halberstadt, & Bluemke, 2012). Following Sartre’s (1992) dialectic of facticity and transcendence, the y-axis aligns with transcendent motivations to form one’s own response to the world, even if that response uses symbols created by others. Accordingly, religious beliefs, experiences, and orientations tend to fall along this axis to the extent that they capture private aspects of 1

Here, it should be noted that the nature of an experimental manipulation (e.g., mortality salience, MS) is not a necessary determinant of the axis relevant to a research endeavor. For example, a study examining the effect MS on afterlife beliefs concerns the y-axis, even though mortality may be considered a z-axis concern.

212

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

religiosity. To illustrate y-axis measurement, consider the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL: Koenig & Bu¨ssing, 2010), a popular brief, multifactorial epidemiological measure of religiosity. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

How often do you attend church or other religious meetings? How often do you spend time in private religious activities, such as prayer, meditation, or Bible study? In my life, I experience the presence of the Divine (i.e., God). My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to life. I try hard to carry my religion over into all other dealings in life.

All but the first item pertain to the y-axis, in that they query private dimensions of religiosity. However, because of its first item the DUREL is not limited to y-axis measurement. Research that probes public, interpersonal dimensions of religion addresses the x-axis. This axis registers differences in religion as it concerns belonging, group behavior, or social interaction. Even though most religion studies implement self-report questionnaires, this does not mean that they exclusively conduct y-axis inquiries. Thus because the DUREL’s first item queries participation in the institutional aspects of religion, it is engaging with the x-axis. Similarly, measures of religious social support involve the x-axis because they examine experiences of associating with others (e.g., Krause, Ellison, Shaw, Marcum, & Boardman, 2001). Overall, the x-axis is such a reliably predictive dimension of religiosity, especially in epidemiological research (Idler et al., 2009), that some scientists have argued that religion’s effects may be “nothing but” social support. However, like other attempts to reduce religion to one of the axes, this argument has not been borne out by research along the y- and z-axes (Pargament, 2002). The z-axis concerns temporal and historical aspects of religion. At close quarters, this means that any account of religion where change is acknowledged falls along the z-axis to some extent. However, the z-axis also registers historical conditions and transitions that inform religious life. Some of the most important sociological works on religion provide rich material describing the z-axis, such as Weber’s (1905/2010) study of Protestantism and society and Srinivas’ examination of Sanskritization in India (2002). These literatures describe the complex social, political, and economic transitions that have accompanied religious shifts in Europe and India. Together with the x-axis, the z-axis aligns with Sartrean facticity in analyses, in that these axes predominantly describe the circumstances that people encounter, which they did not make themselves. The triaxial model facilitates a cultural-existential psychology of religion and identity, integrating modes of inquiry that are often conducted in isolation. Investigations along the three axes provide accounts of how existential dilemmas are simultaneously resolved and amplified in religious life, and how religion structures existential concerns. Importantly, it also recognizes the interpenetration of existential, cultural, and historical domains. We will employ this model to organize the rest of the chapter. First, we will organize some of the most popular (social) psychological approaches to understanding religious identity in terms of the model, arguing that the majority of such approaches tend to focus on only one of the three dimensions. These tend not to satisfy the full requirements of an existential psychological understanding of religious identity, resulting in a literature that is somewhat fragmented, often lopsided, and deserving of better integration. Second, we will describe some initial empirical attempts at examining aspects of religion and identity that have received comparatively less attention, such as understudied dimensions or the interplay between dimensions.

Common psychological approaches to religion and identity Psychology tends to approach religion in a generalizing way: researchers devote most of their efforts to illuminating “the mechanism” behind religious belief or its effects. This tone was arguably set early on by William James’ (James, 1902/2007) The Varieties of Religious Experience, which contributed tremendously toward the incorporation of religion as a subject for social scientific study, but which also focused strongly on the person’s inner psychological experience of religion (the book was subtitled A Study in Human Nature). Since James’s early efforts, psychologists have struggled and argued to “master” the riddle of religion from primarily one-sided, reductive frameworks. Pressures toward specialization, demarcation, and theoretical innovation in a highly crowded area of study have often encouraged researchers to approach religion more or less exclusively from either an outside-in or inside-out perspective. Social psychologists often develop a theory of motivation or sociality in general and then apply it specifically to religion. Consider the titles of several articles published in the February 2010 Special Issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review devoted to the psychology of religion: “Religiosity as Self-Enhancement” (Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010), “Religious Belief as Compensatory Control” (Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010), “Religion as Attachment” (Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010). In each case the phenomenon of religion is essentially assimilated to an individual motivational

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

213

process that is assumed to apply equally to a range of other phenomena. The motivation to reduce religion to the workings of isolated, universal mechanisms is so strong in psychology that even frameworks calling for recognition of religious diversity—such as Norenzayan’s (2013)—ultimately summarize most religious cultural and historical variation with reference to a few broad dimensions—such as the historical transition to “Big Gods” with the emergence of the state and generalized prosociality. Each such psychological account of religion doubtless has merit, and one may well argue that it is the proper contribution of psychology to explain religious belief and behavior in psychological terms (James’s original project). Whether such efforts adopt more of an inside-out or outside-in perspective, they can certainly contribute to an overall understanding of religion; after all, religion is simultaneously an important source of personal motivation (y-axis) and a social system (x-axis), arguably the most historically common and important example of either. Nevertheless, an existential understanding of religion and identity must go beyond one-sided approaches toward greater integration along the dimensions of the triaxial model. We will consider ways in which prior psychological research on religion as tended to prioritize either an inside-out (private, y-axis) or an outside-in (public, x-axis) perspective, before considering the past contributions of existential psychology to religion and identity research.

Assimilation to personality Research employing inside-out approaches tends to address the y-dimension of the triaxial model, evaluating unidimensional individual differences and their various outcomes. A common perspective on religious identity emerges from personality psychology, where identity is examined by determining traits, attitudes, and beliefs that people hold with differing degrees of stability across situations (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Fleeson, 2001; Mischel, 2004). Correspondingly, personality-based approaches to identity focus on individuals’ consistent (or variable) tendencies to respond to their environment in particular ways. Similarly interested in person-specific qualities, some psychologists of religion have identified important constructs by asking people about dimensions of their religiosity, which are implemented to gauge individual differences along a number of continuums. One example is religious orientation, an index of the motivational dimensions of religiosity (Allport & Ross, 1967). Intrinsic religiosity (Hoge, 1972), for instance, indicates a motivation to pursue religious activity for its own sake, rather than for extrinsic outcomes like social position. Extrinsic religiosity, on the other hand, can be understood in terms of either motivation for social connections and status, desire for good spiritual outcomes, or as the use of religious social networks to cope with life stressors. Another influential construct that emerges from this approach is religious fundamentalism (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992), which is typified by a tendency to believe there is one core religious truth, which is opposed by malevolent forces intent on its destruction. Notably, here fundamentalism a y, and not an x-axis construct: it is not determined by affiliation with a fundamentalist religious institution but by scores on a metric of attitudes and beliefs. In its strong form, this perspective on religious identity follows an inside-out approach, focusing on individual differences in religiosity and their consequences. Although religious orientation research has been tremendously influential, it tends to privilege the private, y-axis, often eliding the more public, social aspects of religion. This overemphasis on the effects of intrinsic motivation or fundamentalism is problematic for several reasons. Some of the salutary effects of intrinsic religiosity appear to be mediated by the provision of social resources in a religious community (Hovey, Hurtado, Morales, & Seligman, 2014). In addition, this perspective may also be constrained by its commitment to a particularly modern, individualist, and Western (Protestant) understanding of religion as inherently connected to deeply personal beliefs and convictions (Swanson, 1964). This possibility is borne out by recent evidence (Cohen et al., 2017) that the most popular measure of intrinsic and extrinsic orientations does not demonstrate invariance across culturally diverse religious samples and can only be used for such purposes with important modifications and caution. Although the literature on religious orientations certainly speaks to existential issues of crafting a personal identity that is authentically experienced and secure as opposed to defensive, a full account of religion and identity must incorporate a more thorough, less prejudiced understanding of the importance of the public x-axis.

Assimilation to the social Although this approach is rarer within psychology compared to other disciplines, some perspectives view religion as an essentially outside-in phenomenon that can be reduced to the public x-axis. From these vantages, religion is perhaps the clearest case of external factors such as culture, group norms, and social networks impressing themselves on the individual. Some of the most influential work on identity focuses on how people come to identify with a specific group or

214

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

status, and the consequences of such identification. In this work, identity comprises the perception of belonging, sameness, and distinction experienced by a group’s members. This perspective on religion was influentially expanded in psychology through social identity theory (SIT: Tajfel, 1974). Ysseldyk, Matheson, and Anisman (2010) summarized a great deal of research that considers religion from a SIT standpoint. SIT theorists have argued that religion is uniquely formative toward identity because it confers membership in a group that is “eternal,” sacred, and all-pervading (Ysseldyk et al., 2010). Research that employs outside-in approaches, such as the SIT perspective on religion, tends to either focus analyses along the x-axis of our proposed model, or occasionally on the interactions between x and y axes. For example, Greenfield and Marks (2007) employ an analysis grounded in SIT to account for the association between religion and well-being. They find that the association between religious attendance (a public behavior) and well-being (a self-reported, private phenomenon) was mediated by close associations with members of one’s religious group (an affiliative, interpersonal characteristic). Haidt’s (2013) moral foundations theory is another prominent contemporary example of an outside-in perspective that tends to assimilate religion to social functions and benefits. The theory describes religion as a historically ubiquitous cultural system that solidifies the moral foundations of Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity (Graham & Haidt, 2010). Through mechanisms such as group rituals, which often center around concepts of intragroup status and roles as well as symbolic definitions of purity and defilement, religious communities simultaneously bind the individual into a social group and a corresponding meaningful worldview. The theory draws on a group selection evolutionary account to propose that human minds have adapted to religiosity because of the comparative advantages accrued by groups that tightly bound their members via religion (Graham & Haidt, 2010). As in the case of the SIT account, moral foundations theory also suggests that the greater well-being reported by religious individuals is a result of the fact that most religions foster the development of psychologically rewarding and protective social relationships.

Experimental existential psychology research on the religious identity Comprising several research programs, XXP has applied empirical methods to examine the various ways that religion emerges from, responds to, and produces existential anxieties. Early attempts to empirically investigate existential motivations in religion were conducted as an extension of earlier y-axis approaches to the study of religion. Building on Allport’s earlier work (Allport & Ross, 1967), Batson et al. recognized an understudied element in religious orientation research: the motivation to engage with existential complexity, tolerate doubt, and discover meaning for oneself. This motivation was termed religious quest (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991) and has been found to predict lower authoritarianism (McCleary, Quillivan, Foster, & Williams, 2011), belief in a deistic and supportive, but nonintervening god (Phillips, Pargament, & Lynn, 2004), and greater cognitive flexibility in addressing existential dilemmas (Batson & Raynor-Prince, 1983). Recently, Van Tongeren et al. examined religious orientations distinguished by “security-oriented” versus “growth-oriented” motivations. They observed that growth-oriented concerns—operationalized by quest—corresponded with greater tolerance toward religiously different groups but also with lower meaning in life. When exposed to meaning threats, those higher in growth motivation demonstrated greater anxiety about existential concerns, suggesting that security orientations may buffer meaning anxieties more robustly. Importantly, orientations toward security versus growth are applicable to nonreligious individuals as well. When threatened with existential anxieties, atheists may adhere as rigidly to particular worldviews as religious individuals (Farias, Newheiser, Kahane, & de Toledo, 2013), and openness in existential beliefs may be a valuable metric across populations. To suit more diverse populations, Van Pachterbeke, Keller, and Saroglou (2012) adapted the Religious Quest scale into a measure of Existential Quest, which probes quest motivation in individuals irrespective of their religious beliefs. However, the stability of religious and existential quest across the lifespan, across cultures, and within differing social contexts is unclear (e.g., are people as open in their existential beliefs in a supportive church in Ghana as they are in a difficult job interview in Taiwan?). Because these investigations are aligned squarely on the y-axis, it is difficult to answer this question. It is illuminating that when the x-axis is introduced to orientation research through cross-cultural studies, intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest motivations appear to bear varying relationships to one another, to well-being, and to other valued outcomes across cultures (Lavriˇc & Flere, 2008). Terror Management Theory presents an extensive research literature examining religion as a response to existential anxieties, primarily those concerning death (Vail et al., 2010). This literature is too broad to extensively review here, and we will only outline it in brief as it relates to identity formation and the triaxial model. One of the central theses about religion borne out in TMT research is that religions extend possibilities for symbolic and literal immortality through their social and soteriological functions, which serve as buffers against the possibility of death anxiety. Indeed, research has consistently demonstrated that when religious people are presented with existential threats they elevate

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

215

their religious commitments (Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012); that those higher in religious commitments appear less susceptible to existential threats (Jonas & Fischer, 2006); and that when religious beliefs are undermined people are more vulnerable to death anxieties (Friedman & Steven Rholes, 2007). Through the careful use of experimental manipulations, TMT research has developed a fine-grained understanding of the ways in which death anxiety interacts with religious worldviews. Overwhelmingly, however, this research has focused on worldview as something that exists within the person, neglecting existential concerns along x and z axes. Some promising work has studied the effects of MS on temporal variables such as nostalgia and time-related decision-making (Abeyta, Nelson, & Routledge, 2019). Unfortunately, these priorities have not been systematically extended to the study of religion. In a comprehensive treatise, Jong and Halberstadt (2016) present a careful analysis of the relationships between religion and death anxiety. Based on a review of the literature, they stress the importance of examining causal hypotheses of the exact relationship between death anxiety and religion. They point out that the variables used to operationalize religion and death anxiety exhibit a great degree of flux, especially with variation across social and temporal domains. Furthermore, unlike prior models, which have typically assumed a linear association between death anxiety and religion (driven primarily by death anxiety), they suggest instead that this association is curvilinear in nature. Specifically, they describe a dynamic process where on one hand, as death anxiety mounts the motivation toward religion increases. On the other hand, however, after an apex of death anxiety, as religiosity increases death anxiety decreases, such that people with the highest and lowest degrees of religious belief may have similar levels of death anxiety. XXP research on religion represents an important further development toward an integrative model of religion and identity. It highlights the unique contribution of religious beliefs in protecting the self against awareness of its mortal limits. This work also demonstrates how religiosity can become problematic for the individual over the course of their personal development. It provides a clear account of why the existence of other religions is threatening for the highly religiously identified individual and shows that those higher in quest or growth orientations may experience crises of meaning and emptiness anxiety that they will have to resolve. Clearly, this work makes a central contribution to the development of an existential account of religion and identity. Nevertheless, we propose that moving forward XXP research on religion should adopt a more pluralistic and comprehensive methodological approach to fully illuminate how the person’s identity is shaped over time by religious experiences and concerns. Much XXP research shares with the majority of psychology of religion work a nearexclusive focus on the private y-axis, ignoring cultural variability in the nature and experience of religion. Even work that mounts an impressive cross-cultural approach, such as that of Jong and Halberstadt (2016), still endeavors to apply generalizing, evolutionary perspectives in such a way that, for example, immortality belief can be measured in an identical fashion across nations with diverse religious histories. While work of this kind can make important advances in determining the roots of religiosity in existential motivation, it only goes so far in accounting for the sociocultural and temporal dimensions of religious identity. This is a recurrence of the problem noted at the outset of this section, namely, that psychologists often assimilate religious experience to broader motivations. However, there is no guarantee that finding evidence of general psychological processes within religion is not the direct result of applying the same methods (experiments, translatable surveys) to religious phenomena as to any other type. Because most psychological work is quantitative (correlational or experimental), laboratory-based, and carried out with convenience samples in the Global North, psychologists have not paid sufficient attention to the full complexity of the religious identity (Murphy, 2017). Belzen (2010) thus pleads for a more interdisciplinary, culturally oriented approach to the psychology of religion: The psychology of religion should consider as one of its prime tasks the discovery and depiction of what is specific about religion: that religious subjects are embedded in religious groups and communities is obvious, that many processes as explored in social psychology and sociology will be found with such groups and communities is equally trivial. The question as to whether there is any difference between membership in a religious group versus membership in a non-religious group is not a trivial one. . . Conceiving religion as an element of culture may enable psychologists to participate in the analysis of religion, e.g., in the search for any specificity the religious “form of life” may have with regard to the subjectivity of those involved in that religious form of life (pp. 127 128).

Religious cultures represent unique, differentiable attempts to resolve existential dilemmas, and they differ from one another (and from “secular” cultures) in the way they structure the lives and thoughts of their members. If the individual transitions from one religious culture to another over the course of their lifespan, they may arrive at a very different constellation of existential concerns and resources. And over the course of human history, the emergence of secularism as a “modern social imaginary” (Taylor, 2007) alters the extent to, and the mechanisms through, which religion may act as a viable existential resource. This is not the place to develop a full account of how religious worldviews differ in

216

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

unique, important ways from nonreligious worldviews, but several candidate variables might be considered. These would center around Berger’s (1967) conception of religion as a “sacred canopy”—a worldview that (typically) not only directly denies mortality but also infuses many or all aspects of mundane existence with a meaningful connection to a higher, transcendent plane of existence. Scholars of religion (Murphy, 2017; Pak, 2017) have proposed that more pluralistic methods, including qualitative approaches, will be necessary to illuminate how religion is embedded in cultural contexts (x-axis), how identity and religion intersect in complex ways over the lifespan (z-axis), and how religious worldviews differ from each other and from nonreligious worldviews. For the remainder of this chapter, we will make gestures toward theoretical and methodological approaches that stand to provide a more comprehensive existential account of religious identity. We will point toward work that has made important steps integrating the individual y-axis with the sociocultural x-axis or with the temporal z-axis. This work draws on the important contributions of prior psychology of religion research, including XXP studies. But it also seeks a more holistic account of the religious identity using novel methods. Although no single study or approach has yet accounted for religious identity in a way that encompasses all dimensions of the triaxial model, we believe this work offers important suggestive steps.

Toward an integrative model of religion and identity Integrative approaches to the x-axis Researchers within psychology have begun to recognize not only that religion is an important element within the broader patchwork of cultural variation (Tarakeshwar, Stanton, & Pargament, 2003) but also that cultural variation in patterns of religious belief and practice must be examined if we are to understand the influence of religion on identity (Cohen, Wu, & Miller, 2016; Jong & Halberstadt, 2016). For instance, research recently reviewed by Cohen et al. (2016) raises the possibility that many cross-cultural differences—such as disproportionate susceptibility to the fundamental attribution error in European-American as opposed to East Asian contexts—may be due in large part to variation in religious belief—attested to by the fact that Protestants in the United States are especially likely to prefer internal attributions (Li et al., 2012). Within the same regional context, different religious groups may socialize their members to think and behave in dramatically different ways; and within the same religion, ethnic and regional variation may have similarly dramatic impact. Plentiful examples can be found even when we restrict our purview to the United States: Catholic Latinos have different demographic and psychological profiles compared to non-Latino Catholics, and compared to the growing Protestant Latino population (Calvillo & Bailey, 2015). Thus when constructing an existential account of religious identity, it is essential to consider the sociocultural x-axis in concert with the private y-axis. A recent program of research by Cohen et al. offers an inspiring investigation of religious-cultural differences in how people cope with threats to meaning and value. For instance, Kim and Cohen (2017) examined religious variation in the extent to which individuals engage in the defense mechanism Freud referred to as sublimation: transferring effort from the repression of socially condemned impulses (for sex, aggression, etc.) into creative, socially approved activity (see Brown, 1959). Drawing on Weber’s cultural-historical analysis, Kim and Cohen (2017) predicted that, in North American contexts, Protestants would be more likely to rely on creative sublimation as a defense against threatening thoughts and desires than Catholics or Jews. Their research revealed that, among Protestants who were dispositionally high in asceticism (operationalized through reported desire to participate in experiments requiring fasting and pain endurance), there was a positive relationship between tendencies to repress anxiety and self-reported creativity. This relationship was not observed among Catholics. These data testify to the relevance of the triaxial model: Both the xaxis (religious affiliation) and the y-axis (dispositional asceticism) contributed to explaining variation in defensive coping mechanisms for taboo thoughts. One of the present authors (Sullivan, 2016) initially developed the approach of cultural-existential psychology through an intensive, multimethod examination of how different religious subgroups in the United States cope with existential threats by drawing on different resources. He obtained data from a group of traditionalist Mennonites, who possess a culturally collectivist lifestyle, and a group of Unitarian Universalists, who espouse fairly radical ideals of community-based individualism. He compared data from these two groups to a sample of undergraduates, standard for psychological studies and serving here as a control group (for a detailed description of these three populations and their relevant differences from one another, see Sullivan, 2016). Approximately 30 participants from each group were recruited and administered surveys containing several measures of cultural orientation, religious beliefs, worldview assumptions, and existential threat experience (Sullivan, 2016). Survey results confirmed that (relative to the other groups) Holdeman Mennonites were orthodoxly religious and

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

217

collectivist, Unitarian Universalists were horizontally individualist and secular, and undergraduates were vertically individualist. Holdeman Mennonites showed a comparatively greater proclivity toward guilt, and a lesser proclivity to experience anxiety about meaninglessness. Religious beliefs and the tendency to engage in reparative behavior (to make amends to others whom one has wronged) emerged as culturally derived defenses for the Holdemans. Unitarian Universalists evinced a greater proclivity toward anxiety, and a lesser proclivity toward concerns about being condemned by others. Unitarian Universalists defend against threats by relying on their humanist worldview (e.g., a belief in the ultimate benevolence of the world and humanity). Finally, undergraduates showed a unique pattern characteristic of competitive individualism. They were relatively oriented toward anxiety and showed greater death anxiety compared to the other two groups (an effect mediated by vertical individualism). Undergraduates seem to rely on a sense of selfesteem to protect themselves against all manner of existential threat types. In a similar manner to the work of Cohen et al., this intensive investigation of religious subgroups attests to the importance of simultaneously considering the y- and x-axes. Particularly relevant is the finding that different existential resources protect the individual against existential anxieties, as a function of the broader cultural context in which they are immersed. While self-esteem buffers undergraduates against death anxiety—a finding highly consistent with the TMT literature—there was no evidence that self-esteem predicted death anxiety among traditionalist Mennonites. Instead, Mennonites’ self-reported death anxiety was negatively predicted by their professed belief in a controlling God. Similar findings have emerged from other work examining the interaction between culture and religious belief on well-being: Cohen et al. (2016) found that, among Chinese participants, well-being was predicted by belief in a just world, but not God belief; whereas among North Americans, well-being was predicted by God belief and not belief in a just world. Findings such as these are not in any way inconsistent with prior XXP theorizing: indeed, they support the foundational premise that the standards for being a person of value are culturally determined, and hence, within different cultural and religious worldviews, different beliefs and self-views shelter the individual from anxiety. At the same time, they reinforce the contention that a complete understanding of how religion shapes identity through the negotiation of existential concerns must account for the x-axis of cultural variation between religious groups.

Integrative approaches to the z-axis Developmental models of identity are well poised to integrate multiple dimensions of religiosity because they consider development to be a process that unfolds over time, through interactions between the person and their environment. A particularly important arc within developmental theories of religion and identity derives from the work of Erikson (1994). Erikson (1993) was a psychoanalytic psychologist who developed a life-stage model of individual development based on identified developmental goals for eight different life stages, which he also applied to religion. Influenced by Erikson’s endeavor to situate individuals’ worldviews by understanding their developmental goals and challenges, several efforts have been made to chart naturalistic religious development. Fowler (1995) inaugurated Faith Development Theory, which resulted in a decades-long study of spiritual development across the lifespan. Fowler identified a progressive sophistication in religious attitudes and beliefs as individuals matured, marking six developmental stages. The early stages are constrained by cognitive capacities posited by the corresponding stage in Piaget’s model of development. For example, Fowler’s “Mythic-Literal” stage (7 12 years old) is subject to concrete-operational thinking, and accordingly features literal interpretations of religious metaphors (Roehlkepartain, Benson, & Wagener, 2006). Several problems interfered with broad acceptance of Fowler’s theory. First, the cross-cultural and interreligious generalizability of these stages exhibits limitations (Jardine & Viljoen, 1992). Second, evidence does not support rigid stage theories in psychology, suggesting instead that development occurs along overlapping and nonlinear spectrums (Streib, 2005). Third, Fowler’s stages of faith development are evaluated by means of an interview that has received a mixed reception (Parker, 2006). These difficulties led to several expansions on Fowler’s model. Notably, Streib (2010) has nuanced and extended Fowler’s theory, positing that the stages of faith development constitute overlapping, interacting, and recurring dimensions of religiosity. In this sense, Streib’s model of religious development resembles insideout, y-axis perspectives on religious development by identifying individual differences along dimensions of religiosity which, though the result of developmental processes, can be assessed cross-sectionally. Notably, in recent work Streib et al. have turned their analyses toward the temporal dimension (the z-axis of the triaxial model) by examining biographical narratives in faith development (Keller & Streib, 2013), and arguing for the need for longitudinal research. Indeed, recent longitudinal studies have applied latent class analyses to demonstrate that developmental trajectories differ between individuals (Lee, Pearce, & Schorpp, 2017). Recently, Milstein and Manierre (2012) have also implemented an Eriksonian approach to faith development, expanding somewhat differently on Fowler’s work. They argue for a cultural, ontogenetic model of religious development. This view approximates a triaxial model theoretically, regarding

218

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

developmental acculturation into religious worldviews as an interaction between individual differences in development and sociocultural contexts over a developmental trajectory across time. Unfortunately, this work has not been followed by empirical investigations. Developmental approaches reveal the diachronic nature of religious identity formation. How, then, do developmental trajectories along the z-axis resolve within an individual’s self-concept in the y-axis? Narrative psychological research investigates the stories that people tell about themselves, and how these stories are capable of transforming experiences into identities. For example, McAdams considers narrative to be a constructive process, whereby people draw on cultural resources to shape life experiences into coherent stories. These stories are distinctive, yet share common language and themes that make them broadly legible and nested within the social sphere (McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich, 2006). According to McAdams, cultural resources such as religion inform these narratives, guiding the possibilities and meanings attributed to the stories people tell about themselves. Notably, Jackson’s existential phenomenological anthropology also identifies narrative as a powerful catalyst, which simultaneously reflects existential dilemmas and allows people to transform them, across time and between people (Jackson, 2002). Jackson’s analyses suggest that religion allows people to navigate the boundaries of individual and communal life by informing collective and personal narratives in a way that is responsive to existential challenges. Recent work by several of the authors (Palitsky, Sullivan & Milstein, in preparation) has attempted to integrate narrative and developmental perspectives on religious identity. This research evaluated individuals’ perceptions of their own religious development over time by means of a measure examining the degree of (1) conflict people experienced with current and past religious communities and beliefs, and (2) the degree of transitions that people experienced over their lifetime. In a sample of undergraduate college students, conflict emerged as a predictor of depressed mood; however, this association was fully mediated by existential quest, suggesting that quest motivation may have a distinct function among individuals who are more religiously conflicted. On the other hand, reduced transition was associated with lower conflict, which in turn predicted reduced spiritual struggle. Transition is a contextual factor that is largely beyond a person’s control, especially in childhood. This x-axis variable, however, contributes to distress on the y-axis (struggle) through a variable linking the x and y: perceived conflict with one’s religious community and beliefs. In order to fully explore the ramifications of this developmental historical approach, it must be paired with longitudinal studies linking perceived biographical transitions with actual diachronic measurement. When integrated with culturally informed perspectives, such endeavors stand to advance a triaxial understanding of religion and identity.

Further reflections on the z-axis: secularism and existential identity The notion of multiple identities—one of which is a religious identity—is a relatively recent artifact observed in secularizing societies, which are marked by a differentiation of modes of identity (Casanova, 2009). The category of “religion” is itself a European export; many societies that exhibit modes of life, belief, and worship that are recognizably religious (such as Shinto or Hinduism) have not described these activities as religious until European scholars “helpfully” suggested that they do so (Asad, 1993). Therefore such differentiation may not adequately apply to the interaction of religion and identity across contexts. One psychologically grounded investigation of historical writings (Baumeister, 1987) suggested that the postEnlightenment decline of religiosity and increases in individualistic child-rearing tendencies result in societies where individuals perceive their own selves as discrete entities that require discovery, definition, and actualization. As Geertz (1975) famously suggested, the “Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe. . . [is] a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures” (p. 31). From this perspective, it appears that the social and divine determination of one’s identity are supplanted in favor of individuals’ personal responsibility for self-realization. This process of self-realization likely also generalizes to religious identities. Through secularization, in lieu of other determinants of identity, individuals focus on the value of personal, lived experience and on “the ritualizing of the construction of one’s self” (Abrahams, 1986, p. 46). Indeed, it has been argued that phenomenological secularism is itself defined by perceived choice in one’s own ideological identification, particularly when such choices are made against a backdrop of norms of nonreligion (Casanova, 2009). Processes that promote a sense of self as something that is separate and that requires discovery may explain crosscultural differences in people’s tendencies to prioritize personal expression versus social adherence. For example, research has documented cross-cultural differences in individuals’ tendencies to engage in self-monitoring (i.e., attentiveness and reactivity to social cues) and autonomous self-expression (e.g., Church et al., 2006). As individuals become increasingly reliant on their sense of personal identity, they may be less sensitive to social cues and be more likely to value expression of their unique self. As modernization increases, religious affiliation may be increasingly viewed as a

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

219

choice. Evidence suggests that cultures where the self is seen as mutable (i.e., dynamic and flexible vs static) tend to afford a sense of y-axis self-continuity that derives from personal narrative rather than stability, per se (Becker et al., 2018). In short, modernization leads autobiographical identity (y-axis) to take precedence over social identity (x-axis), affording changes in the meaning of religious membership. However, this movement toward the y-axis is itself contingent on broader transitions along the x- and z-axes. One of the outcomes of religion (versus a- or nonreligion) being seen as a personally important choice is that identity becomes dramatically more problematic for individuals. Within communities that spanned generations without a competitive marketplace of belief systems, it is likely that people were less prone to experience the crises of identity that are common in contemporary society (Erikson, 1975; Gauchet & Taylor, 1999). Although religious struggles and crises of faith are certainly not unique to pluralistic or secularizing societies, they are far more common in such contexts where identity in general has the nature of an open project and religious belief appears to be a matter of personal conviction. An existential account of the religious identity must accordingly understand how individuals are embedded in certain historical moments along the z-axis, in societies where secularism and pluralism may or may not have infringed on the process of identity construction.

A closing note on the origin In this chapter we have advanced an integrative framework for investigating religion and identity formation, which recognizes and brings in to mutual relationship three axes: the private/individual (y), the public/cultural (x), and the temporal (z). These axes correspond not only with the dimensions within which individuals experience and resolve existential dilemmas but also with the primary domains investigated in psychological studies of religion and identity. By attending to these three domains and their interactions, ongoing research can contribute to a more comprehensive cultural-existential understanding of religion and identity. In laying out any set of three axes, the eye may be drawn toward the origin. In our model, the origin is a curious place, insofar as it might imply a zero-point or midpoint for an axis. Historical and cultural analyses demonstrate that change along one axis may in fact shift the perceived midpoint of other axes: at one point in England it was unthinkable that one would refer to oneself as an atheist (Hunter & Wootton, 1992). In mounting any scientific study of religion, it is likely that the origin shifts toward the perspective of the researcher, leading to the possibility of premature overgeneralization. Jong and Halberstadt (2016) observe that the study of religion and death, for example, has yielded unrealistic assumptions about the effects of death anxiety by studying a population whose death anxiety is comparatively high— college-aged emerging adults in the United States. As a closing point, we therefore suggest that studies of religion and identity always take place in cognizance of other possible origins, whether through interdisciplinary collaborations or through dialogue with emic perspectives from the religious traditions we study.

References Abeyta A.A., Nelson T.A. and Routledge C., Chapter 8 - Precious time: The role of time and temporal thought in managing death awareness, In: Routledge C. and Vess M., (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory, 2019, 209 225, Retrieved from. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12811844-3.00008-1. Abrahams, R. D. (1986). Ordinary and extraordinary experience. In V. W. Turner, & E. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 45 73). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Adluri, V. (2012). Philosophy and salvation in Greek religion. de Gruyter. Al-Ghazali, I., Minhajul Abideen: The best way for worshippers. 2001, Idara Islamiyat-e-Diniyat All¯ah, A. ibn M. I. ʻAta¯ ʼ, & Al-Iskandari, S. A. I. “Ata” A. (2005). Book of illumination. Fons Vitae. ˙ Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432 443. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113 133. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5. Alter, R. (2011). The art of biblical narrative. Basic Books. Anonymous. (1965). The Upanishads (later printing ed.). In J. Mascaro (Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Asad, T. (1993). Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (1st ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Barjamovic, G., & Ryholt, K. (2016). Problems of canonicity and identity formation in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Museum Tusculanum Press. Barrett, W. (1962). Irrational man: A study in existential philosophy. Doubleday. Batson, C. D., & Raynor-Prince, L. (1983). Religious orientation and complexity of thought about existential concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22(1), 38 50. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1385590.

220

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: 2) Reliability concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(4), 430 447. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1387278. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective (revised ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological review of historical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 163 176. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.163. Becker, M., Vignoles, V. L., Owe, E., Easterbrook, M. J., Brown, R., Smith, P. B., . . . Lay, S. (2018). Being oneself through time: Bases of selfcontinuity across 55 cultures. Self and Identity, 17(3), 276 293. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1330222. Belzen, J. A. (2010). Religion and self: Notions from a cultural psychological perspective. Pastoral Psychology, 59(4), 399 409. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-009-0204-z. Benjamin, D. J., Choi, J. J., & Fisher, G. W. (2010). Religious identity and economic behavior. National Bureau of Economic Research (Working paper no. 15925). Available from https://doi.org/10.3386/w15925. Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion (1st ed.). Doubleday. Brown, N. O. (1959). Life against death ((later printing ed.)). Vintage. Calvillo, J. E., & Bailey, S. R. (2015). Latino religious affiliation and ethnic identity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(1), 57 78. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12164. Camus, A. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus: And other essays (reissue ed.). New York: Vintage. Casanova, J. (2009). The secular and secularisms. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 76(4), 1049 1066. Church, A. T., Katigbak, M. S., del Prado, A. M., Valdez-Medina, J. L., Miramontes, L. G., & Ortiz, F. A. (2006). A cross-cultural study of trait selfenhancement, explanatory variables, and adjustment. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(6), 1169 1201. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jrp.2006.01.004. Cohen, A. B., Mazza, G. L., Johnson, K. A., Enders, C. K., Warner, C. M., Pasek, M. H., & Cook, J. E. (2017). Theorizing and measuring religiosity across cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(12), 1724 1736. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217727732. Cohen, A. B., Wu, M. S., & Miller, J. (2016). Religion and culture: Individualism and collectivism in the east and west. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(9), 1236 1249. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022116667895. Durkheim, E´. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: Free Press. Erikson, E. H. (1975). Life history and the historical moment. New York: Norton. Eliade, M. (1987). In W. R. Trask (Trans.). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Erikson, E. H. (1993). Young Man Luther: A study in psychoanalysis and history. W. W. Norton & Company. Erikson, E. H. (1994). Identity and the life cycle. W. W. Norton & Company. Farias, M., Newheiser, A.-K., Kahane, G., & de Toledo, Z. (2013). Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(6), 1210 1213. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.05.008. Fastnow, C., Grant, J. T., & Rudolph, T. J. (1999). Holy roll calls: Religious tradition and voting behavior in the U.S. house. Social Science Quarterly, 80(4), 687 701. Fleeson, W. (2001). Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6), 1011 1027. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.1011. Fowler, J. W. (1995). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning (revised ed.). HarperOne. Friedman, M., & Steven Rholes, W. (2007). Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(5), 794 801. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2006.07.008. Gauchet, M., & Taylor, C. (1999). In O. Burge (Trans.), The disenchantment of the world (0002-edition ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Geertz, C. (1975). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Hutchinson. George, A. R. (2003). The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic: Introduction, critical edition and cuneiform texts. Oxford University Press. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353415. Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 49 59. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309348618. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer, Retrieved from. Available from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10. Greenfield, E. A., & Marks, N. F. (2007). Religious social identity as an explanatory factor for associations between more frequent formal religious participation and psychological well-being. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 17(3), 245 259. Available from https://doi. org/10.1080/10508610701402309. Guignon, C., & Pereboom, D. (1995). Existentialism: Basic writings/Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub Co Inc. Haidt, J. (2013). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion (reprint ed.). New York: Vintage. Hoge, R. (1972). A validated intrinsic religious motivation scale. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11(4), 369 376. Available from https:// doi.org/10.2307/1384677.

Religion and the construction of identity Chapter | 15

221

Hovey, J. D., Hurtado, G., Morales, L. R. A., & Seligman, L. D. (2014). Religion-based emotional social support mediates the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and mental health. Archives of Suicide Research, 18(4), 376 391. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13811118.2013.833149. Hui, V. K.-Y., & Fung, H. H. (2008). Mortality anxiety as a function of intrinsic religiosity and perceived purpose in life. Death Studies, 33(1), 30 50. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180802494099. Hunter, M., & Wootton, D. (1992). In M. Hunter, & D. Wootton (Eds.), Atheism from the reformation to the enlightenment. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atheism-from-the-reformation-to-the-enlightenment-9780198227366? q 5 Atheism%20from%20the%20Reformation%20to%20the%20Enlightenment&lang 5 en&cc 5 gb. Idler, E. L., Boulifard, D. A., Labouvie, E., Chen, Y. Y., Krause, T. J., & Contrada, R. J. (2009). Looking inside the black box of “attendance at services”: New measures for exploring an old dimension in religion and health research. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19(1), 1 20. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610802471096. Jackson, M. (2002). The politics of storytelling: Violence, transgression, and intersubjectivity. Museum Tusculanum Press. James, W. (2007). The varieties of religious experience. Digireads.com. Jardine, M. M., & Viljoen, H. G. (1992). Fowler’s theory of faith development: An evaluative discussion. Religious Education, 87(1), 74 85. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/0034408920870108. Jaspers, K. (1919). Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. Springer. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 553 567. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.553. Jong, J., & Halberstadt, J. (2016). Death anxiety and religious belief: An existential psychology of religion. Bloomsbury Publishing. Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 983 989. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.005. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 14(1), 37 48. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750. Keller, B., & Streib, H. (2013). Faith development, religious styles and biographical narratives: Methodological perspectives. Journal of Empirical Theology, 26(1), 1 21. Available from https://doi.org/10.1163/15709256-12341255. Kim, E., & Cohen, D. (2017). Roads more and less traveled: Different emotional routes to creativity among Protestants and Catholics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(6), 901 925. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000105. Knysh, A. (2010). Islamic mysticism: A short history. Leiden, Netherlands: BRILL. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail. action?docID 5 1092439. Koenig, H. G., & Bu¨ssing, A. (2010). The Duke University Religion Index (DUREL): A five-item measure for use in epidemological studies. Religions, 1(1), 78 85. Available from https://doi.org/10.3390/rel1010078. Krause, N., Ellison, C. G., Shaw, B. A., Marcum, J. P., & Boardman, J. D. (2001). Church-based social support and religious coping. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(4), 637 656. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/0021-8294.00082. Lavriˇc, M., & Flere, S. (2008). The role of culture in the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being. Journal of Religion and Health, 47(2), 164 175. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-008-9168-z. Lee, B. H. J., Pearce, L. D., & Schorpp, K. M. (2017). Religious pathways from adolescence to adulthood. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 56(3), 678 689. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12367. Li, Y. J., Johnson, K. A., Cohen, A. B., Williams, M. J., Knowles, E. D., & Chen, Z. (2012). Fundamental(ist) attribution error: Protestants are dispositionally focused. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(2), 281 290. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026294. May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.), (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology (1st ed.). Simon & Schuster. McAdams, D. P., Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (Eds.), (2006). Identity and story: Creating self in narrative. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. McCleary, D. F., Quillivan, C. C., Foster, L. N., & Williams, R. L. (2011). Meta-analysis of correlational relationships between perspectives of truth in religion and major psychological constructs. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 3(3), 163 180. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0022208. McCullough, M. E., Hoyt, W. T., Larson, D. B., Koenig, H. G., & Thoresen, C. (2000). Religious involvement and mortality: A meta-analytic review. Health Psychology, 19(3), 211 222. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.19.3.211. Milstein, G., & Manierre, A. (2012). Culture ontogeny: Lifespan development of religion and the ethics of spiritual counselling. Publications and Research. Retrieved from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_pubs/345. Mischel, W. (2004). Toward an integrative science of the person. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), 1 22. Available from https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev.psych.55.042902.130709. Murphy, J. (2017). Beyond “religion” and “spirituality”: Extending a “meaning systems” approach to explore lived religion. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 39(1), 1 26. Available from https://doi.org/10.1163/15736121-12341335. Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the genealogy of morals/ecce homo (new ed.). New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, F. (1974). The GayScience, with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs. Translated, with commentary, by Walter Kaufmann (1st ed.). New York: Random House USA Inc. Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Otto, R. (1958). In J. W. Harvey (Trans.). The idea of the holy (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

222

PART | 3 Isolation and social identity

Pak, J. H. (2017). Cultural psychology of religion and qualitative inquiry. In A. Village, & R. Hood (Eds.), Research in the social scientific study of religion (pp. 163 187). BRILL. Pargament, K. I. (2002). Authors’ responses: Is religion nothing but. . . .? Explaining religion versus explaining religion away. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 239 244. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1303_06. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56(4), 519 543. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(200004)56:4 , 519::AID-JCLP6 . 3.0. CO;2-1. Parker, S. (2006). Measuring faith development. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34(4), 337. Phillips, R. E. I., Pargament, K. I., & Lynn, Q. K. (2004). Self-directing religious coping: A deistic god, abandoning god, or no god at all? With Appendix: Religion and Problem Solving, 43(3), 409 418. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00243.x. Pope Gregory, I. (2013). Pastoral rule. Limovia.net. Pyszczynski, T., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Experimental existential psychology: Living in the shadow of the facts of life. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and social cognition (pp. 279 308). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Roehlkepartain, E. C., Benson, P. L., & Wagener, L. (2006). The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence. SAGE. Sartre, J. P. (1968). Search for a method. New York: Vintage Books. Sartre, J.-P. (1993). In H. E. Barnes (Trans.). Being and nothingness (reprint ed.). New York: Washington Square Press. Sartre, J. (1992). Being and Nothingness. United States: Washington Square Press. Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2010). Religiosity as self-enhancement: A meta-analysis of the relation between socially desirable responding and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 14(1), 17 36. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351002. Srinivas, M. N. (2002). Collected essays. Oxford University Press. Streib, H. (2005). Theory: “Faith development research revisited: Accounting for diversity in structure, content, and narrativity of faith”. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15(2), 99 121. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1502_1. Streib, H. (2010). Conceptualizing and measuring religious development in terms of religious styles and schemata; New considerations. In ResearchGate. Retrieved from ,https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277848073_Conceptualizing_and_Measuring_Religious_Development_ in_Terms_of_Religious_Styles_and_Schemata_New_Considerations.. Sullivan, D. (2016). Cultural-existential psychology: The role of culture in suffering and threat. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Kay, A. C. (2012). Toward a comprehensive understanding of existential threat: Insights from Paul Tillich. Social Cognition, 30(6), 734 757. Available from https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.734. Swanson, G. E. (1964). The birth of the gods: The origin of primitive beliefs. University of Michigan Press. Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Information (International Social Science Council), 13(2), 65 93. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1177/053901847401300204. Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Religion: An overlooked dimension in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(4), 377 394. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022103034004001. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age (1st ed.). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tillich, P. (2009). Dynamics of faith (1st ed.). New York: HarperOne. Unamuno, M. D. (2013). Tragic sense of life. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288 1300. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167212449361. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165. Van Pachterbeke, M., Keller, J., & Saroglou, V. (2012). Flexibility in existential beliefs and worldviews: Introducing and measuring existential quest. Journal of Individual Differences, 33(1), 2 16. Available from https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000056. Walsh, K., King, M., Jones, L., Tookman, A., & Blizard, R. (2002). Spiritual beliefs may affect outcome of bereavement: Prospective study. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 324(7353), 1551. Weber, M. (2010). In S. Kalberg (Trans.). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. (revised ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 14(1), 60 71. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309349693.

Chapter 16

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Ewa Szumowska1,2,*, Aneta Czernatowicz-Kukuczka1,*, Małgorzata Kossowska1, Szymon Kro´l1 and Arie W. Kruglanski2 1

Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, 2University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States

Religion has fascinated researchers across disciplines. Indeed, the phenomenon has been analyzed from psychological (e.g., James, 1902), sociological (e.g., Durkheim, 1976), and cultural (e.g., Weber, 2005) perspectives. In this chapter, we propose a broad view of religion within the 3N theory of ideological involvement (Kruglanski et al., 2013, 2014; Kruglanski, Jasko, Webber, Chernikova, & Molinario, 2018; Webber & Kruglanski, 2018). The 3Ns refer to needs, narratives, and networks. The need component identifies the motive(s), or need(s), which the individual seeks to satisfy. The narrative component relates to the belief system one endorses, the main function of which is to identify the goals and the means that are appropriate for satisfying the need(s). Finally, the network component validates the narrative and rewards behaviors prescribed by it while punishing the ones that go against it. The theory thus provides a framework that is useful for better understanding of various religious phenomena. In what follows we will first focus on the motivational underpinnings of religion. Although the idea itself is not new (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Duriez, 2003; Silberman, 2005), we will demonstrate two core motives pushing people toward religion (the need component), the epistemic need to know and the need for personal significance. The epistemic need to know has been extensively studied in the context of religion, while the need for significance is relatively new. However, the need for significance is a promising avenue of inquiry, especially in as far as religion has been defined as “a search for significance in ways related to the sacred” (Pargament, 1997, p. 32). Next, we will demonstrate that religion is very powerful in satisfying both of these needs by referring to the specific content of religious beliefs (the narrative component) and to religious groups (the network component). We will thus try to answer the questions of why people believe, what they believe in, and how religious commitment is sustained. In doing so we will refer to both religion, understood as “co-presence of beliefs, ritualized experiences, norms, and groups that refer to what people perceive to be a transcendent to humans entity” (Saroglou, 2014; p. 14), and religiosity, understood as individual involvement in religion, or religious commitment, as well as subjective attitudes and beliefs related to that phenomenon. We believe that such a conceptualization allows for a much broader perspective on religion, one that encompasses its motivational, social, and cultural components. It also helps understand a variety of religious beliefs, behaviors, and social phenomena related to religion, from personal religious orientations to relations between different religious groups. We will start by analyzing the motivational underpinnings of religious beliefs and commitment (the need component of the 3N model).

*Shared first authorship. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00017-2 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

225

226

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Need(s) Many studies have shown that at the root of religiosity lies motivation (for a review, see Laurin & Kay, 2017). We too assume that at the core of religious belief and commitment lie basic human needs. Specifically, we argue that people believe in order to gain stable and reliable knowledge about the world and people around them (the epistemic need to know) as well as to gain the feeling of meaning and significance (the need for personal significance). We will now discuss these two motivations.

The epistemic need to know Knowledge is of essential importance for human affairs (Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski, Dechesne, Orehek, & Pierro, 2009); it is necessary to navigate through the social world, to guide intelligent action (Fiske, 1992), and to carry out even the most mundane activities (Kruglanski, Chen, Dechesne, Fishman, & Orehek, 2009). People thus strive to possess what seems like stable and reliable knowledge about the world and their social environment. This striving is a general motive all humans share (Festinger, 1954; Jonas et al., 2014; Kruglanski, 1989, 2004; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002) and its satisfaction is essential for healthy human functioning (Laurin & Kay, 2017). Indeed, research has shown that people find uncertainty about the social environment unpleasant (Greco & Roger, 2003; Hogg, 2000; Knyazev, Savostyanov, & Levin, 2005) and that they have a natural preference for things that are predictable, familiar, stable, and uncertainty-reducing (e.g., Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Swann, 2012). They also aim at quickly resolving inconsistencies that appear in their knowledge structures (Festinger, 1954; Swann, 2012) and at constructing comprehensible explanations of reality (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Although an apparently universal element of human nature, the strength of the need to know varies across individuals. There is ample evidence that there are stable individual differences in the degree to which people strive to possess knowledge, and that some people can handle the lack of certainty better than others (Furnham & Ribchester, 1995; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). One of the dimensions that captures this phenomenon is the need for cognitive closure (NFC; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996) defined as the “desire for a definite answer on some topic, any answer as opposed to confusion and ambiguity” (Kruglanski, 1989, p. 14). People high in this need thus strive for any knowledge that provides them with the sense of certainty (Kruglanski, 1989, 2004). Since firm, stable, and definite knowledge is especially effective in providing one with the sense of certainty, it is particularly preferred by people who are high in the need for closure (see Kossowska, Szumowska, Dragon, Ja´sko, & Kruglanski, 2018; for an overview). The same can be found in the domain of religion. There is evidence demonstrating a positive correlation between NFC and religious fundamentalism (Brandt & Reyna, 2010; Saroglou, 2002) defined as strong adherence to religious teachings, which are regarded as ultimately true (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). As such, fundamentalism constitutes a firm knowledge structure and is thus particularly appealing for people with heightened level of NFC. Similarly, in our studies (Kossowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, & Sekerdej, 2017), we have observed a positive relationship between NFC and religious orthodoxy, understood as a rigid and close-minded approach toward religious teachings (Hutsebaut, 1996; Wulff, 1991). We assume that strict adherence to religious content is a way of providing people who are high in NFC with the sense of certainty. The need to know, however, can also vary situationally. In the following sections, we will discuss evidence showing that religiosity increases when a situationally determined need for certainty and knowledge is induced.

Religiosity and the need to understand the world As argued earlier, people are strongly motivated to see the world as understandable, controllable, and predictable (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Due to the characteristics of religious narratives (discussed later in the chapter), adherence to religious beliefs may be a particularly effective strategy of dealing with the randomness and uncertainty of the world. Indeed, research has shown that people become more religious in unstable and unpredictable times. For instance, archival data on the Great Depression in the United States, a time of great economic threat and instability (Sales, 1973), indicates that interest in spiritual matters (operationalized as the number of publications on the topic) markedly increased during that period. Moreover, there were an increased number of conversions to new religious movements (NRMs) providing believers with strong and well-structured doctrines and thus equipping them with an effective tool to minimize the chaos and unpredictability in life. Similar results were found in one of our studies in which we measured religious orthodoxy (Hutsebaut, 1996; Wulff, 1991) before and after the terrorist attack in Paris in November 2015 (Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, Kossowska, Szwed, & Sekerdej, 2019). Terrorist attacks are examples of collective crises—that is, situations lying beyond the control of any

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

227

individual and the development of which is impossible to foresee (Merolla, Ramos, & Zechmeister, 2011). In a repeated measure design, we observed a significant increase in both experienced anxiety and orthodoxy. We may thus assume that strict adherence to religious beliefs allowed people to reduce the uncertainty and unpredictability imposed on them by those threatening acts. Aside from extreme cases of economic decline or terroristic attacks, we experience world-related uncertainty on a daily basis. This too can be overcome through religious commitment. For example, McGregor, Nash, and Prentice (2010) demonstrated that inducing uncertainty in an achievement domain (reading an incomprehensible passage regarding statistics) increased religious idealism, but only in participants high in uncertainty aversion. Importantly, the researchers did not observe a similar pattern of results on the superstition scale, which suggests the special role of religiosity in reducing uncertainty. Similarly, in our study we found that reading statements related to uncertainty (e.g., “In my life, there were situations when I felt a lot of stress because of uncertainty”) led to stronger engagement in religious behaviors, such as attending Catholic Mass or fasting (Sekerdej, Kossowska, & Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, 2019). Another set of evidence for the relationship between the situationally induced need to know and religiosity comes from studies on personal control. According to Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, and Laurin (2008), the sense that one is able to influence his/her social environment and to control one’s own actions prevents people from experiencing randomness and unpredictability. However, personal control fluctuates situationally. Therefore people often rely on external systems of control, such as trust in government and belief in God, as the means of compensatory control, which allows them to maintain the sense of order and structure, despite lacking personal control over the events in question. From this point of view, a low sense of personal control (understood as a decreased ability to understand and predict external events) should be related to a higher level of belief in God. In one experiment, participants were asked to describe a situation from their life over which they had no control whatsoever (vs a neutral situation, Kay et al., 2008). After the manipulation participants rated their endorsement of two aspects of God: God as a creator (not imposing control over the events) and God as a controller (external control system). As expected, in the low-control (vs neutral) condition people showed significantly greater endorsement for the controlling aspect of God, while the belief in creative aspect of God remained unchanged. In another study, undermining trust in government also resulted in increased religiosity (Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010). The study was conducted 2 weeks before (instability condition) and 2 weeks after (stability condition) a general election in Malaysia in 2008. Before the election, when the situation was highly unpredictable, people reported a higher level of belief in a controlling God than after the election. Similarly, reading a passage about an unstable situation of the Canadian government (vs about the government’s stability) increased participants’ belief in a controlling God. There is also neuropsychological evidence showing that religious beliefs may play a role in satisfying epistemic motives. For example, Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsh, and Nash (2009) found that people high in religious zeal (a fanatic form of belief) showed reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) after making a mistake on a neutral cognitive task. The ACC plays a role in self-regulation by initiating control in situations of conflict, error, or uncertainty. High activation of the ACC is experienced as anxiety. The pattern of ACC activity Inzlicht et al. (2009) obtained for zealous people suggests that religious conviction is related to lowered sensitivity to conflicting information in one’s knowledge system. This is possibly achieved by diverting attention away from the discrepancy induced by committing an error. In a similar fashion, Kossowska, Szwed, Wronka, Czarnek, and Wyczesany (2016) showed that people high in religious fundamentalism exhibited lowered ACC activity, especially in the situation of experimentally induced uncertainty. Both studies indicate that religious beliefs may act as a buffer against the affective consequences of knowledge inconsistency generating uncertainty.

Religiosity and the need to understand other people The need to know also refers, if not primarily, to social reality (Kruglanski, 2004), and people are highly motivated to understand and predict the behavior of others. Such predictability is provided by social norms and moral rules that members of a given group should follow and which are embedded in religious narrative. The most direct way to predict the behavior of others is to simply monitor it. However, direct, one-to-one monitoring is not possible in large social groups (Axelrod, 1984). Larger societies are vulnerable to so-called free-riders (Henrich, 2004), that is, people who behave immorally and use common resources without any limits or without providing anything in exchange. Thus to enforce trust in others, such groups may introduce third-party punishment, imposed by institutions such as courts or police (Herrmann, Tho¨ni, & Ga¨chter, 2008). However, such institutions are a relatively new cultural accomplishment;

228

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

hence, they may not always be effective. The predictability of social reality is more often ensured by adherence to religion (Norenzayan, 2014). Specifically, certainty about others’ behavior is strengthened by belief in God, who is perceived as a supernatural watcher (Shariff, Norenzayan, & Henrich, 2010). The line of reasoning is as follows: God’s omniscience ensures that no one can act immorally in complete secret; therefore showing devotion to God by engaging in costly religious rituals (Bulbulia, 2004) is a signal of trustworthiness for other people. In other words, religiosity provides a constant system of control, which makes other people predictable (at least within one’s own group). Direct evidence for the link between belief in God and trustworthiness comes from studies on prejudice against atheists (Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011). Atheists, as nonbelievers who do not have any God who would constantly monitor their behavior, are regarded as unpredictable in their behaviors and untrustworthy. Thus negative attitudes toward them should be based especially on issues of trust, which was exactly what was found in a series of studies by Gervais et al. (2011). Atheists were regarded as untrustworthy in contrast to gay men, for example, who were described by participants as disgusting but not untrustworthy. In subsequent studies, atheists were described as more likely to commit a crime or not suitable to be hired for job requiring a high level of trust (i.e., daycare worker). All of these relations were mediated by the perceived low level of trustworthiness of atheists. All of the abovementioned evidence suggest that individuals believe in order to gain the sense of knowing and understanding the world, their place in it and the people around them. But religiosity can also be motivated by one’s striving for personal significance, which is also a basic human need that can fuel a variety of behaviors.

The need for personal significance The need for personal significance refers to one’s desire to matter, to “be someone,” and to have meaning in one’s life (Kruglanski et al., 2009, 2013, 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, Factor, & Szumowska, 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). It is about “counting and mattering by standards of the normative social reality to which one subscribes, leading the ‘good life’ in accordance with one’s group’s values” (Kruglanski et al., 2013, p. 559). The need for significance is thus a basic human need, a general motivational force beyond mere survival (Kruglanski et al., 2009; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018) and as such encapsulates other needs identified as definitive of the human condition, such as the desires to gain respect, competence, mastery, esteem, and meaning in life (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Fiske, 2010; Frankl, 2000; George & Park, 2016; Higgins, 2012; Martela & Steger, 2016; Maslow, 1943; Park, 2010; Steger, Oishi, & Kashdan, 2009; White, 1959). All these various specific motivations would thus be special cases of the significance quest (Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). As in the case of other motives, the quest for significance can be induced by the experience of (anticipated) significance deprivation (as in the case of humiliation, personal failure, or an undermined sense of personal value) or by significance incentivization, that is, the opportunity for significance gain (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). This desire to matter, or the quest for personal significance, motivates a variety of our everyday pursuits, from building one’s career, undertaking creative endeavors, or helping others, to more unusual or extreme ones, such as dying or killing for a cause (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). We here argue that it also motivates religious commitment. Indeed, research has demonstrated that when people’s sense of significance is lost or threatened, their level of religiosity increases. There is ample evidence showing that evoking the fear of death (a manipulation of the “fundamental insignificance” that death connotes, Kruglanski et al., 2014) makes people more religious. For example, Norenzayan and Hansen (2006) and Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi (2012) demonstrated that after thinking about their own death, people’s belief in a higher power significantly increased. On the other hand, religious struggles were related to an increased accessibility of death-related thoughts, thus leading to depressive symptoms, which may be understood as a loss of significance (Edmondson, Park, Chaudoir, & Wortmann, 2008). In a study of bereaved parents of infants who died from sudden infant death syndrome, it was found that the importance of religion was positively related to searching for meaning shortly after the death, which was in turn related to better adjustment 18 months later (McIntosh, Silver, & Wortman, 1993). A similar trend can be observed in everyday life when people often undergo a religious shift after experiencing a personal failure, the death of a family member, severe illness, or a letdown in a romantic relationship (“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity”). Research has also found that religiosity increases in elderly people whose search for meaning in life is higher than that of younger people (Krause, 2005)—having the feeling that one’s life matters and is meaningful is crucial for one’s sense of significance (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018).

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

229

Moreover, research has shown that it is this increased motivation to (re)gain significance that might explain the willingness for self-sacrifice, often found in religiously committed individuals. A study by Be´langer and Kruglanski (2012) found that when the participants’ sense of significance was lowered by evoking the feeling of guilt, they were more likely to sacrifice for a cause. Particularly, in an experiment, religious participants were exposed to sexual (vs neutral) stimuli (scantily dressed women in a Victoria’s Secret advertisement), in order to arouse “sinful” thoughts and feelings of sexual guilt, and their support for martyrdom for a social cause was measured. The results showed that religious participants who were exposed to sexual stimuli admitted to a greater readiness to self-sacrifice for a cause, that is, they declared a greater readiness to sacrifice their life or renounce all of their personal wealth for a cause. Interestingly, the relation between religiosity and support for self-sacrifice was mediated by sexual guilt (a proxy of significance loss). Similarly, Dugas et al. (2016) found that the personal sense of insignificance experienced by Iraqi and Palestinian refugees living in Jordan was positively associated with their readiness to undergo self-sacrifice, intense suffering, or to forego material wealth for a cause. Similar results were obtained from an American sample. Specifically, it turned out that the loss of significance, as manipulated via social rejection and failure at experimental tasks, also led to a greater readiness to undergo sacrifice for a cause (Dugas et al., 2016). These findings are in line with theories of meaning making that examine the process of restoring meaning in the face of negative, stressful, or traumatic events (Park, 2010). According to those theories, when situations induce a discrepancy between global and situational meaning, a sense of frustration is evoked, and behavior aimed at regaining meaning is undertaken (e.g., Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, 2010; Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012; see Webber et al., 2018). The quest for significance, however, can be evoked not only by the loss of one’s sense of significance (or the threat thereof) but also by the opportunity for significance gain. Therefore any actions by which one can gain respect in the eyes of others (or God), such as becoming a martyr or religious leader, can be significance bestowing. Indeed, history is rich with examples of people who laid their lives at the altar of faith—as is emphasized in many religious and hagiographical works (e.g., Duffy, 2012; Farmer, 1997). Revelations, epiphanies, prophecies, the sense of personal calling, and miracles are other striking examples of the significance-bestowing potential of religion (they give one a sense of importance and exceptionality). People can also gain significance by acquiring the conviction that they are fulfilling their ethical obligations, that they are living “a good life,” and that they are doing everything to become a “good,” moral, and worthy person. Indeed, studies showed that after being primed with the concept of God, people presented more socially desirable answers in a questionnaire (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). Another experiment showed that after activating the concept of God people acted more in line with moral rules; that is, they were more willing to share money equally between themselves and another participant of the study (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007). The effect was replicated in natural settings (Duhaime, 2015): Moroccan salesmen were much more willing to give some or all of the money they could earn in the study to charity if they were approached while the call for prayer was audible. In their teachings, religions are typically (more or less) explicit in asserting that abiding by a certain set of rules and observing a certain set of rituals will make one a good person and give them a chance to earn a reward of the highest value (eternal life, glory, enlightenment, etc.). This, however, depends on the particular narrative to which a person subscribes—a matter we will discuss later in the chapter.

Joint working of the two needs Although the need to know and the need for significance can motivate religious belief and commitment, each on their own, religious motivation can be particularly strong when the two needs work together. Indeed, some of the examples we provided earlier refer to events that likely evoke the two needs at the same time, such as reminding one of their eventual death, arousing a sense of (economic, safety, and symbolic) threat, or the experience of a severe personal failure (e.g., Czernatowicz-Kukuczka et al., 2019; Kay et al., 2008; Sales, 1973). In accordance with this line of thinking, researchers have argued that the experience of significance loss creates an inconsistency between the positive manner in which individuals wish to perceive themselves and the experience they are currently having (cf. McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001) and thus induces the feeling of uncertainty (Festinger, 1957). This was experimentally demonstrated in a series of studies by Webber et al. (2018) in which the experience of significance loss increased the motivation to seek certainty and closure, which in turn affords the restoration of personal significance. In a study conducted among suspected militants from the Abu Sayyaf Group imprisoned in the Philippines, the experience of personal humiliation was positively related to the need for closure (which was then positively related to the endorsement of Islamic extremism). A similar pattern was found among detained former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (a separatist militia involved in Sri Lanka’s recent civil war): feelings of

230

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

humiliation and shame were positively related to the need for closure, which in turn mediated their support for violence in the service of secession and for the establishment of a separate Tamil state. Although more studies on the relationship between the two needs are required, the findings previously mentioned suggest that some experiences might evoke the two needs at the same time, thus explaining why they are so effective at increasing religiosity. In turn, religion is very powerful in satisfying both of these needs, thanks in large part to religious narratives and religious networks the main characteristics of which will be discussed in the following sections.

Narrative According to the 3N theory (Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018), it is the narrative that identifies the goals and the means that are appropriate for satisfying the need(s). Religion is a narrative with a wide range of content—from cosmogony to eschatology—and as such creates goals and prescribes behaviors (means) to achieve these goals. It identifies “ultimate goals” such as finding salvation and eternal life (like in Christian narratives) or escaping the cycle of reincarnation and suffering (like in Buddhism); connecting with or adhering to the sacred; living an altruistic life full of forgiveness; achieving enlightenment; and knowing God or experiencing the transcendent (e.g., Emmons, 2005; Pargament, Magyar, & Murray-Swank, 2005; Park, 2004). It also identifies other subordinate goals such as working for peace and justice in the world, devoting oneself to family, finding deep intimacy with others, or achieving supremacy (Park, 2004; Silberman, 2005). As an extremely potent source of values (Baumeister, 1991), religion determines what is right, worthy, and to be sought after. It thus provides certainty and guidance in an individual’s life. It also tells people what to do in order to attain significance (Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). Religion provides prescriptions for achieving the valuable goals it identifies. Everyday reality is explained by means of myths. Myths provide knowledge, offer guidelines for conduct via identifying (un)desired behaviors, and act as warnings. Hence, religion serves as an independent source of knowledge about every aspect of reality and life, and it links goals with the means of their attainment. For example, some might see suffering as the best way to God (e.g., Mother Teresa who subscribed to the rule of “giving until it hurts,” Chawla, 1992, and applied it to those under her care, Hitchens, 2012), some practice meditation and self-discipline in the hope of reaching enlightenment, and some interpret holy texts as a call for violence against “infidels” and expect to achieve salvation through such actions. Religious narratives, however, create whole systems of meaning that allow believers to understand and explain the world around us (Silberman, 2005). Although there are significant differences between religious ideologies around the world, most of them share some qualities that make them perfectly suited to satisfy epistemic and significance needs.

Common characteristics of religious narratives Religious narratives are related to the sacrum, which is the core element of every religion (Durkheim, 1976; Eliade, 1959; Otto, 1958). As such, they are unfalsifiable and deserve special attention and respect. They too are a source of sacred values (Atran & Axelrod, 2008; Sheikh, Ginges, Coman, & Atran, 2012), which are moral imperatives for behavior (e.g., the Ten Commandments, the Five Pillars of Islam, and the Noble Eightfold Path). Due to their divine origins, they must be obediently followed, regardless of the circumstances. Sacred values also give believers a sense of righteousness, thus boosting their sense of significance. In fact, Yilmaz and Bahcekapili (2015) found that in a situation of moral conflict between two parties, religious people were more convinced that there is an objectively right answer (a divine Truth), and that therefore one of the parties must be wrong. Sacred values thereby provide narrative which gives significance to actions otherwise lacking material or instrumental value. Narrative connected to sacred values can be used to establish permanent sentiments and the goals of the group (Atran & Axelrod, 2008; Ginges & Atran, 2013). Moreover, since religion prescribes what is right, good, and moral, people following these rules can acquire a powerful sense of worthiness. In some cases, such a sense can be a source of the feeling of moral superiority (as in the case of Spanish colonialism, Marcos, 1992). Some religions provide one with the sense of worthiness in a more direct manner (e.g., the notion of being the “chosen nation” in Judaism, Gurkan, 2008; Mormonism, Barlow, 2012; or Rastafarianism, Edmonds, 2012). Such a belief can sometimes, however, take some rather extreme forms. For instance, the members of the Solar Temple believed that, as part of an elected group, in order to “transit” to their immortal bodies they needed to commit suicide (Mayer & Siegler, 1999). Another characteristic of the religious narrative is its complexity (Silberman, 2005). It answers all of the questions that a person may ask, including the existential ones, the “Big Questions.” It provides certainty about the world’s existence, as well as the end of human existence, therefore giving answers that cannot be obtained in other ways. It also

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

231

allows one to handle everyday issues by offering an interpretative framework for unexpected events, which may be understood as a part of God’s plan. Thus it gives meaning to something that might otherwise seem random and meaningless. It also presents the perspective of something better (an afterlife, eternal life, eternal glory, or the end of suffering) thus protecting people from feeling insignificant (“a speck of dust”), even if the current situation suggests the contrary (“who is last shall be first”). Aside from rules, religious narratives, by themselves or by means of religious institutions (Berger, 1979), also sanctify authorities and religious leaders (e.g., priests, imams, and rabbis). A religious leader has a special status, as his/her position stems from divine authority (e.g., from Jesus to Saint Peter to Apostolic succession). Therefore people may fully rely on them to offer a constant guidance through life. The role of the leader is especially visible at the beginning of a religious movement when a charismatic leader (e.g., Jesus, Baha’O’Llah, and Joseph Smith), who is regarded as a divine messenger, attracts a large group of people to follow him/her (Barnes, 1978). One might observe such a process in current NRMs (Barker, 1989), but almost every religion has similar origins. In fact, research shows that right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981), conceptualized as submission to authorities, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, is positively related to holding fundamental religious beliefs (Johnson et al., 2011; Laythe, Finkel, & Kirkpatrick, 2001). This suggests that religious people rely on authorities in decision-making processes, which possibly gives them the sense of certainty to act in an otherwise unpredictable environment. In addition, religion is a collective narrative (Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010). The social aspect of religion will be discussed more thoroughly in the section on network, but for now what is notable is that sharing beliefs with other people provides social proof, which validates and strengthens the sense of rightness, satisfying one’s need for significance. It also allows people to regard religious beliefs as unquestionable truths (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) and thus provides unchangeable, stable, and predictable elements to life, thereby satisfying one’s need to know.

Differences between narratives There are also differences between religious ideologies and not all of them are equally suited to satisfy epistemic and significance needs. As Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov (2010) stated, the main difference between what they call Western (that is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and Eastern religious traditions is their attitude toward “the Truth with a capital T” (p. 227). Western ideologies are circled around divine revelation and therefore stress the existence of absolute, objective Truth, to which a follower may gain access through their religion. This idea of objective Truth remains constant despite the differences between many denominations in monotheistic religions of the West and seems to be incorporated into the culture. On the other hand, Eastern ideologies operate in a more pluralistic context, with more complex views on gods (polytheism, pantheism, henotheism, etc. in religions such as Hinduism, Shinto, and Chinese folk religion) and coexisting philosophies/religions (Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). On top of that, the Eastern approach is less linear, with concepts such as the cycle of reincarnation (sa n_ s¯ara) or the ideas about maintaining harmony (with the universe in Taoism; in social life in Confucianism). Interestingly, research has found that these cultures differ in their need to see the world as a stable and predictable place. On the societal level, there are differences in the so-called uncertainty avoidance index (UAI, defined as “the extent to which the member of a culture feels threatened by ambiguous and unknown situations,” Hofstede et al., 2010, p. 191) between countries with dominant Western and Eastern religious traditions, with higher scores being found in the former. Moreover, in Christian societies, the number of Catholics is positively related to the country’s UAI. Of course the correlational nature of the data does not allow one to infer causality; however, the results might suggest that the Catholic denomination is especially well suited to ease uncertainty. Similarly, various aspects of a given ideology may differ in their power to satisfy these basic needs. In some religious traditions, God is presented as an ambivalent being, in Otto’s (1958) understanding consisting of the mysterium tremendum (feelings of awe, majesty, power, and mystery) and the mysterium fascinans (feelings of fascination, love, grace, and salvation). In Christianity the image of God as a source of love, care, understanding, and forgiveness (merciful God) is present mainly in the New Testament, while in the Old Testament God demands justice and punishes people for committed sins (just God). We also find a similar differentiation in the Quran; among the 99 names of Allah, there is Al-Wadud (loving God) and Al-Hasib (God who brings justice). The image of God as just acts as a source of epistemic certainty, as (S)He poses certain rules and demands that people obey them. In fact, in one line of our studies we observed that people high in NFC described God more in terms of justice than in terms of mercy. Moreover, when asked about God’s reaction to sinful behaviors (e.g., drinking and driving), they regarded Him/Her as more prone to condemnation than forgiveness (Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, Ja´sko, & Kossowska, 2017). On the other hand, people with a deprived need to belong preferred the image of a merciful God.

232

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

This is perhaps because the sense of being loved and unconditionally accepted by someone allows people to uphold their sense of worthiness and significance. Studies on NRMs provide further evidence for the link between the type of ideology and the need for certain knowledge. A great majority of NRMs, often labeled as cults or sects (Melton, 2004), propose a simplified view of the world and clear-cut behavioral rules, such as the specific religious rituals one should conduct, the type of clothing one should wear, and the gender roles one should follow (Buxant, Saroglou, Casalfiore, & Christians, 2007). It is not a coincidence that an intensified interest in NRMs was observed after the Second World War and during the time of great social transformation in the 1960s (Lewis, 2004). For example, Saliba (2003) defined cult-joiners from that period as psychologically deprived individuals, who were uncertain about their future or life goals. Cults provided them with the feeling of security in a structured and predictable environment. More recent studies (Buxant et al., 2007) have also pointed out that members of NRMs (like the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church) tend to have a higher need for order and predictability, compared to samples from the general population—a need that seems to be satisfied through religious conversion. NRMs can also efficiently satisfy people’s need for significance; more efficiently than traditional religions can. These generally small groups often focus on finding the “real” or “deeper” self, and are thus sometimes labeled as cults of personality (Saliba, 2003). This personalized treatment allows people to overcome the feeling of being lost and alienated in the surrounding reality and allows people to find their place on Earth (e.g., the Rajneesh Movement; Richardson, 1995). Moreover, people often join NRMs as the result of a life crisis (e.g., a job loss or the death of a close relative). Cults allow people to fill the void and to regain significance by strong adherence to new ideals (Saliba, 2003). Indeed, research suggests that extreme narratives, or ones that deviate from what most people consider reasonable or correct (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018), are particularly effective in granting one with the sense of significance (Hogg, Kruglanski, & Van den Bos, 2013; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018; Webber et al., 2018). According to the goal systems theory (Kruglanski, Chernikova, Babush, Dugas, & Schumpe, 2015), means that satisfy a given goal/need, but at the same time undermine other goals/ needs (so-called counterfinal means), are perceived as more instrumental in relation to a given goal. Therefore those religious narratives that are most demanding and require sacrifices in regard to other needs might be particularly appealing to those who seek to (re)gain significance. This is well illustrated in the quote by one of the Missionary Brothers of Charity: “The more difficult, the more demanding my life, the closer I feel to Him. I can never leave.” (Chawla, 1992, p. 95). This is also in line with studies by Olivola and Shafir (2013) showing that people are sometimes willing to endure more pain for a prosocial cause, because they perceive such experiences as more meaningful, or more significance-conferring, than less painful ones (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). The sense of significance gained through sacrifice also explains the appeal of various austere religious practices, such as chastity, fasting, or celibacy, and the decision to become a missionary, monk, or nun. Many of the latter groups adopt a rigorous regime and impose “lifelong hardship, seclusion, and a meagre diet upon themselves in pursuit of their ideals” (Sitwell, 1965, p. 1). In extreme cases, this might lead to asceticism, self-flagellation, or sacrificing one’s life at the altar of faith. Indeed, many studies have shown that people who feel insignificant are willing to self-sacrifice for the sake of faith (Dugas et al., 2016). This might lead to violence especially when, according to a given narrative, there are rewards directly attached to violence as was the case in the Crusades (Runciman, 1987), Viking myths about ascendance to Valhalla (Hultga˚rd, 2011), the headhunting practices of the Naga tribes (Mills, 1935), or the ritual of pasola on Sumba (fighting with the aim of spilling the blood of the opponent on the ground; Vel, 2001). Indeed, studies by Jasko, Szastok, Grzymała-Moszczynska, Maj, and Kruglanski (2019) found that people who had experienced failures at work or had problems in social relationships were more likely to resort to violence in the pursuit of their ideological goals (see also Dugas et al., 2016).

Personal narratives Aside from formal differences in religious ideologies, people also differ in their personal narratives about religion, that is, their individual attitude toward religious teachings. In general, we can point to two distinct types of religiosity which may manifest themselves within any religious denomination (Saroglou, 2014). On the one hand, we can speak of openminded religiosity, aimed at religious self-growth and transcendence. Formal religious narratives are just a starting point for creative suspicion, the questioning of truths, and building one’s own narrative by going beyond religious dogmas. This attitude is labeled as a quest religious orientation (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993). On the other hand, there is close-minded religiosity. This personal attitude toward religion may be expressed by strict adherence to religious

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

233

norms and by the strict observance of religious rituals and prohibitions. Allport and Ross (1967) described this phenomenon as an external religious orientation, but religious fundamentalism (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2005) or orthodoxy (Pancer, Jackson, Hunsberger, Pratt, & Lea, 1995) also fit that definition. In that case, religious narratives play an instrumental and utilitarian role in providing certainty in an otherwise uncertain environment. In fact, many studies have found that the need to know is related only to the latter type of religiosity. For example McCann (1999) found that in times of social or economic threat people are more attracted to authoritarian churches, while attraction to nonauthoritarian churches decreases. Similarly, Saroglou (2002) demonstrated that the NFC was positively correlated with religious fundamentalism, but not with spirituality. In turn, in our own studies, we have found that orthodoxy (measured by the Post Critical Belief Scale; Duriez, Fontaine, & Hutsebaut, 2000) systematically correlated with NFC, while there was no connection between NFC and symbolic inclusion a more open-minded and creative approach toward religious teachings (Kossowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, et al., 2017; Kossowska, Sekerdej, & Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, 2017). Similarly, in the study on the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks mentioned earlier, the observed increase in religious beliefs appeared only for religious orthodoxy, but not for other measures of religiosity (Czernatowicz-Kukuczka et al., 2019). These findings suggest that closed-minded religiosity is particularly effective in satisfying the epistemic need to know. Other personal narratives, however, might be more instrumental in granting one with the sense of significance, as studies suggest that it is internal, more mature, and committed religiosity rather than external religiosity that contributes to one’s sense of significance. In one study, individuals who were internally motivated, committed, and characterized by high spiritual and moral commitment (“true believers”) reported a higher sense of purpose in life than externally motivated, uncommitted, and unbelieving individuals did (Soderstrom & Wright, 1977). In another study, it was internal orientation that was positively related to thinking more highly of oneself (operationalized as self-esteem, Maltby, Lewis, & Day, 1999). Internal orientation was also positively associated with “the search for personal closeness with God, hope, and meaning through religion” (Pargament et al., 1992, p. 507). A similar positive association was also found for quest orientation, but not for external orientation. These findings are consistent with other results demonstrating that certain meaning frameworks may appeal to some people because of their explicitness, clarity, and coherence, and thus due to their higher possible epistemic rewards, as in the case of external, closed-minded religious orientation, and other due to the sense of significance they promise, as in the case of internal (and perhaps quest) orientation (e.g., Hogg & Adelman, 2013; Hogg et al., 2013; Heine et al., 2006; Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012). Such narratives or meaning systems, however, do not come out of thin air; they are generally grounded in the shared reality of one’s social network (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018).

Network The network component of the 3N model (Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018) refers to the group of people who subscribe to the given (religious) narrative. It is usually via the network that one comes in contact with the narrative and it is the network’s support for the narrative that validates it and serves as proof of its veracity (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). The network provides a sense of “shared reality” (Echterhoff & Higgins, 2017) thanks to which one can satisfy their epistemic need to know. It also rewards behaviors that are prescribed by the narrative and punishes the ones that go against it, that is, those who do “good deeds” are accepted and respected (and thus granted the sense of significance), while those who do wrong (according to a given narrative) are rejected (and thus granted the sense of insignificance). Rejection can take extreme forms, such as shunning (e.g., as among Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muramoto, 2001), stoning (still practiced in some Muslim countries, Korbatieh, 2018), or honor crimes (e.g., in some Muslim countries, Kulwicki, 2002).

Religion as a social phenomenon Indeed, many researchers from classic sociologists (Durkheim, 1976) to modern psychologists (e.g., Hayward & Krause, 2014) have pointed out that religion needs necessarily be defined through a social lens. Although it is often studied as a set of propositional beliefs of individuals, religion’s social aspects are crucial to fully understand the role it plays in our lives (Graham & Haidt, 2010). Baldwin (1902) wrote the following: “The fact is constantly recognized that religion is a social phenomenon. No man is religious by himself, nor does he choose his god, nor devise his offerings, nor enjoy his blessings alone” (p. 325).

234

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

As Graham and Haidt (2010) suggested, one function of religious commitment is to bind people into larger groups (possibly even whole societies; see Shariff et al., 2010). They discussed religiosity in the context of moral foundations theory (Haidt & Graham, 2007), pointing out that religious morality is based on all five foundations. That is, in addition to justice and care, which were labeled as individualizing foundations, religiosity is also linked with in-group loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity (the binding moral foundations). The latter three elements are not regarded as part of morality by people with lower levels of religions engagement (or no religious engagement). In a similar vein, Ysseldyk et al. (2010) proposed that religiosity plays a large role in social identity. Drawing from social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), they stated that along with race, gender, nationality, etc., religious identity serves powerful social functions. Therefore the seemingly individualistic consequences of religion, like enhanced mental health (Koenig, King, & Carson, 2012), subjective well-being (Wink, Dillon, & Larsen, 2005), or general life satisfaction (Ellison,1991), might be more the effect of high group identification and group-related behaviors than of religiosity itself (Lim & Putnam, 2010).

Religious groups as a source of shared reality Religion as a social phenomenon provides individuals with the sense of shared reality (Silberman, 2005). According to Echterhoff and Higgins (2017), sharing reality with others increases confidence about one’s belief systems. Therefore, by definition, religion is aimed at satisfying epistemic needs. It also validates and justifies the means one uses to gain significance. Similarly, Dugas and Kruglanski (2018) proposed that shared reality validates individuals’ knowledge, thus increasing the reliability of that knowledge and providing group members with the sense of collective righteousness. In that context, the social network confirms an otherwise unfalsifiable set of religious beliefs, and sanctions certain ways behaving. Shared reality allows people to achieve the sense of certainty quickly and effortlessly. However, it is also related to the derogation of any individual or group who disrupt it (Kruglanski & Orehek, 2012). Hence, the negative social consequences of religiosity, like prejudice or aggression, may be the result of undermining one’s sense of certainty. Supporting evidence for this comes from studies on religiosity and prejudice. So far, many authors have claimed (Batson & Burris, 1994; Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010; Hunsberger, 1995; Kirkpatrick, 1993) that religion is related to prejudice toward various out-groups due to the dogmatism or fundamentalism its entails. More recent research (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, et al., 2017; Kossowska & Sekerdej, 2015; Kossowska, Sekerdej, et al., 2017), however, has also suggested that religiosity leads to higher prejudice toward so-called value-violators—people or groups who challenge one’s shared reality by promoting different views or values (different religious groups, those who violate a moral taboo, or atheists who directly undermine the religious worldview). Moreover, this relationship was especially visible in the context of an increased dispositional or situational need for certainty and only for the closed-minded type of religious narratives (Kossowska, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, et al., 2017; Kossowska, Sekerdej, et al., 2017; Sekerdej et al., 2018). Furthermore, the results of one of our studies (Kossowska, Szwed, Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, Sekerdej, & Wyczesany, 2017) indicated that prejudice is functional in reducing the threat posed by value-violating groups. That is, people who are high in religious orthodoxy had a higher heart rate than did nonorthodox participants after being exposed to atheistic slogans, suggesting that they felt more threatened in that situation. However, the feeling of threat was significantly reduced (heart rate decreased) when they were provided with the opportunity to express negative opinions (prejudice) about atheists (vs when filling out a neutral personality questionnaire). This shows that prejudice is a tool in maintaining consensus about reality. This religiously motivated prejudice against other groups often goes hand in hand with an enhanced intragroup prosociality and helping behaviors (Preston, Salomon, & Ritter, 2013), thus making the distinctions between groups even clearer and the social world even more organized.

Religious identification as a source of certainty and significance Aside from shared reality, religion provides individuals with a group identity (Ysseldyk et al., 2010). As suggested by Hogg (2000), group identification provides the sense of certainty through the process of self-categorization. This process, on the group level, leads people to understand the self through the lens of a prescriptive group prototype, which usually provides one with a set of norms of how to think, feel, and/or behave. In other words, the self is recategorized in group terms. In fact, Hayward and Elliott (2009) showed that the closer the self is to the religious group prototype, the more psychologically beneficial religious commitment is for the individual.

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

235

In an extension of Hogg’s (2000) initial theory, Hogg, Sherman, Dierselhuis, Maitner, and Moffitt, (2007) proposed that the important characteristic that is strongly related to reaching certainty is group entitativity. The simpler the prototype, the easier it is to identify with the group; therefore clearly defined, homogenous, and distinctive groups are more effective in satisfying epistemic needs. Religious groups constantly highlight their entitativity (e.g., by using distinct sets of symbols, similarity of clothing, and collective routines and rituals), which makes them well suited to deal with personal uncertainty on the social level (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). Being a part of a valued group also provides one with a sense of significance. This feeling is all the stronger, the more one is convinced that their group is moral, good, or exceptional in any other way (Webster, 1908). On the other hand, humiliating and disrespecting one’s group and trampling on its sacred values (Atran, 2010) can induce the feeling of significance loss (e.g., Muslim immigrants to Europe who encounter widespread disrespect and signs of “Islamophobia” on the part of native populations in their host countries, Kruglanski, Crenshaw, Post, & Victoroff, 2007; Sageman, 2004). In line with this, Friedman and Saroglou (2010) found that strong religious identity in a group of Muslims in Belgium was related to lower personal self-esteem, due to the perception of lower religious tolerance on the part of the host culture. Sometimes perceiving the self through the lens of the group prototype may be taken to the extreme. Swann, Jetten, Go´mez, Whitehouse, and Bastian (2012) described the phenomenon of identity fusion; that is, experiencing complete unity between the self and one’s group. As the personal self is fully immersed within the group identity, people are more willing to undertake extreme actions for the sake of the group (e.g., to fight or die to regain the sense of group significance, Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). This also means that religious identification may be related to negative intergroup consequences, like religiously motivated aggression. According to the coalitional commitment hypothesis (Ginges, Hansen, & Norenzayan, 2009), only collective religious actions that are aimed at increasing group cohesion lead to violence toward out-groups. For example, in a group of Palestinians, the frequency of mosque attendance was related to higher support for martyr attacks, while no such relationship was observed between the frequency of prayer and support for martyr attacks. Similarly, Israeli Jews who were primed with words related to synagogue (compared to prayer) were more prone to label Baruch Goldstein’s attack on Muslims1 as heroic.

Uniqueness of religious groups The question remains whether all groups are able to fill the kinds of human needs discussed above. It is certainly the case that identification, even identity fusion or the sense of shared reality, is not specific to religious groups alone. We may observe similar processes for nations, races, or even some less prominent group, the members of which are perceived to share essential qualities (Swann & Buhrmester, 2015). Is there anything special about religion as a social group? There are several reasons to believe that they are in fact different from other groups in their ability to fill the kinds of basic needs discussed above. For example, for many people, their religious identity is one of the most salient identities in their lives (Freeman, 2003) and therefore is central to their self-concept (Ysseldyk et al., 2010). Its importance stems from the narrative based on sacrum. As having divine origins, this identity is rooted in the “Truth” (Kinnvall, 2004) and cannot be undermined or overruled by any human and cannot be assimilated within other identities (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). Some evidence of the greater importance of religious identity comes from a study on Israeli Jews. The study was conducted before and during an (Intifada-related) escalation of the larger Israeli Palestinian conflict (Fredman, Bastian, & Swann, 2017). This study found that religious identity was a better predictor of intended revenge actions toward Palestinians than was national identity, especially in the situation of threat and the lack of certainty—both of which were increased by the conflict. In addition, it has been demonstrated that groups based on religion tend to last longer as compared to secular groups (Stephan & Stephan, 1973). Their endurance provides people with a greater sense of stability. Lastly, the bonds between members of religious groups are tighter than between those other groups, especially in small religious communities (Saliba, 2003), which may increase the sense of cohesion. The sense of cohesion is further reinforced by participation in ritual practices, which constantly renew the sense of community (Durkheim, 1976; Summers-Effler, 2006). Moreover, in times of crisis, rituals can evoke the idea of solidarity and order by means of the scapegoat mechanism (Girard, 1989). 1. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs and opened fire to Muslim worshippers killing 29 of them before he was beaten to death.

236

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

The research findings previously discussed show that the combination of a stable and cohesive social network with a sacrum-related and complex narrative makes religion a powerful tool for satisfying two basic motives: the need to know and the need for personal significance. In other words, “[. . .] praying together seems to be better than either bowling together or praying alone” (Lim & Putnam, 2010, p. 927).

Interplay between the 3Ns The 3N theory posits that needs, narratives, and networks are interrelated and there exist dynamic relationships between them (Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). The more powerful the need compared to other needs, the less the necessity for additional rationalization to use extreme means provided by the network. So, the greater the religious commitment (or the greater the importance of the needs the commitment is meant to satisfy), the greater the likelihood of self-sacrifice or the use of violence, even in the absence of strong sacrifice- and violencejustifying narratives. On the other hand, the weaker the religious commitment relative to alternative goals, the more important it is to have a compelling narrative and a network that validates it in order for an individual to select extreme means (i.e., means that undermine their and or/others’ basic needs, Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). Narratives too differ in the behaviors they prescribe. As argued earlier, most/all of them contain some set of rules prescribing how to be a good or a moral person. Since such rules are usually shared and accepted by the society (also by its nonreligious members), and following them is not typically very demanding, they generally do not require additional justification. However, some narratives go against basic social norms (as in the case when there is violence involved) and/or require a great sacrifice (as in the case of martyrdom). In such cases, a high level of motivation and additional support from the network is required in order to maintain one’s commitment. This point is well illustrated in monasteries and nunneries in which it is a common practice to reduce or sever ties with one’s family and friends, replacing them with ties with the divine and with the ones who are equally committed (physical seclusion also accompanies social seclusion, as when monasteries are located far from other human dwellings). This helps maintain a long-lasting religious commitment and supports radical acts and ultimate sacrifices, such as mass suicides. This was the case in Jonestown, the town founded by Jim Jones, in which he lived with his followers, secluded from other people. Over 900 people in Jonestown killed themselves as a sacrifice for their religious group (People’s Temple; Reiterman & Jacobs, 1982). Such a radical act, prescribed by the narrative and satisfying believers’ epistemic and significance needs, was only possible given very strong (probably coercive) emphasis from the network.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have tried to tie different religious phenomena together within the framework of the 3Ns theory (Kruglanski et al., 2014; Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). We have argued that religious belief and commitment are motivated by the two basic needs: the epistemic need to know and the need for personal significance. Then, we demonstrated the power of religion to satisfy these two needs by referring to religious narratives and religious networks. This approach thus fits the literature emphasizing the motivational underpinnings of religiosity (answering the question of why people believe; Allport & Ross, 1967; Duriez, 2003; Hogg et al., 2010; Laurin & Kay, 2017). However, it also answers the questions of what they believe in (the narrative component) and how religious commitment is sustained (via the network’s support). It also suggests that religiosity is rational and purposeful in the sense that it helps satisfy basic human motives (the same has recently been argued in the context of violent extremism, Kruglanski, Fernandez, et al., 2019; Kruglanski, Jasko, et al., 2018). In doing so it goes against more traditional views presenting religious beliefs as irrational (e.g., Frazer, 1900; Le´vy-Bruhl, 1923; Freud, 1989; cf. Stark, Iannaccone, & Finke, 1996; Stoczkowski, 1999; Thurow, 2013).

References Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432 443. Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg, MB, Canada: University of Manitoba Press. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113 133.

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

237

Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2005). Fundamentalism and authoritarianism. In R. F. Paloutzian, C. L. Park (Eds), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 378 393). Guilford Press, New York and London. Atran, S., & Axelrod, R. (2008). Reframing sacred values. Negotiation Journal, 24(3), 221 246. Atran, S. (2010). Talking to the enemy: Violent extremism, sacred values, and what it means to be human. London, UK: Penguin UK. Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books. Baldwin, J. M. (1902). Fragments in the philosophy and science of being: Collected essays and addresses. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Barker, E. (1989). New religious movements: A practical introduction. London: HMSO. Barlow, P. L. (2012). Chosen land, chosen people: Religious and American exceptionalism among the Mormons. The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 10(2), 51 58. Barnes, D. (1978). Charisma and religious leadership: An historical analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17(1), 1 18. Batson, C. D., & Burris, C. T. (1994). Personal religion: Depressant or stimulant of prejudice and discrimination. In M. P. Zanna, & J. M. Olson (Eds.), The psychology of prejudice: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 7, pp. 49 169). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press. Be´langer, J. J., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2012). On sin and sacrifice: How intrinsic religiosity and sexual-guilt create support for martyrdom. University of Maryland, Unpublished data. Berger, P. (1979). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Anchor. Brandt, M. J., & Reyna, C. (2010). The role of prejudice and the need for closure in religious fundamentalism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(5), 715 725. Brandt, M. J., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2017). People both high and low on religious fundamentalism are prejudiced toward dissimilar groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(1), 76 97. Bulbulia, J. (2004). Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention. Evolution and Cognition, 10(1), 19 38. Buxant, C., Saroglou, V., Casalfiore, S., & Christians, L. L. (2007). Cognitive and emotional characteristics of new religious movement members: New questions and data on the mental health issue. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 10(3), 219 238. Chawla N., Mother Teresa, The authorised biography, 1992, Diane Publishing Company, Collingdale, US. Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A., Ja´sko, K., & Kossowska, M. (2017). God image and sense of personal control. In Presentation on Motivation and social perception conference. Gdansk, 19 21 July. Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A., Kossowska, M., Szwed, P., & Sekerdej, M. (2019). Radicalization under terrorist threat: Effects of intolerance of uncertainty on attitudes toward immigrants. Manuscript in preparation. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227 268. Duffy, E. (2012). Introduction. In J. De Voragine (Ed.), The golden legend: Readings on the Saints (pp. 11 20). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dugas, M., Be´langer, J. J., Moyano, M., Schumpe, B. M., Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., . . . Nociti, N. (2016). The quest for significance motivates self-sacrifice. Motivation Science, 2, 15 32. Dugas, M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2018). Shared reality as collective closure. Current Opinion in Psychology, 23, 72 76. Duhaime, E. P. (2015). Is the call to prayer a call to cooperate? A field experiment on the impact of religious salience on prosocial behavior. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(6), 593 596. Durkheim, E. (1976). The elementary forms of the religious life. London & New York: Routledge. Duriez, B. (2003). Vivisecting the religious mind: Religiosity and motivated social cognition. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 6(1), 79 86. Duriez, B., Fontaine, J. R., & Hutsebaut, D. (2000). A further elaboration of the Post-Critical Belief Scale: Evidence for the existence of four different approaches to religion in Flanders-Belgium. Psychologica Belgica, 40(3), 153 182. Echterhoff, G., & Higgins, E. T. (2017). Creating shared reality in interpersonal and intergroup communication: The role of epistemic processes and their interplay. European Review of Social Psychology, 28(1), 175 226. Edmonds, E. B. (2012). Rastafari: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edmondson, D., Park, C. L., Chaudoir, S. R., & Wortmann, J. H. (2008). Death without god: Religious struggle, death Concerns, and depression in the terminally III. Psychological Science, 19(8), 754 758. Eliade, M. (1959). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion (Vol. 144). New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ellison, C. G. (1991). Religious involvement and subjective well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 32, 80 99. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning and religion. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 731 745. Farmer, D. H. (1997). The Oxford dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117 140. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Fiske, S. T. (1992). Thinking is for doing: Portraits of social cognition from daguerreotype to laserphoto. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 877 889. Fiske, S. T. (2010). Social beings: Core motives in psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons. Frankl, V. E. (2000). Man’s search for ultimate meaning. New York: Basic Books.

238

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Frazer, J. (1900). The golden bough. A study in magic and religion (Vol. 1). New York: Macmillan. Fredman, L. A., Bastian, B., & Swann, W. B., Jr (2017). God or country? Fusion with Judaism predicts desire for retaliation following Palestinian stabbing Intifada. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(8), 882 887. Freud, S. (1989). An outline of psycho-analysis. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company. Friedman, M., & Saroglou, V. (2010). Religiosity, psychological acculturation to the host culture, self-esteem and depressive symptoms among stigmatized and nonstigmatized religious immigrant groups in Western Europe. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32(2), 185 195. Freeman, M. A. (2003). Mapping multiple identities within the self-concept: Psychological constructions of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. Self and Identity, 2(1), 61 83. Furnham, A., & Ribchester, T. (1995). Tolerance of ambiguity: A review of the concept, its measurement and applications. Current Psychology, 14 (3), 179 199. George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning in life as comprehension, purpose, and mattering: Toward integration and new research questions. Review of General Psychology, 20, 205 220. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 298 302. Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189 1206. Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2013). Sacred values and cultural conflict. Advances in Culture and Psychology, 4, 273 301. Ginges, J., Hansen, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2009). Religion and support for suicide attacks. Psychological Science, 20(2), 224 230. Girard, R. (1989). The scapegoat. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Greco, V., & Roger, D. (2003). Uncertainty, stress, and health. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(6), 1057 1068. Gurkan, S. L. (2008). The Jews as a chosen people: Tradition and transformation. London & New York: Routledge. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 98 116. Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2010). Why don’t we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 126 139. Hayward, R. D., & Elliott, M. (2009). Fitting in with the flock: Social attractiveness as a mechanism for well-being in religious groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39(4), 592 607. Hayward, R. D., & Krause, N. (2014). Religion, mental health, and well-being: Social aspects. In V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior (pp. 255 280). New York and London: Psychology Press. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88 110. Henrich, J. (2004). Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 53 (1), 3 35. Herrmann, B., Tho¨ni, C., & Ga¨chter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319(5868), 1362 1367. Higgins, T. E. (2012). Beyond pleasure and pain: How motivation works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hitchens, C. (2012). The missionary position: Mother Teresa in theory and practice. London: Hachette UK. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw Hill. Hogg, M. A. (2000). Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Review of Social Psychology, 11(1), 223 255. Hogg, M. A., & Adelman, J. (2013). Uncertainty identity theory: Extreme groups, radical behavior, and authoritarian leadership. Journal of Social Issues, 69, 436 454. Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 72 83. Hogg, M. A., Kruglanski, A. W., & Van den Bos, K. (2013). Uncertainty and the roots of extremism. Journal of Social Issues, 69, 407 418. Hogg, M. A., Sherman, D. K., Dierselhuis, J., Maitner, A. T., & Moffitt, G. (2007). Uncertainty, entitativity, and group identification. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(1), 135 142. ´ ðinn, Valholl and the Einherjar. Eschatological myth and ideology in the Late Viking Period. In G. Steinsland, J. V. Hultga˚rd, A. (2011). O Sigurðsson, J. E. Rekdal, & I. Beuermann (Eds.), Ideology and power in the Viking and Middle Ages (pp. 297 328). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Hunsberger, B. (1995). Religion and prejudice: The role of religious fundamentalism, quest, and right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 51(2), 113 129. Hutsebaut, D. (1996). Post-Critical Belief a new approach to the religious attitude problem. Journal of Empirical Theology, 9(2), 48 66. Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385 392. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. New York and London: Longmans, Green. Jasko, K., Szastok, M., Grzymała-Moszczynska, J., Maj, M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2019). Rebel with a cause: Personal significance from political activism predicts willingness to self-sacrifice. Journal of Social Issues, 75(1), 314 349.

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

239

Johnson, M. K., Rowatt, W. C., Barnard-Brak, L. M., Patock-Peckham, J. A., LaBouff, J. P., & Carlisle, R. D. (2011). A mediational analysis of the role of right-wing authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in the religiosity prejudice link. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 851 856. Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., . . . Quirin, M. (2014). Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach. In J. Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 49, pp. 219 286). Burlington, VT: Academic Press. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14 (1), 37 48. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18 35. Kinnvall, C. (2004). Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the search for ontological security. Political Psychology, 25(5), 741 767. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1993). Fundamentalism, Christian orthodoxy, and intrinsic religious orientation as predictors of discriminatory attitudes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 256 268. Knyazev, G. G., Savostyanov, A. N., & Levin, E. A. (2005). Uncertainty, anxiety, and brain oscillations. Neuroscience Letters, 387(3), 121 125. Koenig, H. G., King, D. E., & Carson, V. B. (2012). Handbook of religion and health (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Korbatieh, S. (2018). Adultery laws in Islam and stoning in the modern world. Australian Journal of Islamic Studies, 3(2), 1 20. Kossowska, M., Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A., & Sekerdej, M. (2017). Many faces of dogmatism: Prejudice as a way of protecting certainty against value violators among dogmatic believers and atheists. British Journal of Psychology, 108(1), 127 147. Kossowska, M., & Sekerdej, M. (2015). Searching for certainty: Religious beliefs and intolerance toward value-violating groups. Personality and Individual Differences, 83, 72 76. Kossowska, M., Sekerdej, M. & Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A. (2017). Religia i nietolerancja. O przekonaniach religijnych podszytych le˛kiem i ich społecznych konsekwencjach [Religion and intolerance: Religious beliefs laced with anxiety and their social consequences].In W. J. Brzezi´nski (red.), Obcy i swoi. Psychologiczna natura stosunko´w mie˛dzygrupowych (s. 95 118). Pozna´n: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wydziału Nauk Społecznych UAM. Kossowska, M., Szumowska, E., Dragon, P., Ja´sko, K., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2018). Disparate roads to certainty processing strategy choices under need for closure. European Review of Social Psychology, 29, 161 211. Kossowska, M., Szwed, P., Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A., Sekerdej, M., & Wyczesany, M. (2017). From threat to relief: Expressing prejudice toward atheists as a self-regulatory strategy protecting the religious orthodox from threat. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 873. Kossowska, M., Szwed, P., Wronka, E., Czarnek, G., & Wyczesany, M. (2016). Anxiolytic function of fundamentalist beliefs: Neurocognitive evidence. Personality and Individual Differences, 101, 390 395. Krause, N. (2005). God-mediated control and psychological well-being in late life. Research on Aging, 27(2), 136 164. Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases. New York: Plenum. Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The psychology of closed mindedness. New York: Psychology Press. Kruglanski, A. W., Be´langer, J. J., Gelfand, M., Gunaratna, R., Hettiarachchi, M., & Sharvit, K. (2013). Terrorism—A (self) love story: Redirecting the significance quest can end violence. American Psychologist, 68(7), 559 575. Kruglanski, A. W., Chen, X., Dechesne, M., Fishman, S., & Orehek, E. (2009). Fully committed: Suicide bombers’ motivation and the quest for personal significance. Political Psychology, 30, 331 557. Kruglanski, A. W., Chernikova, M., Babush, M., Dugas, M., & Schumpe, B. M. (2015). The architecture of goal systems: Multifinality, equifinality, and counterfinality in means-end relations. Advances in Motivation Science, 2, 69 98. Kruglanski, A. W., Crenshaw, M., Post, J. M., & Victoroff, J. (2007). What should this fight be called? Metaphors of counterterrorism and their implications. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 8, 97 133. Kruglanski, A. W., Dechesne, M., Orehek, E., & Pierro, A. (2009). Three decades of lay epistemics: The why, how, and who of knowledge formation. European Review of Social Psychology, 20(1), 146 191, 2009. Kruglanski, A. W., Fernandez, J. F., Factor, A. R., & Szumowska, E. (2019). Cognitive mechanisms in violent extremism. Cognition, 116 123. Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., Be´langer, J. J., Sheveland, A., Hetiarachchi, M., & Gunaratna, R. (2014). The psychology of radicalization and deradicalization: How significance quest impacts violent extremism. Advances in Political Psychology, 35, 69 93. Kruglanski, A. W., Jasko, K., Webber, D., Chernikova, M., & Molinario, E. (2018). The making of violent extremists. Review of General Psychology, 22, 107 120. Kruglanski, A. W., & Orehek, E. (2012). The need for certainty as a psychological nexus for individuals and society. In M. A. Hogg, & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and the psychology of uncertainty (pp. 3 18). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing. Psychological Review, 103(2), 263 283. Kulwicki, A. D. (2002). The practice of honor crimes: A glimpse of domestic violence in the Arab world. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 23(1), 77 87. Laurin, K., & Kay, A. C. (2017). The motivational underpinnings of belief in God. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 56, 201 257. Laythe, B., Finkel, D., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2001). Predicting prejudice from religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism: A multipleregression approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(1), 1 10. Lewis, J. R. (Ed.), (2004). The Oxford handbook of new religious movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Le´vy-Bruhl, L. (1923). La mentalite´ primitive. Se´ance du 15 fe´vrier 1923. Bulletin de la Socie´te´ franc¸aise de Philosophie, 23, 17 48.

240

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. American Sociological Review, 75(6), 914 933. Maltby, J., Lewis, C. A., & Day, L. (1999). Religious orientation and psychological well-being: The role of the frequency of personal prayer. British Journal of Health Psychology, 4(4), 363 378. Marcos, S. (1992). Indigenous eroticism and colonial morality in Mexico: The confession manuals of New Spain. Numen, 39(2), 157 174. Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11, 531 545. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370 396. Mayer, J., & Siegler, E. (1999). “Our terrestrial journey is coming to an end”: The last voyage of the Solar Temple. Nova Religion: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 2(2), 172 196. McCann, S. J. (1999). Threatening times and fluctuations in American church memberships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(3), 325 336. McGregor, I., Nash, K., & Prentice, M. (2010). Reactive approach motivation (RAM) for religion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (1), 148 161. McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 472 488. McIntosh, D. N., Silver, R. C., & Wortman, C. B. (1993). Religion’s role in adjustment to a negative life event: Coping with the loss of a child. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 812 821. Melton, J. G. (2004). Perspective: Toward a definition of “New Religion”. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 8(1), 73 87. Merolla, J. L., Ramos, J. M., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2011). Authoritarianism, need for closure, and conditions of threat. In M. A. Hogg, & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and the psychology of uncertainty (pp. 212 227). Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Mills, J. P. (1935). The Naga headhunters of Assam: Notes on a lecture given to the Royal Central Asian Society on May 8, 1935. Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 22(3), 418 424. Muramoto, O. (2001). Bioethical aspects of the recent changes in the policy of refusal of blood by Jehovah’s Witnesses. British Medical Journal, 322 (7277), 37 39. Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Norenzayan, A. (2014). Does religion make people moral? Behaviour, 151(2 3), 365 384. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(2), 174 187. Olivola, C. Y., & Shafir, E. (2013). The martyrdom effect: When pain and effort increase prosocial contributions. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 26, 91 105. Otto R., The idea of the holy (Vol. 14), 1958, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Pancer, S. M., Jackson, L. M., Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M. W., & Lea, J. (1995). Religious orthodoxy and the complexity of thought about religious and nonreligious issues. Journal of Personality, 63(2), 213 232. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. New York: Guilford Press. Pargament, K. I., Magyar, G. M., & Murray-Swank, N. (2005). The sacred and the search for significance: Religion as a unique process. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 665 687. Pargament, K. I., Olsen, H., Reilly, B., Falgout, K., Ensing, D. S., & Van Haitsma, K. (1992). God help me (II): The relationship of religious orientations to religious coping with negative life events. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31, 504 513. Park, C. L. (2004). The notion of stress-related growth: Problems and prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 69 76. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257 301. Preston, J. L., Salomon, E., & Ritter, R. S. (2013). Religious prosociality: Personal, cognitive, and social factors. In V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior (pp. 190 215). New York and London: Psychology Press. Proulx, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). The five “A”s of meaning maintenance: Finding meaning in the theories of sense-making. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 317 335. Proulx, T., Heine, S. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2010). When is the unfamiliar the uncanny? Meaning affirmation after exposure to absurdist literature, humor, and art. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 817 829. Reiterman, T., & Jacobs, J. R. (1982). Raven: The untold story of the Reverend Jim Jones and his people. New York: EP Dutton. Richardson, J. T. (1995). Clinical and personality assessment of participants in new religions. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 5(3), 145 170. Runciman, S. (1987). A history of the Crusades: The First Crusade and the foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sageman, M. (2004). Understanding terror networks. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sales, S. M. (1973). Threat as a factor in authoritarianism: An analysis of archival data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 44 57. Saliba, J. A. (2003). Understanding new religious movements. Boulder, CO: AltaMira Press. Saroglou, V. (2002). Beyond dogmatism: The need for closure as related to religion. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 5(2), 183 194.

Truth and significance: a 3N model (needs, narratives, networks) perspective on religion Chapter | 16

241

Saroglou, V. (2014). Introduction: Studying religion in personality and social psychology. In V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior (pp. 11 45). New York and London: Psychology Press. Sekerdej, M., Kossowska, M., & Czernatowicz-Kukuczka, A. (2018). Uncertainty and prejudice: The role of religiosity in shaping group attitudes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(2), O91 O102. Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803 809. Shariff, A. F., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2010). The birth of high gods: How the cultural evolution of supernatural policing agents influenced the emergence of complex, cooperative human societies, paving the way for civilization. In M. Schaller, A. Norenzayan, S. J. Heine, T. Yamaguishi, & T. Kameda (Eds.), Evolution, culture and the human mind (pp. 119 136). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sheikh, H., Ginges, J., Coman, A., & Atran, S. (2012). Religion, group threat and sacred values. Judgment and Decision Making, 7(2), 110 118. Silberman, I. (2005). Religion as a meaning system: Implications for the new millennium. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 641 663. Sitwell, S. (1965). Monks, nuns and monasteries. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Soderstrom, D., & Wright, E. W. (1977). Religious orientation and meaning in life. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 33(S1), 65 68. Stark, R., Iannaccone, L. R., & Finke, R. (1996). Religion, science, and rationality. The American Economic Review, 86(2), 433 437. Steger, M. F., Oishi, S., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Meaning in life across the life span: Levels and correlates of meaning in life from emerging adulthood to older adulthood. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 43 52. Stephan, K., & Stephan, G. (1973). Religion and the survival of utopian communities. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 12(1), 89 100. Stoczkowski, W. (1999). Des hommes, des Dieux et des extraterrestres. Ethnologie d’une croyance moderne. Paris, France: Flammarion. Summers-Effler, E. (2006). Ritual theory. In J. H. Turner, & J. E. Stet (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of emotions (135 154). Boston, MA: Springer. Swann, W. B., Jr. (2012). Self-verification theory. In P. Van Lang, A. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 23 42). London: Sage. Swann, W. B., Jr., & Buhrmester, M. D. (2015). Identity fusion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 52 57. ´ ., Whitehouse, H., & Bastian, B. (2012). When group membership gets personal: A theory of identity fusion. Swann, W. B., Jr., Jetten, J., Go´mez, A Psychological Review, 119(3), 441 456. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin, & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33 47). Monterey, CA: Brooks Cole. Thurow, J. C. (2013). Does cognitive science show belief in god to be irrational? The epistemic consequences of the cognitive science of religion. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74(1), 77 98. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288 1300. Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1 60). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Vel, J. A. (2001). Tribal battle in a remote island: Crisis and violence in Sumba (Eastern Indonesia). Indonesia, 72, 141 158. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2007). National (dis)identification and ethnic and religious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(10), 1448 1462. Webber, D., Babush, M., Schori-Eyal, N., Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, A., Hettiarachchi, M., Be´langer, J. J., . . . Gelfand, M. J. (2018). The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 270 285. Webber, D., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2018). The social psychological makings of a terrorist. Current Opinion in Psychology, 19, 131 134. Weber, M. (2005). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London & New York: Routledge. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (6), 1049 1062. Webster, H. (1908). Primitive secret societies: A study in early politics and religion. New York: Macmillan. White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66, 297 333. Wink, P., Dillon, M., & Larsen, B. (2005). Religion as moderator of the depression-health connection: Findings from a longitudinal study. Research on Aging, 27(2), 197 220. Wulff, D. M. (1991). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary views. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Yilmaz, O., & Bahcekapili, H. G. (2015). Without God, everything is permitted? The reciprocal influence of religious and meta-ethical beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 95 100. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60 71.

Further reading Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193 209. Bar-Tal, D. (1990). Causes and consequences of delegitimation: Models of conflict and ethnocentrism. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 65 81. Bar-Tal, D. (2011). Intergroup conflicts and their resolution: Social psychological perspective. New York: Psychology Press.

242

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Fuller, S. S., Endress, M. P., & Johnson, J. E. (1978). The effects of cognitive and behavioral control on coping with an aversive health examination. Journal of Human Stress, 4(4), 18 25. Hayward, R. D., & Elliott, M. (2011). Subjective and objective fit in religious congregations: Implications for well-being. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14(1), 127 139. Kossowska, M., Dragon, P., & Bukowski, M. (2015). When need for closure leads to positive attitudes towards a negatively stereotyped outgroup. Motivation & Emotion, 1, 88 98. Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., & Gunaratna, R. (2012). Terrorism as means to an end: How political violence bestows significance. In P. R. Shaver, & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 203 212). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pedahzur, A. (2005). Suicide terrorism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Piazza, J. (2012). “If you love me keep my commandments”: Religiosity increases preference for rule-based moral arguments. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22(4), 285 302. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 816 827. Zuckerman, P. (2013). Atheism and societal health. In S. Bullivant, & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of atheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 17

Existential uncertainty and religion Holly R. Engstrom and Kristin Laurin University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

On the CBS show Living Biblically, when Chip (the protagonist) is feeling uncertain about his life and is searching for a book to help him, the Bible miraculously appears in front of him, and he decides to solve his problem by living his life in literal accordance with the rules in the Bible (Ackerman, 2018). The Brothers Karamazov echoes the theme that religious beliefs can help people cope with existential uncertainties: One of the titular characters tells a parable wherein the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition explains to Jesus that people look to religion for concrete answers and rules to obey, and that, “man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born” (Dostoevsky, 1880, p. 280). Real-life anecdotes also align with this idea: When Lisa Kohn, a former Moonie cult member, was asked why people join cults, she said that “Overall, we have a need for “meaning” or “understanding.” We want to believe in something. . . and we, in general, want to have a reason for being or purpose,” and that being in a cult gives people “the surety of ‘knowing the truth’” (McKenna, 2018). Modern television, classic literature, and fringe cult members all tell us that religious beliefs can help people cope when they feel overwhelmed by uncertainty. Should we believe them? Psychological science says yes (e.g., Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010; Jost et al., 2014; Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; McGregor, Haji, Nash, & Teper, 2008; Vail et al., 2010; van den Bos, 2009). Indeed, people tend to become more religious when faced with many kinds of existential threats, such as a reminder of death, a lack of necessities for survival, or an outbreak of Ebola (Arrowood et al., 2017; Jong, Halberstadt, & Bluemke, 2012; Norris & Inglehart, 2011). In this chapter, we focus on the existential threat of uncertainty and explore its psychological relationship with different aspects of religious belief. People tend to find uncertainty aversive or even traumatic, instead preferring structure and order (Antonovsky, 1979; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Kruglanski, 1990; Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006; Lerner, 1980; Pennebaker & Stone, 2004). One reason why people find uncertainty so upsetting is that it threatens their ability to make sense of their own existence. People want to see themselves and their world as meaningful—that is, they want to see coherent relationships between “elements of their external world, elements of the self, and. . . the self [and] the external world” (Heine et al., 2006, p. 89). Feeling uncertain about what will happen next implies that one lacks understanding of how events in the external world are related, and feeling uncertain about one’s own identity implies that one lacks of understanding of how elements within oneself form a coherent whole. In either case, uncertainty is an existential threat to people’s ability to see meaning. But the threat of uncertainty is impossible to avoid completely. People routinely encounter reminders that the world is not necessarily an orderly and predictable place: Loved ones die in unexpected accidents, friends fight while rivals reconcile, the sun shines when it was expected to rain, and we ourselves behave in ways inconsistent with our own attitudes. Each of these experiences reminds us that our lives are filled with considerable uncertainty. There are many ways to alleviate the aversive feelings that stem from this uncertainty. For example, people may attempt to perceive structure and order even in a visually chaotic scene (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), or they may turn their attention to thoughts or situations they feel more certain about (Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015; van den Bos & Lind, 2002; van den Bos, Poortvliet, Maas, Miedema, & van den Ham, 2005). Most relevant to our purposes, one predominant way that people address their feelings of uncertainty is to turn to religion (Kay et al., 2008; Kay, Moscovitch, & Laurin, 2010; Kay, Shepherd, Blatz, Chua, & Galinsky, 2010; Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008; McGregor et al., 2008; McGregor, Nash, & Prentice, 2012; Rutjens, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2010; van den Bos, van Ameijde, & van Gorp, 2006). The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00018-4 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

243

244

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

What is religion, and what is uncertainty? Religion The term religion can refer to a staggering variety of thoughts and actions across a wide array of historical and cultural contexts, all relating in some way to a “what humans do in reference to what they consider as (an external) transcendence” (Saroglou, 2011, p. 1321). Attesting to this variety, different scholars provide markedly different definitions for religion—contrasting perspectives that are undoubtedly represented within this very volume. In this chapter, we focus on religious beliefs. Religious beliefs often involve beliefs in entities that range from human-like god(s) to impersonal forces and generally share an emphasis on how transcendent being(s) or force(s) interact with humans and the earth. The belief that there is something beyond the physical world of humans—be it deities like gods or demons, spiritual realms like heaven or hell, or consciousness that lasts after death—is an important component of virtually all religions (Jones & Eliade, 2005). Religious beliefs also often include beliefs about which moral values should guide how one behaves (e.g., McCullough & Willoughby, 2009; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008; Stark & Bainbridge, 2013). Religious standards for morality tend to be higher than secular standards (Saroglou, 2013) and place a stronger emphasis on respect for sanctity, authority, and loyalty (Graham & Haidt, 2010).

Uncertainty Uncertainty comes in two different flavors: Informational and personal.

Informational uncertainty Informational uncertainty involves feeling that “one’s own level of understanding is such that one cannot say for sure what will happen” (van den Bos & Lind, 2002, p. 4). The core of informational uncertainty is a sense that one cannot perfectly predict future events; one of the reasons it is threatening is that it makes it difficult for people to decide how they should behave (Kay, Laurin, Fitzsimons, & Landau, 2014; Landau et al., 2015). For example, without internet access or watching the news, it might be difficult to predict tomorrow’s weather in a given destination, so we might feel uncertain about whether we should pack a snowsuit or a swimsuit for our upcoming vacation. Social situations can also elicit this type of uncertainty: We might wonder whether another person’s behavior signifies that they genuinely share interests with us, or simply that they are trying to curry favor, so we might feel uncertain about whether we should ask them out on a date or merely to do our paperwork.

Personal uncertainty Personal uncertainty is when people feel uncertain of their own thoughts, behaviors, and experiences (van den Bos, 2009). This type of uncertainty is thought to be especially upsetting and aversive because it involves confusion around a deeply personal and important issue: Someone experiencing personal uncertainty might find herself wondering, “Who am I, really?” Adolescents may search for the answer to this question by trying on different clothing styles and social groups, perhaps going through a straight-A student phase, a rebellious skateboarding phase, and an apathetic stoner phase, in an effort to see which identity feels the truest. Personal uncertainty can also occur when people see instability or inconsistencies between their thoughts, behaviors, and experiences. For example, a person who feels compassion toward cows but also enjoys eating beef jerky may feel some personal uncertainty about their true feelings toward animals, meat, and morality, and search for ways to resolve this issue, perhaps choosing to believe that cows lack the mental capacity to suffer even when spending their lives in factory farms before being slaughtered for jerky (Bastian, Loughnan, Haslam, & Radke, 2012).

Putting the two together There are individual differences in people’s tendency to experience uncertainty, and in their tolerance for it (e.g., Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), and there are situational factors that moderate uncertainty (e.g., Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010; McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2009; van den Bos et al., 2006). In this chapter, we focus primarily on situational factors that create informational and/or personal uncertainty, and on people’s responses to this uncertainty as they pertain to religion. Many situations incite both informational and personal uncertainty. For example, when faced with a decision about who to vote for in an upcoming election, people may experience informational uncertainty about what the candidates’ true values and policy positions really are. If so, they may feel

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

245

uncertain about who to vote for, because they lack the relevant information. But they may also experience personal uncertainty about their own true values, or their feelings toward various policy positions. In other words, whereas informational uncertainty might make people unsure of who to vote for because they feel they lack relevant information, personal uncertainty might make them feel unsure of who to vote for despite having all the relevant information. Understanding what type(s) of uncertainty are elicited by a particular situation, and how this predicts the way in which people use religion to address that uncertainty, will allow us to create a more detailed map of the relationship between uncertainty and religion. That being said, our discussion will not touch on informational uncertainty that is completely personally irrelevant. This kind of uncertainty exists—a person might be uncertain about what the weather in a faraway country will be tomorrow (while having no immediate travel plans), how tall a mountain is (while having no urge to climb it), or how an imaginary person in a vignette feels (while having no burning desire to perform appropriately in a psychology study). But this type of uncertainty is typically one that people find unimportant and not particularly aversive, when compared to personally relevant uncertainty, and is likely not sufficiently upsetting or anxiety-provoking to instigate fundamental changes in most people’s deeply held religious convictions (van den Bos, 2009).

Why does religion help people deal with uncertainty? Four major theories provide explanations, directly or indirectly, for why religion might help people deal with uncertainty: uncertainty-identity (Hogg, 2007), reactive approach motivation (McGregor, Nash, & Prentice, 2010), compensatory control (Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009), and system-justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost et al., 2014). All begin with the premise that uncertainty is generally aversive and induces anxious arousal and conclude that religious beliefs are one particularly effective or common way to cope with this experience; each, however, deals with a different prototypical instantiation of uncertainty. Table 17.1 summarizes these theories.

TABLE 17.1 Theories connecting religion and uncertainty. Type of uncertainty

Why this uncertainty is aversive

Processes to reduce uncertainty

Why religion reduces uncertainty

Uncertaintyidentity

Personal: Being unsure of one’s feelings, beliefs, and how one should behave

Difficulty planning what to think/do/believe and predicting what others will do

Identify more strongly with groups, especially entitative (e.g., fundamentalist) ones, thus depersonalizing the self and others and providing consensual validation

Religious beliefs promote depersonalization and consensual validation, increasing group entitativity

Reactive approach motivation

Informational: Trying to pursue a goal but seeing that there are obstacles that make it unclear whether this goal can be achieved

Difficulty predicting whether you will achieve the goal, and whether it is worth trying

Turn to pursuing a different goal, especially one that can be pursued indefinitely and internally, thus inhibiting thoughts of the original goal

Religious beliefs can be pursued both indefinitely and internally

Compensatory control

Informational: Being worried that the world operates in a random, unpredictable way

Difficulty planning and predicting life outcomes

Emphasize/exaggerate personal or external control, restoring an overall sense that the world is under the control of predictable agents

Religious beliefs can provide general feelings of (personal or external) control through specific ideologies

System justification

Personal: Internal conflict between being complicit in/ dependent on a system, and seeing that system as unpredictable, illegitimate, or unfair

Dissonance between one’s behavior and opinions

Justify and legitimize the current system such that one perceives it as good, fair, and stable

Religious beliefs can justify and legitimize the current system through specific ideologies

246

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Uncertainty-identity theory We begin by describing uncertainty-identity theory, which addresses a very broad conceptualization of uncertainty.

Identifying with social groups helps alleviate uncertainty This theoretical perspective concerns situations when people experience doubts and uncertainty about “who they are, what they should think, how they should behave, and how others will perceive and treat them” (Hogg et al., 2010, p. 72). Although this definition involves elements of informational uncertainty (e.g., about the treatment one can expect from others), it is largely centered on personal uncertainty (i.e., about who one is, or what one thinks, feels, or wants to do). This theory further postulates that one of the most common and effective ways of reducing these uncertainties is to identify with social groups (Hogg, 2007). Identifying with social groups helps resolve uncertainty in two ways. First, identifying with a social group leads people to depersonalize their own behavior and perceptions, meaning that they see themselves less in individual terms and more in terms of the ingroup prototype (Hogg et al., 2010). This prototype includes prescriptive and descriptive norms about how people should think, act, and interact with one another. In other words, depersonalization helps resolve both kinds of uncertainty included within the bounds of uncertainty identity theory. It relieves the primary personal uncertainty by providing people with a prototype for their own self, offering clear guidelines about what they should believe and how they should act, and it relieves the secondary informational uncertainty by providing ingroup and outgroup prototypes people can apply to others and thereby deduce how these others will likely treat them. The second consequence of identifying with a social group is that it provides consensual validation for people’s self- and worldviews, by ensuring that these are shared by other ingroup members. Consensual validation reduces personal uncertainty by helping people feel that they need not wonder about who they are, what they should think, how they should see the world, and how they should behave—after all, the group’s answers to those questions are shared by all and therefore obviously correct. To a lesser degree, consensual validation may also help one to reduce informational uncertainty, to the extent that the group’s beliefs predict the future or explain how the world works.

Entitative groups are especially good at alleviating uncertainty Depersonalization and consensual validation both operate to a larger extent in groups that are highly entitative—that is, groups with clear boundaries and internal structure, common goals, internal homogeneity, and so on: Groups that are “groupy” (Campbell, 1958; Hamilton & Sherman, 1996; Hogg & Adelman, 2013). For example, a highly entitative workplace might have norms for arriving precisely at 9 a.m. and leaving precisely at 5 p.m., clear rules for interacting with individuals at different levels of the organizational hierarchy, and a common goal to create a single high-quality product. In contrast, a less entitative workplace might be one where people arrive and leave when they want, treat all their colleagues similarly regardless of their position, and work individually on creative projects that interest them personally. This latter workplace might hold the appeal of familiarity for academics reading this chapter; nevertheless, the former, more entitative, workplace is the one that gives people clear, unambiguous guidance on what to think and how to behave, thereby reducing their uncertainty about these issues (Hogg, Sherman, Dierselhuis, Maitner, & Moffitt, 2007; Sherman, Hogg, & Maitner, 2009). For this reason, groups like these become more appealing in the presence of uncertainty (Hogg & Adelman, 2013).

Why are religions useful? Religious groups often provide both depersonalization and consensual validation, making them good at reducing uncertainty, and therefore appealing to people experiencing uncertainty. Depersonalization occurs when people can see themselves less as individuals and more in terms of a clear ingroup prototype; religious groups can provide such a prototype. They often tell adherents what to do, think, and feel, for example, dictating rules about what is appropriate to wear, what to believe about how the universe was created, and what one should do if faced with immoral temptation. Moreover, these rules are usually consensually validated by the rest of the religious group, who share faith that they are correct. This shared belief appears less fallible than a belief that one holds alone, as an individual. Finally, to the extent that the rules dictated by religious beliefs are strong—as they are in fundamentalist or orthodox religious groups (McDonough, 2005)—both the depersonalization and the consensual validation are correspondingly strong.

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

247

Fundamentalist religious groups tend to both provide a very detailed template for adherents to follow and discourage dissent, thereby ensuring at least the appearance of shared belief. Indeed, when people feel uncertain, they do prefer these kinds of highly entitative religious groups. For example, religious people made to feel uncertain preferred orthodox religious leaders over moderate ones (Blagg & Hogg, 2009; cited in Hogg et al., 2010) and reacted more harshly toward those who question religious tenets and thereby threaten the group’s consensual agreement on those tenets (van den Bos et al., 2006). In some cases, these entitative, orthodox, or fundamentalist groups turn to extremism: Viewing one’s ideology as absolutely true implies that following this ideology or imposing it on others is justifiable or even necessary—even if doing so requires violent, extreme action (Pratt, 2010). Thus, because uncertainty leads people toward fundamentalist groups, it likely also leads them toward extremist actions in the name of those groups. Supporting this idea, among suspected Islamic militants imprisoned in the Philippines, those with higher dispositional uncertainty espoused more extremist beliefs about correct behavior, endorsing more statements like “True Muslims must listen to the instructions of religious leaders and obey them without question” (Webber et al., 2018). And, when uncertainty was high, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims both supported more violent actions against their respective outgroups (Hogg & Adelman, 2013). These findings imply that, when uncertainty is high, people may be more attracted to entitative religious groups that promote highly structured rules for behavior and belief in the absolute moral righteousness and superiority of the group (Savage & Liht, 2008). But some religions tolerate a good deal of dissent and debate, such as many Unitarian Universalist churches, which even seem to foster uncertainty, actively dissuading their members from blindly agreeing with the minister (Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Waynesboro, 2018). These less entitative religions may become less appealing when people feel a lot of uncertainty from other sources and may instead be particularly appealing to individuals with a quest orientation for religion (Batson, 1976), who have a higher tolerance for uncertainty (Batson & Raynor-Prince, 1983; Ladd, 2007).

Reactive approach motivation theory A second theoretical perspective focuses on a much more narrow and specific instantiation of uncertainty: Informational uncertainty about whether one will be able to achieve a desired goal (McGregor et al., 2009; McGregor, Nash, Mann, & Phillips, 2010).

Uncertainty related to goal pursuit is anxiety-inducing Reactive approach motivation theory concerns situations where an individual is attempting to approach a desired goal but is uncertain about whether she will be able to achieve that goal. The resulting anxious arousal that this theory postulates comes from informational uncertainty: The individual cannot predict if she will be able to reach her goal. For example, a budding thespian might be highly motivated to build a career on the stage, but uncertain that the directors will cast her in an upcoming production or that she can support herself in New York on a waitressing salary as she waits for the next audition. This uncertainty is largely informational: It focuses on doubt and confusion surrounding whether the director will like her audition, how much money a waitress can make in tips, or how her acting skills compare to those of the other aspiring thespians. This informational uncertainty may make people question how they should behave, specifically, whether they should continue to pursue the goal or give up entirely. Secondarily, this informational uncertainty may lead to some personal uncertainty, if people question the conflict between their desire to achieve a goal and the knowledge that it is going to be difficult to achieve: Am I good enough to achieve this goal? Do I really want to achieve it?

Zealously approaching a different goal can quell this anxiety The theory further states that one primary way of assuaging the anxiety that arises from goal-related uncertainty is to approach a different, unimpeded goal. This alternative goal may be completely unrelated to the threatened one. For example, our thespian may deal with her career-related anxiety by focusing on improving her soccer skills, or on cleaning her apartment. To optimally reduce anxiety, people suffering from goal-related uncertainty must approach their alternative goal zealously, eagerly, and compulsively, like rats “running so eagerly on a wheel that they starve to death” (McGregor, Nash, Mann, et al., 2010, p. 133). This is because actively approaching a new goal constrains people’s attention to information relevant only to the new goal (Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008). Thus, actively approaching an alternative

248

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

goal induces people to cognitively inhibit concerns unrelated to this new goal, which includes their thoughts of uncertainty surrounding the previous goal (Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsh, & Nash, 2009). While sprinting around the soccer field or scouring her kitchen, the thespian is absorbed in the task at hand and is paying attention only to that new goal (possibly, in the soccer case, literally to scoring new goals), rather than to her anxiety-provoking career uncertainty.1

Why are religions useful? Reactive approach motivation scholars have noted two reasons why religious goals might be especially well suited to serve as alternative goals for people faced with goal-related uncertainty (McGregor et al., 2010). First, many religious goals can be pursued largely in the individual’s mind, meaning that they are less subject to the kinds of obstacles and frustrations that plague concrete, finite goals. That is, although one may run out of cleaning supplies, or soccer games may be canceled, no external obstacle can fully block one’s pursuit of stronger faith. Of course, some external events (like followers of other religions, or skeptical friends) may sometimes challenge people’s faith, but they cannot physically prevent people from mentally committing to their beliefs. Moreover, religious people may view these challenges as being sent by a higher power to test their faith, such that these obstacles can actually reinforce this faith rather than damage it (Bearon & Koenig, 1990). Second, religious goals tend not to be finite—there usually is no end state where one is completely, perfectly committed to one’s religion. Most religious people experience some doubts about their beliefs (Henrie & Patrick, 2014; Krause, 2014; Smith & Denton, 2003). This means that for most religious people, it is almost always possible to increase the strength of their belief. Thus, when they are confronted with uncertainty about their worldly goals, they can respond by pursuing increasing faith in the tenets of their religion. Furthermore, even if someone reaches the highest possible confidence in their religious beliefs, that state may require ongoing effort to maintain (e.g., Exline, 2002), for example, by avoiding thoughts or real-world events that call any aspect of it into question. Accordingly, maintaining or increasing one’s religious belief is a goal almost anyone can work on indefinitely. Thus, ideal targets of reactive approach motivation are goals that can be pursued solely in one’s own mind, and that can be pursued indefinitely. There are of course many goals that can meet these criteria, but religious goals tend to fit particularly well. Increasing one’s religious commitment can be pursued indefinitely, whenever uncertainty recurs, and with little threat of external obstacles blocking this pursuit. If our thespian alleviates her anxiety by cleaning her house, or playing soccer, that may only serve as a short-term fix: Once the house is clean or the game is over, her anxiety will rise again. By contrast, she could spend her entire life striving to become a more pious person and return to that goal any time she feels any angst about her acting prospects. If instead she decided to spend her entire life striving to be a better soccer player, she would likely run into trouble when she discovered that it costs money, time, and knee health to do so, or when she runs into the inevitability of an aging body. Mentally pursuing religious ideals likely comes at a lower price and can be sustained across the lifespan. Indeed, people do increasingly commit to their religious beliefs when they are experiencing uncertainty about their goals (McGregor et al., 2010). For example, undergraduates who were made to feel uncertain about their ability to achieve their academic goals, compared to those who were not made to feel uncertain, were more likely to endorse statements like “I am confident in my belief system” and “My belief system is grounded in objective truth.” Moreover, this uncertainty-driven pursuit of religious ideals is zealous, single-minded, and ferocious, as predicted by reactive approach motivation. For example, in the same study, uncertain undergraduates also said they would be more willing to take extreme action to defend their beliefs, for example, agreeing that “If it came down to it, I would sacrifice my life to defend my belief system.” Similarly, people who feel uncertain are more willing to harshly denigrate those who disagree with their beliefs, perhaps because doing so helps people feel more committed to their beliefs. For example, (nonMuslim) participants who wrote about a currently unresolved relationship dilemma that they were facing were more likely to denigrate Islam, agreeing that it is a cult and that it promotes terrorism, compared to participants who wrote about a relationship dilemma that a friend was facing (McGregor et al., 2008). Although these studies induce uncertainty about one’s goals, whereas uncertainty-identity theory studies induce personal uncertainty, people’s responses are remarkably similar: In both cases, people who feel uncertain denigrate religious outgroups and endorse extreme action to defend their beliefs. 1. This goal-switching can sometimes be adaptive: Our thespian may genuinely need to work on her soccer skills or clean her apartment as much as she needs to find a career, or accomplishing goals about which she feels certain may give her the confidence she needs to feel less uncertain about her original goal. But this kind of goal-switching may other times simply be palliative: To temporarily help avoid stressful thoughts of her acting career.

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

249

Compensatory control theory A third theoretical perspective, compensatory control theory (Kay et al., 2008; Kay et al., 2009), addresses people’s fluctuating concerns that the world may operate in a random, haphazard, unpredictable way.

Personal and external control reassure people that the world is orderly According to this theory, people need to believe that the world operates in a systematic and predictable manner. People can fulfill this overarching need by believing that the world is under the control of one or more benevolent agents. This agent can be the self or some external force like powerful gods or stable governments. Most people’s default tendency is to satisfy this need through a combination of beliefs in their own personal control and beliefs about external control. This means that threatening an individual’s sense of personal control can increase their anxiety that the world is uncertain and random. This anxiety is linked with informational uncertainty: It makes people realize that future events are unpredictable and that they do not know what will happen, either to them or in the world at large. People can respond to these threats by increasing their reliance on sources of external control, thus reestablishing a sense of predictability and structure and alleviating their anxiety. One important source of external control is the concept of god(s). Believing that a powerful god is actively managing events in the world can compensate for lack of personal control and restore a sense of certainty, predictability, and order.

Why are religions useful? Compensatory control theory contends that believing in powerful gods is one source of external control that can restore people’s sense of order. Specifically, believing in powerful supernatural deities that can intervene in worldly affairs helps people reestablish control and reduce the informational uncertainty associated with lacking personal control. For example, when participants’ personal control was threatened by thinking about a recent event over which they did not have control, they were more likely to agree that it was feasible that God was in control of the universe, compared to participants who thought about an event over which they did have control (Kay et al., 2008). This personal control threat did not affect belief that God had created the universe, suggesting that losing personal control triggered a specific type of informational uncertainty: uncertainty about control and structure in the universe. This specific type of informational uncertainty triggered a correspondingly specific religious belief that God controls and structures the universe. To effectively reduce uncertainty, this belief must be that this god (or gods, or supernatural forces) controls the world in logical and predictable ways. Feeling that God controls the world in “mysterious ways” that are presumably unknowable is less effective in reestablishing people’s feelings of structure (Landau, Khenfer, Keefer, Swanson, & Kay, 2018). In addition, belief in supernatural control is more likely to occur when other potential sources of external control such as the government are not effectively providing structure and order (e.g., because they are unstable; Kay, Shepherd, et al., 2010), and some research suggests it is indeed critically mediated by the experience of anxiety triggered by thoughts of randomness or low personal control (Kay, Moscovitch, et al., 2010; Laurin et al., 2008).

System-justification theory The final theoretical perspective we consider here is system-justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), which addresses people’s concerns about the fairness and rightness of the social, economic, and political systems in which they live.

Construing the system in a negative light causes dissonance Most people abide by laws created and sustained by political systems, adhere to the rules and norms of their place of school or work, buy products and hold jobs that are part of an economic system, and so on. In other words, most people are—at least in some way—dependent on and complicit in the systems that surround them. Given this dependence and complicity, perceiving that the system may be illegitimate, unfair, or unpredictable is likely upsetting and guilt- or anxiety-provoking. This can be understood as a form of personal uncertainty, wherein people’s behaviors conflict with their perceptions and beliefs. If a person sees the system as harmful, unfair, or capricious, but at the same time she depends on and supports that system, this may cause her to question what she really thinks about that system. Who is she, if she both supports this system and sees it as unfair? For example, Michael may have observed that at the

250

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

company where he has worked for a decade, highly competent women tend to remain in entry-level positions. This poses an existential problem: He has observed that his company may discriminate against women, but at the same time he has supported that same company by working for it for years. How can he reconcile these facts and preserve his sense of himself as a coherent and unified person?

Reconstruing the system in a more positive light reduces dissonance One way to reduce this uncertainty would be to try to change to the system, but this would be extremely difficult, likely beyond the means of any individual person experiencing the uncertainty. Unless he is an extreme narcissist, Michael probably does not believe that he, on his own, could change the culture of his company with respect to gender stereotypes. Moreover, trying to do so would mean introducing more uncertainty, in the form of “the uncertain prospect of social change” (Jost & Hunyady, 2005, p. 262). Instead, many people reduce uncertainty by rationalizing their system: They twist their perceptions or attitudes to create better alignment between their tacit support of the system and their evaluation of its goodness. For example, Michael might make himself feel better about his continued support for his apparently sexist company by deciding that women are likely to have children and be less committed to their job, and that these choices explain why they remain unpromoted in spite of their on-paper qualifications. These kinds of mental gymnastics allow people to reduce cognitive dissonance between the idea that they depend on and are complicit in the system and the idea that the system is unfair.

Why are religions useful? Many religions offer a set of beliefs that portray the social, economic, and political systems as fair, predictable, and legitimate. For example, the Hindu belief in karma and reincarnation (White, Baimel, & Norenzayan, 2017) may promote the idea that individuals deserve their status in life, while encouraging people to believe that if they live properly, they will be rewarded in their next life (Cotterill, Sidanius, Bhardwaj, & Kumar, 2014; Weber, 1968). Similarly, the Judeo-Christian Bible contains many divine ordinations of status differences, for example, between men and women (e.g., “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord”; Ephesians 5:22, English Standard Version), between slaves and slaveowners (e.g., “Slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything”; Titus 2:9), and between the rich and poor (e.g., “The Lord makes poor and rich; He brings low, he also exalts”; 1 Samuel 2:7). Among most religious people, it is the norm to believe in these kinds of system-justifying ideologies (Jost et al., 2014). Thus people can feel that these doctrines are sensible and right, because they are shared by many other people. Embracing these shared, normative religious doctrines ultimately makes people feel good about the social, political, and economic status quo that the doctrines portray as right and good (Jost et al., 2014; Shepherd, Eibach, & Kay, 2017). Many of these doctrines provide mechanisms by which immanent justice can occur, when supernatural forces cause one’s life outcomes to align with one’s moral actions or character (Callan, Sutton, Harvey, & Dawtry, 2014). For example, the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation suggests that if a person has low status in this life, this means that in their previous life, they did not try hard enough to transcend material reality, or they engaged in too many immoral, self-interested actions (Sharma, 1990). Similarly, the Bible is replete with examples of people who commit immoral actions and are punished by God, for example, through plagues, poverty, or being sold into slavery. The idea that negative outcomes can be caused by supernatural punishment is not limited to major world religions. For example, in Yasawa Island, Fiji, many people believe that ancestor gods (Kalou-vu) punish moral violations with disease and bad luck (McNamara, Norenzayan, & Henrich, 2016). These supernatural mechanisms allow religious adherents to explain away unfair outcomes, instead seeing them as legitimately caused by someone’s previous moral or immoral deeds. Another religious belief that can preserve perceptions that the system is fair and predictable is belief in ultimate justice, when people are compensated for positive or negative events that befall them through no fault of their own. The prototypical case is someone coming to see their life as more meaningful and fulfilling as a result of their suffering. For example, in the Bible, Job undergoes hardship and suffering because of God’s tests but knows that he will ultimately be compensated; “When [God] has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). Consistent with the idea that religious beliefs can help people legitimize injustices in their world, religious individuals explain victims’ outcomes in terms of both immanent and ultimate justice more than nonreligious individuals do (Harvey & Callan, 2014).

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

251

Integrating the four perspectives The four theoretical perspectives outlined above involve wide varieties of conceptualizations of uncertainty and of means by which religious beliefs reduce uncertainty. What do they, as a combined set, tell us about the relationship between uncertainty and religion?

How is each type of uncertainty alleviated by religion? We begin integrating across each of the perspectives we outlined above by considering separately how religious beliefs alleviate each type of uncertainty: Informational and personal.

Informational uncertainty: the purview of reactive approach motivation and compensatory control Compensatory control focuses broadly on the feelings of uncertainty engendered by lacking personal control; reactive approach motivation focuses on uncertainty surrounding a person’s ability to achieve a specific goal. In other words, these two theories relate primarily to uncertainty surrounding whether one’s actions will reliably translate into their intended results. These theories also highlight broadly similar responses to uncertainty. On the face of it, believing in supernatural control (as in compensatory control) and focusing on different goals (as in reactive approach motivation) seem to be radically different responses. However, consider the intimate connection between personal control and goal pursuit (e.g., Laurin & Kay, 2017; Shell & Husman, 2001; Stipek & Weisz, 1981). Reactive approach motivation describes the behavior of people whose current goals are frustrated—that is, who lack control over the outcome of their goals. This act of transposing one’s motivation away from frustrated (i.e., uncontrollable) goals onto ones that can be pursued mentally (i.e., that are not subject to external constraints) could be translated into the language of compensatory control. When external obstacles threaten the personal control people feel over a particular goal, they reaffirm, in a compensatory manner, their personal control in another area, zealously pursuing an unrelated goal to demonstrate their power to accomplish desired ends with their actions. In the case of our earlier example about an aspiring thespian, her uncertainty about whether she will be able to accomplish her goal to make it on Broadway could also be interpreted as a threat to her personal control. If she feels that her ability to build an acting career is completely out of her hands, she lacks control over whether she will be able to accomplish this important personal goal. Thus she might reassert her control by pursuing other goals over which she does have control, like zealously increasing her religious faith, but she might also respond by looking to external sources of control, like gods, that can reassure her that acting careers are not distributed capriciously but instead are handed out in an orderly fashion to those who deserve it. (Of course, she could alternatively decide to bolster her faith in other more worldly external agents, like the casting director, but she may find it easier to believe that God, not the director, has the kind of infallibility, logic, and predictability that makes external agents of control especially reassuring.) Once she is reassured that she, or some fair external agent, is in control, this should help her to feel confident that she can in fact accomplish desired ends. Indeed, one consequence of many compensatory responses to control threats is that they reassure people that they can accomplish their goals, especially when they are in need of such reassurance (Khenfer, Laurin, Tafani, Roux, & Kay, 2017; Khenfer, Roux, Tafani, & Laurin, 2017; Landau et al., 2018). In this way, it is possible that the types of uncertainty that both theories address are ultimately aversive because of the way in which they threaten goal pursuit, and that reactive approach motivation is a special case of compensatory control, describing a specific threat to personal control (goal frustration) and a specific response to that threat (transfer of motivation onto a different goal). This way of integrating the two theories suggests that informational uncertainty may be best alleviated by reestablishing control. Informational uncertainty involves doubts about what will happen next. It stands to reason, therefore, that it could be alleviated by looking to some process or system that ensures that actions lead reliably to predictable consequences. If one can predict the consequences of one’s actions, one has successfully predicted what will happen next. In this sense, the key to resolving informational uncertainty may be replacing the questions about which people feel uncertainty with other, related questions about which they feel no such uncertainty. Choosing to believe in a powerful god, or zealously pursuing an alternative goal, does not resolve the source of the uncertainty they are designed to target. Powerful gods do not magically restore people’s personal control, and approaching an alternative

252

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

goal does not eliminate the frustration blocking one’s pursuit of the original goal. When the distraction lapses, and people’s attention returns to that original problem, they may find themselves in need of further palliative action.

Personal uncertainty: the purview of uncertainty identity and system justification Uncertainty-identity theory focuses broadly on questions surrounding who you are, how you should feel, and how you should act. It posits that the main religious response to alleviate this personal uncertainty is to join a group of people and follow their specific norms, prototypes, and rules for correct behavior, thoughts, and feelings. System justification theory can be described in strikingly similar terms. It addresses a subset of these uncertainties, focusing specifically on personal uncertainty about a person’s true beliefs due to inconsistencies between her support for her social system and her negative perceptions of that system. And it, too, posits that the main religious response to alleviate this personal uncertainty is to follow a group’s normative belief system, in particular, normative ideologies that justify and sustain the system. In other words, both theories highlight broadly similar responses to experiencing personal uncertainty: Aligning oneself with established group norms and supporting the group or system that disseminates these norms. This suggests that perhaps personal uncertainty is best addressed by joining and defending social groups and systems. This stands to reason, because personal uncertainty, unlike informational uncertainty, involves confusion, doubts, or inconsistencies in the self, which can be resolved by adopting norms about how to act, what to feel, and what to believe. The key to resolving these kinds of concerns appears to be providing literal answers to the questions about which people feel uncertainty. This is what the norms of groups and system-justifying ideologies provide by telling people how they should act, feel, and believe. From this perspective, people’s religious responses to personal uncertainty may be more functional and problem-focused than the more palliative, distracting responses that people engage in to help alleviate informational uncertainty. This highly speculative idea requires additional research.

Future directions for this field Moving forward, we offer three suggestions that might serve as goals for future investigations: (1) Empirically demonstrating how religious beliefs affect uncertainty (not just how uncertainty affects religious beliefs), (2) broadening the scope of research to include more cross-cultural samples, and (3) resolving the theoretical conflict regarding the role of uncertainty in religious fundamentalism.

Considering religion’s influence on uncertainty The vast majority of the empirical work testing the idea that religion can alleviate uncertainty has done so by testing whether people turn toward religion when faced with uncertainty. In other words, this work has primarily tested the causal effect of uncertainty on religion. However, the theoretical foundation underlying most of this research implies that the reverse causal link exists as well: Religious beliefs should have a palliative effect, restoring people’s sense of certainty. A small amount of existing work tests this causal effect, but this work has only examined a narrow set of religious elements. For example, among people living with chronic illnesses, those who have more spiritual well-being (defined in these studies as having a closer, more satisfying relationship with God) tend to feel less uncertain about their illness, and to show less effects of uncertainty on well-being (Landis, 1996; McNulty, Livneh, & Wilson, 2004). Similarly, one set of studies in the reactive approach motivation tradition has found that people who are more religiously zealous and who have stronger belief in God have smaller anxiety-related neural responses (Inzlicht et al., 2009). In addition, religious devotion is positively associated with subjective well-being particularly for members of marginalized groups (Pargament, 2002), which system justification theorists interpret as evidence that using religion to justify the social system “serves the palliative function of reducing negative affect and increasing positive affect, thereby increasing satisfaction with the status quo” (Jost et al., 2014, p. 20). Together, these findings suggest that certain forms of religiosity can act as a buffer against the negative effects of uncertainty. But scholars have not generally distinguished, at a theoretical level, between different forms of religion or between the two types of uncertainty to form more nuanced conclusions about their relationships. One exception to this trend is work on compensatory control theory. Research in this tradition has investigated how, under certain conditions, the specific belief that a supernatural agent is in control can restore informational certainty and in so doing make people feel confident that they can act on the world and expect predictable outcomes from those actions. For example, in one set of studies, people who were induced to hold a specific belief that God controls the universe felt

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

253

more confident that their actions would lead to predictable consequences (i.e., less informationally uncertain), and subsequently felt more committed to their goals (Khenfer, Roux, et al., 2017; see also Kay et al., 2014; Khenfer, Laurin, et al., 2017). Another set of studies highlights the importance of the specificity of this belief in control, illustrating that believing that supernatural agents control the world in mysterious ways does not promote goal commitment whereas believing that supernatural agents control the world in predictable and orderly ways does (Landau et al., 2018). These studies are unique in that they highlight the specific religious belief under consideration, and its effects specifically on informational uncertainty. However, even these studies do not measure both types of uncertainty and often measure informational uncertainty only by proxy. This is likely because compensatory control theorists typically are not specifically concerned with uncertainty as a broader construct, or in religion as a specific topic of study. Nevertheless, to integrate theories about the relationship between religion and uncertainty, future studies would benefit from a more comprehensive view of both constructs. Future studies might also investigate the possibility that religion sometimes has opposite effects, instead increasing uncertainty and anxiety. Although religious beliefs can help one to dispel uncertainty, they may also introduce new questions about which people may feel uncertain. Most religious beliefs are unfalsifiable (Friesen, Campbell, & Kay, 2015), meaning that there is no hard evidence that religious people can look to for proof. It is therefore unsurprising that most religious people question and doubt their faith at some point in their lives (Henrie & Patrick, 2014; Krause, 2014; Smith & Denton, 2003). Because this faith is highly important to many religious people (Pew-Templeton, 2012), it seems likely that religion could create some powerfully aversive personal uncertainty. Indeed, people with more religious doubts have more psychological distress, poorer well-being, and higher rates of depression (Krause & Wulff, 2004; Krause, Ingersoll-Dayton, Ellison, & Wulff, 1999). This might suggest that for some people, religion can cause uncertainty in the form of doubts about one’s beliefs, and that this uncertainty is psychologically painful. It is possible that this religiously-driven uncertainty is especially upsetting because religion plays such an important role in reducing other uncertainty. Once one’s religious beliefs are called into question, one may feel uncertain both about those beliefs and about all one’s other personal and informational uncertainty that had previously been quelled by those beliefs. Moreover, in some cases, one’s religious belief itself may promote uncertainty: As we alluded to above, some religious groups refrain from providing answers. For example, one key principle of Unitarian Universalism is promoting “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (Unitarian Universalist Association, 2019). Belonging to this group may therefore exacerbate, rather than minimize, uncertainty. These possibilities warrant more research.

Conducting cross-cultural investigations The vast majority of studies reviewed in this chapter are conducted in North America, with participants drawn either from university student pools or from online platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Participants from these Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies are “some of the most psychologically unusual people on Earth” (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010, p. 29), so patterns highlighted in this body of literature may not necessarily generalize to the rest of humanity. This area of research would benefit in two ways from expanding beyond the Western cultural context. For one thing, Western forms of religion tend to emphasize belief over other important components of religion, such as religious behavior, practice, emotion, and group membership (Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011; Tarakeshwar, Stanton, & Pargament, 2003). This may be one reason why the empirical research reviewed in this chapter has tended to focus on religious belief as a method for alleviating uncertainty. More broadly, the Western cultural background of many psychologists of religion themselves may have made it unlikely that they would come up with theories linking religious components other than belief to uncertainty. On the specific question of religious rituals and practices, Christianity—particularly the Christianity practiced by the upper class, highly educated Westerners who tend to be participants in these studies (Baker, 2009)—tends to place less emphasis on these parts of religion, and more emphasis on belief, than do other religious traditions, such as Judaism (Cohen, Siegel, & Rozin, 2003) and Hinduism (Laurin & Plaks, 2014). This means that existing research may not have been designed appropriately to capture links between uncertainty and religious practices, even if it had attempted to measure it. And yet both uncertainty-identity theory and reactive approach motivation imply some possible connections between uncertainty and religious practices. Uncertainty-identity theory discusses uncertainty about how one should feel, which might be addressed by the emotional elements of religious rituals, which prescribe certain emotional reactions (e.g., feelings of awe, gratitude, humility, or transcendence; e.g., Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Stellar et al., 2017). Reactive approach motivation focuses on how uncertainty about achieving a goal may lead people to reactively approach religious ideals, which might include the transcendence promised by many religious rituals. Future cross-

254

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

cultural research might be able to better test this emotional, ritualistic component of religion in connection with uncertainty. For another thing, uncertainty also takes different forms depending on the cultural context. One dimension along which cultures vary is the degree to which people prefer to avoid uncertainty, according to both classic cross-cultural research and recent replications of that research (Hofstede, 1980; Minkov & Hofstede, 2014). These authors suggest that cross-cultural differences in uncertainty avoidance likely arise because of cross-cultural differences in stress and anxiety (e.g., due to poverty, which tends to differ in a stable pattern between countries): In countries where people are more stressed and anxious, people tend to avoid uncertainty, instead preferring strict rules that they believe will make their lives more predictable and therefore less stressful (Minkov & Hofstede, 2014). Perhaps someone from Denmark or the Netherlands (where people tend to be less concerned about avoiding uncertainty) would be unlikely to approach religion when she feels uncertain, whereas someone from Bulgaria or Ukraine (where people are highly avoidant of uncertainty) faced with the same uncertainty would turn to religion with zeal. Moreover, people living in places that are less economically developed, places that have less income security, or places with poorer health security not only experience stress and anxiety, driving them to avoid uncertainty, but likely also experience more uncertainty in their daily lives because of these harsh economic conditions. This uncertainty, especially when coupled with desire to avoid uncertainty, may in turn drive them to be increasingly religious (Barber, 2011). Both this concrete finding and the hypothetical finding we speculated about above might pose a constructive challenge to theories linking uncertainty to religion. In their current form, these theories generally posit that uncertainty is aversive to most people, while granting the possibility of individual-level differences; future iterations might also consider specific cultural-level differences. In sum, a more cross-cultural investigation into uncertainty and religion would both bolster the idea that there is a connection between uncertainty and religion in humans in general rather than only in these WEIRD samples and help to clarify how specific uncertainties are linked to specific components of religion. Studying religious people other than Christians would require consideration of a wider range of components of religion. Similarly, studying uncertainty in people living in places other than the West would allow investigation into types of uncertainty uncommon in Western, developed nations (e.g., material insecurity). This would also enable consideration of how cultural values about uncertainty affect how people react to it. Broadly, this would allow researchers to form a more comprehensive theory about how, why, and for whom uncertainty affects religiosity.

The relationship between uncertainty and religious fundamentalism Our final proposed goal for future research relates to the link between uncertainty and religious fundamentalism. Uncertainty-identity and reactive approach motivation both predict that people should be more attracted to fundamentalist groups as uncertainty increases, whereas compensatory control and system justification make no such prediction. In fact, system justification makes a seemingly opposite prediction: That as uncertainty increases, people should show increasing support for the status quo.

Increasing uncertainty may lead to increasing fundamentalism According to uncertainty-identity theory, when faced with increasing uncertainty, people should be drawn to increasingly entitative groups. Entitative groups are those with strict rules, homogeneity within the group, clear boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, and so on. Highly entitative religious groups can also be described as fundamentalist groups, as they enforce stern rules, require adherents to behave the same way, and exalt the ingroup over outgroups. Thus this perspective specifies that, under high uncertainty, people should be more drawn to more fundamentalist religious groups, which in turn may require stricter religious behavior. Similarly, reactive approach motivation theory specifies that, when feeling highly uncertain, people should zealously pursue and defend their religion. One way of demonstrating one’s zeal is to support or even undertake extremist actions on behalf of their faith. Thus this perspective also specifies that, under high uncertainty, people should be drawn to extremism, but this time they should be drawn directly to extremist action itself, without the necessary mediator of fundamentalist group membership.

Increasing uncertainty may lead to increasing support for the status quo In contrast to the positions outlined above, system justification theory suggests that when uncertainty increases—when people perceive a larger conflict between their own support for their system and their negative perceptions of that

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

255

system—they should be increasingly motivated to defend the status quo. From this perspective, people are unlikely to want to join radical groups that threaten the status quo when feeling uncertain, and in fact, should increasingly oppose such groups.

Resolving the apparent conflict These theoretical perspectives thus make opposing predictions about the relationship between uncertainty and fundamentalism. One way to integrate them is to consider what systems people justify. System justification theory posits that people will be motivated to defend any system that they are dependent on and complicit in. According to uncertaintyidentity theory and reactive approach motivation theory, people are motivated to join stricter religious groups or adhere to fundamentalist ideology because this helps fulfill their psychological needs to reduce uncertainty. Thus, fundamentalists are likely to psychologically depend on this religious ideological system or group. Furthermore, fundamentalists are (by definition) complicit in supporting fundamentalism. In contrast, fundamentalists may not depend strongly on their broader sociopolitical system—instead, they often rely on themselves and their religious group members for essential services (e.g., homeschooling children rather than sending them to school, or preferring religious charity to government-provided welfare; Belcher, Fandetti, & Cole, 2004; Kunzman, 2010). And they are unlikely to feel complicit in their sociopolitical system: A key element of fundamentalism is defending one’s religious traditions and worldview against the system, which appears to be attacking them (Almond, Sivan, & Appleby, 1995; Emerson & Hartman, 2006). Thus once someone becomes a member of a fundamentalist group, they may become less motivated to defend their sociopolitical system (which they often do not participate in as much as the average citizen), but more motivated to defend their fundamentalist group and its ideology. In this sense, the norms of the fundamentalists’ group may become the most relevant status quo for members of that group. Thus perhaps uncertainty-identity theory and reactive approach motivation theory explain why people become religious fundamentalists in the first place, while system justification theory explains why people justify and sustain their membership in these fundamentalist groups. Future research could examine this proposed chain of events empirically.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have reviewed evidence that uncertainty affects, and is affected by, religiosity. People seem to find uncertainty aversive, and one common reaction to these negative feelings associated with uncertainty is to become more religious. Religion, in turn, seems to reduce uncertainty (although empirical evidence is sparser for this link). We have also illustrated how different types of uncertainty may lead people to different elements of religion. Based on the existing evidence, informational uncertainty may lead people to reestablish control through religion. In contrast, personal uncertainty may lead people to identify with social groups and social systems and to defend these groups and systems more strongly. We suggest directions for future research that may help one to answer this question and draw together these four theories into a comprehensive account of how, why, and for whom uncertainty influences religion.

References Ackerman, A. (2018). Living biblically. Warner Bros. Television Distribution, CBS. Almond, G. A., Sivan, E., & Appleby, R. S. (1995). Fundamentalism: Genus and species. In M. E. Marty, & R. S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms comprehended (pp. 399 424). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, stress, and coping. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., Kersten, M., Routledge, C., Shelton, J. T., & Hood, R. W. (2017). Ebola salience, death-thought accessibility, and worldview defense: A terror management theory perspective. Death Studies, 41(9), 585 591. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07481187.2017.1322644. Atkinson, Q. D., & Whitehouse, H. (2011). The cultural morphospace of ritual form. Examining modes of religiosity cross-culturally. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(1), 50 62. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.09.002. Baker, J. O. (2009). The variety of religious experiences. Review of Religious Research, 51(1), 39 54. Barber, N. (2011). A cross-national test of the uncertainty hypothesis of religious belief. Cross-Cultural Research, 45(3), 318 333. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397111402465. Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(2), 247 256. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211424291. Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15(1), 29 45. Batson, C. D., & Raynor-Prince, L. (1983). Religious orientation and complexity of thought about existential concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22(1), 38 50.

256

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Bearon, L. B., & Koenig, H. G. (1990). Religious cognitions and use of prayer in health and illness. The Gerontologist, 30(2), 249 253. Belcher, J. R., Fandetti, D., & Cole, D. (2004). Is Christian religious conservatism compatible with the liberal social welfare state? Social Work, 49 (2), 269 276. Callan, M. J., Sutton, R. M., Harvey, A. J., & Dawtry, R. J. (2014). Immanent justice reasoning: Theory, research, and current directions. In J. M. Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 49, pp. 105 161). Academic Press. Available from https://doi. org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800052-6.00002-0. Campbell, D. T. (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3(1), 14 25. Cohen, A. B., Siegel, J. I., & Rozin, P. (2003). Faith versus practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(2), 287 295. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.148. Cotterill, S., Sidanius, J., Bhardwaj, A., & Kumar, V. (2014). Ideological support for the Indian caste system: Social dominance orientation, rightwing authoritarianism and karma. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2(1), 98 116. Available from https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v2i1.171. Dostoevsky, F. (1880). The brothers Karamazov. New York: The Lowell Press. (C. Garnett, Trans.). Emerson, M. O., & Hartman, D. (2006). The rise of religious fundamentalism. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 127 144. Available from https://doi. org/10.1146/annurev.soc.32.061604.123141. Exline, J. J. (2002). Stumbling blocks on the religious road: Fractured relationships, nagging vices, and the inner struggle to believe. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 182 189. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1303. Friesen, J. P., Campbell, T. H., & Kay, A. C. (2015). The psychological advantage of unfalsifiability: The appeal of untestable religious and political ideologies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 515 529. Gable, P., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-motivated positive affect reduces broadening of attention. Psychological Science, 19(5), 476 483. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02112.x. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353415. Hamilton, D. L., & Sherman, S. J. (1996). Perceiving persons and groups. Psychological Review, 103(2), 336. Harvey, A. J., & Callan, M. J. (2014). The role of religiosity in ultimate and immanent justice reasoning. Personality and Individual Differences, 56 (1), 193 196. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.08.023. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 88 110. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2 3), 61 83. Available from https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X. Henrie, J., & Patrick, J. H. (2014). Religiousness, religious doubt, and death anxiety. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 78 (3), 203 227. Available from https://doi.org/10.2190/AG.78.3.a. Hofstede, G. (1980). Cultural consequences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Available from https://doi.org/10.5465/AME.2004.12689661. Hogg, M. A., & Adelman, J. (2013). Uncertainty-identity theory: Extreme groups, radical behavior, and authoritarian leadership. Journal of Social Issues, 69(3), 436 454. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12023. Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 72 83. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309349692. Hogg, M. A. (2007). Uncertainty-identity theory. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 39, pp. 69 126). Academic Press. Hogg, M. A., Sherman, D. K., Dierselhuis, J., Maitner, A. T., & Moffitt, G. (2007). Uncertainty, entitativity, and group identification. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(1), 135 142. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2005.12.008. Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385 392. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press. Jones, L., & Eliade, M. (2005). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. Jong, J., Halberstadt, J., & Bluemke, M. (2012). Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 983 989. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.005. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33(1), 1 27. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1994.tb01008.x. Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881 919. Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2014). Belief in a just God (and a just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34(1), 56 81. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1037/a0033220. Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(5), 114 118. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00377.x. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14 (1), 37 48. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750.

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

257

Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18 35. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.95.1.18. Kay, A. C., Laurin, K., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Landau, M. J. (2014). A functional basis for structure-seeking: Exposure to structure promotes willingness to engage in motivated action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 486 491. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0034462. Kay, A. C., Moscovitch, D. A., & Laurin, K. (2010). Randomness, attributions of arousal, and belief in god. Psychological Science, 21(2), 216 218. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609357750. Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For God (or) country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(5), 725 739. Available from https://doi. org/10.1037/a0021140. Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264 268. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x. Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297 314. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297. Khenfer, J., Laurin, K., Tafani, E., Roux, E., & Kay, A. C. (2017). Interventionist external agents make specific advice less demotivating. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 73(July), 189 196. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.07.003. Khenfer, J., Roux, E., Tafani, E., & Laurin, K. (2017). When God’s (not) needed: Spotlight on how belief in divine control influences goal commitment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 117 123. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.005. Krause, N. (2014). Religious doubt, helping others, and psychological well-being. Journal of Religion and Health, 54(2), 745 758. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-014-9977-1. Krause, N., Ingersoll-Dayton, B., Ellison, C. G., & Wulff, K. M. (1999). Aging, religious doubt, and psychological well-being. Gerontologist, 39(5), 525 533. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/39.5.525. Krause, N., & Wulff, K. M. (2004). Religious doubt and health: Exploring the potential dark side of religion. Sociology of Religion, 65(1), 35 56. Kruglanski, A. W. (1990). Lay epistemic theory in social-cognitive psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 1(3), 181 197. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.”. Psychological Review, 103(2), 263 283. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263. Kunzman, R. (2010). Homeschooling and religious fundamentalism. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 3(1), 17 28. Ladd, K. L. (2007). Religiosity, the need for structure, death attitudes, and funeral preferences. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 10(5), 451 472. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674670600903064. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(6), 879 892. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.90.6.879. Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 694 722. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038703. Landau, M. J., Khenfer, J., Keefer, L. A., Swanson, T. J., & Kay, A. C. (2018). When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 71 82. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.11.012. Landis, B. J. (1996). Uncertainty, spiritual well-being, and psychosocial adjustment to chronic illness. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 17(3), 217 231. Available from https://doi.org/10.3109/01612849609049916. Laurin, K., & Kay, A. C. (2017). The motivational underpinnings of belief in God. In J. M. Olson (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 56, pp. 201 257). Elsevier. Laurin, K., Kay, A. C., & Moscovitch, D. A. (2008). On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(6), 1559 1562. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.007. Laurin, K., & Plaks, J. E. (2014). Religion and punishment: Opposing influences of orthopraxy and orthodoxy on reactions to unintentional acts. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(7), 835 843. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614534698. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Springer. McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69 93. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014213. McDonough, S. (2005). Orthodoxy and heterodoxy. In L. Jones (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religion (2nd ed., pp. 6909 6913). Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. McGregor, I., Haji, R., Nash, K. A., & Teper, R. (2008). Religious zeal and the uncertain self. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(2), 183 188. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/01973530802209251. McGregor, I., Nash, K., Mann, N., & Phillips, C. E. (2010). Anxious uncertainty and reactive approach motivation (RAM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(1), 133 147. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12028. McGregor, I., Nash, K., & Prentice, M. (2010). Reactive approach motivation (RAM) for religion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (1), 148 161. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019702. McGregor, I., Nash, K., & Prentice, M. (2012). Religious zeal after goal frustration. In M. A. Hogg, & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and The Psychology of Uncertainty (Vol. 30, pp. 147 164). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

258

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

McGregor, I., Prentice, M. S., & Nash, K. A. (2009). Personal uncertainty management by reactive approach motivation. Psychological Inquiry, 20(4), 225 229. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400903333460. McKenna, M. (2018). Who’s most likely to join cults? Retrieved November 28, 2018 ,https://fashionmagazine.com/culture/former-moonie-cult-interview/.. McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2016). Supernatural punishment, in-group biases, and material insecurity: Experiments and ethnography from Yasawa, Fiji. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 6(1), 34 55. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2014.921235. McNulty, K., Livneh, H., & Wilson, L. M. (2004). Perceived uncertainty, spiritual well-being, and psychosocial adaptation in individuals with multiple sclerosis. Rehabilitation Psychology, 49(2), 91 99. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0090-5550.49.2.91. Minkov, M., & Hofstede, G. (2014). A replication of Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance dimension across nationally representative samples from Europe. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, 14(2), 161 171. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1470595814521600. Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. T. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 113 131. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.1.113. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322, 58 62. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1126/science.1158757. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2011). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiosity. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 168 181. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1303. Pennebaker, J. W., & Stone, L. D. (2004). Translating traumatic experiences into language: Implications for child abuse and long-term health. In L. J. Koenig, L. S. Doll, A. O’Leary, & W. Pequegnat (Eds.), From child sexual abuse to adult sexual risk: Trauma, revictimization, and intervention (pp. 201 216). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pew-Templeton. Global religious futures project. (2012). Retrieved August 2, 2019, from ,http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/.. Pratt, D. (2010). Religion and terrorism: Christian fundamentalism and extremism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 22(3), 438 456. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/09546551003689399. Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2010). Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1078 1080. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.009. Saroglou, V. (2011). Believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging: The big four religious dimensions and cultural variation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42(8), 1320 1340. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022111412267. Saroglou, V. (2013). Religion, spirituality, and altruism. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. American Psychological Association. Savage, S., & Liht, J. (2008). Mapping fundamentalisms: The psychology of religion as a sub-discipline in the understanding of religiously motivated violence. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 30(1), 75 91. Available from https://doi.org/10.1163/157361208X316971. Sharma, K. N. (1990). Varna and Jati in Indian traditional perspective. Sociological Bulletin, 39(1), 15 31. Shell, D. F., & Husman, J. (2001). The multivariate dimensionality of personal control and future time perspective beliefs in achievement and selfregulation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 26(4), 481 506. Available from https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.2000.1073. Shepherd, S., Eibach, R. P., & Kay, A. C. (2017). “One nation under God”: The system-justifying function of symbolically aligning God and government. Political Psychology, 38(5), 703 720. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12353. Sherman, D. K., Hogg, M. A., & Maitner, A. T. (2009). Perceived polarization: Reconciling ingroup and intergroup perceptions under uncertainty. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12(1), 95 109. Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2003). Methodological design and procedures for the national survey of youth and religion (NSYR). Chapel Hill, NC: The National Study of Youth and Religion. Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (2013). Religion, deviance, and social control. New York: Routledge. Stellar, J. E., Gordon, A. M., Piff, P. K., Cordaro, D., Anderson, C. L., Bai, Y.,. . . Keltner, D. (2017). Self-transcendent emotions and their social functions: Compassion, gratitude, and awe bind us to others through prosociality. Emotion Review, 9(3), 200 207. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1754073916684557. Stipek, D. J., & Weisz, J. R. (1981). Perceived personal control and academic achievement. Review of Educational Research, 51(1), 101 137. Available from https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543051001101. Tarakeshwar, N., Stanton, J., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Religion: An overlooked dimension in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(4), 377 394. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022103253184. Unitarian Universalist Association. The principles and sources of our religious faith. (2019). ,https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/ principles. Retrieved 04.09.19. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Waynesboro. Freedom of pulpit, freedom of pew. (2018). ,https://uufw.org/about-us/freedom-of-pulpit-freedomof-pew/. Retrieved 28.11.18. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165. van den Bos, K. (2009). Making sense of life: The existential self trying to deal with personal uncertainty. Psychological Inquiry, 20(4), 197 217. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400903333411. van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1 59). New York: Academic Press. ,https://doi.org/10.4319/lo.1974.19.2.0350..

Existential uncertainty and religion Chapter | 17

259

van den Bos, K., Poortvliet, P. M., Maas, M., Miedema, J., & van den Ham, E. J. (2005). An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(2), 91 113. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.06.001. van den Bos, K., van Ameijde, J., & van Gorp, H. (2006). On the psychology of religion: The role of personal uncertainty in religious worldview defense. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28(4), 333 341. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp2804. Webber, D., Babush, M., Schori-Eyal, N., Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, A., Hettiarachchi, M., Be´langer, J. J.,. . . Gelfand, M. J. (2018). The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 270 285. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000111. Weber, M. (1968). Economy and society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Trans., original work published 1922). Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality, 67(6), 1049 1062. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1049. White, C., Baimel, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2017). What are the causes and consequences of belief in karma? Religion, Brain and Behavior, 7(4), 339 342. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1249921. Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322, 115 117.

Chapter 18

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Travis Proulx Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

Why are we humans (still) religious? Answers to this question typically survey what it is that religion does and then branch into two additional questions: Is religion still the best at doing those things? Do we even need those things? Across innumerable pages authored by innumerable philosophical psychologists (and psychological philosophers), the assessments seem to boil down to one of the three conclusions: (1) religion does nothing that we need; (2) religion does things that we need, but we can do better; (3) religion does things we need better than anything else. By and large, the answer a scholar settles on can be generally predicted by their initial proximity to religion. For example, if you begin and end your life as a Christian of one sort or another—regardless of what you were in between—you’ll find yourself with a Kierkegaardian commitment to religion’s necessary role in the human psyche. If you merely started your life with a religious mindset but ended up somewhere very (very) different, you might find yourself with a Nietzschean sense that religion serves a deep need that can be (and is) met in other ways. If you’re someone who neither began nor ended your life with a religious mindset, you’re more likely to assert that religion does nothing that we need. Of course, this last rites for religion—favored by chagrined scientists and bereted philosophers—has to offer an answer to the original question: why are we humans (still) religious? If humans at every time in every place have been religious, and they’re getting something they don’t need, someone over the course of millennia should have figured this out. By one common account, humans have, by and large, figured out that there are better ways to avoid threats in their environment. Yes, there is a consistent need to predict and control our physical and social environments. We need to plan for the future and ensure that our fellow man is a help, not a hindrance. Over the relatively recent past, scientific inquiry, and the technology it allows, has long ago supplanted religious conjecture as a means of dodging the slings and arrows. And over the subsequent centuries, increasingly comprehensive rules of law, enforced with increasingly comprehensive modes of worldly coercion, have long since supplanted bronze age texts as basis for industrial tort law. Which segues not very neatly into the meaning of life, which may be the only thing that religion can be still said to provide; if not the how, then the why of our being. Except that it may also be the case that the purpose of human existence is a question that can be answered as easily by individuals or Earthly institutions. And maybe it is, even as Freud suggests, that the purpose of human existence is a question that religion itself has convinced us that we need to answer. Without religion, no one would be convinced that they need it for anything (Freud, 1930/1991a, 1930/1991b). As a scientist who, like Freud, has begun my life with no particular religious upbringing, I have a fairly concrete attitude about the extent to which people need religion, or something like it. Unlike Freud, I think that they absolutely do, at least some of the time. Why? Because religion is a totalizing worldview, and totalizing worldviews are about reducing anxiety. Some people may experience anxiety more than others, but it is enough of us, enough of the time, that totalizing worldviews become a necessary means of reducing this anxiety for most of us some of the time. And it doesn’t really matter if we call it God, Fate, or Nature, or a particular totalizing ideology (Atheism or Humanism or the Communist State); they are all born of the same impulses toward anxiety reduction and all falter to the extent that their contradictions arouse anxiety and are reinforced or reformed or swapped for another totalizing view. They are born as anxiety reduction, die to anxiety, and are reborn as a means of reducing the same. Over the course of this chapter, I’ll trace this narrative with Kierkegaard (1843/1997), and a simple distinction between two worldviews—the Ethical and the Absolute. The Ethical is the sum total of human values and knowledge, The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00019-6 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

261

262

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

which should be enough to tell us what to do and how to do it. Except that it isn’t because we also have the Absolute, which is a source of value and knowledge that is infinite and unchanging and so distinct that it can mandate the destruction of the Ethical. Why would people invent such a thing? Because anchoring our lives to the Absolute makes our anxieties go away. Which is very different than Freud’s understandings of religion, one which is grounded mainly in the Ethical—a sum total of values and knowledge given supernatural force to make us feel safe and secure and protected under the care of a Cosmic Dad. For Freud (1927/1991), it’s not anxiety that drives us to religion, but anxiety that drives us from it, as the fictions that buttress the Cosmic Dad become more absurdly apparent. Religion dissolves in anxiety, and it is only a matter of time before we face the facts of the Ethical all on its own. Except that Camus (1955) acknowledges that the ethical is so riddled with contradictions and absurdities that we long for a Universal and Absolute Unity to save us from an endless and ongoing anxiety from which there is no escape, only reprieve, sometimes, for some of us, through totalizing worldviews, which are, in essence, Religion, by one name or another. And none of this is mere conjecture. Everything we know about the neuroaffective correlates of cognitive conflict leads us back to anxiety and the Absolutes that salve the absurd (Proulx, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012). This isn’t to say that your brain has an area that corresponds to the Absolute, but it does have core structures that match your worldview to reality, and line up the elements of your worldview with one another. When there is a mismatch, you experience arousal, which isn’t a bad thing, in itself. In fact, this “mismatch” arousal can be exciting, or even thrilling, and is likely essential for learning new things at the outset. But when our brain detects mismatches where we are pretty certain—where we really didn’t expect to find them—we experience this arousal as anxiety, which most of us don’t find thrilling (crippling, mostly). Moreover, reminding ourselves of things about which we’re certain—the beliefs and experiences that our brain treats as “Absolute”—buffers us against these absurdities and allow us to function in a world where our brains will never be able to make everything add up. And these networks of belief and experience—about which we’re really, really certain—can be given any number names depending on the beliefs and experience they’re representing: meaning frameworks, worldviews, ideologies, and, yes, religions. There are no doubt differences of degree in how much anxiety we experience when our brains detect conflict, and differences where we expect to experience conflict, and to what extent. However, there are no brains that do without domains that are treated like religion and that fail to draw upon something like religion when conflict arises in these domains. This is true, even for those brains belonging to scientists who will tell you that you do not need religion. These thinkers who work from paradigms that they strive to make consistent with reality and within themselves. Based on premises that are taken largely as articles of faith, scientists experience anxiety when their paradigms are broken or incoherent. And if they also call themselves atheists, they would be as anxious about the “Return of Jesus Christ” as a Christian hearing the Call of Cthulhu.

Anxiety gives rise to the (religious) Absolute Kierkegaard and cosmic horror According to Lovecraft (1926/2014), Cthulhu was a tentacle-mawed alien, sleeping beneath the ocean, waiting for a time when he would awaken and destroy humanity, not because he had anything against humanity per se. Rather, the destruction of humanity would be an incidental side effect of raising his lost city of R’lyeh, which will send cascading waves of alien mental energy throughout the world, driving humanity to madness and death. In the meantime, the broadcasting insanity of the sleeping alien is detectable to those humans who seek it out, toiling in cultist covens to bring about the reawakening of the sleeping alien and the reemergence of R’lyeh, and, as an incidental consequence, their own destruction. For Cthulhu—and his creator, HP Lovecraft—humanity itself is entirely incidental to the broader cosmic goings-on; the “Gods” are barely aware that we exist. Unless you are a Cthulhu cultist, what could be more terrifying than annihilation by giant monsters? It’s simply getting squashed when they roll over. The Gods are monsters, who just don’t care. Lovecraft is credited as the originator of Cosmic Horror, which filled the pages of Weird Tales in the early part of the 20th century. The real originator of cosmic horror filled the pages of obscure philosophical periodicals a few decades earlier, birthing the genre with a text called Fear and Trembling (1843/1997). Before Kierkegaard, we all had an idea of what Gods were like and the religious beliefs that encased them. Gods were personifications of natural forces. They could be understood. They valued us, insofar as we had things that they wanted. We could make offerings of these things, and they might spare us their stormy wrath or bestow their sunny fortune. Gods could also be gigantic versions of us. A passionate, rational, lustful, prideful, wise, and foolish pantheon who were superior in power, if not moral judgment. They were as virtuous and flawed as ourselves, and, as such, could also be comprehended and petitioned. Even if

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Chapter | 18

263

we didn’t have anything to add to their power, we could provide them something of value: entertainment, both as pathos and hilarity. And if there were Gods—or a God—that needed nothing from us at all, they still cared for us. The Cosmic Dad God was very much like the real thing, a seemingly all-powerful caregiver to their fragile and foolish children, who felt obligated to nurture their creation. These gods gave us security. Kierkegaard’s god was something really, very different. It didn’t follow from our own values and beliefs—didn’t reflect them, didn’t validate them, and didn’t adhere to them. At the outset, Kierkegaard makes a distinction between two domains that tell us what to value and what to believe: the Ethical Sphere and the Absolute. The Ethical sphere is the sum total of cultural understanding: the accepted knowledge derived from intuition or science and the traditions and laws that regulate our behavior—the endlessly evolving, interweaving, and recombining cultural accumulations of “what to do,” “how to do it,” and “why.” Above this sphere is The Absolute, which is both higher above and distinct from the Ethical. A font of belief and values, it doesn’t rely on some still higher plan to validate its dictates, and unlike human societies, the Absolute is eternal and for all time. And for most of the time, the Absolute reflects the values and beliefs of the Ethical (and the humans who created both). The Absolute is the ultimate justification for adhering to the Ethical: “See, the Gods also value Honour and Loyalty! They favour our Nations and Laws, and are Cosmic Dads who will reward and punish us in accordance with our cultural conformity, both in this life and in some other! So, eat your Goddamn vegetables and stop hitting your brother!.” “But Ah-Ha!” says the vegetable-avoidant, brother-beating child. “This Absolute sounds exactly like the sum total of the Moms and Dads I hear from every day. Why should I believe that such a thing even exists, and is not merely the invention of said Moms and Dads to constrain my will and adjust our mutual relations?” To which the Ethical has a reply at the ready: scenarios in which the gods show that they do not have our best interests at heart and want things for themselves and not for us. “See? Gods must be distinct from the Ethical, as they will occasionally demand something from us that violates the Ethical, but to preserve the Ethical, we must do as they ask. So it is that Tragic Heroes must occasionally sacrifice their children to the gods for the greater Ethical good, including children who avoid vegetables and beat their brothers.” And while this might give the precocious preteen a moment’s pause, they eventually notice that even as this Absolute defies the Ethical, it does so in a manner that justifies Ethical behavior; So you must occasionally behave unethically to preserve the Ethical? This sounds an awful lot like something else that the sum total of Moms and Dads would invent to constrain our will and adjust our mutual relations—another “Absolute” that is an invention of the Ethical. The rise of the cosmic alien. When addressing this particular objection, many cultures at many times have turned to a solution that plays with fire (Burning Bush level fire). It is a solution that fills Kierkegaard with Fear and Trembling and which may be used to justify all manner of very unethical behavior: scenarios where the Absolute demands destruction of the Ethical itself. “See? Look at the story of Abraham and Isaac. God tells the Israelites that Isaac is the very future of their people, then tells Abraham to sacrifice him anyway. Abraham understands that this will doom his society, yet nevertheless attempts to do so without question. So it is that he becomes a Knight of Faith in service of a distinct, eternal absolute, even if, or especially if, it requires the destruction of Ethical sphere!” It’s at this point that the skeptical child might feel as though his/her parents have ceased to make sense. Why on Earth should they obey the dictates of a God who promises nothing, save, perhaps, the destruction of the Earth? What is the value of human society if it can be tossed away, in its entirety, in the service of some other entity? More generally, the child might begin to wonder about some of her parents’ other words and deeds. Why do they insist on wearing reeking robes while intoning chants in an eldritch tongue? Why do they hope to raise this alien city of R’lyeh, which will, apparently, wipe out all of humanity with mental radiation? And who is this “Mighty Cthulhu” they seem to venerate? The Mighty Cthulhu is the Absolute who proves its existence by defying the Ethical. The cultist parents are Knights of Faith, proving their absolute commitment to the Absolute by obeying Cthulhu in defiance of the Ethical. And Cthulhu provides for these cultists what God provides for Abraham: a sense of certain meaning and purpose that salves all anxiety. There is no cognitive conflict in the monomaniacal service of Cthulhu/Jehovah. There is only the quiescence that comes from serving an eternal entity whose dictates are clearly defined. And if this all seems a little selfish, maybe that is so, but so is any religious commitment that is the only kind of commitment, whereby we and the cultists and Abraham could choose to do otherwise. The fact that we choose to align with perfect purpose, even if it means the destruction Mankind, is apparently a price that Knights of Faith are willing to pay on everyone else’s behalf. And who knows, maybe the destruction of Mankind is something we have also wanted all along? I mean, has anyone ever seen this “Mighty Cthulhu,” whose existence is flatly asserted over the course of ecstasy-inducing, orgiastic murder-sacrifice rituals? And what of this “Jehovah” with whom Abraham claims to be in unique personal contact? Are we certain that this god commanded Abraham to slay this savior son? If, hypothetically, these Absolutes did not

264

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

actually exist, it’s also possible that these “sacrifices” were atrocities the Knights of Faith had always wanted to commit, for their own very personal reasons. By cutting out the Ethical-middle-man, these Knights may have found a way to indulge and justify their most personal desires. It’s wholly human wish-fulfillment, not some manifestation of the Divine. By projecting these urges onto an “Absolute,” we can close the cognitive conflict and quell anxiety to an extent that far exceeds the “Spirits of Wind and Water”, the lustful “Olympians” or the stern Cosmic Dad.

Anxiety dissolves the (religious) Absolute Freud and cosmic delusions Freud (1927/1991) also sees wish fulfillment as the seed of religion, and like any other wish that is not also a brute fact, religion is, at best, deemed an illusion. This is to say, the precepts of religion, be they spirits or gods or God, cannot be shown to correspond, irrefutably and undeniably, to the reality that most others experience; there is no intersubjective agreement on the nature of the Divine. Of course, as Freud notes, this is largely by design, insofar as our construals of the divine shift and alter to thwart attempts at validation—or more precisely, falsification. As such, it is difficult to say that religion, like any illusory wish-fulfillment, is necessarily untrue. There are any number of illusions that, due to sheer good fortune, may turn out to be real; a girl may marry a handsome prince or I might win a Nobel Prize for Social Psychology. More commonly, we can make these dreams come true. In truth, our present reality is largely constituted of elements that began as wishful illusions, but these wishes were eventually fulfilled through the hard work of civilization; aeroplanes and hydraulics and smart phones have made us as swift and strong and knowledgeable as our savannah-wandering ancestors dared to dream. This is what differentiates illusions from delusions; one might be true, while the other is false. Illusions could correspond to reality, either now or in the future. Delusions demonstrably do not or cannot correspond to reality. According to Freud, this is the bleak future of the religious illusion. Even if the “divine” can be construed in a manner so abstract that its overlap with reality can be rendered impossible to assess, the internal coherence of religious doctrine can be easily assessed. In fact, our rational capacities make this assessment unavoidable, and the nested contradictions, over time and in a given time, arouse such a degree of cognitive conflict that the religious worldview will end up on the scrap heap of civilization. Religion may quell any number of fears, but it ultimately falls to anxiety. Along the way, Freud tracks the same arc of the Ethical and Absolute as Kierkegaard: animism through to pantheons through to totalizing monotheisms. Over the course of this religious evolutionary trajectory, he outlines three general needs that are met—in illusory fashion—as these worldviews as each grow and consolidate. The security of the Ethical. For Freud (1927/1991) the three central needs addressed by religion are largely the same needs met by various (other) facets of civilization. More to the point, religion was the only means of addressing these needs prior to the advent of advanced social order. At the outset, isn’t the job of religion to “exorcise the terrors of nature.” Please note that this isn’t the actual abridgement of Nature’s terrors, rather, the reduction in fear and confusion that is aroused by floods, earthquakes and bears. In the absence of technologies to predict and control these events (and bears), we can at least reconcile ourselves to these events by personifying them. We are social beings looking for angry lightning and loving sunshine (and friendly bears). The elemental spirits (and bear totems, Freud, 1930/1991a, 1930/ 1991b) that we honor allow us to feel like we understand these forces, which diminishes some of their terror. The terror of death itself is another matter, and religion must also “reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate.” We are conscious beings that are burdened by an awareness of our own demise. In particular, we’re aware of the extent to which aging and death thwart our need to self-actualize—to continually improve and perfect our nature, even as Nature severely limits the horizons of the human progress narrative. To achieve an endless progress, Gods appear who give us an attachment to the eternal. The Olympians recapitulate our appearance, passions and character, allowing us to serve the purposes of beings who outlive their servants. (Alternatively, Jesus Christ cuts to the chase and just grants us eternal life.) And “Jesuses” also address the third, final, and most recently acquired human need: compensation for “the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed” on us. Civilization has succeeded in adjusting the relations of men to an extent that we need not live in constant fear that we’ll be robbed or raped or murdered. However, it has done so at a terrible cost: diminishing the opportunities and incentives to rob and rape and murder. In order to be spared the lustful and/or sadistic impulses of others, we’re no longer able to indulge in these impulses ourselves, and since sex and aggression are our primary sources of pure pleasure, restricting these impulses at civilization’s behest has led to a fair amount of frustration. Once again, however, religion offers to fulfill both the urges that are thwarted and the urges that supersede them. If, for example, you find it frustrating that you can’t maim the objects of your hatred or sexually exploit the objects of your lust, the Olympian Gods will rape and murder by proxy (at least someone is having

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Chapter | 18

265

fun). And if, for example, you find it frustrating that you’ve given up all of your raping and murdering, only to be victimized by someone who has shown less self-control, you can count on divine entities to offer a karmic backstop of ultimate justice. Even if they get away with it in this life, they’ll pay for it in another. The rise of Cosmic Dad. Eventually, these Gods and spirits coalesce into a more singular and singularly efficient Divine wish-fulfiller. In the monotheistic view that dominates the West, there is no atomized array of elemental spirits that reconcile external forces. Nor is there an atomized array of human drives and capacities that validate our internal forces. Rather, a Cosmic Dad embodies all the drives conducive to civilization, banishes what remains to the Cosmic Villain (e.g., Satan), and offers to control the elements in our favor. He is a Dad because that’s our first experience of an all-powerful caretaker, fulfilling all three of our primal wishes (Freud, 1939/1991). He protects us from the terrors of nature and does so out of love for His children. He is Eternal and Perfect and promises to make us the same; our progress narrative will move beyond this life and into another that will never end. And the sacrifices we make in this life will be rewarded with a moral world order that ensures justice in this life and the next. Only we don’t really have any direct experience that this afterlife exists, let alone that there is any justice to be found in some “Heaven” or “Hell.” And there certainly seems to be a lot of injustice in this world, where this supposed moral world order applies. And how do I apply these Ten Commandments to the vagaries of copyright law or free speech? I also have to say: I prayed pretty hard to have more good things happen than bad, and I’m not sure that things have generally gone in my favor. Ditto the world at large, where the distribution of good and bad events seems to be pretty random. In fact, to the extent that things appear to be progressing in any respect, it’s through hard work directly attributable to people. Cooperating people have devised legal frameworks of conflict resolution and criminal justice. Cooperating people have devised scientific frameworks for predicting events, and technologies have helped us to control them. By comparison, Cosmic Deadbeat Dad seems to be pretty hands-off, allowing all kinds of misery and injustice and chaos for someone who claims to be a loving Shepard. And then there were all those strange goings-on with Abraham and Job, which makes Cosmic Dad seem more like Cosmic D-Bag. Oh, and incidentally, has anyone ever seen this Guy? If there’s no evidence he improves our lives, or even exists, why are we bothering with any of this? Because to be frank, all of these contradictions and loose ends are beginning to make religion seem like a delusion. And it’s beginning to make me a bit anxious. In the face of this anxiety, Freud suggests that the religious mindset has two solutions. The first is to offer a knowing wink at the silliness of religious precepts but claim we’re all better off for behaving as if the Cosmic Dad were real. As children, we hear fairy tales of virtue rewarded and vice punished, where cheaters never win and the good guys always do. Even as our growing cognitive capacities detect the incongruities of Wicked Witches and Fairy Godmothers, religion offers an additional and ongoing narrative to help us maintain an ongoing and totalizing Just World. After all, if we didn’t act as if there was ultimate justice—in this world or another—wouldn’t society simply implode in an orgy of sadistic self-interest? Cosmic Dad becomes an alien. If your devastating reply to this line of reasoning is “well. . .maybe not. . .,” the religious mindset has the second reason lined up and ready: Cosmic Dad is completely and utterly genuine and real. In fact, the fundamental irrationality of the religious mindset is the irrefutable proof! If the premises and promises of Cosmic Dad don’t match up to experienced reality, it’s because your thinking is earthbound and blandly rational; you’re experiencing rational anxiety where you should be feeling religious ecstasy. Credo Quia Absurum: you should believe because it is absurd. It’s the irrationality of religious precepts that make them distinct from the laws of man and nature. Are things you prayed for not coming to pass? Are bad things happening to good people, while the sinister triumph? Is the Good Shepard coming across like a Hateful Bully? That is how you know it’s real! When Cosmic Dad is revealed to be a Cosmic Alien, this only proves that he must exist, because it exists outside the rational interests of anyone who would create such a useless monster. And since we already agree that man and nature are low and common, it stands to reason that the distinctly irrational Cosmic Alien must be above and beyond these realms as they transcend to the Divine. And if reason is telling you that this line of reasoning is also irrational, then listen to Martin Luther and stop listening to reason aka “the Devil’s Whore”! (1546/1986) Luther tells us that reason is the rational antithesis of the divine, and attempting to apply this font of Evil is the source of your anxiety. To calm the cognitive conflict, it’s only rational that you stop guiding your life by reason and surrender to Absurdity. And it’s at this point that Luther (according to numerous reliable historical sources) would punctuate his assertion by pulling back his cultist robes to reveal the tentacled maw of a twisted Cthulhu cultist, followed by lengthy recitations from curvilinear script of eldritch chants meant to raise the alien city of R’lyeh, ushering in a new age of trans-dimensional alien dominance that will hasten humanity to madness and death. The fall of both. As you may imagine, the appeal of either argument was lost on Freud (1927/1991). If you would strip religion of its promised security, religion itself will lose its broad appeal. If Cosmic Dad no longer promises

266

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

protection from Nature, perpetual progression or ultimate justice, the anxious cost of religious commitment will no longer seems worth it. The Cosmic Alien can’t quell the terrors that prompted the Cosmic Dad delusion. And we can’t simply wink at the delusion. Perpetually swallowing the irrationality is an endless cycle of anxiety reflux—religion is indigestible. When things are going well, we have no use for Cosmic Dad. When things are going bad, we are told we need him for comfort. But how much comfort has any of this actually provided in the past few centuries? Even as civilization gets better at addressing the central wishes underpinning the religious delusion, we don’t seem to be getting much happier for all that (Freud, 1930/1991a, 1930/1991b). Perhaps this is because the religious fairy tale of Cosmic Dad has been undermined by the successes of science and society. Should we then abandon those aspects of culture that bring us closer to actually fulfilling our wishes? Freud is not partial to abrogating science in favor of Cosmic Dads or Cosmic Aliens. More generally, Freud is loath to see humanity abandon his “god,” Logos, for the Gods that require the abandonment of reason to quell our anxieties. And it will likely be the case that Logos—unlike Cosmic Dads and Aliens—is a “god” that we can’t ever abandon to enjoy our lives or survive as a species, even if we wanted to. The voice of Logos is like gravity: weak, but persistent. The voices of those who direct us to the Good Shepard or implore us to raise R’lyeh may be more shrill and insistent. Nevertheless, the voice of Logos points out that the Gods can’t deliver on the promise of security, and to deliver certainty, they must promise to abandon that promise, and Logos itself. And the persistent voice of Logos won’t let us ignore the fact that abandoning this promise is neither desirable nor even possible. The illusion of religion is shattered, and only the delusion remains. The security of (just) the Ethical. And so, the long, melancholy withdrawing roar of religious sentiment has been echoing through the ages, as codes of laws and technologies have increasingly adjusted our relations and given us control over our environment. Freud believes that this withdrawal can’t be slowed, but it can be accelerated. The last, lowest tide of religion will occur when we collectively admit that laws and technologies are made by us, and we are all there is. There is nothing beyond the Ethical Sphere, and we admit the purely human origins of our endeavors: no parental or alien Absolutes. According to Freud, these fairy tales would have lost their hold on humanity long ago, just like pixies and Olympians, in the absence of continued religious education. A generation raised to finally take sole credit for our accomplishments—and our follies—will undergo a period of transition not unlike someone who spent their life taking sleeping draughts to render themselves unconscious, then forced to forgo them entirely as they become less effective. Freud accepts that there will be costs. We will have to admit both helplessness and insignificance within the broader forces of the universe. However, science will see the former sense diminish over time, and the latter—a sense of purpose beyond civilization—is a need that was manufactured by the religious mindset that will die with its creator. And to the extent that these needs will somewhat persist? Well, individuals will always maintain irrational and unmet needs, but these everyday neuroses are surmounted in everyday settings, and the neurotic delusions of the Absolute can be surmounted at the societal scale, by means of the same cathartic processes and with the same adaptive outcomes, as the energies wasted on religious delusion are channeled into the activities that actually address our wishes. Unlike the delusion of totalizing worldviews, this won’t come in a revolutionary manner—all at once and for all time. Rather, it will be in the mode of gradual advancement with uncertain outcomes. And so there will be uncertainty, and with it some anxiety. But the persistent voice of Logos forever lashes at the contradictions of these totalizing worldviews, arousing the same anxiety that hastens their demise. Is this anxiety greater than what is temporarily tranquilized by the same totalizing worldviews?

Anxiety gives rise to and dissolves (any) Absolute Camus and absurd heroes In giving an approximate answer to this question, Camus paraphrases Kierkegaard’s own estimation of life without The Absolute: . . . if, at the bottom of everything, there were merely a wild, seething force producing everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fill underlay all things, what would life be but despair?”. . . Everything considered, a determined soul can manage.

Embedded within this quote are three notions that Camus elaborates over the course of An Absurd Reasoning (1955). First, people have a fundamental need to perceive reality as unified and eternal. Counter to Freud, the Absolute isn’t merely a fallback justification for religious doctrine. Positing The Absolute is aimed toward the fulfillment of a

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Chapter | 18

267

primal and universal wish, even if it proves to be a delusion, rather than an illusion which may ultimately become reality. Second, the inability to perceive any unified and eternal rational order evokes a great deal of anxiety. Actually, worse than anxiety: despair, which is the realization that our anxiety doesn’t matter. Finally, there is the assertion that certain "determined souls" can manage this despair, living with the apparent truth that there is no ultimate order to comfort or regulate us, leaving them to function as rational agents in a world that isn’t entirely rational or entirely irrational—a world with no Absolutes whatsoever. But who are these “determined souls?” One might speculate that Camus is referring to those who have cast off the delusions of religious sentiment, whose rational capacities have eroded these totalizing relics of our collective childhood and bravely face the world without Cosmic Dads or Aliens. This is to say, the theorists and thinkers that populate the academic world, philosophers and scientists whose privileged vantage from the atop of the ivory tower lays bare the religious delusion, and whose powerful constitutions render them immune to the anxieties that consume the religion-addicted masses. However, if these brave, resolute intellects exist, they can’t be said to populate the ranks of philosophical thinkers, according to Camus (a philosophical thinker). Rather, Camus argues that most schools of thought dominating continental philosophy into the 20th century were predicated on Absolutes, tacit or otherwise. This is because the philosophers who founded and followed these schools were as thirsty for certainty as any theologian. Dogmatism and nihilism. The Phenomenologists, for example, look for certainty in the atoms of sense perception. They call these units “qualia”: the myriad elements of experienced reality that populate our mental lives. While qualia may be irreducibly subjective, they are also irreducible. Whatever it is that causes us to have one experience or another—however shared or unique these experiences happen to be—the experience itself can’t be denied or argued to “really” be something other than it appears. Qualia is “appearance” itself, and for the phenomenologists, constitutes an Absolute that can form the only suitable foundation for human knowledge. And if you absolutely don’t believe that an Absolute foundation for human knowledge is possible, be a devotee of the Irrationalists, who approached experience with utmost skepticism, even to the point of nihilism, and proclaimed the folly of interacting with any purportedly shared and predictable reality. From this perspective, one should revel in paradox and absolutely eschew the rational, though Camus points out that this constitutes its own adherence to the Absolute: a construal of reality that is wholly one way rather than another. More generally, dogmatic and nihilistic modes of thinking can be understood as “secret sharers” (Gadamer, 1975)— seemingly opposite but tethered to the same totalizing view that Absolute certainty is required for human knowledge, motivated by a shared motivation to determine the Absolute. Ultimately, Camus laments that Kierkegaard—of all people (!)—succumbed to a complete commitment this Absolute, quelling his anxieties in the face of absurdity by elevating it to the Absurd; a “God” that he could absolutely count on not being able to count on, for all eternity. Perhaps it is the case that all systems of purposed knowledge—philosophical, religious, even scientific—are means of experiencing the Absolute by the very nature of their systematic views. But what about the rest of us plebs? The folks who are just trying to be more happy than sad? Well, we go through our daily lives doing just that: working and playing and loving and making more of ourselves. All the while, our rational capacities are mapping out reality in ways that tell us the best ways to do these things, and what it is that determines what is “best.” From time to time, these same rational capacities confront us with the gaps between what we think we understand and what we would like to understand, and we are confronted a feeling of the absurd. When we feel this way about things we really care about, this feeling is a very bad feeling, a potentially paralyzing anxiety that pushes us down one of two paths: a return to living as if some kind of Absolute undergirds our experiences, or a leap from the window. From Camus’ perspective, both represent a kind of suicide: one that ends one’s life, and one that destroys one’s mind. The rise of the absurd hero. Since Camus is no nihilist, he outlines a third path that does not end as the extinguishing of one’s physical or mental life. If one is possessed of a “determined soul,” they may pursue the path of the Absurd Hero. The Absurd Hero lives in perpetual awareness that the world is neither wholly rational nor wholly irrational. The Absurd Hero tolerates the fly-by-wire existence implied by the absence of any Absolute. Specifically, the Absurd Hero steels themselves against the waves of anxiety that wax and wane with each new appearance of the absurd. Their reward for this existence is authenticity, and the kind of freedom that comes from living a life unshackled by adherence to a totalizing worldview. And if you doubt that such an existence is possible, Camus offers... a single example of the Absurd Hero (in the form of a myth). Sisyphus has been cursed by the gods to push a bolder up a hill and watch as it rolls back down the other side, again and again throughout all eternity. The task is, of course, absurd, in that no real progress can ever be made. And of course, Sisyphus is rational enough to note this absurdity, again and again. And of course, mental (if not physical) suicide is an option—returning to a habitual existence of habitually pretending that the bolder won’t simply roll down the

268

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

hill (again and again). But Sisyphus takes neither of these easy outs. Instead, he accepts his experienced reality, and the (extreme) anxiety that emerges from time to time. And if this anxiety must also be quelled, this is done by changing his attitudes toward the task, as he is always free to want to push a boulder up a hill, again and again and again and again. Because as it turns out, whether or not a task is meaningful is not a matter of the task itself, but a matter of the mind that carries it out. What if Sisyphus wants to push the rock, even enjoys it? What if the endless task is the rational fulfillment of his desires, rather than the frustration of reason? Can we all be like a mythical character? Can we find meaning the absence of an Absolute?

Neuroscience of the Absolute The answer to this question probably runs along the following lines: some of us can, at least some of the time. But until all of us can, all of the time, it is likely that civilizations will construct and apply notions of the Absolute, whether it is Cthulhu or Christ or the Communist State. And the reason that this is so generally comes down to the way that our brains work. To reiterate, we can be clear that brains do not have “Absolute-detectors,” or areas that are dedicated to the generation of “lawfully regulated flux metaphysical systems that allow for the teleological suspension of The Ethical.” What brains do have are systems that are generally dedicated to (1) forming mental models of our experiences, (2) comparing these models to our subsequent experiences, (3) alerting us with arousal if the models mismatch with experience, (4) appraising our ability to address the mismatch, and (5) filling us with anxiety if we are not up to the task. What we have are different brain systems responsible for making meaning (Park, 2010) and maintaining meaning (Proulx, Markman, & Lindberg, 2013) in the face of cognitive conflict.

Your brain is a meaning-making machine Meaning has been generally defined as mental representations of expected relationships, by many philosophers (e.g., Heidegger, 1996/1956) and many psychologists (e.g., Baumeister, 1991). And it is immediately worth noting that neither philosophers nor psychologists have much to say about what kinds of expectations are based on what manner of mental representations, save to divide them into broad classes that correspond to something like, what is and what should be (Peterson, 1999). When you add up what is and what should be, you end up with everything; every conceivable experience, desire and imagining. And while you might make useful distinctions about expectations for traffic lights, economic exchange and your role as a parent, your brain does not. Your brain is an organic computer, generating a simulation of your experiences, matching the simulation to further experiences, then sending you warning signals when there isn’t a match (Nunez, 2010). Your brain will keep sending you these signals until your simulation is a perfect match with your experiences, so even if there is no such thing as the Absolute, only something that functions like an Absolute—a framework that renders anything expected—will silence these signals forever. It’s your cortex that builds these simulations, tracking contingencies over a lifetime of experience interacting with different people and different environments. As a self-reflective entity, your most elaborate simulations are for your own self, with simulations of how your self-simulation interacts with the other simulations. Layers and layers of expectation are accumulated over the course of cognitive development, growing in exponential spurts as our short-term memory capacity increases with the size of our cortex (Pressley & McCormick, 2007). And just as important as our expectations for predictable experiences are meta-expectations for what we can’t predict. Our brains aren’t stupid; they realize that not everything can be currently understood. Accordingly, our simulations further simulate the extent to which reality can be simulated, whereby what we expect to not understand is further elaborated of the course of our lives (Cohen, McClure, & Yu, 2007) Borrowing from the machine learning literature, cognitive neuroscientists have identified two general states for when our experiences match up with our (programmed) simulations: Exploitation versus Exploration (Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005). When our experiences are running roughly in line with our expectations, we’re in a state of Exploitation. Our brains are navigating the external environment, with attention focused by expectations for what we’ll find there. This focus means that we’re actively filtering out experiences that might distract us, including experiences that contradict the simulation. We don’t want to be distracted because it feels generally good to generally be in this approachoriented state. Our Behavioral Activation system predominates (Gray, 1982), and we focus on attaining rewards (vs avoiding punishments). Positive affect predominates, and for most of us, most of the time, this is the mode that predominately directs our behavior. Our lives are guided by the simulation; we’re living with meaning.

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Chapter | 18

269

Your brain is a meaning-maintenance machine However, our brains are continually evaluating the match between the simulation and ongoing experience. When experiences deviate from expectations—to an extent that our attention can’t filter out the discrepancies—we have brain structures that alert us to the inconsistency. More often than not, our brains determine that the mismatch is no big deal. We have a meta-simulation for these deviations, and as long as the inconsistencies occur within acceptable limits, it constitutes expected uncertainty (Yu & Dayan, 2005). In these situations, our brains keeps calm and carries on, though it’s a different response when these deviations exceed the expectations for what we can’t expect. When we experience unexpected uncertainty—the unusual where everything should be very usual—the behavioral inhibition system is activated, along with systems that control and produce arousal (i.e., cortical norepinephrine, NE). And in and of itself, this can also be no big deal. Our levels of NE evoke a state that is termed Exploration, where our attention becomes less focused and less filtered. This allows us to scan the environment for experiences that might still be coherent with the simulation, or provide the basis for a new simulation. And this exploratory attention is also turned simultaneously inwards, as higher levels of NE activate our brains’ “Default Mode Network” (Raichle, 2009) which allows for reflective awareness and evaluations of the simulations themselves (some call this consciousness, Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). In most cases, we have the cognitive resources to treat the conflict as a challenge to be met, updating or reorienting simulations (i.e., learning). This gets us back on track and into our behavioral approach mode of being. When we do not have the resources to deal with the inconsistency (or feel like we do not), the experience become a threat, and arousal become anxiety (Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996).

Anxiety is everywhere Anxiety is something we like to avoid, which is to say, it’s the feeling of wanting to avoid. It’s irreducible qualia that is the feeling of what bad feeling is. To avoid or reduce this aversive state, our brains engage in several different tactics— sometimes all at the same time. At the outset, we can block out the awareness of inconsistency that’s not intrinsically relevant to our current task (“Did a glowing asteroid destroy London? I am busy reading Lovecraft.”). Or we can reinterpret the inconsistency in such a way that it arouses expected uncertainty (“By striking London with a glowing asteroid, Cosmic Dad is teaching us not to read Lovecraft.”). This task made easier when our simulation allows for any possible eventuality (“Or maybe the Cosmic Alien was just having a laugh?”). Alternatively, we can shift attention to some other simulation to palliate the anxiety (“At least we can all agree that Lovecraft is amazing!”). Or we can learn new information that explains the inconsistency (“After years of scientific inquiry, I have determined that reading Lovecraft causes asteroid strikes.”). Over the course of centuries, and across multiple disciplines and subdisciplines of philosophy and psychology, theorists and scientists have described and studied this process, from the violation of expected relations [“nonrelation,” Heidegger (1956/1996) the Existentialist] to the anxiety it arouses [“disequilibrium,” Piaget (1937/1954) the Developmental Psychologist] to the cognitive strategies it activates [“assimilation or accommodation,” Park (2010) the Psychologist of Meaning]. Here is an example of one particular inconsistency. Playing card anxiety. In the late 1940s, Jerome Bruner was a social cognition researcher who was interested in how expected relations—termed paradigms—impacted our experiences. Specifically, he was interested in how people would experience unusual versions of everyday events. How he went about examining the matter was fairly straightforward— he showed people altered versions of playing cards. We all have mental representations of expected relations for a deck of cards: there are 52, Hearts are red, Spades are black, etc. Bruner called these expected relations “paradigms,” and when he played around with these expectations (a black colored Heart), he found that people generally did one of two things: they “saw” the Heart as a Spade or they noticed the Heart was black and realized Bruner was showing them weird cards. While these findings jived with Bruner’s intuitions, what he didn’t quite expect was that many participants would report experiencing anxiety in the presence of weird cards—especially among those who sensed something wasn’t quite right about them, but could not put their finger on it (Bruner & Postman, 1949). Scientific anxiety. A few years later, philosopher Kuhn (1962/1996) recalled this experiment when considering how expected relations—also termed paradigms—impacted scientific observations. Specifically, he was interested in how scientists experience empirical findings that don’t correspond to their theory-based expectations. After surveying centuries of scientific inquiry, Kuhn concluded that scientists generally do one of two things: they “see” the anomalous finding as if it were congruent with their favored theory, or they acknowledge the finding is anomalous and alter their theory to account for it. What they seldom do is abandon a theory altogether, especially if there is no alternative that would explain the finding. Kuhn compared this process to the behaviors of the participants in Bruner’s experiment,

270

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

arguing that people are motivated to preserve their paradigms—often irrationally—whether they allow us to understand playing cards or particle physics. And the primary psychological force underlying these behaviors remains the same: anxiety, which is the ironic consequence of rational inquiry. This is because for a theory to be useful, it has to make more and more specific predictions for what the scientist should expect to find. But when there are more and more specific predictions, there are more and more undeniable opportunities for the theory to be contradicted. Which means more opportunities to experience anxiety, and more motivation to construct totalizing paradigms that predict anything and everything—what Carl Popper would term unfalsifiable theories (this should all sound familiar . . .). Absolutes quell anxiety. About 40 years later a lazy undergraduate on the 6th year of their 4-year degree program would read Thomas Kuhn’s observations about paradigms and playing cards and promptly forget about them. A few years later, this same student remembered these observation as graduate student in a psychology program, and with different colleagues at different universities over many years tested a theory grounding a prediction that unusual playing cards—or any other meaning violation—would lead to anxiety, which in turn would motivate efforts to affirm other paradigms—or meaning frameworks—more strongly (Proulx & Heine, 2006). And indeed, that is what we found (Proulx & Major, 2013). Even as people “saw” unusual playing cards as if they made sense, they would presumably find them unnerving—if only unconsciously—as they would react by affirming unrelated beliefs more strongly. Later we would measure psychophysiological responses to unusual playing cards and find that, indeed, people show a marker of anxious arousal—cortical NE—when they see the unusual cards. Moreover, this anxiety will diminish if people affirm their political beliefs prior to seeing the unusual cards—but only among people who hold the beliefs very strongly (Sleegers, Proulx, & van Beest, 2015). As it turns out, the kinds of people who hold beliefs with unusual strength have brains that handle these anomalies a little differently, dampening awareness of the anomalies before they enter conscious awareness.

The eternal recurrence of the Absolute But not entirely, which is why a rigid commitment to a totalizing worldview can dampen the rationality-induced anxieties but can’t extinguish them. Your brain can treat meaning as if it were Absolute, but the quiet voice of Logos is persistent. It will tell when your meaning contradicts reality and contradicts itself. And it won’t shut up until your meaning coheres entirely to reality and within itself. And since the limitations of our brains mean this can never happen, your brain has only one option: move on to something else that it can treat as Absolute, if only for a while, when we’re feeling anxious. New anxieties are brought to bear, and the cycle shifts and repeats itself, again and again. And with each of these successive cycles, mother nature has determined—as a matter of adaptive fitness—that we should vary as individuals in the frequency and extremity of these cycles. For our species, it’s useful to have folks who are motivated to construct complex mental models and some that aren’t (Suedfeld & Tetlock, 1992). It’s useful to have some folks who are more or less motivated to compare these models to experience (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). And it’s useful to have folks who don’t experience much anxiety when these things don’t add up, and some people who experience a lot (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993), which is to say, you need both Freud and Kierkegaard and everyone in between. And civilizations need a pu-pu platter of meaning frameworks—both Ethical and Absolute—to cater to these tastes; tastes that are primarily determined by the varying functions of brain systems that make and maintain meaning, tastes that will treat sources of security—science or politics or laws—as though they were Absolute (from time to time), tastes that look to sources that can only provide certainty—Cosmic Alien gods—as Absolutes (for all time, when the City of R’lyeh is raised and all science and politics and laws are annihilated), and tastes that will look to dogmatism and nihilism, at one time or other, as a comforting Absolute. Which brings us back to the question: Why are we humans (still) religious? The answer is that all brains sometimes need Absolutes. And anything that does the job as well as a religious Absolute, is as absolute as Religion.

References Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annual Review of Neuroscience., 28, 403 450. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford. Blascovich, J., & Tomaka, J. (1996). The biopsychosocial model of arousal regulation. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 28, pp. 1 51). New York: Academic Press. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60235-X. Bruner, J., & Postman, L. (1949). On the perception of incongruity: A paradigm. Journal of Personality, 18, 206 223. Camus, A. (1955). An absurd reasoning. The myth of Sisyphus and other essays (pp. 3 49). New York: Vintage.

Cosmic Dad or Cthulhu: why we will always need (religious) absolutes Chapter | 18

271

Cohen, J. D., McClure, S. M., & Yu, A. J. (2007). Should I stay or should I go? How the human brain manages the trade-off between exploitation and exploration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 933 942. Freud, S. (1927/1991). The future of an illusion. In A. Dickson (Ed.), Sigmund Freud: 12. Civilization, society, and religion. New York: Penguin Books. Freud, S. (1991a). Civilization and its discontents. In A. Dickson (Ed.), Sigmund Freud: 12. Civilization, society, and religion. New York: Penguin Books. Freud, S. (1991b). Totem and taboo. In A. Dickson (Ed.), Sigmund Freud: 12. Civilization, society, and religion. New York: Penguin Books. Freud, S. (1939/1991). Moses and monotheism. In A. Dickson (Ed.), Sigmund Freud: 12. Civilization, society, and religion. New York: Penguin Books. Gadamer, H. G. (1975). Hermeneutics and social science. Cultural Hermeneutics, 2(4), 307 316. Gray, J. A. (1982). Pre´cis of the neuropsychology of anxiety: An enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5(3), 469 484, 1982. Heidegger, M. (1996/1956). Being and time. New York: State University of New York Press. Kierkegaard, S. (1843/1997). Fear and trembling. In H. Hong, & E. Hong (Eds.), The essential Kierkegaard (pp. 93 101). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kuhn, T. (1962/1996). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Lovecraft, H. P. (2014). The call of Cthulhu. Simon and Schuster. Luther, M. (1546/1986). In J. Pelikan, & H. T. Lehmann (Eds.), Luther’s works (LW). Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. T. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simpler structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 113. Nunez, P. L. (2010). Brain, mind, and the structure of reality. Oxford University Press. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257. Peterson, J. (1999). Maps of meaning: The architecture of belief. New York: Routledge. Piaget, J. (1937/1954). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books. Pressley, M., & McCormick, C. B. (2007). Child and adolescent development for educators. New York: Guildford Press. Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Death and black diamonds: Meaning, mortality, and the meaning maintenance model. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 309 318. Proulx, T., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(5), 285 291. Proulx, T., & Major, B. (2013). A raw deal: Heightened liberalism following exposure to anomalous playing cards. Journal of Social Issues, 69(3), 455 472. Proulx, T., Markman, K. D., & Lindberg, M. J. (2013). Introduction: The new science of meaning. The Psychology of Meaning. Raichle, M. E. (2009). A paradigm shift in functional brain imaging. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 12729 12734. Sleegers, W. W., Proulx, T., & van Beest, I. (2015). Extremism reduces conflict arousal and increases values affirmation in response to meaning violations. Biological Psychology, 108, 126 131. Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2015). The science of mind wandering: Empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. Annual review of psychology, 66, 487 518. Suedfeld, P., & Tetlock, P. E. (1992). 27 Conceptual/integrative complexity. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (6), 1049. Yu, A., & Dayan, P. (2005). Uncertainty, neuromodulation, and attention. Neuron, 46(4), 681 692.

Chapter 19

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Crystal L. Park University of Connecticut, Mansfield, CT, United States

Meaning is widely regarded as central to human experience. Frankl (1969) posited that the primary human motive was “will to meaning,” asserting that the main driver of human existence is to find meaning and value in life itself, rather than other ends such as acquiring wealth or power. Frankl further posited that meaning is not inherent in life but rather must be actively created by each individual. Expanding on Frankl’s ideas, Baumeister (1991) noted that people actively construct the meaning of their lives on a daily basis and that meaning is part of every action and thought. He described the human need for meaning as a craving, a desire, even an addiction complete with tolerance and withdrawal effects (Baumeister, 1991). Park, Edmondson, and Hale-Smith (2013) asserted that this “need for meaning” may be more accurately considered as the need for a functional meaning system. This perspective, they argued, better describes the complex roles of meaning in meeting myriad human needs. People require a system of meaning to comprehend the world and to navigate their way through it. Although many other animals also have cognitive systems that allow prediction and explanation of encounters in the world (e.g., Shettleworth, 2010), humans go far beyond biological imperatives in the complexity and capabilities of their meaning systems. Humans desire—and, arguably—need a sense of purpose and direction, a feeling that what they are doing has some ultimate purpose, a view of their daily endeavors in the context of a bigger picture; these are the transcendent demands placed upon their meaning systems (George & Park, 2017). Without success in meeting these demands, people exhibit disaffiliation, despair, and depression (Volkert at al., 2019). Many specific meaning-related needs have been identified, including self-regulation (Koole, McCullough, Kuhl, & Roelofsma, 2010), agency (Gray & Wegner, 2010), control (Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010), certainty (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010), identity (Negru-Subtirica, Pop, Luyckx, Dezutter, & Steger, 2016), social validation and integration, comprehension, security (Park et al., 2013), purpose, efficacy, values, self-worth (Baumeister, 1991), and the need to cope with trauma and awareness of our own mortality (Vail et al., 2010). Religion has been proposed as one way in which humans may meet these meaning-related needs (e.g., KoltkoRivera, 2006 2007; Park, 2013). In fact, Batson and Stocks (2004) went so far as to define religion as “whatever a person does to deal with existential questions” (p. 141). They further described the meaning-related existential basis of all of the needs identified by Maslow (1970) and how religion can address all of them. For example, safety needs raise the existential questions, “What can and should I do to protect myself? Are there powerful forces that I can and should appeal to for safety? How can I control the future?” all of which religion can satisfactorily answer (Batson & Stocks, 2004). Similarly, the construct of implicit religion has been advanced to describe how human endeavors that are not overtly religious in nature may be seen as inherently religious by the functions that they serve (Bailey, 2010). This chapter describes current perspectives and empirical findings regarding religiousness and meaning in the context of stressful life events. Park’s (2010) model of meaning serves as the organizing framework for this chapter. First, the meaning making model is presented; this model distinguishes global and situational meaning and identifies discrepancies that arise between global and situational meaning as producing distress and being the impetus to make meaning. We then describe how religiousness is often involved in both levels: beliefs, goals, and the subjective sense of meaningfulness at the global level; and appraised meaning of the event and meaning making processes at the situational meaning level. The chapter concludes with suggestions regarding future research on religiousness and meaning. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00020-2 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

273

274

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

The meaning making model Integrating a number of different theoretical perspectives on meaning, the meaning making model identifies two major aspects of meaning: global and situational meaning (Park, 2010; see Fig. 19.1). Global meaning is the overarching orienting framework through which people structure their lives and assign meanings to specific encounters with their environment (i.e., situational meaning). Global meaning comprises three aspects—beliefs, goals, and subjective sense of meaning (Park & Folkman, 1997). Global beliefs are broadly encompassing assumptions that inform people’s views of their own nature as well as their understanding of other people and the world (Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Koltko-Rivera, 2004). Global goals refer to people’s motivation/purpose for living, choice of goals, standards for judging behavior, and basis for self-esteem. Global goals are high-level ideals, states, or objects toward which people work to achieve or maintain (Klinger, 2012). A global meaning that contains a coherent view of the world, feelings of being on-track with one’s goals and values, and feeling that one’s own existence matters gives rise to a subjective sense of meaning or purpose in life (George & Park, 2017). Individuals’ understanding of both ordinary encounters and highly stressful events (i.e., their appraised meaning) is a function of their global meaning system in conjunction with the specifics of those encounters. In everyday life, global meaning informs individuals’ understanding of themselves and their lives and directs their personal projects and, through them, their general sense of well-being and life satisfaction (e.g., Emmons, 1999). Further, when individuals encounter potentially stressful or traumatic events, they assign a meaning to them. Appraised meanings are compared with global meaning, and stress or trauma is experienced when appraised meanings “shatter” or violate aspects of one’s global meaning system (Park et al., 2016). For example, experiencing a brutal assault by a stranger may violate one’s global beliefs that the world is fair or that people are benevolent. Global goals are violated when an event is appraised as discrepant with what one wants. Thus a brutal assault may also violate one’s goals of staying healthy and whole and living with freedom from fear. Appraisals of events that violate one’s global meaning create distress. The meaning making model posits that the extent of distress in reaction to a stressful event will be proportionate to the discrepancy between individuals’ global beliefs and goals and their appraised situational meaning of the event (Park & Folkman, 1997; Park et al., 2016). This distress, in turn, initiates meaning making—efforts to restore coherence among one’s preexisting global meaning and the appraised meaning assigned to the event (Park, 2016). Meaning making refers to attempts to restore global meaning when it has been disrupted or violated. Meaning making involves revising one’s view of the situation and reformulating one’s beliefs and goals in order to regain consistency Global meaning Beliefs (e.g., theodicies, nature of humans, sin, afterlife, control, justice) Goals (e.g., ultimacy, sanctified goals, transcendence) and Values (guidelines for achieving goals) Subjective sense of life as comprehensible, with purpose, and that one matters

Situational meaning

Appraised event meaning Stressful event

Attributions Primary (threat, loss, challenge) Desecration or sacred loss

Yes Discrepant?

No No distress

FIGURE 19.1 Meaning making model, highlighting the role of religiousness.

Distress

Religious meaning making

Meanings made

Benevolent religious reappraisal

Changes in appraised meaning (e.g., reattributions)

Reappraisal of God’s powers Demonic reappraisal

Changes in global meaning Stress-related growth

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

275

among them (Park, 2010). When situational meaning is discrepant with their global meaning, people typically attempt to revise their views of events to better incorporate them into their global meaning (i.e., assimilation). However, when discrepancies are large, people may try to change their global meaning to incorporate events (i.e., accommodation). The meaning making process helps people reduce their sense of discrepancy between appraised and global meanings and restore a sense that the world is comprehensible, that they are on-track to reach or maintain their goals, and that their lives are worthwhile (Cooper, Zoellner, Roy-Byrne, Mavissakalian, & Feeny, 2017; LoSavio, Dillon, & Resick, 2017). Meaning making can be adaptive to the extent that it results in reducing discrepancies and restoring global meaning (Brown, Belli, Asnaani, & Foa, 2019; Holliday, Holder, & Surı´s, 2018). However, failing to reduce discrepancies between situational and global meaning leads to rumination, intrusive thoughts, and depression (Hayes et al., 2017). Meaning making can lead to many different outcomes, termed meanings made. These include changes in one’s appraisal of the event (e.g., coming to see it as less damaging or, perhaps, even fortuitous), changes in one’s global meaning (e.g., viewing the world as less controllable), and stress-related growth (e.g., perceiving positive changes in oneself such as increased appreciation for life, stronger connections with family and friends, or greater self-awareness of one’s strengths).

Religiousness and global meaning Religion is a common foundation for global meaning systems, but it is not the only one. For example, some researchers have investigated alternatives, such as science or naturalistic materialism (e.g., Preston & Epley, 2009). However, the extent to which nonreligious, nonmetaphysical frameworks can address issues of ultimate purpose and existence appears limited (Vail et al., 2010) and people often find such nonmetaphysical viewpoints unsatisfactory (Park, 2013). Religious meaning systems, on the contrary, appear well-suited to provide global meaning. For example, Hood, Hill, and Spilka (2018) identified four criteria by which religion is uniquely capable of providing global meaning: comprehensiveness, accessibility, transcendence, and direct claims. Comprehensiveness refers to the vast range of issues that religion can encompass, including beliefs about the world (e.g., human nature, social and natural environment, and the afterlife), contingencies and expectations (rewards for righteousness and punishment for doing evil), goals (e.g., benevolence, altruism, and supremacy), actions (e.g., compassion, charity, and violence), and emotions (e.g., love, joy, and peace) (Hood et al., 2018). Religion is accessible in that it is widely promoted and comes in many forms, so people can usually find a way of being religious or spiritual that suits them. Religions also provide opportunities for transcending their own concerns or experience and connecting with something greater. Finally, religions make bold and authoritative claims regarding their ability to provide a sense of significance. All these characteristics lead to the unmatched ability of religion to serve as the foundation of global meaning (Hood et al., 2018). When religion is incorporated into people’s global meaning systems, their understanding of God or of the divine (e.g., as loving and benevolent, wrathful, or distant) will inform their beliefs about the nature of people (e.g., inherent goodness, made in God’s image, and sinful human nature) and this world (e.g., the coming apocalypse and the illusory nature of reality) as well as, perhaps, the next (e.g., Heaven and reincarnation) (Newton & McIntosh, 2013). Religion also forms the core of many individuals’ identities in terms of how they understand themselves as a religious or spiritual being (e.g., as unworthy of God, as chosen; Hardy, Nadal, & Schwartz, 2017) as well as their social identification with a religious group. Religious identity can also provide a source of self-esteem (Davis & Kiang, 2016; Hardy et al., 2017) although perceiving discrepancies between one’s current and ideal spiritual selves has been related to poorer psychological functioning (e.g., Saunders, Lucas, & Kuras, 2007). In addition to explicitly religious beliefs, other global beliefs (such as in fairness, control, coherence, benevolence of the world and other people, and vulnerability) can be informed by religiousness (Koltko-Rivera, 2006 2007). For example, links between religiousness and global beliefs regarding control are well established (Debnam et al., 2012; Hood et al., 2018). Some forms of religiousness explicitly encourage a surrender of control and a handing over of control to powerful others (Exline, 2002). Experimental research has demonstrated that following manipulations that lower a sense of personal control, people report higher levels of belief in a God who has control over events (e.g., Kay et al., 2010). One aspect of religiousness, theodicies, can be strongly involved when individuals face highly stressful events. Theodicies refer to explanations for human suffering, “philosophical/theological attempts to reconcile the presence of evil and suffering in the world with the idea of an all-powerful and good creator God” (Hall & Johnson, 2001, p. 5). Quantitative studies have begun to focus on theodicies, facilitated by a recently developed measure, the views of

276

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

suffering scale, which assesses a range of different theodicies (e.g., karma, randomness, suffering as retribution, and suffering as soul-building) (Hale-Smith, Park, & Edmondson, 2012). Although religiousness usually has been found to influence global beliefs in positive ways, some types of religious beliefs can be negative in their content or influence on the believer as well. For example, some religious cognitions, such as religious extremism or rigidity as well as beliefs about an angry, uncaring, or punitive God can have powerfully destructive implications for personal and social functioning (see Exline & Rose, 2013). In terms of influences on the believer, some research has suggested that although a sense of secondary control is often helpful, it also poses the risk of religious fatalism, by which people may abdicate responsibility to take direct actions to alleviate problems (e.g., Jones et al., 2015). Religion is central in the lives of many people, providing their ultimate motivation and primary goals for living as well as prescriptions and guidelines for achieving those goals (Park, 2013). The highest level goals can include connecting or adhering to what one regards as sacred; living a life full of benevolence, forgiveness, or altruism; achieving enlightenment; finding salvation; knowing God; or experiencing transcendence (Talevich, Read, Walsh, Iyer, & Chopra, 2017). Other goals can be derived from these superordinate ones, such as having peace of mind, working for peace and justice in the world, devoting oneself to one’s family, or creating a strong sense of community with other believers. Of course, people often embrace negative goals, such as supremacy and destruction, in the name of religion as well (Ellis, 2017). Some goals are explicitly religious or spiritual in nature, but every goal that individuals hold may become connected to what they consider the sacred through a process of sanctification (Pomerleau, Pargament, & Mahoney, 2016). Therefore any goal can take on religious value when individuals link it to their conceptualization of the sacred. In terms of religious influences on the third aspect of global meaning, subjective sense of meaning, many studies have documented strong links between religiousness and this subjective sense of meaning in life (e.g., Ivtzan, Chan, Gardner, & Prashar, 2013).

Religion and meaning in stressful life circumstances An individual’s religiousness can provide a comprehensive and integrated framework of meaning that explains many worldly events, experiences, and situations in highly satisfactory ways (Hood et al., 2018). As described above, the meaning making model asserts that stressful experiences trigger meaning making, through which individuals try to reduce discrepancies between their appraised meaning of a particular stressful event and their global beliefs and goals (Park, 2010). Religion is often an integral part of this meaning making. In fact, religion may exert its most pronounced influence in times of greatest stress because, for most people, religion is part of their global beliefs and goal. When these beliefs and goals are threatened or violated by traumatic events, most religions provide ways of understanding, reinterpreting, and adding value to difficulties and suffering as well as ways to see the work of a loving God (Hood et al., 2018). For people experiencing injustice, loss, suffering, or trauma, a religious meaning system may be the most reliable and effective way to navigate these experiences. As a framework of meaning, religiousness can strongly influence individuals’ initial appraisals, or understanding, of particular events. Once appraised as stressful, religiousness can influence meaning making processes. Finally, religiousness can be a part of the products of meaning making processes, including the positive changes that individuals report following stressful experiences (e.g., Park & Sinnott, 2018). The following sections describe how religion is involved in meaning making through the processes of initial appraisals, appraisals of discrepancy, meaning making coping (efforts at changing both appraised meaning and global meaning), and outcomes of the meaning making process (meanings made).

Religiousness and initial appraisals of stressful events Any event can be experienced and understood in very different ways, depending on individuals’ specific perspective, including their religious beliefs. Religious beliefs provide many different ways to interpret an event. For example, notions that there is a larger plan, that events are not random, or that personal growth can arise from struggle can inform the specific meaning an individual assigns to an event. Some individuals may believe that God would not harm them or visit upon them more than they could handle, whereas others may believe that God is trying to communicate something important through the event or that the event is a punishment from God (Furnham & Brown, 1992). One study found that chronic pain patients who held a positive God image were more likely to appraise their illness as an opportunity to change their life or to reflect upon what is essential in life, which predicted higher levels of happiness, while chronic

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

277

pain patients with an angry God image were less likely to appraise their illness in this way, leading to lower levels of happiness (Dezutter et al., 2010). Theodicies also inform the way individuals appraise their situation and can lead to painful discrepancies. Hall and Johnson (2001) discussed how individuals can hold only two of the following three propositions simultaneously: God is omnipotent, God is all good, and evil exists. Following traumatic experiences, people struggle to find some way to believe that these three statements are not logically incompatible or defend the plausibility of God’s existence in the light of these seemingly contradictory propositions. Such struggle to make meaning or hold onto one’s beliefs in a powerful and loving God when one has personally experienced evil or severe negative trauma can be great (Park, Currier, Harris, & Slattery, 2017). A variety of solutions to this dilemma lead to a variety of theodicy beliefs. Hall and Johnson (2001) note that one influential Christian viewpoint holds that goodness can occur only in a world where evil also exists, particularly those virtues that an individual comes to practice only through suffering because of evil, such as patience, mercy, forgiveness, endurance, faith, courage, and compassion (Hall & Johnson, 2001). In this meaning system, one can come to see one’s traumatic or stressful experience as an opportunity to grow through one’s suffering (e.g., to build one’s soul, to become more Christ-like, and to grow in agape love; Hall, Shannonhouse, Aten, McMartin, & Silverman, 2018). Another solution may be to view suffering as necessary for reaching future events, such as the ultimate goal of salvation (Hall, 2016). To date, very little research has examined how preexisting theodicies influence how individuals understand the stressful experiences they encounter. Causal attributions, people’s understandings of why a given event occurred are another important type of event appraisal; attributions can be naturalistic or religious (Park, 2013). For example, naturalistic explanations for illnesses can include stress, injury, pathogens, and weakened immune systems, while religious attributions can include God’s efforts to teach, challenge, or punish the afflicted or to teach a lesson to others. It is quite common for individuals to make naturalistic attributions for the immediate or proximal cause of the event but also invoke religious or metaphysical explanations for the more distal attributions (e.g., Park & Carney, 2019). Religious attributions appear to be particularly common for aversive or harmful events and those of high ambiguity and threat (Hood et al., 2018). The likelihood that an individual will make religious or nonreligious attributions for particular experiences or encounters also depends, in large part, on the relative availability of global religious and naturalistic beliefs as well as the extent to which the explanatory power of each type of attribution is satisfactory (Park, 2013). Religiousness can influence how people understand and respond to specific traumatic events. For example, in a study of students who were strongly adversely affected by the 2005 hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, higher religiousness was related to greater appraisal of the hurricanes as threatening and as more of a loss and less of a challenge. Further, those who were more religious were more likely to perceive God as responsible for the hurricanes (Newton & McIntosh, 2009). One’s general religiousness influences the likelihood that one will make religious attributions. A study of college students in the area affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (both of which hit the Southern United States in 2005) asked participants why events like these happen. Highly religious students mostly identified the cause as God’s plan, while less religious students were more likely to make attributions to “a freak of nature,” the law of averages, or a random natural event (Pecchioni, Edwards, & Grey, 2011). Further, religious attributions are often associated with less distress and better recovery. In a sample of women who survived the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami, studied 3 years after the disaster, attributions to karma were negatively related to depressive or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Banford, Wickrama, & Ketring, 2014). Similarly, in the study of undergraduates after Katrina and Rita, those who attributed such disasters to God’s plan, random natural events, and law of averages had significantly lower levels of PTSD symptoms than did those who selected freak of nature, moral karma, and payback (Pecchioni et al., 2011). The contrasting findings for karma may be due to the fact that participants in Asia were largely Buddhist while those in the United States were primarily Christian. Nearly half of the women surveyed near the site of the South East Anatolian (Turkey) earthquake explained the quake as the will and guidance of God, while 41% considered it a natural event and 9% blamed human irresponsibility. Women who blamed other humans’ irresponsibility for the disaster reported higher levels of depressive, somatization, and paranoid symptoms than did those explaining it as God’s will or as a natural event (Sezgin & Punama¨ki, 2012). Not all religious attributions are benign, however, and the specifics of the attribution influence its associations with recovery. For example, in a sample of survivors of the 2005 Pakistani earthquake, one type of religious appraisal for the disaster—feeling punished by God for one’s sins or lack of spirituality—was, perhaps not surprisingly, associated with higher stress levels and negative emotions (Feder et al., 2013). Similarly, in a sample of Hurricane Katrina survivors who were displaced to a shelter in Texas within several weeks of the storm, perceiving God as in control and perceiving the hurricane as punishment were both related to higher levels of PTSD symptoms (Park, Sacco, & Mills, in

278

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

press). Thus attributions can have important implications for whether discrepancies with global meaning are perceived and therefore with long-term recovery. Some attributions may reinforce survivors’ beliefs that the world is predictable and comprehensible and that God loves and protects them, while others may leave survivors feeling vulnerable and lacking control and safety. Although theodicies were not measured in these studies, results are consistent with the notion that participants’ attributions preserved beliefs that God is omnipotent and suffering exists, perhaps at the expense of the belief that God is omnibenevolent or perhaps even preserving these beliefs in a benevolent God by embracing the potentially distressing belief that one is worthy of punishment or has a lesson to learn. Religious beliefs often include how people understand the afterlife; these beliefs can often be seen in people’s efforts to understand their experiences following bereavement (Neimeyer, 2016). For example, some people believe that the deceased continues to exist, that they will be reunited with the deceased after death, and even that they can continue to interact with the deceased, albeit in a different way, while others believe that there is no afterlife or that it is an unpleasant existence (Root & Exline, 2014). Individuals’ understandings of the afterlife will thus greatly shape the meaning and significance of their loss in unique ways. For example, for a bereaved individual, holding beliefs that his loved one is still present and can still communicate may lessen the sense of loss experienced (i.e., the person is still in his life, albeit in a different format) while a bereaved individual who believes that death is the end of existence may experience a much larger hole in his life and correspondingly greater violation of his global meaning (Park & Benore, 2004). Another type of religious event appraisal is that of sacred loss and desecration. These appraisals involve perceiving the event as involving dissolution of a point of connection with transcendent reality. These appraisals can be of the event as a sacred loss, including the loss of something viewed as a manifestation of God or invested with sacred qualities. They can also involve seeing the event as desecration, perceiving sacred aspects of life as having been violated. One study of students whose parents divorced found that general religiousness predicted greater appraisals of sacred loss and desecration; these types of appraisals were highly distressing (Warner, Mahoney, & Krumrei, 2009). Thus religiousness can influence individuals’ understanding of their stressful or traumatic experiences in myriad ways, including their causal attributions, theodicies, goals, and context-specific beliefs. Individuals’ initial understanding of the stressful experience will drive the extent to which they experience distress and need to engage in meaning making, the next stage in the meaning making process, to which we now turn.

Religiousness and discrepancy/distress After appraising the initial meaning of an event, individuals must determine the extent to which that meaning is congruent with their general views of the world and their desires and goals. Although the meaning making model is widely discussed in research on stressful life events (e.g., Neimeyer, 2016; Park & Blake, in press), surprisingly little research has explicitly focused on how people evaluate the discrepancies between their global meaning and their appraisals of potentially traumatic events (Park, Mills, & Edmondson, 2012). Several studies have provided indirect evidence that people higher in religiousness may perceive traumatic events as more discrepant with their global meaning systems, suggesting that devout individuals may find sudden and inexplicable aversive events more challenging to their global meaning system (Park, 2013). A study of survivors of the 2016 Louisiana floods found that holding higher benevolent God theodicies (i.e., beliefs that God is protective and always acting in ways that aim to take care of his flock) was associated with higher levels of global belief violation (McElroy-Heltzel et al., 2018). Although sparse, this evidence to date suggests that religiousness can help individuals to appraise situations more benignly but can also serve as a liability in terms of perceiving discrepancies between one’s global meaning system and the specifics of a stressful encounter. What determines when religiousness is helpful in steering individuals toward benign and less violating appraisals and when it does the opposite remains to be established? To date, so little research has focused on these issues that it is premature to even speculate why religiousness may play out in these very different ways.

Religiousness and meaning making coping According to the meaning making model, discrepancy produces distress which, in turn, fuels efforts to restore congruency between global and situational meaning through meaning making. People make meaning in many different ways, such as attempting to change their appraised meaning of the stressor to make it less aversive or minimize its impact, or to change their global beliefs and goals to accommodate this new and unwelcome experience. Some of these processes are deliberate coping efforts, while others may be less effortful and experienced more as intrusive thoughts (Park &

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

279

George, 2018; see Park, 2010; for a review). People are higher in religiousness are more likely to use meaning making strategies such as positive reappraisal coping, which involves looking for and emphasizing the favorable aspects and implications of situations. Further they are also more successful in applying these meaning making efforts in terms of better adjustment to stressful experiences (Vishkin et al., 2016). For example, religious individuals have demonstrated a propensity to focus on the aspects of a stressful situation that can lead to growth and opportunity (Vishkin, Bloom, & Tamir, 2019). Further, many of these meaning making efforts have a religious aspect, and, in fact, much of religious coping comprises efforts to make meaning from the stressful situation. For example, the RCOPE (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998), a widely used measure of religious coping, includes a number of subscales explicitly tapping into religious reappraisals of the event or reconfiguring one’s global meaning system. For example, coping through benevolent religious reappraisal refers to using religion to redefine the stressor as benevolent and potentially beneficial, while reappraisal of God’s powers refers to redefining God’s ability to influence the stressful situation. Drawing on their religious beliefs, individuals may appraise a serious illness as an opportunity to develop deeper compassion for others and as a way to draw closer to God (Hall et al., 2018). Some research suggests that theodicies determine the distress people experience when attempting to make meaning. In samples of adults and undergraduate students, beliefs that suffering is part of God’s benevolent plan, as well as beliefs that a nonbenevolent God causes suffering, were associated with more divine struggle and in turn with lower levels of well-being and higher distress. Beliefs attributing a benevolent role to God in suffering were directly linked to higher well-being, along with beliefs about God’s limited knowledge of the future and ability to prevent suffering (Wilt, Exline, Grubbs, Park, & Pargament, 2016). These findings suggest that perhaps participants reduced their perception that God is omnipotent, so that they could maintain the belief that God is omnibenevolent and that evil/suffering exists. Such shifts in views of God have rarely been documented and clearly warrant future research. Collectively, these efforts to religiously reappraise both the meaning of the stressful event and one’s global meaning are fairly common and may facilitate changes in meaning as well as powerfully influence adjustment to stressful events (see Pargament, Falb, Ano, & Wachholtz, 2013; for a review of religious coping).

Religiousness and meanings made The eventual products or outcomes of meaning making are changes in appraised meaning of the stressful event and, sometimes, changes in global meaning. Because religious beliefs, like other basic beliefs, tend to be relatively fixed, people confronting crises are thought to be more likely to reappraise their perceptions of situations to fit their preexisting beliefs than to change their religious beliefs (Park et al., 2017). Nevertheless, religiousness can inform meanings made that involve changes in appraised meaning and those that involve changes in global meaning.

Changes in appraised meaning In changing the meaning of a stressful situation, religiousness can be drawn upon to offer additional possibilities for causal reattributions and to illuminate other aspects of the situation. Although reappraisals can be either positively or negatively toned, the motivation to reduce distress generally leads to reappraising stressful situations in a more positive light by giving them a more acceptable meaning, one more consistent with global beliefs and goals. One of the most commonly studied changes in situational meaning made is reattributions. While people are thought to assign cause for events fairly shortly after its occurrence, this attribution is often revised over time through meaning making (Park, 2013; Ullman & Najdowski, 2011). People tend to make reattributions that help one to alleviate their distress. For example, people may initially feel that God neglected to care for them or even deliberately and unjustly caused their trauma. Over time, however, people may come to see the stressful event as the will of a loving or purposeful God, even if it is a God who is inscrutable and beyond human understanding (Hood et al., 2018). Religion provides many different options for making positive reattributions and is frequently invoked in the search for a more acceptable reason for an event’s occurrence than what one may have originally made. For example, people can come to see the stressful event as a spiritual opportunity, as the punishment of an angry God, or as the product of human sinfulness (Park et al., 2017). The meanings that individuals derive can depend in large part on their religious meaning system. Indeed, in a national sample of Christian college students, individuals with strong positive attachment to God and low attachment anxiety were more likely to view suffering as a means of spiritual growth and connection with God (Bock, Hall, Wang, & Hall, 2018). Reattributions for stressful encounters often help individuals to sustain their global religious beliefs.

280

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Although religion commonly facilitates the making of more positive meanings, reinterpretations of stressful experiences are not always positive. For example, people sometimes come to believe that God harmed them, either through deliberate action or through passivity and neglect. These negative outcomes of the making-meaning process can generate mistrust, anger, hurt, and disappointment toward God or even doubt regarding God’s existence (Exline & Rose, 2013). One study of elderly medical inpatients dramatically illustrates the possibility of negative outcomes of religious meaning making coping. Negative religious interpretations of their illness (e.g., seeing their illness as the work of the devil or a result of God’s abandonment) were related to higher rates of subsequent mortality, even after controlling for sociodemographic variables and physical and mental health (Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2001).

Changes in global meaning Traumatic events expose people to the darker sides of life, including human vulnerability and evil (Garbarino & Bedard, 1996; Gray, Maguen, & Litz, 2007). These events are sometimes so discrepant with global meaning that no amount of situational reappraisal can restore a sense of congruence with the individual’s preexisting global meaning. In these instances, individuals may reduce the discrepancy between their understanding of an event and their global meaning by changing their fundamental global beliefs or goals, including, perhaps, their understanding of themselves, others, and the world; their views of good and evil; the importance of forgiveness; their sense of meaning in life; and their relationships with family, community, and God (McCullough, Bono, & Root, 2005). For example, sometimes those with faith come to view God as less powerful (Kushner, 1981) or cease to believe in God altogether. Others may come to believe that they are unable to comprehend everything that happens in the world or God’s reasoning for it, while others may become convinced of their own sinful nature (see Exline & Rose, 2013). Individuals may change or reprioritize their global goals by rededicating themselves to their religious commitments or pledging to be more devout. For example, a 10-year longitudinal study of how people living with HIV cope with HIV and other stressors (e.g., facing death, stigma, poverty, and limited healthcare) found that spiritual meaning making often led to positive meanings made, including spiritual comfort, empowerment, growth/transformation, and gratitude (Kremer & Ironson, 2014). In some instances, periods of extreme stress and subsequent difficulties in making meaning from them can lead to radical religious transformation (Hood et al., 2018). This radical transformation typically involves conversion. Within their new denomination or religion, converts may find alternative systems of global beliefs and goals that help them answer their difficult questions and solve their life problems. Spiritual transformations may be deconversions as well, such as losing one’s faith or connection to a particular religion (see Paloutzian, Murken, Streib, & Namini, 2013, for a review). Some research suggests that theodicies determine the distress people experience when attempting to make meaning. In samples of adults and undergraduate students, beliefs that suffering is part of God’s benevolent plan, as well as beliefs that a nonbenevolent God causes suffering, were associated with more divine struggle and in turn with lower levels of well-being and higher distress. Beliefs attributing a benevolent role to God in suffering were directly linked to higher well-being, along with beliefs about God’s limited knowledge of the future and ability to prevent suffering (Wilt et al., 2016). These findings suggest that perhaps participants reduced their perception that God is omnipotent, so that they could maintain the belief that God is omnibenevolent and that evil/suffering exists. Such shifts in views of God have rarely been documented and clearly warrant future research.

Religiousness and stress-related growth One outcome of meaning making that often straddles the global/situational meaning divide is stress-related or posttraumatic growth, which refers to coming to see a negative event as the catalyst for positive life changes. Some of these perceived changes are profound, such as reorienting one’s life and rededicating oneself to reordered ultimate goals, while others involve smaller changes such as being more intimate with loved ones, handling stress more effectively, taking better care of oneself, seeing one’s own identity more clearly, feeling closer to God, being more appreciative of the everyday aspects of life, and having the courage to try new things. In considering reports of posttraumatic growth, it is important to keep in mind that these are perceptions of changes rather than veridical reports of changes, and, in fact, these reports demonstrate little correspondence with actual experiences of positive change (Park & Sinnott, 2018). Perceived growth appears to come from looking for positive aspects of negative events and identifying some redeeming features of the experience. Many religious traditions, including Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, contend that spiritual growth occurs primarily during times of suffering (Aldwin, 2007). Through suffering, humans develop character, coping skills, and a

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

281

base of life experience that may enable them to manage future struggles more successfully. Many religions also attempt to cultivate virtues such as compassion, which render people more attuned to the suffering of others. One revealing study of older Mexican Americans demonstrated how those who are highly religious can utilize their pain and suffering as a modality for deepening their faith. These elders viewed their suffering in various ways, including as a way to “suffer like Jesus,” to become more compassionate toward others, and even to atone for previous sins (Krause & Bastida, 2009). In fact, one of the most consistent findings regarding predictors of perceived positive life change following life stressors or trauma is that religiousness, measured variously as intrinsic religiousness, religious attributions, and religious coping, is a strong predictor of reports of growth (Shand, Cowlishaw, Brooker, Burney, & Ricciardelli, 2015).

Future directions in research on religiousness and meaning making Although the need for meaning, and the natural role of religion in life meaning, have long informed psychologists’ views of these topics, empirical approaches have suffered from a lack of clarity regarding meaning. Framing the “need for meaning” as the “need for a functional meaning system” helps one to anchor the issues of meaning and religiousness/spirituality in ways that allow delineation of many contexts, processes, and specific types of meaning, allowing for more sophisticated empirical research. As this chapter makes clear, progress is being made in many areas, yet because this approach is fairly new, much remains to be learned. In general, future research in this area should be longitudinal and, ideally, prospective (i.e., measuring meaning systems prior to as well as following stressful encounters). Religious and nonreligious meaning making and meanings made must each be assessed across time, and processes of meaning making should be assessed carefully, examining both deliberate meaning making attempts and more automatic types of processing (see Park, 2010; for an overview of methodological issues). Some of the topics that seem to be particularly promising include G

G

G

G

G

Interplay of intra- and interpersonal processes. Meaning is always mediated through one’s own internal experience, yet much individual meaning is acquired through social processes; and meaning making often occurs in social situations, such as discussing one’s understanding of suffering with another person, who may provide new insights or reinforce one’s interpretations. How do these intra- and interpersonal processes inform and influence one another? Centrality of religion to one’s meaning system. People may vary greatly in the extent to which religion informs different aspects of their global meaning (e.g., to identity or behavior in daily life; Dezutter et al., 2010). Such individual differences should be more closely examined, along with the ways that they influence how people function in ordinary life (e.g., appraising daily events) and in situations of crisis. Religion versus secular influences on meaning. Very little is understood about how religious and secular meanings interact in influencing either global or situational meaning. Intriguing research suggests that even people who do not profess a belief in God often report anger at God (see Exline & Rose, 2013). When do secular influences predominate and when do they give way to religious influences? Perceptions of discrepancy. As noted in this chapter, sometimes individuals’ religious meaning systems are strong enough to protect them from experiencing violations (e.g., a belief that although beyond human understanding, there is a plan). Yet research has also demonstrated that stronger religiousness is related to more violations and more cognitive processing, at least following bereavement (Park, 2013). Under what conditions do individuals experience violations of their global religious meaning? And how do individuals alleviate these violations? What happens when they are not reparable? Attention to belief and goal content. To fully understand meaning systems requires a firm understanding of the contents of global meaning, including the specific global beliefs individuals hold and the specific goal hierarchies that they are working to achieve or maintain. As noted earlier, the recent focus on theodicies is a welcome development in research in the psychology of religion. However, many other beliefs have received minimal attention, in spite of their obvious importance within religious meaning systems. At present, we know even very little about what the important beliefs are—most research at present has focused only on the existence and broad nature of God and of an afterlife—let alone how they are involved in meaning making following stressful experiences. For example, we know little about how individuals understand how active a role God plays in their lives, or if and how God communicates directly with them. Further, very little research to date has explicitly focused on how different religious (and nonreligious) goals influence how and when people encounter highly stressful events or what they do to cope with

282

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

them once encountered. The psychology of religious meaning will be greatly advanced with greater focus on the specific beliefs and goals that comprise individuals’ religious meaning systems.

References Aldwin, C. M. (2007). Stress, coping, and development: An integrative perspective (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Bailey, E. (2010). Implicit religion. Religion, 40, 271 278. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2010.07.002. Banford, A. J., Wickrama, T., & Ketring, S. A. (2014). Physical health problem intrusion linking religious attributions to marital satisfaction in survivors of the 2004 tsunami. Journal of Geography and Natural Disasters, 4, 118. Batson, C. D., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Religion: Its core psychological functions. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 141 155). New York: Guilford Press. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press. Bock, N. A., Hall, M. E. L., Wang, D. C., & Hall, T. W. (2018). The role of attachment to God and spiritual self-awareness in predicting evangelical Christians’ appraisals of suffering. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21, 353 369. Brown, L. A., Belli, G. M., Asnaani, A., & Foa, E. B. (2019). A review of the role of negative cognitions about oneself, others, and the world in the treatment of PTSD. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 43(1), 143 173. Cooper, A. A., Zoellner, L. A., Roy-Byrne, P., Mavissakalian, M. R., & Feeny, N. C. (2017). Do changes in trauma-related beliefs predict PTSD symptom improvement in prolonged exposure and sertraline? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 85, 873 882. Davis, R. F., III, & Kiang, L. (2016). Religious identity, religious participation, and psychological well-being in Asian American adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 45, 532 546. Debnam, K. J., Holt, C. L., Clark, E. M., Roth, D. L., Foushee, H. R., Crowther, M., & Southward, P. L. (2012). Spiritual health locus of control and health behaviors in African Americans. American journal of health behavior, 36(3), 360 372. Dezutter, J., Luyckx, K., Schaap-Jonker, H., Bu¨ssing, A., Corveleyn, J., & Hutsebaut, D. (2010). God image and happiness in chronic pain patients: The mediating role of disease interpretation. Pain Medicine, 11, 765 773. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-4637.2010.00827.x. Ellis, L. (2017). Religious variations in fundamentalism in Malaysia and the United States: Possible relevance to religiously motivated violence. Personality and Individual Differences, 107, 23 27. Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns. New York: Guilford Press. Exline, J. J. (2002). Stumbling blocks on the religious road: fractured relationships, nagging vices, and the inner struggle to believe. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 182 189. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1303_03. Exline, J. J., & Rose, E. D. (2013). Religious and spiritual struggles. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd Ed, pp. 380 398). New York: Guilford. Feder, A., Ahmad, S., Lee, E. J., Morgan, J. E., Singh, R., Smith, B. W., & Charney, D. S. (2013). Coping and PTSD symptoms in Pakistani earthquake survivors: Purpose in life, religious coping and social support. Journal of affective disorders, 147(1-3), 156 163. Frankl, V. E. (1969). The will to meaning. New York: New American Library. Furnham, A., & Brown, L. B. (1992). Theodicy: A neglected aspect of the psychology of religion. The International journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(1), 37 45. Garbarino, J., & Bedard, C. (1996). Spiritual challenges to children facing violent trauma. Childhood, 3(4), 467 478. George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2017). The Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale: A tripartite approach to measuring meaning in life. Journal of Positive Psychology, 12, 613 627. Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Blaming god for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 7 16. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309350299. Gray, M. J., Maguen, S., & Litz, B. T. (2007). Schema constructs and cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder. In L. P. Riso, P. L. Du Toit, D. J. Stein, & J. E. Young (Eds.), Cognitive schemas and core beliefs in psychological problems: A scientist-practitioner guide (pp. 59 92). Washington, DC. ,https://doi.org/10.1037/11561-004.. Hale-Smith, A., Park, C. L., & Edmondson, D. (2012). Measuring religious beliefs about suffering: Development of the Views of Suffering Scale. Psychological Assessment, 24, 855 866. Hall, M. E. L. (2016). Suffering in God’s presence: The role of lament in transformation. Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, 9, 219 232. Hall, M. E. L., & Johnson, E. L. (2001). Theodicy and therapy: Philosophical/Theological contributions to the problem of suffering. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 20, 5 17. Hall, M. E. L., Shannonhouse, L., Aten, J., McMartin, J., & Silverman, E. (2018). Theodicy or not? Spiritual struggles of evangelical cancer survivors. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 0091647118807187. Hardy, S. A., Nadal, A. R., & Schwartz, S. J. (2017). The integration of personal identity, religious identity, and moral identity in emerging adulthood. Identity, 17, 96 107. Hayes, A. M., Yasinski, C., Grasso, D., Ready, C. B., Alpert, E., McCauley, T., . . . Deblinger, E. (2017). Constructive and unproductive processing of traumatic experiences in trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for youth. Behavior Therapy, 48, 166 181. Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 72 83. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309349692.

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

283

Holliday, R., Holder, N., & Surı´s, A. (2018). Reductions in self-blame cognitions predict PTSD improvements with cognitive processing therapy for military sexual trauma-related PTSD. Psychiatry Research, 263, 181 184. Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2018). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (5th ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Ivtzan, I., Chan, C. P., Gardner, H. E., & Prashar, K. (2013). Linking religion and spirituality with psychological well-being: Examining selfactualisation, meaning in life, and personal growth initiative. Journal of Religion and Health, 52, 915 929. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press. Jones, A., Cohen, D., Johnstone, B., Yoon, D. P., Schopp, L. H., McCormack, G., & Campbell, J. (2015). Relationships between negative spiritual beliefs and health outcomes for individuals with heterogeneous medical conditions. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 17(2), 135 152. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 37 48. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353750. Klinger, E. (2012). The search for meaning in evolutionary goal-theory perspective and its clinical implications. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications (pp. 23 56). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2004). The psychology of worldviews. Review of General Psychology, 8, 3 58. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/10892680.8.1.3. Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2006 2007). Religions influence worldviews; Worldviews influence behavior: A model with research agenda. Psychology of Religion Newsletter: Division 36-American Psychological Association, 32, 1 10. Koole, S. L., McCullough, M. E., Kuhl, J., & Roelofsma, P. H. M. P. (2010). Why religion’s burdens are light: From religiosity to implicit selfregulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 95 107. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351109. Krause, N., & Bastida, E. (2009). Religion, suffering, and health among older Mexican Americans. Journal of Aging Studies, 23, 114 123. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.11.002. Kremer, H., & Ironson, G. (2014). Longitudinal spiritual coping with trauma in people with HIV: Implications for health care. AIDS Patient Care and STDs, 28, 144 154. Kushner, H. S. (1981). When bad things happen to good people. New York: Schocken Books. LoSavio, S. T., Dillon, K. H., & Resick, P. A. (2017). Cognitive factors in the development, maintenance, and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Current Opinion in Psychology, 14, 18 22. Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York: Harper & Row. McCullough, M. E., Bono, G., & Root, L. M. (2005). Religion and forgiveness. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 394 411). New York: Guilford Press. McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., Davis, E. B., Davis, D. E., Aten, J. D., Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., & Hwang, J. (2018). Benevolent theodicies protect against PTSD following a natural disaster. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 37, 6 17. Negru-Subtirica, O., Pop, E. I., Luyckx, K., Dezutter, J., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The meaningful identity: A longitudinal look at the interplay between identity and meaning in life in adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 52, 1926 1936. Neimeyer, R. A. (2016). The narrative arc of tragic loss: Grief and the reconstruction of meaning. International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy, 5(1), 6. Newton, A. T., & McIntosh, D. (2009). Associations of general religiousness and specific religious beliefs with coping appraisals in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12, 129 146. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674670802380400. Newton, T., & McIntosh, D. N. (2013). Unique contributions of religion to meaning. The experience of meaning in life (pp. 257 269). Dordrecht: Springer. Paloutzian, R. F., Murken, S., Streib, H., & Ro¨βler-Namini, S. (2013). Conversion, deconversion, and spiritual transformation: A multilevel interdisciplinary view. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 399 421). New York: Guilford. Pargament, K. I., Falb, M. D., Ano, G. G., & Wachholtz, A. B. (2013). The religious dimension of coping. Advances in theory, research, and practice. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed, pp. 560 579). New York: Guilford. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., Tarakeshwar, N., & Hahn, J. (2001). Religious struggle as a predictor of mortality among medically ill elderly patients: A 2-year longitudinal study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 161, 1881 1885. Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 710 724. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1388152. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257 301. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018301. Park, C. L. (2013). Religion and meaning. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 357 379). New York: Guilford. Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning making in the context of disasters. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 72(12), 1234 1246. Park, C. L., & Benore, E. R. (2004). You’re still there: Beliefs in continued relationships with the deceased as unique religious beliefs that may influence coping adjustment. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 37 46. Park, C.L. & Blake, E.B. (in press). Resilience and recovery following disasters: The meaning making model. In S. E. Schulenberg (Ed.), Disaster mental health and positive psychology. New York, NY: Springer. Park, C. L., & Carney, L. M. (2019). Religion, spirituality and health. In T. A. Revenson, & R. A. R. Gurung (Eds.), Handbook of health psychology (pp. 239 251). New York: Routledge.

284

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Park, C. L., Currier, J., Harris, J. I., & Slattery, J. M. (2017). Trauma, meaning, and spirituality: Translating research into clinical practice. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Park, C. L., Edmondson, D., & Hale-Smith, A. (2013). Why religion? Meaning as motivation. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, J. Jones, & A. Mahoney (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion and spirituality (pp. 157 171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997). Meaning in the context of stress and coping. Review of General Psychology, 1, 115 144. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.1.2.115. Park, C. L., & George, L. (2018). Lab- and field-based approaches to meaning threats and restoration: Convergences and divergences. General Review of Psychology, 22, 73 84. Park, C. L., Mills, M., & Edmondson, D. (2012). PTSD as meaning violation: A test of a cognitive worldview perspective. Psychological Trauma Theory, Research Practice, and Policy, 4, 66 73. Park, C. L., Riley, K. E., George, L., Gutierrez, I., Hale, A., Cho, D., & Braun, T. (2016). Assessing disruptions in meaning: Development of the Global Meaning Violation Scale. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 40, 831 846. Park, C. L., Sacco, S. J., & Mills, M. A. (in press). Do religious resources help in the immediate aftermath of a crisis? Hurricane Katrina evacuees’ religious habits, appraisals, and coping. Psychological Trauma. Park, C. L., & Sinnott, S. (2018). Testing the validity of self-reported posttraumatic growth in young adult cancer survivors. Behavioral Sciences, 8, 116. Pecchioni, L. L., Edwards, R., & Grey, S. H. (2011). The effects of religiosity and religious affiliation on trauma and interpretations after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Journal of Communication & Religion, 34, 37 58. Pomerleau, J. M., Pargament, K. I., & Mahoney, A. (2016). Seeing life through a sacred lens: The spiritual dimension of meaning. In P. Russo-Netzer, S. Schulenberg, & A. Batthyany (Eds.), Clinical perspectives on meaning (pp. 37 57). Cham: Springer. Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2009). Science and god: An automatic opposition between ultimate explanations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 238 241. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.013. Root, B. L., & Exline, J. J. (2014). The role of continuing bonds in coping with grief: Overview and future directions. Death Studies, 38(1), 1 8. Saunders, S. M., Lucas, V., & Kuras, L. (2007). Measuring the discrepancy between current and ideal spiritual and religious functioning in problem drinkers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 21, 404 408. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-164X.21.3.404. Sezgin, U., & Punamaki, R. L. (2012). Earthquake trauma and causal explanation associating with PTSD € and other psychiatric disorders among South East Anatolian women. Journal of Affective Disorders, 141, 432 440. Shand, L. K., Cowlishaw, S., Brooker, J. E., Burney, S., & Ricciardelli, L. A. (2015). Correlates of post-traumatic stress symptoms and growth in cancer patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psycho-Oncology, 24(6), 624 634. Shettleworth, S. J. (2010). Cognition, evolution, and behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Talevich, J. R., Read, S. J., Walsh, D. A., Iyer, R., & Chopra, G. (2017). Toward a comprehensive taxonomy of human motives. PLoS One, 12(2), e0172279. Ullman, S. E., & Najdowski, C. J. (2011). Prospective changes in attributions of self-blame and social reactions to women’s disclosures of adult sexual assault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26, 1934 1962. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260510372940. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165. Vishkin, A., Bigman, Y. E., Porat, R., Solak, N., Halperin, E., & Tamir, M. (2016). God rest our hearts: Religiosity and cognitive reappraisal. Emotion, 16, 252 262. Vishkin, A., Bloom, P. B. N., & Tamir, M. (2019). Always look on the bright side of life: Religiosity, emotion regulation and well-being in a Jewish and Christian sample. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20, 427 447. Volkert, J., Ha¨rter, M., Dehoust, M. C., Ausı´n, B., Canuto, A., Da Ronch, C., & Sehner, S. (2019). The role of meaning in life in community-dwelling older adults with depression and relationship to other risk factors. Aging & mental health, 23(1), 100 106. Warner, H. L., Mahoney, A., & Krumrei, E. J. (2009). When parents break sacred vows: The role of spiritual appraisals, coping, and struggles in young adults’ adjustment to parental divorce. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 1, 233 248. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0016787. Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., Park, C. L., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). God’s role in suffering: Theodicies, divine struggle, and mental health. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 352 362.

Further reading Harper, F. W. K., Schmidt, J. E., Beacham, A. O., Salsman, J. M., Averill, A. J., Graves, K. D., & Andrykowski, M. A. (2007). The role of social cognitive processing theory and optimism in positive psychosocial and physical behavior change after cancer diagnosis and treatment. Psychooncology, 16, 79 91. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.1068. Hood, R. W., Hill, P. C., & Williamson, W. P. (2005). The psychology of religious fundamentalism. New York: Guilford Press. Laufer, A., Solomon, Z., & Levine, S. Z. (2010). Elaboration on posttraumatic growth in youth exposed to terror: the role of religiosity and political ideology. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 45, 647 653. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-009-0106-5. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Platinum Press.

Religiousness and meaning making following stressful life events Chapter | 19

285

Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Jewell, T., Magyar, G. M., Tarakeshwar, N., Murray-Swank, N. A., et al. (2005). A higher purpose: The sanctification of strivings in a community sample. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 239 262. Available from https://doi. org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1503_4. Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Jewell, T., Swank, A. B., Scott, E., Emery, E., & Rye, M. (1999). Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal religious constructs in marital functioning. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 321 338. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0893-3200.13.3.321. Martos, T., Ke´zdy, A., & Horva´th-Szabo´, K. (2011). Religious motivations for everyday goals: Their religious context and potential consequences. Motivation and Emotion, 35, 75 88. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9198-1. McIntosh, D. N., Silver, R. C., & Wortman, C. B. (1993). Religion’s role in adjustment to a negative life event: Coping with the loss of a child. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 812 821. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.812. Michael, S. T., & Snyder, C. R. (2005). Getting unstuck: the roles of hope, finding meaning, and rumination in the adjustment to bereavement among college students. Death Studies, 29, 435 458. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180590932544. Park, C. L., Edmondson, D., & Blank, T. O. (2009). Religious and non-religious pathways to stress-related growth in cancer survivors. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 1, 321 335. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-0854.2009.01009.x. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68 78. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual review of Psychology, 52, 141 166. Available from https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141. Schultz, J. M., Tallman, B. A., & Altmaier, E. M. (2010). Pathways to posttraumatic growth: The contributions of forgiveness and importance of religion and spirituality. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 104 114. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018454. Schwartz, S. H., & Bilsky, W. (1990). Toward a theory of the universal content and structure of values: Extensions and cross-cultural replications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 878 891. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.5.878. Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four western religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88 107. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/2787148. Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2010). Religiosity as self-enhancement: A meta-analysis of the relation between socially desirable responding and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 17 36. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351002.

Chapter 20

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Nick Stauner, Julie J. Exline and Joshua A. Wilt Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States

Religious and spiritual (R/S) struggles are a topic of growing interest within the psychology of religion and spirituality (R/S). R/S struggles mark a point of connection between the psychology of R/S and existential psychology, particularly where the latter focuses on concepts of existential threats. Several reviews emphasize the relationships of well-being and distress to R/S in general, and R/S struggles in particular (Exline, 2013; Exline & Rose, 2013; Pargament, 2007; Pargament, Murray-Swank, Magyar, & Ano, 2005; Stauner, Exline, & Pargament, 2016; Wilt, Stauner, & Exline, 2017). This chapter offers an update with a special focus on the implications of R/S struggles for existential meaning and threats to it. In recognition of the dominantly positive themes of research connecting R/S to well-being, we begin with a brief review of the connections between the psychology of R/S and positive psychology. This introduction sets the stage for a short theoretical reevaluation of supernaturalism as an aspect of R/S with particularly mixed implications for meaning and well-being that deserve further research. These points in turn motivate our discussion of R/S struggles, which blend supernatural, secular, and spiritual themes with existential threats that have mostly negative implications for meaning and well-being, distinguishing them as relatively unique and important constructs in the psychology of R/S. Our theoretical reframing of R/S struggles in terms of existential threats further emphasizes their relevance to existential psychology. Finally, we reinforce the connections between R/S struggles and positive psychology with a brief update to previous reviews on recent research relating R/S struggles to health, well-being, and R/S meaning, and close with discussion of the potential for personal and spiritual growth through successful resolution of R/S struggles.

Overview of the positive psychology of religions and spirituality R/S can help people develop and maintain well-being and meaning in life (for a recent review, see Wilt, Stauner, & Exline, 2017). A theoretical postulate with considerable popularity and support in the psychology of R/S is that religions benefit health and well-being generally. However, an important preface to this point is that most supportive literature relies on nonexperimental evidence from primarily Christian populations, especially in the United States (Park & Slattery, 2013). Ethical and practical limitations often preclude such research, and theorists often substitute correlational evidence, though this can neither establish causality nor rule out other possibilities, such as potential influences of wellbeing on religiousness. Furthermore, correlational research outside the United States mixes partial support for religiousness’ positive relationship to well-being with the evidence of strong moderation by culture, such that religiousness relates negatively to well-being in many relatively secularized and highly developed cultures (e.g., western and northern Europe; Gebauer et al., 2017). With these caveats in mind the following brief summary of literature is meant to give a basic sense of the wealth of supportive empirical evidence and richness of theory as to how R/S may benefit people. An extensive body of research documents positive associations between religious involvement and physical and mental health (for reviews, see Aldwin, Park, Jeong, & Nath, 2014; George, Ellison, & Larson, 2002; Koenig, 2012; Koenig, King, & Carson, 2012; Wilt, Stauner, Lindberg, et al., 2017). Several mechanisms have been highlighted for these associations. First, religious involvement is often linked with greater self-control (see McCullough & Willoughby, 2009, for a review) and better behavioral regulation skills (Aldwin et al., 2014), which often take the form of more positive health The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00021-4 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

287

288

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

behaviors. For example, greater religiousness has been associated with lower levels of smoking, drinking alcohol, and risky sexual behaviors, along with a greater likelihood of medical screenings (for reviews, see Aldwin et al., 2014; Koenig, 2012). Second, religious involvement often provides access to social support networks (George et al., 2002), both directly through congregational and clergy support (e.g., Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000; Salsman, Brown, Brechting, & Carlson, 2005) and indirectly through factors such as increased marital stability (Koenig, 2012) and a sense of community and shared values (Graham & Haidt, 2010). Third, R/S provide people with access to a wide array of religious coping strategies (Pargament, 2006; Pargament, Falb, Ano, & Wachholtz, 2013; Pargament, Feuille, & Burdzy, 2011; Pargament et al., 2000; Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998; Pargament, Tarakeshwar, Ellison, & Wulff, 2001). Religious coping can take many forms, ranging from religious social support (see earlier) to appraisal-based strategies: seeing a deity’s benevolence in a stressful situation, for example, or partnering with God(s) to solve a problem. Many people see God(s) as benevolent, relational, and a powerful source of security (for a review, see Granqvist, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2010). Religions can provide people with a vicarious sense of control in stressful situations through beliefs in and identification with God(s) (Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010). Religious belief in an afterlife can also help to reduce anxiety around the prospect of death (Vail et al., 2010) and comfort following bereavement (Smith, Range, & Ulmer, 1992). Fourth, and most centrally for the purposes of this chapter, R/S constitute existential meaning systems and contribute interactively with other compatible meaning systems to the global sense of meaning in life (Park, 2019; Park, Edmondson, & Hale-Smith, 2013). Beyond the experience-organizing meaning provided by the metaphysical beliefs that define and motivate R/S worldviews, R/S inform value systems (Schwartz, 2012), prescribe and sanctify personal goals (Emmons, 1999), and train behavioral routines and lifestyles that create order in daily life. The resources R/S offer for meaning-making and coping overlap considerably, since part of the meaning R/S provide also comes through promises of solutions or support for coping with existential threats. Throughout this chapter, our discussion of existential threats follows the structure of Yalom’s (1980) theory, according to which four primary threats apply to humanity in general: 1. mortality—the loss of personal identity, the discontinuation of experience, bereavement from loved ones, and the limits to personal power implied by human frailty and limited lifespans; 2. isolation—the intrinsic and largely inevitable separation of individuals’ experiences and consciousness that defies the needs for relational intimacy and mutual understanding; 3. freedom—the lack of inherently clear and predetermined, purposive directions for individuals’ behavioral choices, and the burden of responsibility individuals thus bear for these choices and their consequences; and 4. meaninglessness—the similar, apparent lack of a clear, inherent order and meaning to life and existence in general, and the confusing randomness of events and circumstances outside personal control. Briefly stated, R/S often address and can partially mitigate each of these threats via multiple mechanisms including afterlife and eschatological beliefs (potentially reducing the existential threat of mortality), identification and often the hope of ultimate unification with divinity and the virtuous (mitigating existential isolation), prescriptions of moral codes and calls to R/S causes (reducing the meaning threat of overwhelming freedom and responsibility for behavioral decision-making), and metaphysical beliefs about the origins of the universe and causes of events (reducing their apparent meaninglessness). The potential of R/S to provide meaning is a particularly important premise for this chapter, because meaning may mediate positive effects of religiousness on well-being (Steger & Frazier, 2005). Yet the meaning systems offered by R/ S often contain many challenges and complications that may also cause or exacerbate existential problems and threaten well-being. People may experience these problems as R/S struggles, or separate R/S struggles may also cause or result from existential problems that occur in R/S life.

The mixed blessing of supernaturalism Supernaturalism is a core aspect of many R/S worldviews that exemplifies their potential to both provide and challenge the subjective sense of global meaning in life. For the purposes of this chapter, we define supernaturalism broadly as the general belief in agentic entities or phenomena that transcend conventional understandings of nature. Supernatural beliefs often serve to explain macrocosmic, foundational, or extremely influential events and states of existence, such as the origins and structure of the natural universe and supernatural domains (e.g., heaven, the pure land, and hell) and the causes of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes and hurricanes) and the outcomes of geopolitical events (e.g., wars).

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

289

Supernaturalism itself and R/S worldviews that incorporate supernaturalism thus constitute systems of relatively deep, transcendent meaning when compared to more secular, mundane, or self-centered systems of meaning such as some popular forms of hedonism, materialism, and social status-seeking. To this extent that supernaturalism provides deep meaning, this may imply a greater potential for well-being benefits (Reker, 2000); perhaps it implies greater consequentiality in general, including heightened risks as well. Major themes of supernaturalism include supernatural entities and supernatural states of existence. Research relating these themes to meaning and well-being is sparse, but some positive connections have been established. Regarding supernatural entities, most theory, research, and perhaps even most R/S activity in the general population focuses on God(s). Although the generalizability of existing research is limited by its overrepresentation of Christian populations in North America and Europe, this research demonstrates the popularity (within the given populations, at least) of God images with desirable characteristics such as benevolence, compassion, and relational closeness (Exline, Grubbs, & Homolka, 2015). Believing that such a powerful, benevolent supernatural agent is on one’s side can give a sense of power, security, and hope for the future. Experiences of the divine sometimes occur as peak experiences, through which the individual may experience a broader sense of connection to self-transcendent aspects of existence (e.g., truth itself, sacred values, and all of humanity), escape (if temporarily) one’s present- and self-focused worries, build valuable memories that may form pivotal parts of one’s life narrative, and receive insights that lead to reevaluations and reorientations of one’s purpose and way of life (Yaden, 2019). Peak experiences in general thus contribute to meaning, and though research is sparse and nascent on peak R/S experiences in particular, it seems unlikely that an exception to the general relationship would apply broadly to peak R/S experiences. Experiences of the divine may also contribute to meaning or reinforce it through implications about other supernatural aspects of experience, such as the qualities of experiences anticipated to occur after death. Reassuring or revelatory experiences of a benevolent, supportive God may often seem to imply that a positive afterlife in communion with the divine awaits after death, as many R/S belief systems attest. Thus through both personal experiences and common beliefs, R/S may help to manage the existential threat of mortality by encouraging afterlife beliefs (e.g., Vail et al., 2010). Preliminary evidence supports afterlife belief as a partial mediator of effects of religiousness on meaning in life, whereas divine attributions seem less likely to mediate effects of religiousness on meaning (Stauner & Exline, 2018). Speculatively speaking, this may reflect the complexity and ambivalence of supernatural attributions and these experiences may sometimes cause stress. To the extent that supernatural attributions are subjectively abnormal and violate expectations, they may threaten one’s sense of coherence or comprehension, a facet of meaning (George & Park, 2016, 2017; Martela & Steger, 2016). However, preliminary analyses indicate positive relationships between meaning in life and the recalled frequency of supernatural attributions, though an ambivalent mixture of positive relationships with both positive and negative affect accompanies these results (Michel, Stauner, & Exline, in preparation). The psychological dynamics and ramifications of supernatural attributions may vary the across concepts of different supernatural entities and interact with characteristics of the events in question. For instance, although attributing stressful life events to the planful influence of a supreme being may provide a subjective sense of meaning and hope, it may also raise theodical issues such as the question of whether one’s God is truly omnibenevolent (Hale-Smith, Park, & Edmondson, 2012; Wilt, Exline, Lindberg, Park, & Pargament, 2017). When people attribute suffering and stressful events to divine influences, they may prefer to interpret these influences as benevolent rather than cruel (e.g., as a way of teaching people strength or sending some other meaningful message; Wilt, Exline, et al., 2017). Undergraduates at Florida State University reported that divine attributions for Hurricane Hermine gave them a sense of meaning (Stauner, Exline, Fincham, & May, 2018); this and three other studies indicated that people report more divine attributions when they consider these attributions more meaningful (Stauner, Exline, Fincham, May, & Baumeister, 2018). Thus divine attributions for stressful events seem more likely to function (at least subjectively) as a form of positive religious coping than as negative coping or divine struggle. This relative rarity of divine struggle in response to stress makes R/S struggle harder to understand for both researchers and the general public, though it also makes focused research on the topic all the more valuable. Although the idea of divine struggle might seem absurd for nontheists, divine struggles such as anger toward God(s) are endorsed by some atheists (Sedlar et al., 2018) and those who are identified as nonreligious and nonspiritual (Stauner, Exline, Uzdavines, & Bradley, 2015; Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). Many members of these populations may have coherent concepts of a hypothetical God (Bradley, Exline, & Uzdavines, 2015), and in rare cases, they may disbelieve in God(s) because of R/S struggles, though most nonbelievers emphasize intellectual reasons instead (Stauner, Exline, Bradley, Uzdavines, & Grubbs, 2017).

290

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Theism aside, people may interpret stressful events as revealing their fate; while this may provide subjective meaning by allowing people to project their life narratives into the future, any resultant sense of doom or lack of control may do as much to threaten the sense of meaning in one’s choices, actions, or efforts. Similarly, attributing trauma to bad luck (possibly regardless of whether one sees luck as supernatural) may allow one to dismiss the events’ negative implications about oneself or God(s), avoid rumination, and reclaim meaning through the rest of life. Conversely, when applied to one’s own success stories, good luck attributions may deprive victories of their ability to satisfy the agentic needs for achievement, power, autonomy, competence, mastery, or self-efficacy, whereas God attributions may still serve these needs vicariously through a sense of allegiance with this higher power. This delicate question of responsibility for both the desired and unwanted aspects of one’s life narrative can also become the focus of karmic attributions. Making sense of life’s outcomes through belief in systems of cosmic justice such as karma can support a sense of efficacy and eschatological hope for people who consider themselves capable of living morally good lives. Yet a karmic worldview can also oppress people with both the sense of doom seen in negative fate attributions and the sense of responsibility for freely sealing their fates if they regret their past actions or believe they will continue violating their own understanding of this existential moral order. Popular narratives about ghosts and human spirits, if not necessarily ghost attributions themselves, may also tend to reinforce the sense of responsibility and eschatological consequence in personal choice. Perceived interactions with good people or loved ones who have died may encourage a person to live well in hopes of enjoying similar privileges of visitation or communication from what is often assumed to be a better place after death. Yet such interactions may resemble interactions with God(s), instilling a sense of supervision or compulsion by a higher moral authority. Stories of negative encounters with ghosts may also carry moral implications, as by suggesting that persons may become trapped in the afterlife by unresolved commitments or traumas. Corroborating evidence indicates that people tend to associate confined spaces with spirits of morally bad people, whereas good spirits seem more likely to inhabit open spaces (Gray et al., 2018; Jackson, 2019). These results may indicate that a fear of becoming trapped in a prison-like afterlife contributes to the existential threat of freedom and the responsibility for personal consequences that freedom entails. While definitionally evil supernatural entities such as demons or the devil may seem less ambiguous threats to wellbeing, attributing suffering to demonic influences may have ambivalent implications for meaning (Harriott & Exline, 2019). (Perhaps this is also true of supernatural entities commonly conceived of as morally ambivalent or mischievous, such as jinn, nonhuman spirits, or the trickster gods of some polytheistic pantheons.) Demonic attributions may help to resolve cognitive dissonance about theodicy and personal morality by absolving both God(s) and oneself of direct responsibility for suffering (Beck & Taylor, 2008; Exline, 2017). Nonetheless, theodical concerns may include the question of the devil’s existence in worldviews featuring an omnipotent creator, and demonic attributions seem similarly inseparable from human morality. Demonic attributions often raise questions of indirect responsibility: for instance, when people attribute mental illnesses (whether others’ or their own) to demons, this can still lead to suspicion that the victim invited or provoked the curse (Webb, Stetz, & Hedden, 2008). Such provocation can either be framed as righteous in the sense of spiritual warfare (e.g., Exline, 2017; Tanksley, 2010) or as morally culpable in the sense of violated taboos, Faustian bargains, temptations, or other spiritual weaknesses. Aside from these moral threats to meaning, such perceived pitfalls can also pose mortal threats and similar security threats beyond death. Accordingly, attributing suffering to demonic influences has been categorized as negative religious coping in some of the relevant literature, alongside interpretations of suffering as divine punishment (Pargament et al., 1998, 2000). Theory and research on negative religious coping featuring demonic and divine threats have recently expanded into a district construct domain, religious and spiritual struggles (RSS), which are the primary topic of this chapter.

R/S struggles The term religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles refers to experiences of conflict, tension, or distress that center on religious or spiritual issues (Exline & Rose, 2013). As described in recent reviews (Exline, 2013; Exline & Rose, 2013; Pargament, 2007; Stauner et al., 2016; Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016), common R/S struggles can be grouped into three broad categories and six relatively narrower constructs. First, some struggles focus on people’s beliefs or experiences involving supernatural entities, as alluded to in the prior section. These include demonic struggles, which involve perceived attacks by supernatural evil forces (Harriott & Exline, 2019) as well as divine struggles focused on deities, including anger at God (Exline, Park, Smyth, & Carey, 2011) or feeling punished or unloved by God (e.g., Pargament et al., 2000). Second, interpersonal R/S struggles emphasize conflicts and hurts focused on religious communities, such as anger at organized religion or feeling mistreated or offended by R/S people. A third group of struggles

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

291

are intrapersonal, centered within the person. These include moral struggles (struggles to follow moral principles and guilt about wrongdoing), ultimate meaning struggles (concern about a lack of perceived meaning or purpose in life), and doubt struggles (feeling troubled by doubts, confusion, or questions about religious beliefs or teachings). Recently, the RSS Scale (Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, & Yali, 2014) was designed specifically to tap these six forms of R/S struggle. In the following subsections, we consider each of the six aforementioned types of R/S struggle separately. In each case, we speculate on potential theoretical relationships to Yalom’s (1980) four aforementioned existential threats: mortality, isolation, responsibility/freedom, and meaninglessness.

Divine struggle Theoretically, divine struggle may relate to all four of Yalom’s (1980) existential threats. Beginning with mortality, death can imply a confrontation with a powerful, mysterious entity. When one perceives anger in a deity, one may fear a mortal threat posed by divine wrath, and potentially further harm or suffering beyond death resulting from divine punishment. To the extent that one fears divine anger and punishment due to one’s own choices, this also implies connections between divine struggle and the existential threat of freedom. Generally, deities represent the absolute highest authorities within theistic worldviews. Their judgments often hold the most weight and may often seem unchangeable. Belief in an unforgiving God (let alone several) may exacerbate concerns about one’s past choices and increase the pressure to make future choices carefully. Accordingly, a falsifiable hypothesis for future research could posit that divine struggle positively moderates effects of moral struggle on global guilt, self-esteem, and other outcomes related to psychological well-being and distress. Projecting self-judgment onto a deity (regardless of whether this is valid) may have similar or different psychological consequences as compared to holding oneself directly responsible and feeling guilt or shame. Although these emotions seem likely to accompany any perception that a deity blames oneself, rare cases in which one rejects this blame and rejects guilt or shame in general would also make interesting topics of research. Even when one rejects divine judgment as invalid, they may have no hope of escaping its consequences and may fear additional consequences of rebellion. While divine wrath and punishment often connote threateningly direct confrontation with God(s), people experiencing divine struggle may also feel abandoned by God(s). Feeling abandoned by a deity, particularly a monotheistic God, may imply the ultimate sense of existential isolation when one relies on that deity for guidance or validation of related worldviews. In the context of suffering (which some interpret as abandonment), perceived abandonment may feel like a betrayal when subjectively underserved, or like condemnation when one does feel they may have provoked it. Although the same issues of responsibility may arise in more confrontational experiences of divine punishment, experiences of divine abandonment may not seem to convey messages of divine reproval as clearly. If experiences of abandonment cannot be interpreted as punishment, this may effectively replace one kind of existential threat (freedom, as discussed above) with two: not only isolation but meaninglessness as well. Experiences of abandonment seem likely to violate the popular expectation that God(s) will be relationally close, responsive, and compassionate. If one cannot explain the loss of this relationship, the loss may threaten broader meaning systems that depend on one’s relationship with the divine, as that relationship may often hold greater significance than others and provide life in general with meaning and purpose. Any loss or disruption of a very important, deeply meaningful personal relationship with God(s) could cause a general sense of meaninglessness, but a third kind of divine struggle seems particularly likely to entail the threat of meaninglessness: anger at God(s). Anger at God(s) often arises through the problem of suffering, because the existence of suffering often seems to conflict with God concepts that are omnibenevolent (i.e., completely and perfectly good). Suffering may threaten meaning more when attributed to God(s) but without a clear explanation of why God(s) caused it. If people perceive anger from God(s) as the likely cause of some negative event, for instance, explaining this event as divine punishment may actually protect meaning, whereas if one has no such explanation for the event, this may lead to anger at God (s). Seemingly unprovoked experiences of hardship may violate expectations of protection among those who feel entitled to it, or these experiences may seem to conflict with the idea of divine compassion and benevolence, especially if one does not see a way to grow through the hardship or interpret it as a test. These and other views of suffering have a dedicated measure (Hale-Smith et al., 2012) with demonstrated relationships to perceptions of God in the context of R/S struggle (Wilt, Exline, et al., 2017). Of the 10 views of suffering measured in this research, one has stood out empirically: the “unorthodox” view of God as not entirely good, which correlates positively with divine struggle and distress and negatively with well-being (Wilt, Exline, Grubbs, Park, & Pargament, 2016). Divine struggle may mediate these relationships with well-being and distress. Further research on views of suffering and divine struggle should examine whether

292

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

certain views correlate more strongly with certain kinds of divine struggle, such as the retributive view of suffering with experiences of divine punishment, or the unorthodox view (i.e., denying absolute goodness) with anger directed at God (s). These different views and experiences of God(s) may then have differing implications for existential meaning, either creating mortality and freedom threats or meaninglessness threats depending on whether the observer feels they are responsible for the deity’s action or whether any other explanation is available.

Demonic struggle Like divine struggle, demonic struggle can imply any of the four primary existential threats. As with God(s), the supernatural power of the devil, demons, or other evil spirits involved in a demonic struggle may imply some danger to a person’s life, raising the existential threat of mortality. Furthermore, this threat may extend beyond death if one’s demonic struggle includes concerns about an afterlife, such as suffering caused by demons in an afterlife or a risk of damnation due to one’s interactions with the devil. In this sense, any interaction with demons may also pose the threat of isolation, in which one may feel distanced from God(s) or fear the loss of divine favor due to the corrupting influence of demons. Actual social isolation may occur if others view a person as corrupted by their demonic struggle; shunning and stigmatization are among the social risks associated with demonic struggle. To the extent these social risks are known or perceived, people may self-impose some degree of isolation out of fear of reputational harm rather than seeking help with demonic struggle. Demonic struggle is a poorly understood phenomenon, and the well-being risks of misunderstanding can be substantial. Psychological research on experiences with demons is very limited and largely circumscribed within literatures on possession and psychosis. In light of historical conflicts between psychology and religions, people may fear that reporting experiences with demons to unfamiliar mental health professionals could result in pathologizing labels or the loss of personal freedoms due to unwanted psychiatric diagnoses. These and other cultural factors may lead people experiencing demonic struggle to avoid conventional mental health services and prefer more spiritually focused assistance, but this is not necessarily the less stigmatizing option. Some tendency to attribute demonic struggle and associated psychological problems to the moral failings of the patient has been documented in Christian services, for instance (Mercer, 2013; Scrutton, 2015; Stanford, 2007). Demonic struggle may often contain some element of the existential threat of freedom because of attributions of responsibility directed at the person experiencing demonic struggle. In any case where the people experience stigmatization for demonic struggle, they may internalize a sense of responsibility for bringing demonic influences into their life. They may learn to fear their own freedom if this seems to imply a risk that they will continue inviting harmful influences into their life. While this psychological process may apply even when a person does not know why they are experiencing demonic struggle (e.g., seemingly random night terrors), the threat of freedom seems most relevant to demonic struggles that are based in some experience of temptation to violate moral restrictions. In any temptationbased experience of demonic struggle, the threat of freedom is clear and heightened: a temptation implies freedom of choice, but attributing the temptation to demonic influence implies a clear judgment that a tempting option would be morally injurious or altogether wrong. Yet a temptation strong enough to cause demonic struggle also implies some risk that the person will freely choose the regrettable option; thus, theoretically, in cases of struggle with demonic temptation, freedom can become the core existential threat that entails the aforementioned others as consequences. In addition to these challenges to existential meaning via the threats of mortality, isolation, and freedom, demonic struggle may directly cause a general sense of meaninglessness by raising the theological problem of evil. As in some cases of divine struggle, cognitive dissonance may arise from apparent contradictions between omnibenevolent God concepts and experiences of evil that seem to be caused or permitted by God(s), which may include demonic struggle if a person believes that a God created the demonic influence, allows it to exist, or should have the power to stop its influence. However, when a person does not hold God(s) responsible for demonic struggle, the belief in demons may actually help to resolve theodical threats to meaning by explaining suffering through some force other than God(s). Empirical research has indicated relatively little evidence of an overall relationship between demonic struggle and meaning in life, and even the possibility of a weakly positive relationship (Exline et al., 2014), though this may be a spurious relationship caused by religiousness.

Interpersonal struggle The clearest threat to existential meaning from interpersonal struggle is isolation. Since religious communities often comprise central parts of people’s social networks or overlap with many other parts, conflicts that separate a person

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

293

from their religious community can deeply disrupt one’s sense of connection to humanity in general. In severe cases a person who is not welcome in their religious community may experience social isolation directly when excluded from religious services that have social aspects or functions. A person who leaves a religious community may also feel a more abstract loss of connection to humanity by losing their sense of religious identity, which often serves to define the ingroup and create a sense of kinship with people outside one’s local community. However, recent research suggests that interpersonal struggle does not generally predict religious deidentification positively (nor do most struggles; Stauner, Exline, Uzdavines, Bradley, & Van Tongeren, 2019), so interpersonal struggle may tend to affect meaning and well-being without disrupting religious identity completely. Future research on interpersonal struggle would do well to focus on populations that already experience unusually great amounts of social isolation or ostracism, as these conditions may increase the risks to well-being and meaning that associate with interpersonal struggle. In addition to increasing the risk of severe isolation, interpersonal struggle may lead to other existential threats indirectly through other kinds of R/S struggle. For instance, recent research indicated that people tend to perceive God’s attitudes toward nonheterosexuality as more negative when they belong to religious groups with less accepting attitudes (Stauner, Exline, Przeworski, Birnkrant, & Kaminski, 2017/2018). Muslims and Hindus in the United States also reported more of all R/S struggles in one study (Stauner, Exline, & Pargament, 2015/2016), though it is unclear whether social contextual factors such as isolation or prejudice played a role in creating these differences.

Moral struggle The existential threat of freedom overlaps considerably with the theoretical causes of moral struggle. One might argue that moral struggle is a major mechanism through which freedom threatens existential meaning. The opportunity for choice—and ultimately the necessity of choice—leads to the assumption of responsibility for the consequences of choices. When consequences are undesirable, the burden of responsibility may lead to moral struggle. A closely related construct is moral injury, a topic of special interest to researchers of veterans’ issues (Bre´maultPhillips, Pike, Scarcella, & Cherwick, 2019). The morally sensitive and consequential nature of work (especially active duty) in the armed forces makes moral injury something of an occupational hazard for military personnel. They are exposed to morally troubling experiences at higher rates than the general civilian population and therefore have more opportunities to internalize responsibility for these experiences and feel lasting guilt about them afterward. To some extent, this is true regardless of whether a person’s choices actually caused the morally injurious event or whether they merely witnessed it, but attributions of responsibility do matter. A recent study of veterans currently experiencing an R/ S struggle demonstrated that those who felt responsible for their R/S struggle reported more moral struggle concurrently and over time (Wilt et al., 2019). People with moral struggles sometimes withdraw from religious communities, whether out of fear of judgment and rejection or out of a personal sense of not belonging. An example of this process was described by Royce (1995): due to moral struggle with alcoholism, a pastor left his position and the church, lost his sense of connection to God, and also experienced ultimate meaning and doubt struggles. This case demonstrates the potential of moral struggles to cause isolation and possibly other existential threats through related R/S struggles. Connections to the threat of mortality through fear of divine punishment were mentioned previously, but according to some R/S worldviews (e.g., some karmic belief systems), the negative consequences of immoral behavior may impact a person’s experiences after death independently of the actions or judgments of any God(s).

Doubt struggle R/S worldviews generally serve as frameworks for existential meaning, but this function may be limited by the perceived validity of the worldview. Doubts about the validity of a worldview can coexist with belief in its validity, but doubts sometimes erode beliefs, potentially reducing the ability of the beliefs to provide or support existential meaning. While doubt struggle is defined as a distressing form of R/S doubt, it is not clear whether doubt struggle actually affects the strength of R/S beliefs; doubt struggle has not exhibited consistent correlations with religiousness measured contemporaneously (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). Its ability to predict decreases in religiousness remains untested, but a test of religiousness’ ability to predict change in R/S struggles produced inconsistent evidence that religious belief salience might predict increases in doubt struggle (Stauner, Wilt, Exline, & Pargament, 2017). While our understanding is thus limited by the need for further research, it seems that doubt struggle may be the kind of doubt that can coexist with R/S beliefs without tending to erode them in a strong or consistent manner.

294

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Yet doubt struggle correlates negatively with meaning (Exline et al., 2014), which suggests that the erosion of meaning may cooccur as a cause or consequence of doubt struggle. A general loss of meaning could occur as a new, acute doubt struggle, or it could cause existing doubts to become distressing enough to prompt struggle. If doubt struggle reduces meaning, perhaps this is more of an emotional process than a cognitive one. Since there is a lack of evidence to suggest that doubt struggle interferes with belief, but a clear connection between doubt struggle and distress (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016), it seems most plausible that doubt struggle would create a sense of meaninglessness through feelings of insecurity, thus disrupting the emotional, intuitive experience of meaning. In this sense, doubt struggle may represent an intuitive rather than ideological confrontation with the existential threat of meaninglessness.

Ultimate meaning struggle The connection between R/S struggles and the existential threat of meaninglessness seems clearest with ultimate meaning struggle. Arguably the less clear side of this relationship is the distinction between these constructs. Theoretically, meaninglessness exists as a threatening condition of existence for all of humanity (or perhaps all conscious life), but if ultimate meaning struggle is a universal phenomenon, this is not known and has not been claimed as a theoretical postulate. Research has demonstrated that many people do not report any lack of meaning; however, if meaninglessness exists as a universal condition, it may exist for many as a latent or potential characteristic of worldviews. This kind of latent meaninglessness would neither necessarily manifest in subjective experience for everyone nor lead to ultimate meaning struggle for everyone. Research has supported an empirical distinction between ultimate meaning struggle and the subjective absence of meaning (i.e., the theoretical opposite of the presence of meaning or low end of the dimension represented by this construct; Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006; Wilt, Stauner, Lindberg, et al., 2017). One known distinction between these constructs is in the definitional inclusion of distress, which only applies to ultimate meaning struggle, that is, absence (i.e., low presence) of meaning is not inherently, necessarily distressing, whereas ultimate meaning struggle is. Furthermore, ultimate meaning struggle does not necessarily indicate an absence of meaning; even people reporting the strong presence of meaning in their lives have been known to report ultimate meaning struggle. Thus ultimate meaning struggle can be understood as a subjective lack of meaning—not merely an emptiness where meaning could have existed, but some insufficiency or incompleteness of meaning that is salient and discomforting. Empirical evidence has supported the centrality of distress in the definition of ultimate meaning struggle, consistently demonstrating that, of all R/S struggles, it has the strongest relationships with distress (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). Of course, the preceding points of theoretical distinction are not intended to downplay ultimate meaning struggle’s relationship with meaning in life; it may be the only kind of R/S struggle that relates (strongly and negatively) to meaning in life independently of all other R/S struggles and religiousness (Stauner, Exline, Wilt, Lindberg, & Pargament, 2015/2016).

Review of recent research relating R/S struggles to well-being and R/S meaning In reviewing evidence for potential health and well-being consequences of R/S struggles, it is important to begin by noting that true causal evidence generally does not exist yet. Experimental manipulations of R/S struggles do not exist and could be ethically difficult to design, though clinical interventions are under development and have produced some success stories already (Ano, Pargament, Wong, & Pomerleau, 2017; Pargament, 2019). Causal implications are often erroneously inferred from longitudinal results, but the assumptions needed for causal inference from nonexperimental longitudinal designs have generally not been satisfied in existing longitudinal research on R/S struggles, which is scarce. A recent study established the viability of the RSS for longitudinal research, demonstrating stable measurement properties and latent structure and moderate variability in individual differences in R/S struggles over 1 year (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, & Pargament, Submitted). Unlike stable personality traits or fluctuating emotional states, R/S struggles exhibit an intermediate, developmental phase-like stability that balances lasting relevance with the potential for intervention, and the prediction of important changes. These results distinguish R/S struggles as a fertile domain for longitudinal and experimental research that should expand on the primarily cross-sectional research reviewed here. Cross-sectional correlational research has established many links between R/S struggles and other constructs that are relevant to health and well-being. Given that R/S struggles focus on negative or conflicted thoughts and feelings around R/S, these constructs relate to facets of general psychological distress, such as depression, anxiety, and perceived stress (e.g., Abu-Raiya, Pargament, Krause, & Ironson, 2015; Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). Other reviews on the connections of R/S struggles to health and well-being have been published recently (Ano & Vasconcelles, 2005; Exline, 2013; Exline & Rose, 2013; Pargament, 2007; Stauner et al., 2016), so this section focuses first on supplementing these

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

295

reviews with new conclusions from research that has been published since these reviews, and second on suggesting directions for future research. A study of alcohol problems among undergraduates found positive correlations between problematic drinking and all six kinds of R/S struggles (Stauner, Exline, Kusina, & Pargament, 2019). When testing independent predictive effects of all R/S struggles in multiple regression while controlling religiousness and distress, moral struggle was the only RSS factor that remained a significant predictor. This study highlighted the uniqueness of the relationship between alcohol problems and moral struggle, which offers a good example of the potential for reciprocal causation between R/S struggles and many problems with health and well-being. It seems plausible that problematic drinking often arises as a maladaptive coping response to moral struggle, but the problems that distinguish problematic drinking from the mere frequency of drinking (a negative correlate of R/S struggles), such as failing to meet expectations, seem likely to produce moral struggle as well. This hypothetical feedback loop between alcohol problems and moral struggle could produce the independent relationship observed in the study, but other explanations are possible as well. In a related study of links between R/S struggles and personality traits, negative relationships with R/S struggles emerged for self-esteem and self-compassion (Grubbs, Wilt, Stauner, Exline, & Pargament, 2016). Evidence was particularly strong for self-esteem, which correlated negatively with all R/S struggles, and for ultimate meaning, moral, and divine struggles specifically, in which self-esteem negatively predicted change over 1 year while controlling religiousness. These three struggles correlated negatively with self-compassion as well, whereas demonic, interpersonal, and doubt struggles only correlated significantly with self-esteem. A theoretically related but nonempirical chapter suggested many possible connections between R/S struggles and self-forgiveness that may inform future research (Exline, Wilt, Stauner, Harriott, & Saritoprak, 2017). Grubbs et al.’ (2016) study also included a less desirable aspect of attitudes toward the self, psychological entitlement, which correlated positively with divine struggle. A second theoretical chapter reviewed related research and theory on spiritual entitlement and narcissism and their connections to divine struggle (Grubbs, Stauner, Wilt, & Exline, 2018). Together, these conclusions suggest that self-focused aspects of the existential meaning system must maintain a sense of personal justice by balancing positivity toward the self with moderate or flexible expectations regarding what one deserves. Concepts or attitudes regarding the self that are overly rejecting or unforgiving—or conversely, those that are so strongly self-serving as to make the context of one’s life seem unworthy—tend to cooccur with R/S struggles in a way that again suggests the possibility of mutual causation. Whether a person perceives one’s environment as unjust, or whether a person perceives oneself as an unforgivable source of injustice, R/S struggles may result from the perception of injustice, particularly struggles with God(s), whom people may often hold responsible for causing or correcting injustices. Existing grievances with God(s) may also lead to a sense of entitlement to compensation for one’s suffering. However, a person who feels they deserve to suffer may experience a variety of R/S struggles as a result, especially ultimate meaning, moral, and divine struggles, and in turn these struggles may seem to reflect negatively on the self, mutually reinforcing the sense of existential misalignment within the self. In further support of the idea that perceptions of right and wrong may shape R/S struggles, empirical evidence suggests that R/S struggles may mediate detrimental effects of behaviors that are not inherently unhealthy. When behaviors conflict with religious systems of morality, such as pornography use, moral struggles may arise out of that incompatibility (Grubbs, Stauner, Exline, & Pargament, 2016). This implies that R/S struggles may constitute a primary health risk of restrictive religious meaning systems, and perhaps also a risk of stigmatized behaviors. Most R/S struggles in the RSS relate negatively to the presence of meaning in life (Exline et al., 2014; Stauner, Exline, Wilt, Lindberg, & Pargament, 2015). This is less true of moral and demonic struggles for people who consider themselves spiritual; demonic struggles may even relate weakly and positively to meaning in life, particularly among people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious (Stauner et al., 2015). Similarly, interpersonal and doubt struggles relate less negatively to meaning in life for nonreligious people; perhaps religious conflicts and doubts pose less of a threat to meaning for people who have not personally invested in religions. A separate analysis of the same dataset found that, among atheists, meaning in life only correlated significantly and negatively with moral and ultimate meaning struggles (Sedlar et al., 2018), but interpersonal struggle also correlated negatively with life satisfaction and positively with depression and anxiety. In the atheist subpopulation, divine, demonic, and doubt struggles did not correlate significantly with well-being or distress. R/S struggles are related to, yet distinct from religiousness, stress, and distress, both theoretically and empirically (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). Causality in these relationships is ambiguous and probably complex. R/S struggles exhibit greater stability than mood, but less than religiousness (Stauner et al., Submitted). Stressful life events relate to all R/S struggles positively and equally (Stauner, Exline, Pargament, Wilt, & Grubbs, 2018), and several studies have researched R/S struggles about stressful life events such as natural disasters (e.g., floods, earthquakes, and

296

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

hurricanes; Davis et al., 2019; McElroy-Heltzel et al., 2018; Wadsworth, Santiago, & Einhorn, 2009), where it seems clear that the events preceded the R/S struggles. However, people also report struggles about voluntary stressful life events such as divorce (Krumrei, Mahoney, & Pargament, 2011), which may both cause and result from R/S struggles in various cases. Religiousness relates less consistently to R/S struggles in general, usually predicting more demonic and moral struggles and less ultimate meaning struggles (Stauner, Exline, Grubbs, et al., 2016). These relationships may also depend partly on the religiousness of the population: we have found that religiousness relates negatively to divine, interpersonal, doubt, and general R/S struggles in a Christian university but positively to the same struggles in a relatively nonreligious university. In longitudinal analyses that combined these datasets (a necessary evil due to heavy attrition), religiousness predicted increases in moral, demonic, and interpersonal struggles over time (Stauner, Wilt, et al., 2017). In demonic and moral struggles only, religiousness explains more variance than perceived stress (a subjective measure; Stauner, Wilt, Pargament, & Exline, 2015) or stressful life events (an objective measure; Stauner, Wilt, Exline, & Pargament, 2015). When predicting R/S struggles, neuroticism explains more variance than stressful life events in all except interpersonal struggles (Stauner, Wilt, Grubbs, Pargament, & Exline, 2015). Our studies have failed to find evidence that stressful life events interact with religiousness or neuroticism (our hypothesized buffer and diathesis, respectively; Stauner et al., 2015, 2018), but the relationship between neuroticism and stressful life events makes substantial mediated effects plausible, particularly for interpersonal and ultimate meaning struggles. Neuroticism may increase the likelihood of interpersonal stressors such as relational problems (Coˆte´ & Moskowitz, 1998; Dermody, Quilty, & Bagby, 2016; Gallo & Smith, 1999; Wilson, Harris, & Vazire, 2015), which may then cause interpersonal struggles. Conversely, neuroticism may interfere with coping responses to stressful life events, increasing the likelihood of resultant ultimate meaning struggles. Further research on these causal pathways could prove especially valuable. Cultural generalizability is another open question for future research, but existing research is supportive. Using several measures related to anger at God(s), a study of undergraduates in Southwestern India found evidence of construct validity and comparability between three Christian-majority undergraduate populations in the United States and the Hindu-majority, polytheistic-plurality population of undergraduates at the Indian university (Exline, Kamble, & Stauner, 2017). Though this study focused on cross-cultural validation of anger at God(s), it also reported evidence of a positive correlation between alcohol and drug use and anger toward God(s), but this result was limited to the context of a specific experience of suffering and did not achieve significance regarding current or lifetime frequency of anger toward God(s). An interesting complexity regarding anger toward God(s) emerged in exploratory reanalysis of the RSS’ factor structure among Israeli Palestinian Muslims (Abu-Raiya, Exline, Pargament, & Agbaria, 2015). Although a confirmatory analysis, if it had been attempted, might have found adequate fit for the RSS’ original measurement model in this population, the exploratory approach of this study emphasized a different latent structure in the divine, demonic, and doubt items. Two new hybrid latent factors were selected to explain their covariance instead of the original three: one factor combined demonic struggle with items measuring struggle with divine punishment, while the other combined doubt struggle with items measuring struggle with divine abandonment and anger at God. These items expressing negative judgments or doubts about God or one’s religious beliefs exhibited the lowest frequencies of endorsement: only these struggles with negativity or doubt toward God and religion were endorsed by less than a 10th of the sample. These results may reflect the importance of judgments about whether expressing anger and doubt toward God is morally acceptable; generally it is not in the Israeli Palestinian Muslim population, which may suppress reports of these struggles and affect their latent structure. This study did not measure the acceptability of anger toward God, but the aforementioned study of Indian undergraduates did, and found corroborating evidence that anger toward God(s) was endorsed more by individuals that considered it morally acceptable, which most did not (Exline et al., 2017; see also Exline & Grubbs, 2011; Exline, Kaplan, & Grubbs, 2012). Cultural differences aside, all R/S struggles related positively to depression and anxiety in the Israeli Palestinian Muslim population, successfully generalizing conclusions from the United States. Research has also supported theory about R/S struggles and anger at God in a Polish population with a strong majority of Roman Catholics. The original factor structure of the RSS was confirmed in a Polish translation, as were the positive correlations between all R/S struggles and perceived stress (Zarzycka, Ciszek, & Rykowska, 2018). A study using a separate measure of religious strain found that it correlated positively with anxiety, and life satisfaction correlated negatively with a subscale specifically measuring negative interactions with religious group members (Zarzycka, Rybarski, & Sliwak, 2017). In multiple regression, this subscale and another subscale measuring religious fear and guilt (e.g., regarding sin and God’s forgiveness) predicted anxiety independently and interacted with sexual orientation, such

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

297

that negative social interactions predicted anxiety more strongly among homosexuals than among heterosexuals, while religious fear and guilt predicted anxiety less strongly for homosexuals. The Polish study of anger at God found that it correlated positively with interpretations of suffering as punishment from God; this relationship was mostly independent of gender differences and effects of religiousness and God concepts (Zarzycka, 2016). It seems that many of the concepts and correlations involving R/S struggles and well-being are generalizable or comparable across cultures, but further research that is cross-culturally coordinated is bound to reveal subtle differences. Even within the United States, cultures and demographic groups are likely to differ somewhat. A large-sample study of a six-item measure designed to identify participants with R/S struggles found differences across all demographic factors analyzed; these factors were age, gender, education, region, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and several interactions among them (Stauner et al., 2015/2016). Though the aforementioned Polish study did not find significant differences in religious strain between heterosexuals and homosexuals, homosexuals in this large US sample reported more interpersonal and ultimate meaning struggles than heterosexuals, and bisexuals reported more of all R/S struggles than both other groups. Even within Christianity, different denominations expressed varying degrees of R/S struggles: for instance, Catholics reported more of all R/S struggles than Protestants. Correlations with well-being may also differ as was established in a study of religious quest and search for meaning, which found that quest related more positively to life satisfaction and meaning in life among Catholics than among Protestants (Steger et al., 2010). In unpublished analyses, we have found positive correlations between religious quest and all factors of the RSS, so we anticipate that similar dynamics may apply to R/S struggles. Future research should take care to test for differences in the relationships of R/S struggles with well-being and meaning in life depending on demographic differences both across and within cultures.

Potential for growth and spiritual maturity Although R/S struggles are associated with emotional pain, they are not conceived as inherently pathological; indeed, R/S struggles may be a normal and natural part of life for many individuals (Pargament, 1997). R/S struggles may even signal turning points, representing a fork in the road where people may turn toward despair or growth in their existential, spiritual, and emotional lives (Pargament, 2007). Investigations into whether R/S struggles are associated with growth yielded mixed findings (for reviews, see Pargament, Desai, & McConnell, 2006; Wilt, Grubbs, Exline, & Pargament, 2016). Some early studies revealed links between negative religious coping methods that signal R/S turmoil (e.g., spiritual discontent, demonic reappraisal, and interpersonal religious discontent) to positive outcomes such as posttraumatic and R/S growth (Pargament et al., 1998, 2000). Other studies, however, showed links between negative religious coping to R/S decline (e.g., Pargament et al., 2003). More recent studies found that perceived severity and difficulty of R/S struggles relate positively to secular and spiritual measures of both growth and decline (Desai & Pargament, 2015; Wilt, Pargament, & Exline, 2018; Wilt, Pargament, Exline, Barrera, & Teng, 2018). These inconclusive findings motivated research examining the different ways in which people adjust and adapt to R/S struggles. This work is based on the rationale that responses to R/S struggles, rather than simply the R/S struggles themselves, may catalyze growth or decline. More consistent findings have emerged from these lines of research. One way in which people differ in response to R/S struggles is in their ability to make sense of their experiences. Though R/S struggles constitute threats to meaning, some people may be able to find reasons for their R/S struggles that make sense and situate the events in a coherent narrative, whereas for others R/S struggles may defy meaningmaking processes. A recent study of undergraduates showed that there are individual differences in meaning found in R/S struggles, and people who reported higher levels of meaning found tended to experience higher levels of secular and spiritual growth, as well as lower levels of spiritual decline (Desai & Pargament, 2015). Similar results were noted in a sample of US Veterans (Wilt, Stauner, Lindberg, et al., 2017). Furthermore, higher levels of perceived meaning in R/S struggles predicted higher levels of emotional well-being in a sample of undergraduates (Wilt, Exline, et al., 2016; Wilt, Grubbs, et al., 2016). R/S variables have also emerged as consistent predictors of growth and decline in response to R/S struggles. First, higher levels of general religiosity are a robust predictor of more positive adaptations to R/S struggles across a number of studies (Exline, Hall, Pargament, & Harriott, 2017; Wilt, Exline, et al., 2016; Wilt, Grubbs, et al., 2016; Wilt, Stauner, Lindberg, et al., 2017). A second class of predictors specifically reflect perceived interactions with God. Positive perceived relationships with God, more secure attachment to God, higher levels of gratitude to God, and seeing suffering ultimately as a benevolent work of God are associated with more positive outcomes (Desai & Pargament, 2015; Exline, Hall, et al., 2017; Exline, Kamble, et al., 2017; Exline, Wilt, et al., 2017). Within Islam the concept of spiritual jihad frames R/S struggles as opportunities for growth in one’s relationship with Allah; this mindset as applied to specific moral struggles predicts greater spiritual and posttraumatic growth and less distress (Saritoprak, Exline, &

298

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Stauner, 2018). Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that partnering with God in response to R/S struggle may relate to positive outcomes (Exline, Hall, et al., 2017; Exline, Kamble, et al., 2017; Exline, Wilt, et al., 2017; Wilt, Stauner, Harriott, Exline, & Pargament, 2018). These studies showed that religious coping methods reflecting active engagement with God and perceptions of God-initiated action are independently predictive of higher levels of spiritual growth and lower levels of spiritual decline. Pargament (1997) proposed that adaptation to R/S struggles may be understood within the theoretical frameworks of the Religious Orienting System (ROS) and General Orienting System (GOS). The ROS broadly encompasses multiple dimensions of R/S resources that a person can call upon during times of duress. The ROS is one component of a broader GOS (which also includes cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and social variables) that reflects one’s typical ways of viewing the world and dealing with challenges. The GOS and the ROS within it are concerned not with one particular variable but the integration among various aspects of one’s life (Pargament, Wong, & Exline, 2016). The strength of the ROS and GOS vary across individuals; stronger orienting systems help people to cope with stressors (such as R/S struggles), whereas weaker orienting systems may be risk factors for declines in psychological and spiritual functioning (Pargament et al., 2013). From this perspective, R/S variables that emerged as predictors of healthier adaptation to R/S struggles (e.g., higher levels of religiousness and perceived positive interactions with God) may be part of a stronger ROS, and perhaps more proficient meaning-making could be a part of a stronger GOS. A couple of the studies described above have used the ROS and GOS to generate predictions and interpret findings (Desai & Pargament, 2015; Wilt, Stauner, Lindberg, et al., 2017).

Conclusion This chapter exhibits the importance of R/S struggles as novel constructs of interest to existential and positive psychology. A great deal of theoretical overlap exists between theory on the structure of R/S struggles and theory on the structure of fundamental existential threats, but much work remains to be done in demonstrating the empirical reality of these theoretical connections. Therefore we close this chapter with a call for continued scientific investigation of the connections between R/S struggles, meaning, and well-being, particularly with regard to causality and cross-cultural differences in these relationships. Our brief reviews of literature and speculations on theoretical commonalities and possibilities are intended to inspire and motivate the scientific growth that is needed to bridge the independent lines of research on R/S and existential well-being. In the wake of the second wave of theoretical development in positive psychology, which has too recently recognized the true complexity of the quest for healthy, sustainable happiness, consideration of the challenges inherent in R/S meaning systems will be essential to the emergence of a fully mature understanding of how R/S can affect human flourishing for better and worse.

References Abu-Raiya, H., Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., & Agbaria, Q. (2015). Prevalence, predictors, and implications of religious/spiritual struggles among Muslims. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(4), 631 648. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12230. Abu-Raiya, H., Pargament, K. I., Krause, N., & Ironson, G. (2015). Robust links between religious/spiritual struggles, psychological distress, and well-being in a national sample of American adults. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 85(6), 565 575. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1037/ort0000084. Aldwin, C. M., Park, C. L., Jeong, Y. J., & Nath, R. (2014). Differing pathways between religiousness, spirituality, and health: A self-regulation perspective. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(1), 9, 2014. Ano, G. G., Pargament, K. I., Wong, S., & Pomerleau, J. (2017). From vice to virtue: Evaluating a manualized intervention for moral spiritual struggles. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 4(2), 129 144. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/SCP0000128. Ano, G. G., & Vasconcelles, E. B. (2005). Religious coping and psychological adjustment to stress: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 461 480. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20049. Beck, R., & Taylor, S. (2008). The emotional burden of monotheism: Satan, theodicy, and relationship with God. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36(3), 151 160. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710803600301. Bradley, D. F., Exline, J. J., & Uzdavines, A. (2015). The God of nonbelievers: Characteristics of a hypothetical God. Science, Religion and Culture, 2(3), 120 130. Available from https://doi.org/10.17582/journal.src/2015/2.3.120.130. Bre´mault-Phillips, S., Pike, A., Scarcella, F., & Cherwick, T. (2019). Spirituality and moral injury among military personnel: A mini-review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10, 276. Coˆte´, S., & Moskowitz, D. (1998). On the dynamic covariation between interpersonal behavior and affect: Prediction from neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(4), 1032 1046.

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

299

Davis, E. B., Kimball, C. N., Aten, J. D., Andrews, B., Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., . . . . . . Park, C. L. (2019). Religious meaning making and attachment in a disaster context: A longitudinal qualitative study of flood survivors. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14(5), 659 671. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1519592. Dermody, S. S., Quilty, L. C., & Bagby, R. M. (2016). Interpersonal impacts mediate the association between personality and treatment response in major depression. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(4), 396 404. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000144. Desai, K. M., & Pargament, K. I. (2015). Predictors of growth and decline following spiritual struggles. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 25(1), 42 56. Available from https://doi.org/https://10.1080/10508619.2013.847697. Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality in personality. Guilford Press. Exline, J. J. (2013). Religious and spiritual struggles. In K. I. Pargament (Editor-in-Chief), J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Volume 1: Context, theory, and research (pp. 459 475). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Exline, J. J. (August 2017). Turning toward the light: Could positive supernatural attributions provide a ray of hope in dark seasons of spiritual life? In N. Stauner (Chair), Acts of God in the mind, body, and soul. Symposium at the biannual meeting of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion, Hamar, Norway. Exline, J. J., & Grubbs, J. B. (2011). “If I tell others about my anger toward God, how will they respond?” Predictors, associated behaviors, and outcomes in an adult sample. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 39(4), 304 315. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177%2F009164711103900402. Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., & Homolka, S. J. (2015). Seeing God as cruel or distant: Links with divine struggles involving anger, doubt, and fear of God’s disapproval. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 25, 29 41. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10508619.2013.857255. Exline, J. J., Hall, T. W., Pargament, K. I., & Harriott, V. A. (2017). Predictors of growth from spiritual struggle among Christian undergraduates: Religious coping and perceptions of helpful action by God are both important. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(5), 501 508. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1228007. Exline, J. J., Kamble, S., & Stauner, N. (2017). Anger toward God(s) among undergraduates in India. Religions, 8(9), 194. Available from https://doi. org/10.3390/rel8090194. Exline, J. J., Kaplan, K. J., & Grubbs, J. B. (2012). Anger, exit, and assertion: Do people see protest toward God as morally acceptable? Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4, 264 277. Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., Grubbs, J. B., & Yali, A. M. (2014). The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale: Development and initial validation. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 6(3), 208 222. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036465. Exline, J. J., Park, C. L., Smyth, J. M., & Carey, M. P. (2011). Anger toward God: Social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(1), 129 148. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021716. Exline, J. J., & Rose, E. (2013). Religious and spiritual struggles. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 380 398). New York: Guilford Press. Exline, J. J., Wilt, J. A., Stauner, N., Harriott, V. A., & Saritoprak, S. N. (2017). Self-forgiveness and religious/spiritual struggles. In L. Woodyatt, E. L. Worthington, Jr., M. Wenzel, & B. J. Griffin (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness (pp. 131 145). New York: Springer, ISBN: 978-3-319-60573-9. Gallo, L. C., & Smith, T. W. (1999). Patterns of hostility and social support: Conceptualizing psychosocial risk factors as characteristics of the person and the environment. Journal of Research in Personality, 33, 281 310. Available from https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1999.2250. Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., Scho¨nbrodt, F. D., Bleidorn, W., Rentfrow, P. J., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2017). The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, e18 e39. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/PSPP0000104. George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning in life as comprehension, purpose, and mattering: Toward integration and new research questions. Review of General Psychology, 20(3), 205 220. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000077. George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2017). The Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale: A tripartite approach to measuring meaning in life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(6), 613 627. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1209546. George, L. K., Ellison, C. G., & Larson, D. B. (2002). Explaining the relationships between religious involvement and health. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 190 200. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309353415. Granqvist, P., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 49 59. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1088868309348618. Gray, K., Anderson, S., Doyle, C. M., Hester, N., Schmitt, P., Vonasch, A. J., . . . Jackson, J. C. (2018). To be immortal, do good or evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(6), 868 880. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217754068. Grubbs, J. B., Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (August 2016). Moral struggle and pornography use: Moral beliefs, perceived addiction, and value violation. In C. Doehring (chair), Moral stress and injury—Psychospiritual resources for seeking justice conducted at the 124th convention of the American Psychological Association, Denver, CO. Grubbs, J. B., Stauner, N., Wilt, J. A., & Exline, J. J. (2018). Narcissism, religion, & spirituality: Intersections of self, superiority, and the search for the sacred. In A. D. Hermann, A. B. Brunell, & J. D. Foster (Eds.), Handbook of trait narcissism: Key advances, research methods, and controversies. ISBN: 978-3-319-92171-6.

300

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Grubbs, J. B., Wilt, J. A., Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). Self, struggle, and soul: Linking personality, self-concept, and religious/spiritual struggle. Personality and Individual Differences, 101, 144 152. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.365. Hale-Smith, A., Park, C. L., & Edmondson, D. (2012). Measuring beliefs about suffering: Development of the Views of Suffering Scale. Psychological Assessment, 24(4), 855 866. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027399. Harriott, V. A., & Exline, J. J. (2019). Demonic struggles: An overview. Manuscript in preparation. Jackson, J. C. (April 2019). To be immortal, do good or evil. In Hard not to believe (Cognitive perspectives), panel presented at ScienceTeller 2019: Science and the Afterlife, Dunedin, New Zealand. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 37 48, 2010. Koenig, H. G. (2012). Religion, spirituality, and health: The research and clinical implications. ISRN Psychiatry, 2012. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.5402/2012/278730. Koenig, H. G., King, D., & Carson, V. B. (2012). Handbook of religion and health (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Krumrei, E. J., Mahoney, A., & Pargament, K. I. (2011). Demonization of divorce: Prevalence rates and links to postdivorce adjustment. Family Relations, 60(1), 90 103. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2010.00635.x. Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 531 545. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623. McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69, 2009. Mercer, J. (2013). Deliverance, demonic possession, and mental illness: Some considerations for mental health professionals. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 16(6), 595 611. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2012.706272. McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., Davis, E. B., Davis, D. E., Aten, J. D., Van Tongeren, D. R., Hook, J. N., & Hwang, J. (2018). Benevolent theodicies protect against PTSD following a natural disaster. Journal of Psychology & Christianity, 37(1), 6 16. Michel, S., Stauner, N., & Exline, J. J. (in preparation). Correlations between supernatural attributions, meaning in life, affect, and distress. Undergraduate honors capstone research project, Case Western Reserve University. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. New York: Guilford Press. Pargament K.I., The meaning of spiritual transformation. In: Spiritual transformation and healing: Anthropological, theological, neuroscientific, and clinical perspectives, 2006, 10 24. Pargament, K. I. (2007). Spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing the sacred. New York: Guilford Press. Pargament, K. I. (April 2019). Advances in spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing spiritual struggles. In Clinical workshop at the 17th annual meeting of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality APA Division 36, Bowling Green, OH. Pargament, K. I., Desai, K. M., & McConnell, K. M. (2006). Handbook of posttraumatic growth: Research and practice. Pargament, K. I., Falb, M. D., Ano, G. G., & Wachholtz, A. B. (2013). The religious dimension of coping: Advances in theory, research, and practice. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 560 579). New York: Guilford Press. Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D. (2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping. Religions, 2(1), 51 76. Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56(4), 519 543. Pargament, K. I., Murray-Swank, N. A., Magyar, G. M., & Ano, G. G. (2005). Spiritual struggle: A phenomenon of interest to psychology and religion. In W. R. Miller, & H. D. Delaney (Eds.), Judeo-Christian perspectives on psychology: Human nature, motivation, and change (pp. 245 268). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710 724. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1388152. Pargament, K. I., Tarakeshwar, N., Ellison, C. G., & Wulff, K. M. (2001). Religious coping among the religious: The relationships between religious coping and well-being in a national sample of Presbyterian clergy, elders, and members. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(3), 497 513. Available from https://doi.org//10.1111/0021-8294.00073. Pargament, K. I., Wong, S., & Exline, J. J. (2016). Wholeness and holiness: The spiritual dimension of eudaimonics. In J. Vittersø (Ed.), Handbook of eudaimonic well-being (pp. 379 394). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Pargament, K. I., Zinnbauer, B. J., Scott, A. B., Butter, E. M., Zerowin, J., & Stanik, P. (2003). Red flags and religious coping: Identifying some religious warning signs among people in crisis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(12), 1335 1348. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ jclp.10225. Park, C. L. (April 2019). Advancing the psychology of religiousness and spirituality: How can a meaning perspective contribute? In Presented at the 17th annual meeting of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality APA Division 36, Bowling Green, OH. Park, C. L., Edmondson, D., & Hale-Smith, A. (2013). Why religion? Meaning as motivation. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality: Context, theory, and research (Vol. 1, pp. 157 171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Park, C. L., & Slattery, J. M. (2013). Religion, spirituality, and mental health. In R. F. Paloutzian, & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 540 559). New York: Guilford Press.

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

301

Reker, G. T. (2000). Theoretical perspective, dimensions, and measurement of existential meaning. In G. T. Reker & K. Chamberlain (Eds.), Exploring existential meaning: Optimizing human development across the life span, pp. 39 55. Royce, J. E. (1995). The effects of alcoholism and recovery on spirituality. Journal of Chemical Dependency Treatment, 5, 19 38. Salsman, J. M., Brown, T. L., Brechting, E. H., & Carlson, C. R. (2005). The link between religion and spirituality and psychological adjustment: The mediating role of optimism and social support. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4), 522 535. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0146167204271563. Saritoprak, S. N., Exline, J. J., & Stauner, N. (2018). Spiritual jihad among U.S. Muslims: Preliminary measurement and associations with well-being and growth. Religions, 9(5), 158. Available from https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9050158. Schwartz, S. H. (2012). Values and religion in adolescent development: Cross-national and comparative evidence. In G. Trommsdorff, & X. Chen (Eds.), Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development (pp. 97 122). Cambridge University Press. Scrutton, A. P. (2015). Is depression a sin or a disease? A critique of moralizing and medicalizing models of mental illness. Journal of Disability & Religion, 19(4), 285 311. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/23312521.2015.1087933. Sedlar, A. E., Stauner, N., Pargament, K. I., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., & Bradley, D. F. (2018). Spiritual struggles among atheists: Links to psychological distress and well-being. Religions, 9(8), 242. Available from https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9080242. Smith, P. C., Range, L. M., & Ulmer, A. (1992). Belief in afterlife as a buffer in suicidal and other bereavement. OMEGA Journal of Death and Dying, 24(3), 217 225. Available from https://doi.org/10.2190/HME4-G1XE-9HXL-TJ96. Stanford, M. S. (2007). Demon or disorder: A survey of attitudes toward mental illness in the Christian church. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 10(5), 445 449. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674670600903049. Stauner, N., & Exline, J. J. (November 2018). The roles of divine attributions and afterlife belief in well-being’s relationship to religiousness. In Presented at the 2nd international conference on well-being, Singapore. ,https://goo.gl/iKNCDj.. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Bradley, D. F., Uzdavines, A., & Grubbs, J. B. (March 2017). Self-reported reasons for belief and nonbelief in the existence of God. In T. J. Coleman (chair), Whence atheism? Beliefs, reasons, and control in nonbelief conducted at the second international convention of psychological science, Vienna, Austria. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Fincham, F. D., & May, R. W. (August 2018). Making meaning of Hurricane Hermine with supernatural attributions. In Presented at the 10th biennial international meaning conference, Richmond, Canada, and in C. L. Park (chair), The key roles of religion/spirituality in making meaning after traumatic life events conducted at the 126th convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. ,https://goo.gl/VGBTWC.. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Fincham, F. D., May, R. W., & Baumeister, R. F. (August 2018). Facilitative characteristics of supernatural and natural attributions across contexts. In N. Stauner & J. J. Exline (chairs), Attributions in religious and spiritual cognition conducted at the 126th convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., & Pargament, K. I. (Submitted). The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale: Stability over one year. In A. L. Ai, P. M. Wink, & K. A. Harris (Eds.), Assessing spirituality in a diverse world. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., Pargament, K. I., Bradley, D. F., & Uzdavines, A. (2016). Bifactor model of religious and spiritual struggles: Distinct from religiousness and distress. Religions, 7(6), 68. Available from https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7060068. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Kusina, J. R., & Pargament, K. I. (2019). Religious and spiritual struggles, religiousness, and alcohol problems among undergraduates. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 47(3), 243 258, 2019. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (October 2015/July 2016). The demographics of religious and spiritual struggles in the USA. In T. J. Coleman, III (chair), Belief and nonbelief are complex: Longitudinal, demographical, and cognitive perspectives conducted at the convention of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Newport Beach, CA, and at the 31st International Congress of Psychology, Yokohama, Japan. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). Religious and spiritual struggles as concerns for health and well-being. Horizonte, 14(41), 48 75. Available from https://doi.org/10.5752/P.2175-5841.2016v14n41p48. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., Wilt, J. A., & Grubbs, J. B. (2018). Stressful life events and religiousness predict struggles about religion and spirituality. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000189. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Przeworski, A., Birnkrant, J., & Kaminski, M. (May 2017/March 2018). Is God okay with me being gay? Relationships with self-esteem, sexual identity distress, and religious membership. In J. B. Grubbs (chair), Sexuality, religion, and culture: Examining behavioral, clinical, and social outcomes conducted at the 29th annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston, MA, and N. Stauner & J. A. Wilt (chairs), Individual differences in personal relationships to God conducted at the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Conference, Riverside, CA. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Uzdavines, A., & Bradley, D. F. (March/August 2015). The religious and spiritual struggles of the nonreligious and nonspiritual. In N. Stauner & A. Uzdavines (co-chairs), Conducted at the 13th annual Midyear Research Conference on Religion and Spirituality, Provo, UT, and at the convention of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion, Istanbul, Turkey. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Wilt, J. A., Lindberg, M. J., & Pargament, K. I. (March 2015/July 2016). Predicting life meaning and satisfaction with religious & spiritual struggles. In S. J. Homolka (chair), New research on religious and spiritual struggles conducted at the 13th annual Midyear Research Conference on Religion and Spirituality, Provo, UT, and at the 31st International Congress of Psychology, Yokohama, Japan. Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Wilt, J. A., Lindberg, M. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2015, August). The relationship of meaning in life to religious & spiritual character. In Poster presented at the 123rd convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, ON. Stauner, N., Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (June 2015). Religious and spiritual struggles in relation to stress and religiousness. In Poster presented at the fourth biennial convention of the Association for Research in Personality, St. Louis, MO.

302

PART | 4 Systems of meaning

Stauner, N., Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (April 2017). Religiousness and spiritual struggles throughout college life. In Presented at the 97th annual convention of the Western Psychological Association, Sacramento, CA. Stauner, N., Wilt, J. A., Grubbs, J. B., Pargament, K. I., & Exline, J. J. (August 2015). Neuroticism and stressful life events predict religious and spiritual struggles. In T. J. Coleman, III (chair), Atheism: Psychological perspectives conducted at the congress of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion, Istanbul, Turkey. Stauner N., Exline J.J., Uzdavines A., Bradley D.F. and Van Tongeren D.R., (2019, April). Religious deidentification, supernatural attributions, and religious/spiritual struggles, Presented at the midyear conference on religion and spirituality, Bowling Green, Ohio. Stauner, N., Wilt, J. A., Pargament, K. I., & Exline, J. J. (May/April 2015). Religious and spiritual struggles, perceived stress, and religiousness. In Poster presented at the 27th annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, New York, and at Case Western Reserve University’s Research ShowCASE, Cleveland, OH. Steger, M. F., & Frazier, P. (2005). Meaning in life: One link in the chain from religiousness to well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52(4), 574 582. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.52.4.574. Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80 93. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80. Steger, M. F., Pickering, N., Adams, E., Burnett, J., Shin, J. Y., Dik, B. J., & Stauner, N. (2010). The quest for meaning: Religious affiliation differences in the correlates of religious quest and search for meaning in life. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2(4), 206 226. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019122. Tanksley, C. P. (2010). Decreasing anxiety through training in spiritual warfare (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Oral Roberts University. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Wadsworth, M. E., Santiago, C. D., & Einhorn, L. (2009). Coping with displacement from Hurricane Katrina: Predictors of one-year post-traumatic stress and depression symptom trajectories. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 22(4), 413 432. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10615800902855781. Webb, M., Stetz, K., & Hedden, K. (2008). Representation of mental illness in Christian self-help bestsellers. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 11 (7), 697 717. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674670801978634. Wilson, R. E., Harris, K., & Vazire, S. (2015). Personality and friendship satisfaction in daily life: Do everyday social interactions account for individual differences in friendship satisfaction? European Journal of Personality, 29(2), 173 186. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1996. Wilt, J. A., Evans, W. R., Pargament, K. I., Exline, J. J., Fletcher, T. L., & Teng, E. J. (2019). Predictors of moral struggles among veterans. Traumatology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000186. Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., Park, C. L., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). God’s role in suffering: Theodicies, divine struggle, and mental health. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8(4), 352 362. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000058. Wilt, J. A., Exline, J. J., Lindberg, M. J., Park, C. L., & Pargament, K. I. (2017). Theological beliefs about suffering and interactions with the divine. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 9(2), 137 147. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/REL0000067. Wilt, J. A., Grubbs, J. B., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2016). Personality, religious and spiritual struggles, and well-being. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 341 351. Wilt, J. A., Pargament, K. I., & Exline, J. J. (2018). The transformative power of the sacred: Social, personality, and religious/spiritual antecedents and consequents of sacred moments during a religious/spiritual struggle. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1037/rel0000176, Advance online publication. Wilt, J. A., Pargament, K. I., Exline, J. J., Barrera, T. L., & Teng, E. J. (2018). Spiritual transformation among veterans in response to a religious/spiritual struggle. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000208, Advance online publication. Wilt, J. A., Stauner, N., & Exline, J. J. (2017). Religion, spirituality, and well-being. In J. E. Maddux (Ed.), Subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Routledge, ISBN: 9781351231862. Wilt, J. A., Stauner, N., Harriott, V. A., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2018). Partnering with God: Religious coping and perceptions of divine intervention predict spiritual transformation in response to religious/spiritual struggle. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Wilt, J. A., Stauner, N., Lindberg, M. J., Grubbs, J. B., Exline, J. J., & Pargament, K. I. (2017). Struggle with ultimate meaning: Nuanced associations with search for meaning, presence of meaning, and mental health. Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(3), 240 251. Available from https://doi. org/10.1080/17439760.2017.1279208. Yaden, D. (July 2019). Transcendent experience: Perspectives from psychology and neuroscience. In M. Seligman (chair), Founding researchers symposium conducted at the 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology, Melbourne, Australia. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy (Vol. 1). New York: Basic Books. Zarzycka, B. (2016). Prevalence social-cognitive predictors of anger toward God in a Polish sample. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 26, 225 239. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2015.1048660. Zarzycka, B., Ciszek, P., & Rykowska, K. (2018). The Polish adaptation of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale: Factorial structure and psychometric properties. Roczniki Psychologiczne/Annals of Psychology, 21(3), 255 278. Available from https://doi.org/10.18290/rpsych.2018.21.3-4. Zarzycka, B., Rybarski, R., & Sliwak, J. (2017). The relationship of religious comfort and struggle with anxiety and satisfaction with life in Roman Catholic Polish men: The moderating effect of sexual orientation. Journal of Religion and Health, 56(6), 2162 2179. Available from https://doi. org/10.1007/s10943-017-0388-y.

Meaning, religious/spiritual struggles, and well-being Chapter | 20

303

Further reading Bryant, A. N., & Astin, H. S. (2008). The correlates of spiritual struggle during the college years. Journal of Higher Education, 79(1), 1 27. Exline, J. J., Yali, A. M., & Lobel, M. (1999). When God disappoints: Difficulty forgiving God and its role in negative emotion. Journal of Health Psychology, 4, 365 379. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/135910539900400306. Grubbs, J. B., & Exline, J. J. (2014). Why did God make me this way? Anger at God in the context of personal transgressions. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 42, 315 325. Grubbs, J. B., Exline, J. J., & Campbell, W. K. (2013). I deserve better and god knows it! Psychological entitlement as a robust predictor of anger at God. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5, 192 200. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032119. Gutierrez, I. A., Park, C. L., & Wright, B. R. E. (2017). When the divine defaults: Religious struggle mediates the impact of financial stressors on psychological distress. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 9(4), 387 398. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/REL0000119. Harris, J. I., Erbes, C. R., Engdahl, B. E., Ogden, H., Olson, R. H. A., Winskowski, A. M. M., . . . Mataas, S. (2012). Religious distress and coping with stressful life events: A longitudinal study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 68(12), 1276 1286. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ jclp.21900. Krause, N., Ingersoll-Dayton, B., Liang, J., & Sugisawa, H. (1999). Religion, social support, and health among the Japanese elderly. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 405 421. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/2676333. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Weise, D., & Soenke, M. (2016). It’s the end of the world and I feel fine: Soul belief and perceptions of end-of-the-world scenarios. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(1), 104 117. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215616800. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60 71. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309349693.

Chapter 21

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Tom Pyszczynski1 and Mark J. Landau2 1

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, United States, 2University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States

God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. Genesis 1:27 The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, and could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own. Xenophanes, approximately 500 BC. Fear made the first gods in the world. Caecillius Statius, 2003/92 C.E., line 661. Man created God in his own image. Ludwig Feurbach, 1851/2012, p. 98.

With very few exceptions, all cultures embrace supernatural beings or forces that wield power over earthly affairs. Why do people believe in gods and spirits they cannot see? Why do they work so hard to stay in the good graces of their deities? Why do they occasionally kill other people, and even sacrifice their own lives, in the service of these mysterious beings? From the perspective of terror-management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2015), and its diverse intellectual predecessors (e.g., Becker, 1971; Freud, 1927; Lifton, 1979; Rank, 1930/2003), religious and spiritual beliefs serve the vital function of helping people cope with the knowledge of the inevitability of death and the fragility of life by providing hope that death is not the end, but rather, a transition to a better form of existence that never ends. Although the idea that religion functions to help people deny death has been espoused by philosophers, social scientists, and even some theologians for centuries, many currently influential theories of the origins and function of religion afford the problem of death little if any importance. Instead, these theories apply evolutionary psychology to argue, for example, that religion reflects a misapplication of folk psychology to inanimate entities (e.g., Boyer, 2001), that afterlife beliefs merely reflect an inability to comprehend nonexistence (Bering, 2006), and that religion evolved to facilitate social cohesion as a means to address practical problems of everyday living (Atran, 2004). Indeed, some theorists have gone to lengths to argue that death denial played little if any role in religion’s origin. For example, Boyer (2001) devoted an entire chapter of his influential book, Religion Explained, to argue that religious beliefs and rituals surrounding death reflect practical means of dealing with decaying corpses. He also argued that ideas of hell, eternal damnation, and other terrifying afterlife conceptions invalidate the idea that religion functions to manage death-related anxiety. We propose that each of these and conceptually related theories (elaborated in later sections) tells part of the story of religion’s origins and psychosocial functions. And we agree that both the typical cases of religions that provide hope of an afterlife and their exceptions need to be explained by any comprehensive theory of religion. Yet we argue on The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00022-6 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

307

308

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

logical, empirical, and historical grounds that explanations of religion that ignore death are at best incomplete and at worst misleading. At the same time, humans’ relation to their mortality does not operate in a vacuum. TMT was initially proposed as a broad framework for integrating ideas and observations stemming from diverse scholarly perspectives. The potential for terror produced by the awareness of death exerts its influence on an animal with particular psychological characteristics and proclivities that evolved prior to the emergence of the cognitive capacities that made this awareness possible. Thus the understanding of religion that follows from TMT must be informed by ideas about the physical and social environment in which people lived and evolved, and the cognitive architecture and emotional proclivities that guided their thinking and behavior. In this chapter, we explore the interface between TMT and ideas from evolutionary and cognitive psychology to propose an intelligent design theory of the origins and functions of religion. The pun is intended: Popular “intelligent design” theories of humankind are inconsistent with most of what is known about reality. Our intelligent design analysis, however, draws inspiration from a long line of philosophers and social scientists who turned the idea of divine creation on its head to explain how and why early humans designed supernatural agents. We attempt to explain how religious ideas initially emerged, what functions they serve, and how they were revised over the course of history to meet the psychological and pragmatic needs of individuals and societies. In the process, we bring together ideas about evolved cognitive proclivities and the utility of social cohesion emphasized by evolutionary psychology, the creative problem solving and meaning-making activities emphasized by cognitive psychology, and the emotional and motivational forces central to existential psychology (an integrative approach also taken by Pyszczynski, 2016; Pyszczynski & Thompson, 2018). We set the stage for this analysis with a brief overview of the fundamental propositions of TMT and a thumbnail sketch of research supporting these ideas, and then use our intelligent design analysis to integrate these ideas with the main themes from influential evolutionary analyses of religion.

Terror-management theory’s perspective on religion TMT begins with a consideration of how human beings are both similar to and different from all other living organisms. Like all animals, humans are born with a multitude of biological and psychological systems that evolved to keep them alive long enough to reproduce and care for their offspring, thus increasing the likelihood of their genes being passed on to future generations. Evolution also endowed our species with uniquely human cognitive capacities that increased the flexibility and adaptability of human behavior. These capacities include symbolic thought and the consequent use of language; causal reasoning and mental time travel, which facilitate planning and effective action; and self-awareness, which facilitates self-regulation and strategic social interaction. Though selected for because they facilitated survival, reproduction, and ultimately, gene transmission, these cognitive abilities gave rise to a major existential dilemma. They led people to realize that all living things—themselves included—will die, and that death can come at any time in many ways, most of which are terrifying to imagine. Awareness of the ultimate inevitability of death and fragility of life clashes with the motives that facilitate continued life, thereby creating the potential to experience acute anxiety—or terror. If left “unmanaged,” this terror is likely to disrupt goal-directed behavior and ultimately decrease reproductive fitness. From there, TMT posits that our ancestors used the same sophisticated intellectual abilities that gave rise to awareness of death to fashion bulwarks against terror. Put in terms of evolutionary biology, the awareness of death compelled our species to apply our advanced cognitive tools to construct ideas about the world and life that addressed the problem of death and assuaged the potential for unproductive anxiety. Those humanly constructed ideas that were most intuitive, communicable, and useful for meeting psychological needs gradually spread within and across groups to become part of emerging cultural worldviews—theories of reality shared by groups of people that provide (1) a coherent understanding of reality that imbues life with meaning, structure, significance, and permanence; (2) standards of value that make it possible for individuals and groups to acquire value; and (3) the hope of literally and/or symbolically transcending death. Literal immortality is provided by beliefs that life continues in some form after physical death. Prominent examples include heaven, reincarnation, and the merger of one’s soul with the spirits of one’s ancestors. The vast majority of cultures, past and present, acknowledge some form of literal immortality beliefs, although their specifics vary widely across cultures (Solomon et al., 2015). Symbolic immortality is provided by means of identifying with something greater than oneself—a legacy—that will continue long after one’s own death, ideally forever. These means include group identifications ranging from families, nations, and religious/ethnic groups to more mundane identities such as sports team affiliations and alma maters. Symbolic immortality is enhanced by valued contributions to one’s groups, such as children, monuments, inventions, artistic contributions, or stories about oneself that will be told long after one has passed.

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

309

As we will discuss further, religion may be particularly well suited to assuage death anxiety because it typically provides routes to both literal immortality (through afterlife beliefs) and symbolic immortality (through inclusion in a community that extends from far in the past on into eternity). Faith in a cultural worldview is necessary, but not sufficient, to buffer mortality concerns. People must also perceive themselves as living up to the standards of value prescribed by their worldview, and therefore eligible for the available routes to immortality. This is self-esteem as defined by TMT. Self-esteem develops its anxiety-buffering properties early in life, before children are aware of their mortality, as a result of a complex interplay of evolved attachment tendencies and culturally prescribed socialization experience (for a discussion of this process, see Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015; Solomon et al., 2015). When cognitive development engenders awareness of the abstract fact of death’s inevitability, individuals turn for consolation to their local cultural worldview, which (typically) includes religious concepts that explicitly address the problem of death by portraying a supernatural dimension that affords eternal continuance (pending “good” behavior, of course). Typically, the most central aspects of cultural worldviews are abstract ideas and values that cannot be directly verified by one’s senses. Indeed, some of these ideas contradict observable reality. Consequently, faith in these constructs must be maintained through consensual validation (Festinger, 1954). Those who share one’s beliefs and affirm one’s value increase one’s certainty in the worldview’s validity, whereas those with different worldviews or who doubt one’s value challenge this certainty. Though a single person who believes in a fantasy afterlife would have difficulty maintaining faith, sharing one’s beliefs with billions of believers provides compelling evidence that those beliefs must be true, and therefore that the self has a good chance to continue beyond death. Because of the protection from terror that our worldviews provide, people react positively to those who validate their worldviews and negatively to those who threaten them. To date, well over 600 studies conducted in diverse countries and cultures have supported hypotheses derived from TMT (for recent reviews, see Greenberg, Vail, & Pyszczynski, 2014; Pyszczynski et al., 2015). This research has shown that (1) increasing self-esteem reduces self-reported anxiety and physiological arousal in the face of threat and minimizes cognitive biases that deny one’s vulnerability to death; (2) reminders of death (mortality salience; MS) increase defensive responses to people and ideas that impinge on one’s worldview and self-esteem, striving to increase selfesteem, discomfort when violating cultural norms, estimates of social consensus for one’s attitudes, and preference for well-structured information; (3) threats to worldviews or self-esteem make death-related thoughts come to mind more easily and rapidly (death thought accessibility; DTA); and (4) affirming one’s worldview or increasing self-esteem decreases DTA and reduces defensive responses to MS. These studies have tested TMT hypothesis across diverse aspects of worldviews, self-esteem, and close relationships, including political attitudes, ingroup bias, religious beliefs, charitable donations, romantic love, attitudes toward sex, desire for children, health-related behavior, disgust, objectification of women, support for war and terrorism, and physical aggression. Though research has documented cultural variation in particular ways that people use their worldviews, self-esteem, and close relationships to manage terror, the available evidence suggests that these variations are consistent with the central proposition of TMT (Park & Pyszczynski, 2016). Although alternative explanations have been proposed for some aspects of some studies, we know of no viable alternative to TMT that can account for the diversity of findings in this literature (for discussions of critiques and alternative explanations, see Pyszczynski et al., 2015). With this theoretical background in place, we can focus on religion. From TMT’s perspective, religion is a cultural innovation that functions to protect people from the potential for anxiety that results from awareness of the inevitability of death. It does so by harnessing our species’ sophisticated cognitive capacities to create elaborate, consensually validated beliefs in spiritual entities that transcend physical limitations, powerful gods and spirits that influence human affairs, and some form of afterlife in which existence continues after physical death. Religions assuage death anxiety by providing the hope of both literal immortality and symbolic immortality by embedding the individual into a community of believers that stretches both backward and forward in time. A considerable body of evidence supports the role of religious thought and behavior in managing death-related anxiety (for reviews, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Arndt, 2008 this volume; Soenke, Landau, & Greenberg, 2013; Vail et al., 2010). For example, it has been shown that reminders of death increase confidence that life continues after death (Batson & Stocks, 2004) and that supernatural agents exert control over human affairs (Norenzayan, Dar-Nimrod, Hansen, & Proulx, 2009). Affirming one’s religious beliefs or exposure to information supportive of afterlife beliefs eliminates the effects of death reminders on other forms of worldview defense and self-esteem striving (Dechesne et al., 2003; Jonas & Fischer, 2006). Though the literature provides strong support for religion’s terror-management function, TMT does not, in and of itself, explain everything that needs to be understood about religious belief and behavior. The following questions arise: Why do humanly invented death-denying ideas take the particular forms they do? Why do cultures vary so widely in

310

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

the specific nature of these beliefs but nonetheless share many common features? What inspired our ancestors to impute particular features to deities and the supernatural domains they inhabit? How do the forces that motivate individual religious devotion relate to the broader social forces that influence the success or failure of societies? The current “intelligent design” integration of TMT and evolutionary perspectives attempts to shed light on these questions.

Integrating terror management and evolutionary perspectives on religion Evolutionary theories of human behavior begin with Darwin’s (1859) seminal concept of natural selection: Over time, features of organisms that increase the likelihood that the genes responsible for these features will be passed on to future generations become more prevalent in populations. The major force driving the evolution of new forms of behavior is the adaptive utility of physical structures (and connections among them) that give rise to behavior that facilitates reproductive success in particular environments. Several theorists have applied this evolutionary reasoning to explain religion’s origins. Most of these accounts view religion as either a by-product of adaptive tendencies that evolved for other purposes or as having evolved due to its adaptive utility for promoting intragroup cohesion and intergroup competition, which in turn increases the likelihood of gene survival and transmission. In one illustrative analysis that combines the by-product and adaptionist accounts, Norenzayan et al. (2016) claim that the initial emergence of supernatural concepts resulted from early humans anthropomorphizing nature, extending their evolved cognitive proclivities to impute mental states to other humans to impute similar mental experiences to physical aspects of nature. Over time the rather vague concepts of spiritual entities that resulted from naı¨ve application of theory of mind morphed into complex belief systems that included deities who cared about the behavior of humans and intervened in their affairs. These beliefs were adopted by cultures because they facilitated social cohesion. This turned group members into fictive kin, so that prosocial behavior that initially evolved because it facilitated the survival and reproduction of one’s kin was extended to others with whom one shared much less genetic heritage. This broader social investment facilitated living in larger groups and, eventually, the emergence of long-term settlements, villages, and cities. This perspective emphasizes the beneficial consequences of religious belief and the moral behavior it produces for one’s group and ultimately the transmission of one’s genes. On this account, although religious beliefs may have originated as a by-product of evolved cognitive tendencies, Gods became more powerful and integral to human affairs because of the benefits these beliefs provided to groups and genes. Evolutionary theories of religion provide plausible explanations of the cognitive proclivities that initially led our ancestors to impute mental processes to natural phenomena, and they help explain how construing supernatural oversight helped enforce prosocial behavior. However, these analyses fall short of providing a comprehensive explanation of religion and leave many questions unanswered, and usually unasked. How does one explain the massive leap from early humans anthropomorphizing natural forces to the elaborate systems of belief that dramatically influenced human history and continue to influence both individual and collective behavior today? What inspired ideas regarding gods who care about human behavior and allot rewards and punishments in accordance with that behavior? Acknowledging the adaptive consequences of such beliefs does not explain their emergence. Most importantly, what motivates religious belief and behavior at an individual level, in both the earliest believers and contemporary humans? Group benefits of widely shared behavioral proclivities depend on the actions of individuals, which must be explained. And finally, why do the religions that have stood the test of time all entail elaborate systems of belief in which powerful gods or supernatural forces provide some form of immortality to those who live in accord with their culture’s moral values? It is highly unlikely that the emergence of complex religious systems—in which moral behavior is rewarded with a blissful afterlife—resulted from random mutations in neural structures that were selected for because of their reproductive advantages. Nor is it plausible to argue that such beliefs reflect cynical attempts of clever group members to manipulate the masses to promote social order and maintain the power of the elites. This may have sometimes occurred in later stages in the development of religion and society, when leaders and elites realized they could manipulate the masses with tales of a world beyond. Still, it is unlikely that the architects of religion promoted ideas in which they themselves did not believe. And even if religion were merely a device to maintain political power, we would still need to explain what motivates the masses to fall for such schemes. A comprehensive theory of religion’s origins and function should explain what led to the emergence of distinct but functionally similar ideas across diverse groups of people, what made them appealing enough to individuals for them to be widely accepted and eventually instituted as cultural knowledge, and what motivates people to orient their lives around them and endure suffering, sacrifice, and sometimes even death to uphold them. Our intelligent design theory views the by-product perspective as providing important insight regarding the earliest precursors to religious belief and the psychological building blocks that our ancestors used to manage existential

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

311

anxiety. It views the adaptive utility perspective as providing viable explanations of the broader societal consequences of these creative human innovations and how these cultural forces influence individual behavior. It extends these perspectives by merging them with ideas from TMT regarding the psychological forces that inspired our ancestors to impute particular features to their deities and the spirit worlds they inhabit, motivated religious devotion in people over the course of history, and encouraged them to spread these ideas as far and widely as possible. A major theme of our intelligent design perspective is that the dawning awareness of the inevitability of death had a seismic impact that transformed the content and function of both religious belief and morality. In the following sections, we discuss some of the evolved psychological adaptations that likely played a role in the emergence of religious thought and behavior. We discuss how awareness of death motivated our ancestors to build on these cognitive and emotional proclivities to invent a spiritual dimension that transcended the limitations of human existence. The emergence of death awareness was undoubtedly a gradual process, just as was the emergence of the cognitive abilities that made death awareness possible. Our ancestors were likely using their emerging cognitive skills to solve concrete and pragmatic concerns of survival and reproduction long before awareness of the inevitability of one’s own death creeped into awareness. As people discussed and debated these ideas over the course of history, ideas about this spirit world became increasingly elaborate and oriented toward meeting human needs. We then discuss ways in which the individual-level motive to manage anxiety promoted the spread of religious beliefs, which in turn contributed to group-level success by rewarding prosocial behavior with immortality. We then circle back to the view that cohesive societies were beneficial for individual survival, reproductive success, and gene propagation. Finally, we suggest that the adaptive value of religious beliefs for managing anxiety and promoting effective social organization may have selected for neural systems in which anxiety was effectively assuaged by comforting meanings. In the following sections, we present some of the psychological adaptations that likely played a role in the emergence of religious thought and behavior, and we consider how the expression of these adaptations was shaped by the dawning awareness of mortality. Though evolutionary analyses of religion often emphasize cognitive proclivities such as theory of mind, our discussion includes even more primitive emotional tendencies such as the proclivities for fear, disgust, and moral intuitions. Along the way, we discuss empirical evidence relevant to these claims.

Theory of mind Given that our species descended from a long line of primates that lived in small groups, cognitive capacities that facilitated social interaction were especially advantageous. One such capacity, which has received significant scholarly attention, is theory of mind, the tendency to infer mental experiences, motives, and intentions in others—presumably as a reflection of one’s own subjective experiences. Imputing mental experiences to others, while realizing that others’ experiences are often different from one’s own, facilitates communication and cooperation because it enables people to recognize social cues (Baron-Cohen, 1999). Social living requires that individual group members monitor each other’s behavior and be aware that their own behavior is being similarly monitored. This folk mind-reading ability has been posited to play a central role in the origin of religious thought (Barrett & Keil, 1996; Bering, 2006; Boyer, 2004). It is said that early humans extended their theory of mind beyond conspecifics to impute mental states to inanimate objects and forces. To understand physical phenomena, entities and events in nature were anthropomorphized into agents with thoughts, feelings, intentions, and desires, similar to those people experienced in themselves and perceived in other humans. For example, thunder could be understood as aggression committed by an angry god, much like people’s aggression is understood as motivated by their anger. Likewise, a benevolent spirit might help with a hunt when it was pleased, just as a happy neighbor might offer to reciprocate after receiving a gift. We agree that the proclivity to “promiscuously apply” theory of mind to natural phenomena played, and continues to play, an important role in the origins and spread of religion. Still, it is important to realize this tendency is not a mere bug in our cognitive system but rather a motivated tendency to address psychological needs. It was (and is) rewarding because it helped people make sense of the world in which they lived. It also gave them means of communicating with and influencing supernatural agents believed to determine important life events. Petitionary prayer, ritual, and sacrifice are culturally widespread tools for appealing to supernatural agents to intervene on behalf of oneself or one’s group. In this way, imputing theory of mind to natural phenomena bolsters perceived personal control and similarly portrays the world as a structured place where events unfold according to the intuitive and predictable psychologic of folk psychology (e.g., good deeds are typically rewarded; bargains are usually honored). The spirits our

312

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

ancestors imagined were conceived of as part of, rather than somewhat removed from, everyday experience. Put differently, what contemporary humans consider supernatural would have been just another part of nature to early humans. It is likely that our ancestors were anthropomorphizing physical phenomena and imagining spiritual agents long before their cognitive capacities had evolved to the point that made them aware of their own inevitable mortality. Thus the beginnings of an imagined spirit world likely predated mortality awareness. Intelligent design theory posits that, as awareness of death emerged, it profoundly influenced the nature and characteristics of the spirits our ancestors imagined, and how these spirits related to their lives. From this perspective, human beings used their mentalizing proclivities to intelligently design an imaginary world inhabited by spiritual beings or forces that transcend many (but not all) of the laws of nature. What is the evidence for this? Consider Bering’s (2002) proposal, which he refers to as existential theory of mind (EToM), that the tendency to attribute intention and purpose to natural processes extends to life in general, especially our own. For example, people often infer that random events were “meant to be,” occurred to teach them a lesson, or were necessary so that other important things could happen to them. From this perspective the tendency to attribute natural events to intentional agents is a specific case of a general EToM. Research has shown that MS increases the tendency to impute order, purpose, continuity, and agency to events. For example, MS increased explicit just world beliefs (Bassett & Cate, 2014), blaming victims to maintain belief in a just world (Hirschberger, 2006), and preference for interpretations of tragic events that suggest a benevolent causal order in which bad events lead to good outcomes (Landau, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2004).

Fear and anxiety What emotions motivated people to transform primitive misapplication of theory of mind into elaborate religious cosmologies and what evolutionary function did they serve? Surviving long enough to reproduce and pass on one’s genes requires a variety of domain specific and domain general motivational systems that orient organisms toward approaching that which sustains life (e.g., food, water, and warmth) and avoiding that which can take it away (e.g., predators, pathogens, and enemies). Thus a tendency to avoid immanent threats to survival—things that could cause death—is a very basic adaptation that may have been one of earliest behavioral products of natural selection. Even single cell organisms approach nutrition and recoil from toxins. Though all animals presumably experience fear (or something like it) in response to immanent threats, human beings, by virtue of their ability to imagine future events, experience anxiety about possible threats that are not currently impinging on them. The classic distinction is that fear is a response to a specific well-defined threat, of which the person is consciously aware, whereas anxiety is a response to possible future threats, of which the person is either unaware or only vaguely aware of their source. TMT focuses on the anxiety that results from the uniquely human awareness of the inevitability of death as a primary motivating factor. However, the far more primitive emotion of fear in response to immanent threats to life, and the avoidance tendencies it sets in motion, likely set the psychological stage for the emergence of existential anxiety. The efficacy of fear for encouraging religious devotion is intuited by fire-and-brimstone preachers and shaman alike. It is why death symbols and actual human remains are so prominently displayed in religious locales and images of deities (e.g., the Hindu goddess Kali is depicted as wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads). This is why graveyards are so often placed near churches, and death rituals are performed at religious sites. It is why so much religious art includes graphic scenes of death and suffering.

Disgust Another emotional proclivity that may have played a role in the emergence of existential terror and the invention of religion is the experience of disgust in response to rotting flesh. Theories of the psychology of disgust begin with the proposition that this highly aversive emotion initially evolved as a response to decaying flesh to prevent our prehuman ancestors from eating meat contaminated with lethal pathogens (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2008; Schaller & Duncan, 2016). This was clearly adaptive, since eating spoiled meat would often lead to a rapid departure of one’s genes from the population. Personal experience with intestinal distress produced by meat containing nonlethal doses of pathogens provides further impetus for avoiding things with disgusting odors, appearance, or textures. The ease and rapidity with which animals learn to associate neutral stimuli with disgusting stimuli attests to the psychological power of disgust (Seligman, 1970). Disgust has been observed in most primates and many other mammals and is generally agreed to exist in other primates and to have existed long before the emergence of Homo sapiens (Rozin et al., 2008).

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

313

Thus it is likely that early humans experienced disgust in response to the decaying bodies of their conspecifics, which must have been one of the most important and disturbing experiences that precipitated awareness of their own mortality. The dawning awareness that becoming a fetid mass of decaying flesh was one’s own eventual fate was likely even more problematic. This suggests that disgust might be coupled with fear in the emotional response to death that we refer to as terror. Support for this possibility is hinted at by recent findings that even subliminal exposure to putrescine, the chemical that gives rotting flesh its unpleasant odor, increases worldview defense (Wisman & Shrira, 2015). Relative to participants exposed to another noxious odor (ammonia) or neutral controls, those exposed to putrescine exhibited higher levels of vigilance, avoidance, and implicit threat-related cognitions. More intriguingly, exposure to putrescine at levels below the threshold of conscious awareness increased hostility toward an outgroup member, a common form of worldview defense found in terror-management research. The finding that the simple smell of a chemical associated with rotting flesh (and even subliminal exposure to this compound) instigates vigilance and avoidance is consistent with the possibility that disgust plays some role in the activation of cultural worldview-related responses to death. This possibility is consistent with an intelligent design analysis, as it illustrates how awareness of death’s inevitability combined with evolved emotional proclivities to motivate the construction of death-denying religious ideologies.

Inability to imagine nonexistence Emerging awareness of death’s inevitability must have been emotionally upsetting and confusing to proto-humans: disturbing because it tapped into the fear response to threats and the disgust response to decomposing flesh and confusing because death is something that no living person has ever experienced. As Freud (1918) put it, “We cannot, indeed, imagine our own death; whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators” (p. 289). Bering (2008) argues that this inability to imagine nonexistence leads people to assume that existence continues in some form after physical death. Bering explains our inability to imagine nonexistence as resulting from what he refers to as the simulation constraint problem: people are unable to mentally simulate nonexistence because all they can draw on for such simulations are past experiences, which involve existence and consciousness. The closest most people can get are experiences of sleep or deep relaxation, which of course are not the same as nonexistence. Bering also suggests that the early-developing cognitive proclivity for person-permanence, the understanding that people continue to exist even when we cannot see them, leads us to assume that people must continue to exist in some form after they have died. Consistent with these ideas, research shows that even people who believe that existence ends at death often impute the continuation of psychological states, such as caring or desiring, but are less likely to assume that more physical ones, such as taste or hunger, continue after death (Bering, 2002). The upshot of this perspective is that the centrality of immortality beliefs to virtually every religion reflects a mere failure of imagination, not a motivated denial of death. Although we agree that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to imagine absolute annihilation, it is easy to imagine not hearing, not seeing, not being with those we love, not ever again enjoying whatever it is that gives us pleasure. From the perspective of TMT, regardless of whether people are any good at imagining nonexistence, they fear death because they desire life and are born with innate tendencies to fear a diverse array of things that could terminate their lives. Indeed, we suspect that an inability to imagine nonexistence makes death even more frightening. This is why the prospect of becoming a rotting corpse picked at by vultures or other scavengers, being buried or cremated, or being embalmed or dissected by biology students is so disturbing. As Woody Allen commented, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Mind body dualism The tendencies to experience fear in response to threats to life and disgust in response to rotting flesh likely played important roles in the emergence of the ubiquitous tendency to construe the mind, spirit, or soul as distinct from the human body. From a TMT perspective, difficulties imagining nonexistence and the tendency to imagine death from the perspective of a sentient being make it easier for people to assuage their death anxiety by inventing or buying into conceptions of death as a transition to another form of existence. This is typically done by conceptually separating the human essence from the physical body, in the form of a soul, spirit, or mind that can exist independently of one’s body and continues to exist after one’s body has died. The strong human tendency toward mind body dualism likely also results from the experience of conscious will, executive agency, and the common experience of one’s body not always doing what one wills it to do (Preston, Gray, & Wegner, 2006). From an intelligent design perspective on the origins of

314

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

religion, these cognitive proclivities are capitalized on to avert the potential for existential terror by inventing socially shared beliefs and practices designed to elevate some portion of oneself—a soul, spirit, or mind—above our physical bodies so as to exist indefinitely. Support for the role of terror-management concerns in mind body dualism comes from a large body of research showing that death reminders increase distancing from one’s physical body and putting greater value on mental or spiritual aspects of human experience. Reminders of death increase general disgust proclivity, disgust with bodily products, distancing from other animals, queasiness with reproduction-related aspects of the female body, and even aversion to the physical aspects of sex (Goldenberg, 2012). Other studies show that reminders of the corporeal aspects of life increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts. Many of these effects are mitigated when abstract meanings are attached to bodily processes. Research also shows that belief in immortal souls makes people more accepting of an essay predicting the end of humanity (Lifshin, Greenberg, Weise, & Soenke, 2016). These findings strongly implicate concerns with death and human corporeality in lay conceptions of mind body dualism. Theories that do not account for these findings are missing an important aspect of these phenomena. From an intelligent design perspective, evolved cognitive proclivities provided a fertile ground for human beings to construe existence in ways that helped them manage the potential for terror and view the central human essence as distinct from the mortal body is a ubiquitous way of accomplishing this.

Elaborating concepts of powerful deities to transcend death Our intelligent design perspective suggests that evolved cognitive, emotional, and social proclivities set the stage for rudimentary beliefs in an invisible spirit world and gave rise to the existential fears that motivated people to use these beliefs as building blocks for death-denying ideologies. The existential terror that emerged as our ancestors became aware of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death motivated them to elaborate and shape these spirit concepts in ways that met their physical and psychological needs. Invisible spirits were well suited to this task because the powers imputed to them could not be easily disconfirmed by direct observation. Variations of these spirit concepts that best met human needs were most appealing, likely to be communicated to and accepted by others, and eventually found their way into the worldviews of the cultures that were emerging. If, as suggested by many theorists, our ancestors were extrapolating their experiences with other humans to natural phenomena, the deities they imagined would be similar to the people with whom they interacted. This implies there would be considerable variability in the spirits they invented. Some would be hard working, caring, and serious, others would be lazy, selfish, and capricious. Some would be friendly and benevolent, others hostile and dangerous. Benevolent gods and evil demons would be used to explain the good and bad things people experienced in life, respectively. The history of spirit concepts suggests just such diversity in the nature of spirits and deities that have been embraced by different cultures over history. But because of their psychological utility, conceptions of gods who intervened in human affairs, had immense power, and provided means of transcending death would be more appealing and have greater staying power than impish and capricious ones that were largely inconsequential for human affairs. There is a long history of psychological theorizing regarding the power of wish-fulfilling beliefs, from Freud’s (1899) notion of primary process thinking to contemporary theories of motivated social cognition (e.g., Kruglanski, 1980; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1985). Support for these ideas can be found in the large bodies of research documenting the myriad ways that psychological needs affect virtually all forms of thinking, judgment, and decision-making (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). These biases are especially potent in ambiguous situations where definitive knowledge is lacking, as was surely the case in the early days of our species. As previously noted, a considerable body of evidence supports the more specific proposition that death concerns influence various types of supernatural beliefs (e.g., Vail et al., 2010). To solve their existential problems, humankind created gods in their own image but imbued them with powers they themselves did not have. As our ancestors became aware of their own limitations, they imbued their gods with powers that overcame these limitations. Thus people invented gods who helped them stay alive by granting successful harvests and hunts and protecting them from predators and enemies. With the dawning awareness of mortality, these gods took on the additional power of granting continued life after death. The journey from simply imputing agency to natural phenomena to believing in all-powerful gods who granted immortality was undoubtedly long and circuitous, but the comfort provided by powerful immortality-granting gods made them more likely to be imagined, discussed among individuals and spread within groups, and eventually institutionalized as part of cultural worldviews. If our ancestors were using their own experiences as inspiration for the gods they invented, it follows that would create gods in the image of powerful humans, such as their parents, chiefs, and tribal leaders. This would explain both the

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

315

content of supernatural conceptions and the obedience, devotion, fealty, and sacrifice people assume their gods demand in return for meeting people’s needs. Worship is a projection of the deference and submission that powerful humans demand onto the gods that people imagine. This dynamic explains why people’s individualized relationship to god mirrors to a significant extent their style of attachment to their childhood caregiver (Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990). Though the earliest iterations of spiritual ideas were probably fairly vague, as civilization progressed, spirit concepts became more complex and clearly delineated. Extrapolating from observations of contemporary hunter-gather societies, some cultural anthropologists and historians of religion have suggested that the spirits imagined by early humans were rather capricious beings with little interest in human affairs (Wright, 2010). Of course, it is a rather large leap to draw inferences about the content of emerging mythologies 40,000 years ago on the basis of much more recent observations. However, it is clear that the content of religious beliefs changed over time, and it is highly likely that the contemporary tendency to construe spiritual beings as caring about the behavior of humans and rewarding or punishing people depending on their behavior took time to take hold. Perhaps there was a sort of “spiritual arms race” in the powers attributed to spiritual beings, with more powerful deities becoming more prominent over time due to the greater need fulfillment they provided relative to less powerful ones. Because of their familiarity, conceptions of spirits that were inspired by experience with other humans would be especially easy to digest for those exposed to them. This combination of need fulfillment and comprehensibility would help anthropomorphic spirit concepts spread both within and across populations. Note that we are implying a tension between conceiving spiritual beings as both similar to and different from humans: similar because humans were the templates from which our ancestors invented their deities but different because to meet their terror-management needs, their gods needed to transcend the human limitations they were designed to overcome. Indeed, inscrutable gods embedded in cryptic belief systems may have the advantage of being more difficult to critically evaluate and thus more resistant to disconfirmation (Landau, Khenfer, Keefer, Swanson, & Kay, 2018). Because religions were used to both make sense of aspects of life that were difficult to comprehend and assuage fears resulting from aspects of life that were frightening, their precepts may have been somewhat shielded from critical analysis. This required cognitive devices to help people grasp these difficult and disturbing aspects of life.

Conceptual metaphor Although metaphor is usually thought of as a mere communicative device, several theorists and researchers propose that it is a cognitive tool that people use to understand (and not just talk about) one idea in terms of a superficially different idea (Ko¨vecses, 2005; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Conceptual metaphor facilitates understanding by creating a mental mapping, whereby knowledge of one domain is transferred as a template or framework, to structure the representations of another domain, despite their differences. In the case of theory of mind, conceptual metaphor is used to map folk psychology (e.g., lay notions of motives and emotions) onto conceptions of natural phenomena and thereby make sense of complex and otherwise mysterious phenomena. Looking more broadly, though, metaphors play important roles in several aspects of religion. One is to give tangible form to abstractions—to make visible the invisible—and thereby help people grasp aspects of existence that are difficult to comprehend. As noted above, death itself is particularly difficult to conceptualize. How is it that there exists a full-blown person at one moment and an inert and decaying body the next? That is likely why, in religious traditions the world over, artistic representations of death figure prominently in ceremonial rituals and celebrations such as Halloween and The Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos). In these contexts, art forms such as image making and dance employ metaphor to transform the meaning of death from an abstract loss of personhood to something more concrete. Sometimes, this involves personification metaphors (i.e., theory of mind), whereby death is represented as an anthropomorphized agent such as a witch, reaper, or thief. Other common metaphors portray death as a place, another plane of existence, where people (or their souls) “go” after physical death (Gonzalez-Crussi, 1993; Guthke, 1999; Stookey, 2004, p. vii). These metaphors are reflected in common expressions such as “She’s gone, passed on, departed, on the other side.” Putting memorable faces and shapes on mortal terror makes the abstract idea of death concrete and manageable. Conceptualizing death as a person, for example, implies that it can reasoned with, bargained with, tricked or overwhelmed by one’s own superior wit or that of a magical intercessor. Of course, death is not the only concept that metaphor helps to concretize. We see widespread metaphors expressed in religious practices, institutions, and artifacts to represent, for example, concepts of moral good and evil in terms of basic ideas about illumination (i.e., good is light; bad is dark; Eliade, 1996; Langer, 1979), elevation (good is above; bad is below; Haidt & Algoe, 2004) and boundaries between center and periphery (Douglas, 1966). As another example, many religious traditions describe life metaphorically in terms of traveling along a well-bounded and (typically)

316

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

predetermined path. For example, the general metaphor life is a journey features prominently in the Old Testament (Ja¨kel, 2002), with lines such as You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil. To the faithful his ways are straight, but full of pitfalls for the wicked.

Besides helping people grasp abstractions, metaphor helps to put a preferred “spin” on an abstract idea. That is because the mapping created by a metaphor is partial and selective and therefore selectively highlights (makes salient) and downplays (inhibits) aspects of an abstraction depending on their “fit” to the mental slots provided by the preferred understanding of the concrete concept. This has obvious advantages to individuals seeking to uphold a religious worldview (or a secular one, for that matter). People can reach for particular metaphors that focus their attention on aspects of the abstraction that align with their psychological needs. For example, consider the idea of “Judgment Day.” This metaphor likens the fate of one’s soul to a scheduled courtroom hearing. This metaphor highlights the comforting idea that death is set to take place at a predictable time. By the same coin, it downplays the unsettling idea that one’s death can occur at any moment from random sources of misfortune that are impossible to fully anticipate or control. It also implies the possibility of arguing one’s case, consideration of extenuating circumstances, and a just outcome. In sum, humans evolved a powerful ability to represent abstractions metaphorically in terms of superficially unrelated ideas that are more concrete and easier to visualize. Metaphoric thinking likely predated the origin of religion, but as with our intelligent design analysis of other evolved capacities, metaphor’s use was fundamentally altered with the advent of mortality awareness. Individuals and groups could now employ metaphor not only to aid comprehension but also to assuage existential anxiety. To reiterate, metaphors serve two specific roles in this capacity: concretizing concepts that are otherwise difficult to grasp and selectively filtering information to focus attention on palliative conceptions of the world and one’s existence.

Moral intuitions Another important suite of evolved emotion-related building blocks of religious thought are moral intuitions. Evolutionary theories of the origins of morality often point to behavior in other species similar to the moral behavior of humans as evidence that gut-level moral intuitions are primitive adaptations that preceded the emergence of language and other sophisticated intellectual capacities. Behaviors that reflect caring for others, sharing, group protection, deference to leaders, and disgust have been documented in a variety of species, including chimpanzees, gorillas, deer, wolves, elephants, and even bats (Bekoff & Pierce, 2009; Flack & De Waal, 2000). From this perspective, moral inclinations evolved through natural selection to facilitate intragroup cooperation and minimize intragroup conflict. Group members who behave in accordance with such intuitions receive more of the benefits of group membership are less likely to be ostracized and thus live longer and reproduce more successfully. Moral foundations theory (Graham & Haidt, 2010; Haidt & Joseph, 2004) posits that these primitive moral intuitions are the building blocks that were later used by our more cognitively advanced ancestors to create ideas about right and wrong and narrative explanations for why these things matter. As Graham and Haidt put it, these evolved gut-level moral intuitions were the “first draft” of human morality that were later “edited” by culture. Moral foundations theory specifies five (or perhaps six) moral intuitions that evolved to facilitate group living. Caring/harm reflects the long evolutionary history of attachment systems in primates that includes the ability to feel and address others’ distress. Fairness/cheating reflects evolutionary adaptations related to reciprocal altruism and cheater detection. Loyalty/betrayal reflects our long primate history as group-living animals that needed to maintain and protect coalitions. Authority/subversion reflects the dominance hierarchies that evolved to maintain social order. Sanctity/degradation emerged out of the evolved tendency to experience disgust in response to pathogens and contamination that generalized to concerns about cleanliness and purity, especially related to bodily concerns. Moral foundations theorists tentatively added a sixth foundation, liberty/oppression, which likely evolved as a response to others dominating or restricting one’s free movement (Graham et al., 2013). As their cognitive capacities increased, our ancestors used them to explain and elaborate on these intuitions, leading to the diverse array of more specific moral values and norms that people have embraced across cultures and history. For example, though all humans are concerned with fairness and cheating, cultures vary in whether fairness is construed as all people having equal opportunities or outcomes, the extent to which opportunities and outcomes should be

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

317

proportionate to what one does or the social category to which one belongs, and so on. From this perspective, most moral dilemmas reflect differences in the way people construe the specifics of these moral foundations and the relative weight put on each one. People embed these moral foundations in the broader cultural worldviews they use to understand reality. This usually involves viewing moral values as originating in the wishes of spiritual entities or deities that play out in stories about the origins of humankind and the universe and the supernatural domain in which these deities exist. TMT posits that people protect themselves from death anxiety by living up to the standards of value of their culture. Research shows that, at least in contemporary Western societies, moral behavior is the most important dimension affecting people’s judgments of both others and themselves (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005). In support of the terrormanagement function of morality, MS increases adherence to all five moral foundations (Kesebir & Pyszczynski, 2011). For example, Florian and Mikulincer (1997) showed that MS led to more severe ratings of a variety of moral transgressions, most of which involved doing harm to others, and Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (2002) found MS to increase charitable giving (harm/care foundation). Research has also shown that the suffering of innocent victims increases DTA more than that of victims whose behavior caused their suffering (Hirschberger, 2006) and that MS increases derogation of victims of a random tragedy, thus reaffirming belief in a just world (Landau et al., 2004; fairness/cheating foundation). Castano and Dechesne (2005) reviewed a multitude of studies showing that MS increases ingroup favoritism, outgroup hostility, perceptions of group entitativity, and stereotyping (loyalty/betrayal foundation). MS increase support for hypothetical leaders who emphasize the greatness of the ingroup (Cohen, Solomon, Maxfield, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2004) and support for US presidents George Bush (Landau et al., 2004) and Donald Trump (Cohen, Solomon, & Kaplin, 2017; authority/subversion foundation). MS also increases disgust sensitivity and negativity toward sexually provocative women, while exposure to disgusting pictures increases DTA (Cox, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, & Weise, 2007; see also Goldenberg et al., 2001; Landau et al., 2006; sanctity/degradation foundation). The over-arching theme of this chapter is that religions were intelligently designed by human beings—using their evolved cognitive, emotional, and social proclivities—to meet their psychological needs. Evolved moral intuitions were important sources of inspiration for the stories they invented about what the gods cared about, and therefore, what people must do to transcend death. Because they were using their templates for what people cared about when they imagined what the spirits wanted, they assumed that supernatural agents, much like their friends and neighbors, wanted them to behave in a moral manner and would respond to such behavior in kind. Importantly, they made a bargain with their gods—moral behavior in exchange for immortality, and access to whatever conception of the afterlife that their culture had devised. This was a seismic shift in the way morality operated. Awareness of death shifted the motivational impetus for moral behavior from maintaining interpersonal harmony to staying in the good graces of supernatural agents in exchange for admission into the afterlife. This greatly upped the ante for moral behavior: what was once done to please other people and avoid their censure was from this point on done to attain things that were beyond the control of mere mortals—a life that does not end with physical death. In this way, morality, and staying in the good graces of the gods (or in sync with nondeistic cosmologies), became central to religion. This enormous increase in the stakes for moral behavior helps explain why moral values are generally the most highly valued bases of people’s evaluations of both themselves and others (Skitka et al., 2005).

Social aspects of religion This is not to say that the emergence of immortality-granting gods eliminated the influence of other people. Of course people still cared (and continue to care) about what others think of them and will do for or to them. TMT posits that people need consensual validation from others to maintain faith in their beliefs and values and that they are indeed virtuous and valuable. The more that is at stake with one’s beliefs, and the further from observable reality one’s beliefs extend, the greater this need for social validation. This is why religious practice always involves a community of believers who work hard to demonstrate their faith and virtue to each other. Indeed, some of the earliest large scale human settlements, such as Gobleki Tepi in Turkey (Schmidt, 2010), appear to have served as gathering places for religious devotion considerably before the beginnings of agriculture. Indeed, Schmidt (2010) argues that bringing large groups of people together to build temples such as this may have been the impetus for inventing agriculture as a way to feed the workers and worshippers.

Religion as social signal In a related vein, evolutionary theories of religions often emphasize the importance of costly credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) of devotions in maintaining social coalitions (e.g., Heinrich, 2009). From this perspective, more costly

318

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

behaviors signal greater commitment to a belief or value, because those who lack commitment would be unlikely to engage in such behaviors. A corollary is that, the less plausible the belief or value, the greater the need for costly displays to maintain faith within a community. That is, the value of costly displays increases with the difficulty of verifying the beliefs through direct observation. Thus rituals involving sacrifice, suffering, self-mutilation, poverty, charitable giving, celibacy, and the like serve the vital function of communicating the depth of one’s devotion and thus help sustain beliefs within a community. This fits well with the social psychological concept of social consensus for one’s beliefs increasing individuals’ confidence in their beliefs but adds that more elaborate and costly displays of consensus are especially effective in promoting certainty and faith. Although the costly display perspective emphasizes the role of CREDs in supporting the faith of observers within one’s community, cognitive dissonance research from the effort justification paradigm has shown that costly actions also increase the commitment of the person exhibiting the display (Aronson & Mills, 1959).

Evangelism, missionary activity, and the spreading of religious beliefs The idea that faith in one’s worldview requires consensual validation from others helps explain the powerful desire to persuade other people to share one’s beliefs and values. Evangelism and missionary activity are especially powerful illustrations of this tendency. This need for consensual validation is the basis for the well-supported TMT hypothesis that MS leads to more positive reactions to those who share one’s worldview and more negative reactions to those who threaten it. It also explains the powerful desire to spread one’s religious beliefs to others, both within and beyond one’s group. Although those who share one’s beliefs increase one’s confidence in them, those whose beliefs are different from one’s own undermine one’s confidence. Thus affiliating with others who share one’s beliefs and values, especially regarding things that cannot be directly observed, serves the terror-management function of increasing faith in one’s own cultural worldview. Of course, the certainty-promoting utility of converting nonbelievers to one’s faith is not consciously experienced by the proselytizer. This would undermine the psychological usefulness of this strategy. Rather, missionary activity is thought of as an altruistic act, to save the soul of the nonbeliever, and as a service to one’s deity, who is assumed to be pleased by the addition of new believers to the fold. Regardless of how it is construed, investing effort into converting others to one’s faith bolsters one’s own faith and sense of living up to the values of that faith and thus helps manage existential anxiety by increasing one’s chances of a blissful afterlife.

Religious specialization and social power It is also important to recognize the role that social power played in the shaping and spreading of religious belief systems. As societies grew larger and more differentiated, some individuals took on specialized roles of interfacing with the spirits, ascertaining their nature, and informing others about these matters. The knowledge of the spirit world that shamans and other “religious specialists” professed vastly increased their influence over their culture’s belief systems. The influence of source expertise in promoting persuasion has been documented since the earliest days of attitude change research (Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). The inability of most people to directly observe or experience the workings of invisible spirits greatly increases the impact of such purported spiritual experts. Their culturally recognized expertise in these matters provides considerable latitude to such experts in the plausibility of the claims they could effectively persuade people to accept. Similarly, the beliefs of group leaders and other high status group members were likely widely emulated and sometimes forcibly imposed on the less powerful. Given the esoteric knowledge and power over life and death attributed to spiritual specialists, these individuals were held in high esteem by both their communities and the leaders and elites within them. Sometimes these spiritual experts became leaders themselves and sometimes they had special relationships with leaders that gave them power. In turn, religious specialists often promote the legitimacy of group leaders by linking them to the culture’s deities and through rituals that emphasize the approval of those deities (e.g., “God save the King!”). Of course, the idea that powerful elites use religion to gain power over the less privileged members of societies is most famously represented by Marx’s (1844) notion that “religion is the opium of the people.” Indeed, throughout history, leaders have often been viewed as chosen by the gods. In many places, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Japan, leaders were viewed as gods themselves, a practice that continues to this day in some places. In others, such as the Roman Empire and most of Europe, leaders were seen as being chosen by the deity (it was usually, though not always, a him, another sign of the link between social and spiritual power). Research by Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, and Laurin (2009) suggests a complementary relationship between religious and

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

319

nationalistic beliefs, with threats to one increasing devotion to the other. This assumption of a relationship between god and country is reflected in the beliefs held by some that divine intervention led to the election of modern American presidents. For example, after the election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States, Reverend Franklin Graham told an enthusiastic rally of supporters that “God showed up,” and former Representative Michelle Bachmman stated, “God raised up, I believe, Donald Trump” (religiousnews.com/2017).

Social cohesion and summing up Evolutionary theorists who take an adaptationist perspective on religion emphasize its utility for facilitating social cohesion, cooperation within groups, and successful competition with other groups, all ultimately in the service of gene transmission. They argue that believing in watchful gods who mete out rewards and punishments depending on behavior is an effective form of social control that promotes prosocial action within groups and preferential treatment of ingroup over outgroup members. Cultures that embraced gods who demanded appropriate behavior from humans had an advantage over those that did not because supernatural monitoring led to cooperation and group bonding. As Norenzayan (2013) put it, “watched people are nice people” (pg. xiii), whereas before the emergence of watchful gods, enforcement of social norms could only occur when other people were present, imagining an “eye in the sky” kept reward contingencies intact wherever one went, thus increasing cooperation and decreasing freeloading. This made groups with watchful gods better able to compete with other groups, and their success made it easier to impose these beliefs on other groups, by persuasion, imitation, or force, thus leading to further proliferation of such conceptions. These social benefits promoted social cohesion and effective group function, and thus individual survival, reproduction, and caring for offspring, and ultimately, gene survival. We agree that religious beliefs are useful for promoting social cohesion, and that social cohesion generally increases the reproductive fitness of populations who endorse religious beliefs. Once such beliefs are in place, groups and individuals are able to reap the societal level benefits they provide, which in turn likely increases reproductive fitness. But as noted earlier, the broad societal and reproductive consequences of elaborate systems of beliefs cannot explain the origins of these beliefs or what motivates individuals to adhere to them. This requires individual-level analyses that specify the cognitive, emotional, and motivational proclivities that led to the invention and elaboration of religious concepts, and the social processes that maintain and spread them. The current intelligent design analysis attempts just that. It proposes that G

G

G

G

G

G

G

G

G

A cognitive proclivity to apply theory of mind and other folk psychology concepts to inanimate entities led early humans to anthropomorphize natural phenomena, attributing them with human-like mental states (e.g., intentions and desires). Emerging awareness of the inevitability of death, which resulted from the use of sophisticated cognitive capacities to understand a universe in which death is inevitable, gave rise to a potential for existential terror. This potential for terror reflects the activation of fear and disgust responses, which evolved for other purposes, to a future event that is both certain and difficult to comprehend. The potential for terror led early humans to elaborate on the spiritual entities they imagined, inventing and elaborating conceptions of gods and spirits who, unlike humans, were immortal and not subject to many of the laws of nature and physics. It encouraged people to imagine deities who could help them transcend their own limitations, most importantly, their mortality. To satisfy this existential goal, people created deities that cared about human behavior and rewarded behavior that pleased them with admission to a spiritual domain in which life continued after physical death. These deities’ characteristics were inspired by and modeled after experiences with powerful human beings. Building on their experience with their conspecifics, who had evolved the proclivity to care deeply about morality, the deities people invented were similarly invested in rewarding moral behavior and punishing immoral behavior. Awareness of death led to a major transition in the way morality functioned, transforming it from a way to stay in the good graces of conspecifics to reap material and social rewards to a way to stay in the good graces of the gods to reap eternal rewards in an imagined spirit world. Because effective terror management requires a high degree of certainty regarding the veracity of one’s beliefs, people seek consensual validation from others, leading them to congregate in religious communities that encourage displays of faith through ritual and sacrifice. This need for consensual validation motivates evangelical and missionary activity directed toward getting others to share one’s belief and thus provide further consensual validation. Powerful people had a disproportionate impact on the content of religious belief, because they were the models from which people designed their gods and because they controlled the religious specialists who taught people about their

320

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

gods, often in ways that promoted the interests of their powerful benefactors, who themselves were often viewed as gods or as having special rights bestowed on them by the gods. Once a religious belief system is in place, it provides societal benefits of increasing cohesion and reducing behavior that interferes with effective group functioning. This is because of the protection from anxiety that religious devotion and conforming to the moral values of the religion provides to individuals. These individual level motivators of faith and moral behavior promote a cohesive and relatively stable culture. Cohesive and stable cultures afford the teachings and behavioral norms power and longevity, which in turn promote the stability and success of the culture at large and the welfare of the individuals who live in it.

The costs of religion Although religion has benefits for both individuals and societies, it also has significant costs. The increased social cohesion it promotes contributes to disdain, hostility, and violence toward both other groups and members of one’s own group whose piety and devotion are seen as insufficient. Because certainty in the veracity of beliefs depends on social consensus, people who do not share one’s beliefs pose a threat to the security that one’s beliefs provide. This creates an impetus to defuse the threats nonbelievers pose by derogating them, attempting to convert them, or, if all else fails, annihilating them (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). In many cases, these tendencies are explicitly encouraged by religious teachings, promoting missionary activity to spread the word or violent retribution against infidels and apostates. The TMT literature is replete with evidence that reminders of death increase derogation, aggression, and support for violence against those whose religious beliefs are different from one’s own (for a review, see Kesebir & Pyszczynski, 2011). The historical record is similarly filled with an ongoing litany of wars and conquests fueled by religious fervor. From prehistoric tribal wars, through the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition, to the religious terrorism currently plaguing much of the world, the threat to cherished beliefs posed by those with different beliefs has promoted a multitude of genocides (for a review of research on the role of fear of death and religious beliefs in promoting war and terrorism, see Pyszczynski, Vail, & Motyl, 2010). Though many religions promote universal love and compassion for all, and research has shown that reminders of these teachings can reverse the effect of existential threat on hostility toward outgroups (Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski, 2009), living up to these values runs counter to the need for certainty about beliefs that can never be definitively proven. This conflict—between hostility toward those with different beliefs (due to the difficulty of believing the invisible) and the compassion toward such people that many religions explicitly prescribe—is vexing paradox that explains why religious commitment sometimes promotes peace but often encourages violence. The individual equanimity and cultural stability that religion offers can also discourage open-minded, creative, and critical thinking. Indeed, in many (but not all) cultures, questioning religious precepts is forbidden, and heresy and apostasy are crimes punishable by death. It is common for nonbelievers to be viewed as repositories of evil and that one’s gods demand that they be eliminated. On an individual level the protection from anxiety that religious belief provides can inhibit critical thinking about one’s beliefs and open-minded considerations of alternative conceptions of how the world is organized or how to best conduct one’s life. For a discussion of the more general dynamic interplay between the security provided by rigid commitment to sources of security and openly integrating new experiences with existing cognitive structures, see Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Goldenberg (2003).

Concluding thoughts An intelligent design perspective on religion offers a small ray of hope for moving beyond this seemingly insurmountable conflict between the need for certainty about one’s beliefs and mandates to live up to the values associated with one’s beliefs. If religious belief systems are the product of human ingenuity, it may be possible for people to find ways of resolving these competing proclivities. As moral foundations theory suggests, though moral precepts are built upon ancient evolved intuitions, cultures edit and customize these precepts. When open discussion of these beliefs is encouraged (or permitted), this process of reevaluation and revision has the potential to be ongoing. Indeed, it has been argued that violence and war has been generally decreasing over the course of history (Pinker, 2011). This may reflect a gradual process of moral evolution that promotes putting greater value on compassion, fairness, and a sense of shared humanity over allegiance to one’s group, respect for authority, and devotion to purity and sanctity. Compassion for those who are different from oneself has been a part of many religious traditions for at least a few millennia.

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

321

The challenge for intelligent designers of future moral systems is to find ways of making these values win out over the desire for certainty about one’s own worldview.

References Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177. Atran, S. (2004). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). The evolution of a theory of mind. In M. Corballis, & S. Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: psychological perspectives on hominid evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barrett, J. L., & Keil, F. C. (1996). Conceptualizing a nonnatural entity: Anthropomorphism in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology, 31(3), 219 247. Bassett, J. F., & Cate, K. L. (2014). Mortality salience increases belief in a just world but not schadenfreude in response to a natural disaster affecting a religious out-group. Open Psychology Journal, 7, 64 69. Batson, C. D., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Core psychological functions. In Handbook of experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford Press. p. 141. Becker, E. (1971). The birth and death of meaning: An interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man (2nd ed.). New York: The Free Press. Bekoff, M., & Pierce, J. (2009). Wild justice: The moral lives of animals. University of Chicago Press. Bering, J. (2008). The end? Scientific American Mind, 19(5), 34 41. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind1008-34. Bering, J. M. (2002). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6(1), 3 24. Bering, J. M. (2006). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 29, 453 498. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic Books. Boyer, P. (2004). Religion, evolution, and cognition. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 430 433. Available from https://doi.org/10.1086/420914. Castano, E., & Dechesne, M. (2005). On defeating death: Group reification and social identification as immortality strategies. European Review of Social Psychology, 16, 221 255. Cohen, F., Solomon, S., & Kaplin, D. (2017). You’re hired! Mortality salience increases Americans’ support for Donald Trump. Analyses of Social Issues & Public Policy, 17(1), 339 357. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12143. Cohen, F., Solomon, S., Maxfield, M., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2004). Fatal attraction: The effects of mortality salience on evaluations of charismatic, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented leaders. Psychological Science, 15, 846 851. Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., & Weise, D. (2007). Disgust, creatureliness and the accessibility of death-related thoughts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 494 507. Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London: J. Murray. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722 737. Douglas, R. J. (1966). Cues for spontaneous alternation. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 62(2), 171. Eliade, M. (1996). Patterns in comparative religion. University of Nebraska Press. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117 140. Flack, J. C., & De Waal, F. B. (2000). ‘Any animal whatever’. Darwinian building blocks of morality in monkeys and apes. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(1 2), 1 29. Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1997). Fear of death and the judgment of social transgressions: A multidimensional test of terror management theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 369 380. Freud, S. (1899). The interpretation of dreams. (J. Crick, Trans.). Oxford University Press. Freud, S. (1918). Totem and taboo. (A. A. Brill, Trans.). pp. 3 26. Freud, S. (1927). Some psychological consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 8, 133 142. Goldenberg, J. L. (2012). A body of terror: Denial of death and the creaturely body. In P. R. Shaver, & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 93 110). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Kluck, B., & Cornwell, R. (2001). I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 427 435. Gonzalez-Crussi, F. (1993). The day of the dead: And other mortal reflections. Harcourt Brace and Company. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 55 130). Academic Press. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Arndt, J. (2008). A basic but uniquely human motivation. In Handbook of motivation science. New York: Guilford Press. pp. 114 134.

322

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Greenberg, J., Vail, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2014). Terror management theory and research: How the desire for death transcendence drives our strivings for meaning and significance, . Advances in Motivation Science (Vol. 1, pp. 85 134). Elsevier. Guthke, J. (1999). Intelligenzdaten. Psychologische Diagnostik, 4, 396 412. Haidt, J., & Algoe, S. (2004). Moral amplification and the emotions that tie us to saints and demons. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), The Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology. New York: Guilford. Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, 133, 55 66. Heinrich, J. (2009). The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and religion: Credibility-enhancing displays and their implications for culture and religion. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, 244 260. Hirschberger, G. (2006). Terror management and attributions of blame to innocent victims: Reconciling compassionate and defensive responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 832 844. Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelly, H. H. (1953). Persuasion and communication. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ja¨kel, O. (2002). Hypotheses revisited: The cognitive theory of metaphor applied to religious texts. Metaphorik.de, 2(1), 20 42. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of personality and social psychology, 91(3), 553. Jonas, E., Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2002). The Scrooge effect: Evidence that mortality salience increases prosocial attitudes and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(10), 1342 1353. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/014616702236834. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2009). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18 35. Kesebir, P., & Pyszczynski, T. (2011). A moral-existential account of the psychological factors fostering intergroup conflict. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(11), 878 890. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Attachment theory and religion: Childhood attachments, religious beliefs, and conversion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29, 315 334. Ko¨vecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge University Press. Kruglanski, A. W. (1980). Lay epistemo-logic—process and contents: Another look at attribution theory. Psychological Review, 87(1), 70. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.87.1.70. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cognitive Science, 4(2), 195 208. Landau, M. J., Goldenberg, J. L., Greenberg, J., Gillath, O., Solomon, S., Cox, C.,. . . Pyszczynski, T. (2006). The siren’s call: Terror management and the threat of men’s sexual attraction to women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 129 146. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2004). The motivational underpinnings of religion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 743 744. Landau, M. J., Khenfer, J., Keefer, L. A., Swanson, T. J., & Kay, A. C. (2018). When and why does belief in a controlling god strengthen goal commitment? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 71 82. Langer, E. J. (1979). The illusion of incompetence. Choice and Perceived Control, 301 313. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Weise, D., & Soenke, M. (2016). It’s the end of the world and I feel fine: Soul belief and perceptions of end-of-the-world scenarios. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(1), 104 117. Lifton, R. J. (1979). The broken connection: On death and the continuity of life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Marx, K. (1844). Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. Deutsch-Franzo¨sische Jahrbu¨cher, 7(10). Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press. Norenzayan, A., Dar-Nimrod, I., Hansen, I. G., & Proulx, T. (2009). Mortality salience and religion: Divergent effects on the defense of cultural worldviews for the religious and the non-religious. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39(1), 101 113. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1002/ejsp.482. Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39. Park, Y. C., & Pyszczynski, T. (2016). Cultural universals and differences in dealing with death. In Denying death: An interdisciplinary approach to terror management theory. New York: Routledge Press. pp. 193 213. Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: The decline of violence in history and its causes. London: Penguin Books. Preston, J., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2006). The Godfather of soul. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 482 483. Pyszczynski, T. (2016). God save us: A terror management perspective on morality. In J. P. Forgas, L. Jussim, & P. A. M. von Lange (Eds.), The social psychology of morality: The Sydney symposium of social psychology. New York: Routledge. Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (1985). Depression and preference for self-focusing stimuli after success and failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(4), 1066 1075. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.4.1066. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Goldenberg, J. (2003). Freedom vs. fear: On the defense, growth, and expansion of the self. In M. Leary, & J. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity. New York: Guilford. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 1 70. Pyszczynski, T., & Thompson, S. (2018). An intelligent design theory of the origins, evolution and function of religion: Toward an integration of existential and evolutionary perspectives. In R. E. Menzies, R. G. Menzies, & L. Iverbach (Eds.), Curing the dread of death: Theory, research and practice (pp. 103 120).

In his own image: an existential evolutionary perspective on the origins and function of religion Chapter | 21

323

Pyszczynski, T., Vail, K. E., & Motyl, M. S. (2010). The cycle of righteous killing: Psychological forces in the prevention and promotion of peace. In T. Pick, A. Speckhard, & B. Jacuch (Eds.), Homegrown terrorism: NATO science for peace and security series E: Human and societal dynamics (pp. 227 243). Amsterdam: IOS Press. Rank, O. (1930/2003). Psychology and the soul: A study of the origin, conceptual evolution, and nature of the soul. JHU Press. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 816 827. Available from https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.05.016. Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2008). Disgust. Handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 757 776). New York: Guilford Press. Schaller, M., & Duncan, L. A. (2016). The behavioral immune system. In The handbook of evolutionary psychology. New York: Wiley. Vol. 1. pp. 206 224. Schmidt, K. (2010). Go¨bekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs. Documenta Praehistorica, XXXVII, 239 256. Seligman, M. E. P. (1970). On the generality of the laws of learning. Psychological Review, 77, 406 418. Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Sargis, E. G. (2005). Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 895. Soenke, M., Landau, M. J., & Greenberg, J. (2013). Sacred armor: Religion’s role as a buffer against the anxieties of life and the fear of death. In APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Vol. 1, pp. 105 122. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 93 159. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The worm at the core: On the role of death in life. New York: Random House. Stookey, L. L. (2004). Thematic guide to world mythology. Greenwood Publishing Group. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165. Wisman, A., & Shrira, I. (2015). The smell of death: Evidence that putrescine elicits threat management mechanisms. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. Available from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01274. Wright, R. (2010). The evolution of God: The origins of our beliefs. , London: Hachette UK.

Further reading Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of emotions in animals and man. London: Murray.

Chapter 22

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Allon Vishkin and Maya Tamir The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

The uniquely human capacity for self-reflection engenders existential concerns, including awareness of the inevitability of one’s death, isolation, uncertainty about one’s identity, and the apparent meaninglessness of random life events (Koole, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2006). Religion helps individuals maintain coherence in the face of these potentially debilitating existential concerns (Batson & Stocks, 2004). For example, religion may assist in coping with death awareness by promising immortality or in coping with isolation by providing directions for establishing a relationship with God. However, these are not the only ways religion can promote coping with existential concerns. To understand the potential impact of religiosity on coping with existential concerns, it is necessary to understand how both existential concerns and religion are uniquely associated with emotion and emotion regulation. Existential concerns arouse negative emotional states, including fear (Lambert et al., 2014) and anxiety (Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992), and activate the same neural mechanisms associated with physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). The desire to cope with these aversive emotional states motivates individuals to alleviate existential concerns. Terror management theory (TMT) posits that fear of death “lies at the root of some very important psychological motives” (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015, p. 4) and is the “central motivating force” of coping with death awareness (Pyszczynski et al., 2015, p. 18).1 As such, coping with existential concerns engages emotion regulatory mechanisms (Gross & Thompson, 2007) that function to adjust one’s current emotional state in line with one’s desired emotional state. Religiosity is linked with such mechanisms (Vishkin, Bigman, & Tamir, 2014). Therefore emotion regulation may play a key role in how religion alleviates existential concerns. In what follows, we lay out a theoretical framework for how religiosity may facilitate coping with existential concerns via emotion regulatory mechanisms. In order to bridge the vast literatures of existential science, emotion regulation, and religion, we focus on the existential concern related to death awareness in particular, as formulated by TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Pyszczynski et al., 2015).

Forms of coping with fear of death To deal with the aversive feelings aroused by death awareness, people must engage in one of two types of coping: problem focused or emotion focused (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Problem-focused coping involves addressing or altering the situation that aroused the aversive feelings. Emotion-focused coping involves directly regulating the aversive feelings. The purpose of both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping is to manage emotional distress. 1. Fear of death figured prominently in the initial development of the theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), yet few subsequent studies were able to detect an increase in negative affect following a mortality salience manipulation. Consequently, terror management theorists suggested that fear resulting from mortality salience is unconscious (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). However, recent advances have been able to identify the conditions under which fear of death can be reliably detected. By focusing on reliable measures of fear and anxiety, recent research has detected an increase in fear following manipulations of mortality salience (Lambert et al., 2014). A separate research program has also consistently found that mortality salience increases anxiety by focusing on individuals who lack appropriate psychological buffers (Juhl & Routledge, 2016). These advances have reinstated the role of affect as a motivating force in terror management theory. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00023-8 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

325

326

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Problem-focused coping directs one’s efforts toward defining the problem that led to the emotional distress, generating alternative solutions to the problem, weighing the alternative solutions in terms of cost and benefits, choosing among them, and acting on the chosen solution (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Emotion-focused coping directs one’s efforts toward defining the desired emotional state (usually lessening aversive feelings), identifying emotion regulation strategies that can facilitate reaching the desired emotional state, and acting on the chosen emotion regulation strategy. For example, a student who feels anxiety before an upcoming exam has a number of ways to cope with her anxiety. Problem-focused coping would involve identifying the source of the anxiety (e.g., being inadequately prepared for the exam), generating solutions to alter the circumstances that lead to the anxiety (e.g., engaging in quiet study, attending review sessions), and enacting one or more of these solutions. In contrast, emotion-focused coping would involve identifying a desired emotional end-state relative to one’s current emotional state (e.g., reducing anxiety), generating strategies to reach the desired emotional end-state (e.g., watching a stand-up routine on YouTube or reappraising the exam as less threatening), and enacting one or more of these strategies. In this example the motivation for engaging in both types of coping is alleviating the aversive emotion. The coping styles differ in how they approach this goal. Problem-focused coping attempts to reduce the aversive emotion by engaging in behaviors that will alter the situation that caused it, whereas emotion-focused coping attempts to reduce the aversive emotion by directly regulating it. Depending on people’s ability to alter their environment, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping can be adaptive or maladaptive. Emotions can be adaptive because they signal that there are environmental conditions that need to be addressed (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 2000). In some contexts, therefore, it is important to attend to one’s emotions and not necessarily decrease them. In this respect, the emotion-focused coping in the example abovementioned might be maladaptive, to the extent that eliminating anxiety prior to a test eliminates the drive to study for the exam and thereby ignoring the signal to alter one’s environmental conditions. Nevertheless, emotion-focused coping can also be adaptive. Consider nurses working in intensive care units whose work causes them to experience high levels of distress (Hay & Oken, 1972). Problem-focused coping would require the nurses to disengage from their job. In contrast, emotion-focused coping may help them reduce their distress to a level that would enable them to care for patients more effectively. The boundary condition that determines the adaptiveness of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping is the controllability of the stressor: problem-focused coping is most adaptive when stressors are controllable, whereas emotion-focused coping is most adaptive when stressors are uncontrollable (Troy, Shallcross, & Mauss, 2013). We propose that the theory of coping styles can facilitate an understanding of how religion helps people handle death awareness. The framework of TMT has been conducive to understanding the problem-focused route of coping. Specifically, according to TMT (Greenberg et al., 1986; Pyszczynski et al., 2015), awareness of one’s eventual death instills fear and terror. These feelings are aversive and people strive to avoid them. One manner of alleviating these feelings is by enhancing one’s self-esteem. Another manner of alleviating these feelings is by engaging in worldview defense: absorbing, adopting, and protecting cultural worldviews that instill a sense of meaning and significance, providing standards by which human behavior can be judged as valuable or providing an expectation of literal or symbolic immortality. For instance, when people’s mortality becomes salient, they may endorse harsher punishment for moral transgressors (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989), display greater in-group bias (Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002), and evaluate more positively those who praise one’s culture and evaluate more negatively those who criticize it (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Veeder, Kirkland, & Solomon, 1990). Coping by enhancing self-esteem or engaging in worldview defense decreases aversive feelings by establishing psychological buffers that instill a sense of permanence (secular legacy, supernatural afterlife) that mitigates death’s threat of impermanence. If one’s life is meaningful and significant, if one has a firm foundation for judging certain behaviors as valuable, or if one expects to attain immortality, then awareness of death is no longer emotionally debilitating. Adopting such psychological buffers to decrease the source of fear of death is a problem-focused type of coping. Problem-focused coping with fear of death, such as enhancing self-esteem and engaging in worldview defense, has been studied extensively within the framework of TMT. Yet, emotion-focused coping may be just as prevalent, and under certain circumstances equally (if not more) effective. In Fig. 22.1, we present a model to address how both forms of coping can account for the role of religion in alleviating fear of death. The model integrates findings from TMT on the role of religion in coping with fear of death via problem-focused coping. According to TMT, death awareness (sometime referred to as mortality salience, the experimental paradigm for manipulating death awareness) arouses a fear of death. Fear of death motivates a problem-focused search for existential value, which can increase religious sentiments such as belief in afterlife, supernatural agency, and mind body dualism (path 1; Vail et al., 2010). These sentiments lead to the reduction of fear of death (path 2; Vail et al., 2010). In addition, we propose an alternative route to the reduction of terror via emotion-focused coping. In this route, religiosity is exogenous, symbolized by the dotted lines, meaning that it affects coping with fear but is not affected by it.

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

327

FIGURE 22.1 Religion and forms of coping in regulating fear of death.

In particular, when one feels fear as a result of becoming aware of death, religiosity increases the likelihood of engaging in emotion-focused coping (path 3). Furthermore, given that religiosity is associated with adaptive methods of coping with emotion, religiosity can successfully reduce fear of death (path 4). In the following sections, we first offer an abridged review of the association between religion and problem-focused coping based on research conducted in the framework of TMT (see Greenberg, Helm, Landau, & Solomon, 2020; for a comprehensive review). Second, we review the determinants of engaging in emotion-focused coping (vs problemfocused coping) and propose that religiosity is more likely to be associated with the selection of emotion-focused coping. Third, we explicate how religiosity may be associated with more successful enactment of emotion-focused coping. Fourth, we discuss implications of this model for understanding the interplay of religion and emotion regulation in coping with fear of death.

Religion and problem-focused coping with fear of death TMT contends that to manage fear of death, people use problem-focused methods of coping that alter the perceived significance of one’s existence. These coping methods provide a standard by which behavior can be assessed and valued, and the expectation of symbolic or literal transcendence of death to those who live up to these standards (Pyszczynski et al., 2015). Worldviews that provide individuals with a sense of significance include beliefs that life is meaningful (Routledge & Juhl, 2010), that one possesses self-worth (Greenberg et al., 1986), and that one has substantive relationships with others (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Paladino, 2004). Some of these cultural worldviews are particularly in sync with religious beliefs (Vail et al., 2010). Consequently, problem-focused coping with fear of death may increase the adoption of religious worldviews (path 1 in Fig. 22.1), which in turn may decrease fear of death (path 2 in Fig. 22.1). In the experimental research reviewed below on how fear of death affects religious worldviews, the theoretical justification was often consequentialist: it was assumed that fear of death would foster the adoption of religious worldviews that decrease fear of death. Given this state of the literature, the discussion below simultaneously captures how problemfocused coping with fear of death may foster the adoption of religious worldviews, and how religious worldviews may decrease fear of death.

Belief in supernatural beings One of the most basic features of religion is belief in supernatural beings (Tylor, 1871). These supernatural beings are likely to be construed as being in a relationship with individuals (James, 1902) and possessing unique qualities or powers, such as omnipotence or omniscience (Kapitan, 1991; Metcalf, 2004). To the extent that lack of personal control drives effects resulting from death awareness (Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankhanel, 2008) and contributes to fear of death, the reliance on more powerful beings, and the exercise of secondary control by invoking their intervention (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982) can decrease fear of death. Experimental evidence has found that mortality salience,

328

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

a paradigm for increasing death awareness, increases belief in God and in divine intervention (Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006; Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012). Furthermore, a correlational study found that belief in God is negatively associated with anxiety about death (Harding, Flannelly, Weaver, & Costa, 2005). Collectively, these results suggest that religiosity can attenuate the effect of death awareness on fear of death: death awareness increases belief in supernatural beings, and belief in supernatural beings is associated with less anxiety about death.

The afterlife and mind body dualism Another belief common to most religions is a belief in an afterlife (Vail et al., 2010). Belief in an afterlife provides literal immortality and consequently transcends death. Therefore belief in an afterlife may decrease fear of death. Experimental evidence has found that mortality salience increases belief in an afterlife (Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973; Schoenrade, 1989). The belief in an afterlife is facilitated by a belief common to religion of mind body dualism, or the belief that one’s mind and body are two distinct entities (Heflick, Goldenberg, Hart, & Kamp, 2015). By relegating the influence of death to the decay of one’s body, one’s mind can continue living even after one dies (Forstmann, Burgmer, & Mussweiler, 2012). Supporting the notion that mind body dualism is essential to belief in an afterlife, experimental evidence has found that mortality salience increases belief in an afterlife, especially after making mind body dualism salient (Heflick et al., 2015). Furthermore, a manipulation of belief in an afterlife eliminated worldview defense responses following a mortality salience manipulation (Dechesne et al., 2003), suggesting that belief in an afterlife and worldview defense fulfills similar functions in coping with fear of death. This is in line with a correlational study that found that belief in an afterlife is negatively associated with anxiety about death (Harding et al., 2005). Collectively, these findings reveal that death awareness and fear of death increase belief in the afterlife, and belief in the afterlife eliminates the defensive effects of death awareness, possibly by decreasing fear of death.

Human uniqueness Death and decay are common to all life forms, human and animals alike. Such a common fate renders human life insignificant, a sentiment expressed by Ecclesiastes: “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same spirit; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 3:19; New International Version). However, a distinction between humans and animals is maintained in certain religious traditions, such as in the Biblical creation myth, in which humans are created in the image of God and given dominion over the creatures of the world. Experimental evidence has found that mortality salience increases preference for emphasizing distinctions between humans and animals (Goldenberg et al., 2001). Conversely, actions that obscure human uniqueness such as reminders of bodily functions (Cox, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, & Weise, 2007) and exposure to evolutionary/anticreationist arguments (Schimel, Hayes, Williams, & Jahrig, 2007) increase the accessibility of death-related thought. Collectively, these results reveal that mortality salience and fear of death increase belief in human uniqueness, while challenging belief in human uniqueness increases the accessibility of death.

Summary According to a terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion, death awareness and the consequent fear of death foster the adoption of religious worldviews, and these religious worldviews subsequently attenuate fear of death (Vail et al., 2010). There is direct empirical evidence for the first link between fear of death and the adoption of religious worldviews. There is indirect empirical evidence for the second link between these beliefs and lower fear of death. Most of the evidence for the second link comes from studies that measured changes in fear of death via changes in death-thought accessibility (DTA; see Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010). Evidence that DTA is a proxy for fear comes from a study that directed some participants to regulate their emotions following a mortality salience manipulation (Webber et al., 2015). Participants who regulated their emotions had lower DTA than participants who did not. These links have been demonstrated in the association between death awareness and the belief in supernatural beings, belief in the afterlife and mind body dualism, and belief in human uniqueness. Each of these beliefs is more likely to be adopted when experiencing fear of death, and each of these beliefs plays a role in subsequently reducing

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

329

fear of death. Having taken a brief look at the role of religion in problem-focused coping with fear of death, we next move on to the role of religion in emotion-focused coping with fear of death.

Religion and emotion-focused coping with fear of death Two dominant lines of inquiry in research on emotion-focused coping address how likely one is to engage in it (path 3 in Fig. 22.1) and how successful one is in enacting it (path 4 in Fig. 22.1; McRae, 2013). These are, respectively, the antecedents and consequences of emotion-focused coping. Below, we review evidence that death awareness is associated with each of these processes. Then we review the determinants of each of these processes. Finally, we show that religiosity is linked with the determinants of each of these processes, leading to the conclusion that those who are more religious may be more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping and may also be more likely to be successful in enacting emotion-focused coping.2

Selecting emotion-focused coping A handful of studies have established that emotion-focused coping may occur following a mortality salience manipulation. Evidence for this comes from increased accessibility of emotion concepts and differential allocation of attention to positive and negative stimuli. Specifically, a mortality salience manipulation increased the accessibility of positive affect words (DeWall & Baumeister, 2007), an effect associated with engagement in automatic emotion regulation (DeWall et al., 2011). Another study found that a mortality salience manipulation decreased allocation of attention toward fearful stimuli (MacDonald & Lipp, 2008), suggesting that people implicitly regulate fear when mortality is salient by not allocating attention to it. The allocation of attention to positive stimuli and away from negative stimuli following a mortality salience manipulation is also more likely to occur among individuals higher in self-control (Kelley, Tang, & Schmeichel, 2014), who are also more likely to engage in emotion regulation (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). Together, these findings reveal that mortality salience increases the likelihood that people will engage in emotion-focused coping, whether by calling to mind positive affect or by diverting attention from negative affect. Problem-focused and emotion-focused coping are equifinal means for achieving a desired end-state in coping (Kruglanski et al., 2002). Consequently, they are substitutable. As such, there are contextual- or individual-level determinants that affect the likelihood that each form of coping will be selected. The determinants that predict selection of emotion-focused coping are more common among people who are more religious. Below, we review some of these determinants and explain how they may be associated with religiosity.

Perceived control People strive to maintain a perception of control over themselves and the environment (Rothbaum et al., 1982). Perceived control can be manifested in the ability to alter one’s environment (primary control) or in the ability to alter one’s self in line with the environment (secondary control). In trying to alter the context in which an aversive emotion was aroused, problem-focused coping involves a form of primary control (Compas, Banez, Malcarne, & Worsham, 1991). Conversely, in trying to alter the emotion experience, emotion-focused coping involves a form of secondary control. The likelihood of engaging in primary or secondary control is determined by how a situation is perceived (Rothbaum et al., 1982). Specifically, people are more likely to engage in primary control when they perceive that they can influence the situation. Conversely, people are more likely to engage in secondary control when they perceive that their influence over a situation is limited and in the hands of powerful others. Thus it follows that people are more likely to select problem-focused coping when they appraise the environmental conditions as amenable to change, whereas people are more likely to select emotion-focused coping when they appraise the environmental conditions as unalterable (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). By endorsing appraisals that one’s personal control is limited and that supernatural powers dictate earthly affairs, religion increases the likelihood of engaging in secondary control (Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009). The centrality of secondary control in religion was expressed by William James, who stated, “The life of religion . . . consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” (James, 1902, p. 53). Consequently, people who are more religious may be more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping. 2. Throughout this section, we use the terms “emotion-focused coping” and “emotion regulation” interchangeably.

330

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Resources The likelihood of selecting particular coping styles is dependent on the resources one has for effectively engaging in each of them (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). For example, if one is experiencing distress due to financial strain, a problemfocused method of coping might include searching for a job. If one does not have resources to find a job (e.g., one is disabled or one is already working full time), the likelihood of engaging in problem-focused coping will decrease. Resources in emotion-focused coping refer to the beliefs, goals, and strategies that facilitate coping effectively with emotions. These resources include possessing personal beliefs that emotions are controllable (Ford & Gross, 2018), possessing clearly defined emotion goals (Carver & Scheier, 1998) and possessing a range of effective emotion regulation strategies (Bonanno & Burton, 2013). As we will review in the next section, people who are more religious believe that emotions are more controllable, have more prohedonic motives, and use a range of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, Schwartz, Solak, & Tamir, 2019). Thus people who are more religious have more resources for engaging in emotion-focused coping and consequently may be more likely to engage in it. By endorsing appraisals that one’s control over the environment is limited while possessing resources for enacting emotion regulation, people who are more religious may be more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping. When dealing with fear of death, in particular, this means that people who are more religious may be more likely to cope with fear of death by regulating their emotion and less likely to cope with fear of death by boosting their self-esteem and engaging in worldview defense (e.g., Newheiser, Voci, Hewstone, & Schmid, 2015). For example, upon discovering that one is terminally ill, a cancer patient may engage in problem-focused coping, such as by engaging in the myriad types of worldview defenses that boost one’s self-esteem. Alternatively, he or she may engage in emotion-focused coping by directly trying to decrease one’s fear of death. To the extent that such a person is religious, he or she is more likely to perceive the situation as outside of his or her personal control, and more likely to possess the resources to regulate one’s emotions, and consequently more likely to engage in emotion regulation.

Enacting emotion-focused coping The effectiveness of enacting emotion-focused coping is determined by several elements. First, as in other forms of self-regulation (e.g., Cervone & Peake, 1986), certain beliefs regarding one’s ability to regulate one’s emotions are necessary to engage in emotion-focused coping. Next, emotion-focused coping is directed by motives to approach or avoid certain emotional states (Tamir, 2016). These emotional states are the goals of emotion-focused coping and may refer to general classes of emotions, such as increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions, or they may refer to particular emotions, such as decreasing fear or anger. Finally, engaging in emotion-focused coping requires strategies for altering one’s present emotional state to the target emotional state. Strategies for altering emotions differ in their efficacy (Webb, Miles, & Sheeran, 2012). To the extent that people endorse beliefs regarding their ability to alter their emotions in general and fear in particular, endorse motives to reduce negative emotions in general and fear in particular, and use emotion regulation strategies that are effective in altering one’s emotions in a desired direction, they will be effective in reducing their fear of death via emotion-focused coping. We first developed a theoretical account for the association between religiosity and each of these elements of emotion regulation (Vishkin et al., 2014), and then launched an empirical investigation to validate this account. Research on Christians in America, Jews in Israel, and Muslims in Turkey examined the associations between religiosity and beliefs about emotions, general and specific motives in emotion regulation, and use of emotion regulation strategies (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). An additional study examined the association between religiosity and cognitive reappraisal, a particularly effective emotion regulation strategy (Vishkin et al., 2016). We argue that people who are more religious are guided by certain prescriptions and worldviews regarding which beliefs about emotions to endorse, which goals about emotion-focused coping to adapt, and which emotion regulation strategies to use. On the other hand, people who are less religious are not constrained by such prescriptions and worldviews and therefore are likely to display greater variability in these associations. Consequently, people who are more religious are likely to display a unique set of associations with beliefs, goals, and strategies in emotion-focused coping, relative to people who are less religious. Below, we review how each element of emotion-focused coping is related to effective or ineffective coping, and then review how each element is associated with religiosity.

Beliefs People hold beliefs about the controllability of human attributes, including intelligence (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), body weight (Burnette, 2010), and emotions (Tamir, John, Srivastava, & Gross, 2007). Beliefs about

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

331

controllability of emotions refer to how much people think emotions are controllable, in general, as well as how much people think they can control their own emotions (i.e., self-efficacy in emotion regulation; De Castella, Platow, Tamir, & Gross, 2018). Just as beliefs about the controllability of body weight promote successful body weight regulation (Burnette, 2010), beliefs about the controllability of emotions promote successful emotion regulation (Bigman, Mauss, Gross, & Tamir, 2016). Religious texts contain numerous prescriptions about what to feel and what not to feel, such as feeling gratitude (e.g., “give thanks to Me and do not be ungrateful to Me,” Quran 2:152) and not feeling hate (e.g., “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart,” Leviticus 19:17, King James Version) nor fear (e.g., “Fear thou not; for I am with thee,” Isaiah 41:10, King James Version), an exhortation which appears in the Bible more than 70 times. By doing so, religion promotes an assumption that emotions can be controlled. Indeed, religiosity is associated with beliefs about the controllability of emotions, in general, as well as beliefs about one’s own ability to control emotions (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). By endorsing such beliefs, people who are more religious may be more successful when engaging in emotion-focused coping in general, as well as when regulating fear of death, in particular.

Emotion goals When people self-regulate, they adjust their behavior in pursuit of a desired goal (Carver & Scheier, 1998). Consequently, self-regulation is facilitated by clearly defined goals. In the context of emotion-focused coping, clearly defined emotion goals facilitate successful emotion regulation. Religion encourages emotion goals that can lead to the reduction of fear. In particular, religion promotes the pursuit of other-praising emotions, such as awe and gratitude, and discourages the pursuit of the self-praising emotion of pride (Vishkin, Schwartz, Ben-Nun Bloom, Solak, & Tamir, in press). These clearly defined emotion goals provide alternatives to the experience of fear and therefore their pursuit can decrease fear. In support of this notion a gratitude intervention successfully decreased fear of the recurrence of a lifethreatening disease (Otto, Szczesny, Soriano, Laurenceau, & Siegel, 2016). In addition to setting specific emotion goals, religion also directs people to regulate their emotions prohedonically by increasing positive affect and decreasing negative affect (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). A prohedonic orientation is evident in some strands of religious thought. For example, elements in the Hassidic movement in Judaism emphasize that one is required to be in a constant state of happiness (Buber, 1975). Elements of Sufism in Islam describe happiness as the aim of human striving (e.g., Al-Ghazzali, 2005). The strand of religious thought termed by James (1902) as the mind-cure movement discouraged fear and encouraged positive thinking. Given that fear is a negative affective state (Russell, 1980), prohedonic emotion regulation is likely to decrease fear, together with other negative affective states. This proposition is supported by evidence that mortality salience increases the allocation of attention to positive affect (Kelley et al., 2014), as well as the accessibility of terms related to positive affect (DeWall & Baumeister, 2007).

Strategies People use emotion regulation strategies to bring their current emotional state in line with their desired emotional state. Emotion regulation strategies differ in their relative effectiveness. Below, we review emotion regulation strategies that are associated with religiosity and elaborate on how they may be effective in decreasing fear of death. Cognitive reappraisal One of the most effective emotion regulation strategies is cognitive reappraisal (Webb et al., 2012). Cognitive reappraisal involves changing the meaning of emotional events so that they alter emotional experience (Gross & John, 2003). By targeting elements of emotions that occur early in the process of emotion generation, cognitive reappraisal is particularly effective (Gross & Thompson, 2007). The effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal has been demonstrated in the regulation of affective states in general and fear in particular (e.g., Shurick et al., 2012). Religion supplies broad interpretive frameworks that are capable of giving meaning to daily experiences and world events (Geertz, 1966). To some religious Christians, present-day human evil is understood against the backdrop of The Fall from the Garden of Eden; to some religious Jews, existential threats evoke a biblical event as chronicled in the biblical story of Queen Esther—and just as that threat was annulled, so too will future threats be annulled (Geertz, 1966; Yerushalmi, 1982). Given that meaning-making is common to both cognitive reappraisal and religion, we hypothesized that religiosity would be associated with cognitive reappraisal. We found that religiosity is associated with the frequency of using cognitive reappraisal in a Christian, Jewish, and Muslim sample (Vishkin et al., 2016) and subsequently replicated this finding with similar samples (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). In addition, we found that people

332

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

who are more religious were more effective in implementing cognitive reappraisal when instructed to do so (Vishkin et al., 2016). These findings reveal that cognitive reappraisal is a strategy that people who are more religious can use when engaging in emotion-focused coping to deal with aversive emotions in general, as well as when engaging in emotion-focused coping to deal with fear of death, in particular. To the best of our knowledge, a single study has directly examined whether emotion-focused coping is effective in buffering the influence of death awareness (Webber et al., 2015). Death awareness was manipulated via a mortality salience manipulation by showing participants images of bodily functions, such as vomiting, that challenge human uniqueness by blurring the distinction between humans and animals. Participants who were instructed to engage in cognitive reappraisal subsequently showed lower death-thought accessibility, relative to participants who were not instructed to do so. This suggests that engaging in cognitive reappraisal following the mortality salience manipulation decreased aversive emotions, which then reduced the accessibility of thoughts about death. Recent findings suggest that some forms of reappraisal may be more likely than others to be used to regulate fear. Whereas many negative emotions (e.g., anger, sadness) are elicited by negative events that have already occurred, fear is elicited by the expectation of a negative event that has not yet occurred (Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989). Therefore people are more likely to regulate fear via forms of reappraisal that alter the expected outcome of an event (Vishkin, Hasson, Millgram, & Tamir, 2019). This type of reappraisal is called changing future consequences and could include telling oneself that things will turn out better than expected, or that what seems inevitable will not actually happen (McRae, Ciesielski, & Gross, 2012). This type of reappraisal is relatively common in religious texts. For instance, the Talmud recounts an event in which Rabbi Akiva was not welcomed as a guest to a town (Tractate Berachot, 60b). Unfazed, he said to himself that whatever God does is for the best and spent the night in the field. That night, bandits attacked the town and everyone was killed but him. Similarly, the Quran tells of a wealthy landowner who trusts in his crops rather than in God (Surah 18), whereas his friend is not wealthy but trusts in God. Contrary to the wealthy landowner’s expectations, his crops ruin, and he ends up in a more dismal state than his friend. Likewise, a Hindu parable tells of a person walking at night on a dark path as he comes across a snake who is set to bite him (Elder, 2012). He is fearful, but as he draws closer he realizes that it is a rope rather than a snake. Common to all these religious stories is that what one expects to happen does not necessarily reflect what will happen. Such stories enforce reappraisals that alter the apparent outcome of events and therefore are especially relevant for regulating fear. Thus religion equips people with the ability to engage in forms of cognitive reappraisal that are particularly suited for regulating fear. Rumination Rumination is an emotion regulation strategy that involves repetitive thoughts on the experience of emotional distress (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). Both reappraisal and rumination are emotion regulation strategies that involve cognitive elaboration. However, whereas cognitive reappraisal reinterprets a negative emotional event, rumination keeps people in a loop of repetitive thought about the event. Consequently, cognitive reappraisal often leads to less negative affect (Webb et al., 2012), whereas rumination leads to more negative affect (Segerstrom, Tsao, Alden, & Craske, 2000). People who are more religious are less likely to engage in rumination (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019), possibly because rumination and cognitive reappraisal recruit the same neural systems, including the left amygdala and the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, though for different purposes (Ray et al., 2005). Consequently, engaging in cognitive reappraisal may come at the expense of engaging in rumination. Specifically, once such systems have been recruited to engage in cognitive reappraisal among people who are more religious, they may be less available for engaging in rumination. A negative attitude toward rumination is reflected in some religious dictates. For example, the exhortation to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), rather than dwelling on who has wronged us and how we have been wronged, is a call to let go of an emotional event, rather than ruminating over it. The diminished tendency among people who are more religious to engage in rumination may help them avoid the intensification and maintenance of fear of death, allowing it to subside. Distraction Distraction refers to diverting one’s attention from an emotion-eliciting stimulus (Gross, 1998). Distraction is an effective emotion regulation strategy (Webb et al., 2012), particularly when dealing with high-intensity emotional content (Sheppes & Gross, 2012). Given that fear of death can be debilitating (Becker, 1973), distraction may be a particularly effective coping strategy. Based on self-report measures, people who are more religious are more likely to report using distraction (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). This may be due to the availability of religious

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

333

rituals, such as prayer, that can be used to distract oneself from emotional distress. By automating such behaviors via repeated enactment, these ritualized behaviors might require fewer cognitive resources to enact (Koole, McCullough, Kuhl, & Roelofsma, 2010) and thereby offer particularly effective means of distraction in the face of cognitively taxing stressors. Further research is required to directly test why people who are more religious are more likely to engage in distraction. Acceptance Acceptance refers to establishing secondary control by recognizing the reality of a situation, or an emotion aroused by the situation, in order to accommodate it (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989). Acceptance can refer to acceptance of a situation or acceptance of an emotion. For example, upon learning that one has a terminal illness, one may experience fear of death. Utilizing situational acceptance would involve recognizing the situation and coming to terms with it, without trying to alter it. Utilizing emotional acceptance would involve recognizing one’s emotional response to the situation and coming to terms with it, without trying to alter the situation. Whereas these two types of acceptance have been treated as similar (Hayes, 2004; Naragon-Gainey, McMahon, & Chacko, 2017), they are dissociated in relation to religiosity. Across contexts, people who are more religious report using more situational acceptance but less emotional acceptance (Vishkin, Ben-Nun Bloom, et al., 2019). Similarly, people who are more religious are more likely to cope with death via situational acceptance (Harding et al., 2005). Collectively, these findings suggest that in the context of fear of death, religiosity is associated positively with situational acceptance, but not with emotional acceptance. If, as William James suggested, “The life of religion . . . consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” (James, 1902, p. 53), then it is fitting that a religiously motivated acceptance should involve focusing attention outwards, via situational acceptance, rather than inwards, via emotional acceptance. However, it is unclear whether acceptance is effective in coping with fear of death. On the one hand, acceptance is an effective emotion regulation strategy (Troy, Shallcross, Brunner, Friedman, & Jones, 2017), that is associated with adaptive outcomes, such as fewer psychopathological symptoms, including anxiety (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010). On the other hand, by accepting the present situation as it is, acceptance may increase the perceived likelihood that expected negative outcomes are going to occur and thereby increase fear. In line with this reasoning, people were less likely to select acceptance when regulating fear, relative to a reappraisal tactic of changing future consequences (Vishkin, Hasson, et al., 2019). In an additional study in which acceptance or changing future consequences were implemented to regulate sadness or fear, the least effective outcome was obtained when regulating fear via acceptance. How well acceptance can help coping with fear of death remains unclear.

Summary People who are more religious are more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping of fear of death and they are more likely to do so effectively. People who are more religious are more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping of fear of death, relative to problem-focused coping, because they are more likely to perceive that they have less control over their environment. In addition, people who are more religious are more likely to engage in emotion-focused coping of fear of death because they have more resources to do so. People who are more religious are more likely to enact emotion-focused coping effectively because of their beliefs, emotion goals, and available strategies. Their beliefs about the controllability of their emotions facilitate successful engagement in emotion regulation. Their emotion goals facilitate attempts to downregulate fear. They are more likely to use effective strategies, including cognitive reappraisal and distraction, and less likely to use ineffective strategies, such as rumination. People who are more religious, therefore, may be more likely to employ emotion-focused coping to cope with fear of death and do so more effectively than those who are less religious.

Religion and coping with fear of death: reinterpreting existing findings TMT has assumed that religion affects coping with death awareness through problem-focused coping, such as by boosting self-esteem and engaging in worldview defense. The link between religiosity and emotion-focused coping with fear of death suggests a new way to interpret previous findings that investigated the association between religiosity and coping with fear of death. Some studies have suggested that certain dimensions of religiosity, such as intrinsic religiousness, mitigate worldview defense following mortality salience (Jonas & Fischer, 2006). For instance, Jonas and Fischer (2006, Study 1) examined worldview defense in a quasiexperimental design either immediately following a terrorist

334

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

attack or after a significant delay following a terrorist attack. They found that the time of measurement interacted with intrinsic religiosity to predict worldview defense, such that worldview defense was greatest immediately following the terrorist attack among people low (vs high) in intrinsic religiosity. They concluded that the difference between people low (vs high) in intrinsic religiosity is due to the tendency of people higher in intrinsic religiosity to use what we have labeled as problem-focused coping. We offer another possible interpretation of such findings. Specifically, it is also possible that people higher in intrinsic religiosity used emotion-focused coping rather than problem-focused coming. According to this explanation, people higher in intrinsic religiosity may have been less likely to engage in worldview defense not because intrinsic religiosity served as a psychological buffer to death awareness, but because they felt less fear of death upon regulating their emotions. Another study examined whether mortality salience, intrinsic religiosity, and priming religious beliefs interact to predict worldview defense (Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Study 2). When priming religious beliefs, mortality salience increased worldview defense among participants low (but not high) in intrinsic religiosity. The authors concluded that priming religious beliefs affirmed religious values among participants high (but now low) in intrinsic religiosity, which then buffered against the need to engage in an alternative form of problem-focused coping to cope with mortality salience. We propose an alternative explanation. Specifically, priming religious beliefs may have increased the accessibility of religious beliefs, goals, and strategies related to emotion-focused coping. This, in turn, may have increased the likelihood of engaging in emotion-focused coping among people high in intrinsic religiosity following mortality salience. To test these alternative explanations, it would be necessary to directly measure whether people high and low in intrinsic religiosity differ in the extent to which they engage in emotion-focused coping (i.e., emotion regulation) and in their experienced fear of death following a mortality salience manipulation. If they do not, emotion-focused coping can be ruled out as an alternative explanation. Future research should disentangle problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping when investigating the role of religiosity in coping with death awareness and fear of death. For example, one prediction derived from our model is that engaging in one form of coping should decrease the likelihood of engaging in the other form of coping, since both forms of coping are equifinal and therefore substitutable (Kruglanski et al., 2002). Thus when mortality is salient, people who regulate their fear of death via an emotion regulation strategy such as cognitive reappraisal should be less likely to subsequently engage in worldview defense or self-esteem enhancement, relative to people who do not regulate their fear of death. This design can be made more complex by adding intrinsic religiosity as a predictor. A prediction derived from our model is that, when mortality is salient, people high in intrinsic religiosity who regulate their fear of death via emotion regulation should be the least likely to engage in worldview defense, whereas people low in intrinsic religiosity who do not regulate their fear of death via emotion regulation should be the most likely to engage in worldview defense. These predictions await empirical investigation. The distinction between two types of coping with fear of death addresses a central criticism of TMT. Critics of the theory have suggested that other types of threat may lead to the same effects as mortality salience (e.g., Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006). In contrast, proponents of TMT have maintained that even if the effects of some threats overlap with the effects of mortality salience, the latter are unique (Pyszczynski et al., 2015). Based on our model, we propose that both sides of the argument may be correct. To the extent that mortality salience and other types of threat arouse fear, the methods of coping with such fear via emotion-focused coping will be identical. In contrast, to the extent that different types of threat differ in their nature, then engaging in problem-focused coping will entail different behaviors. For example, when managing fear of failure, one may engage in self-handicapping as a problem-focused method of coping (Berglas & Jones, 1978). Alternatively, one may directly regulate one’s fear via cognitively reappraising the fearinducing aspects of the situation. The latter strategy, but not the former, would fit the regulation of fear of death as well. The two forms of coping with death awareness and fear of death have broad implications for TMT that extend beyond the functions of religion.

Conclusion Existential concerns, such as fear of death, arouse aversive emotions. According to TMT, these aversive emotions are a motivating force. Whereas previous research has focused on the role of problem-focused coping when dealing with aversive emotions that arise from death awareness, we point to emotion-focused coping as a complementary route for coping with aversive emotions. Furthermore, we suggest that religiosity may affect coping with fear of death via both routes. In the problem-focused coping route, religiosity is endogenous—the motivation to avoid fear of death increases

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

335

the adoption of beliefs in sync with religious worldviews, which in turn reduces fear of death. In the emotion-focused coping route, religiosity is exogenous—religiosity impacts the likelihood of engaging in emotion-focused coping and its successful enactment. The influence of religiosity on both routes suggests that previous findings on the role of religion in coping with fear of death might be due to a different mechanism than originally proposed. At a broader level, emotion-focused coping with fear of death is an underexplored route in coping with existential concerns, which deserves rigorous empirical investigation.

References Al-Ghazzali, A. (2005). Alchemy of happiness (J. Crook, Trans.). Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications. (Original work published ca. 1105). Aldao, A., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Schweizer, S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: a meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 217 237. Batson, D. C., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Religion: Its core psychological functions. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 141 155). New York: Guilford. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405 417. Bigman, Y., Mauss, I. B., Gross, J. J., & Tamir, M. (2016). Yes I can: Self-efficacy beliefs promote successful emotion regulation. Cognition and Emotion, 30, 1380 1387. Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78, 246 263. Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 591 612. Buber, M. (1975). Tales of the Hasidim: The early masters. New York: Schocken Books. Burnette, J. L. (2010). Implicit theories of body weight: Entity beliefs can weigh you down. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 410 422. Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press. Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267 283. Castano, E., Yzerbyt, V., & Paladino, M. (2004). Transcending oneself through social identification. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 305 321). New York: Guilford Press. Castano, E., Yzerbyt, V., Paladino, M., & Sacchi, S. (2002). I belong, therefore, I exist: Ingroup identification, ingroup entitativity, and ingroup bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 135 143. Cervone, D., & Peake, P. K. (1986). Anchoring, efficacy, and action: The influence of judgmental heuristics on self-efficacy judgments and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 492 501. Compas, B. E., Banez, G. A., Malcarne, V., & Worsham, N. (1991). Perceived control and coping with stress: A developmental perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 47, 23 34. Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. In M. Lewis, & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 91 115). New York: Guilford Press. Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., & Weise, D. (2007). Disgust, creatureliness and the accessibility of death-related thoughts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 494 507. De Castella, K., Platow, M. J., Tamir, M., & Gross, J. J. (2018). Beliefs about emotion: Implications for avoidance-based emotion regulation and psychological health. Cognition and Emotion, 32, 773 795. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722 737. DeWall, C. N., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). From Terror to Joy: Automatic tuning to positive affective information following mortality salience. Psychological Science, 18, 984 990. DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Koole, S. L., Baumeister, R. F., Marquez, A., & Reid, M. W. (2011). Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: Tuning to positivity. Emotion, 11, 623 636. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An FMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290 292. Elder, G. R. (2012). The snake and the rope: A Jungian view of Hinduism. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing. Ford, B. Q., & Gross, J. J. (2018). Emotion regulation: Why beliefs matter. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 59, 1 14. Forstmann, M., Burgmer, P., & Mussweiler, T. (2012). “The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak”: The effects of mind body dualism on health behavior. Psychological Science, 23, 1239 1245. Frijda, N. H., Kuipers, P., & ter Schure, E. (1989). Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 212 228.

336

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., & Fankhanel, T. (2008). The role of control motivation in mortality salience effects on ingroup support and defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 524 541. Geertz, C. (1966). Religion as a cultural system. In M. Banton (Ed.), Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (pp. 1 46). London: Tavistock. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Kluck, B., & Cornwell, R. (2001). I am not an animal: Morality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 427 435. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Simon, L., & Breus, M. (1994). Role of consciousness and the accessibility of death-related thoughts in mortality salience effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 627 637. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Solomon, S. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: Effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who explicitly and implicitly threaten the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 308 318. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Chatel, D. (1992). Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one’s worldview? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 212 220. Greenberg, J., Helm, P. J., Landau, M. J., & Solomon, S. (2020). Dwelling forever in the house of the lord: On the terror management function of religion. The science of religion, spirituality, and existentialism. Elsevier. Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent and response focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 224 237. Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348 362. Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 3 24). New York: Guilford Press. Harding, S. R., Flannelly, K. J., Weaver, A. J., & Costa, K. G. (2005). The influence of religion on death anxiety and death acceptance. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 8, 253 261. Hay, D., & Oken, M. D. (1972). The psychological stresses of intensive care unit nursing. Psychosomatic Medicine, 34, 109 118. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 699 739. Hayes, S. C. (2004). Acceptance and commitment therapy, relational frame theory, and the third wave of behavioral and cognitive therapies. Behavior Therapy, 35, 639 665. Heflick, N. A., Goldenberg, J. L., Hart, J., & Kamp, S. (2015). Death awareness and body Self dualism: A why and how of afterlife belief. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 267 275. Heine, S., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88 110. Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (5th ed.). New York: Guilford Press. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Longmans, Green. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence through intrinsic religiousness, mitigated worldview defense after mortality salience, . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (91, pp. 553 567). Juhl, J., & Routledge, C. (2016). Putting the terror in terror management theory: Evidence that the awareness of death does cause anxiety and undermine psychological well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 99 103. Kapitan, T. (1991). Agency and omniscience. Religious Studies, 27, 105 120. Kelley, N. J., Tang, D., & Schmeichel, B. J. (2014). Mortality salience biases attention to positive versus negative images among individuals higher in trait self-control. Cognition and Emotion, 28, 550 559. Koole, S. L., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Introducing science to the psychology of the soul. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 212 216. Koole, S. L., McCullough, M. E., Kuhl, J., & Roelofsma, P. H. M. P. (2010). Why religion’s burdens are light: From religiosity to implicit self-regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 95 107. Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J. Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. Y., & Sleeth-Keppler, D. (2002). A theory of goal-systems. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 331 378). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Lambert, A. J., Eadeh, F. R., Peak, S. A., Scherer, L. D., Schott, J. P., Slochower, J. M., & Al, L. E. T. (2014). Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation: Revisiting the “affect-free” claim of terror management research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 655 678. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer. MacDonald, G., & Lipp, O. V. (2008). Mortality salience reduces attentional bias for fear-relevant animals. Motivation and Emotion, 32, 243 250. McRae, K., Ciesielski, B., & Gross, J. J. (2012). Unpacking cognitive reappraisal: Goals, tactics, and outcomes. Emotion, 12, 250 255. McRae, K. (2013). Emotion regulation frequency and success: Separating constructs from methods and time scale. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 289 302. Metcalf, T. (2004). Omniscience and maximal power. Religious Studies, 40, 289 306.

Fear not: religion and emotion regulation in coping with existential concerns Chapter | 22

337

Naragon-Gainey, K., McMahon, T. P., & Chacko, T. P. (2017). The structure of common emotion regulation strategies: A meta-analytic examination. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 384 427. Newheiser, A., Voci, A., Hewstone, M., & Schmid, K. (2015). Making and unmaking prejudice: Religious affiliation mitigates the impact of mortality salience on out-group attitudes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54, 774 791. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 400 424. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174 187. Osarchuk, M., & Tatz, S. J. (1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 256 260. Otto, A. K., Szczesny, E. C., Soriano, E. C., Laurenceau, J., & Siegel, S. D. (2016). Effects of a randomized gratitude intervention on death-related fear of recurrence in breast cancer survivors. Health Psychology, 35, 1320 1328. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835 845. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation. In J. M. Olson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1 70). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Ray, R. D., Ochsner, K. N., Cooper, J. C., Robertson, E. R., Gabrieli, J. D. E., & Gross, J. J. (2005). Individual differences in trait rumination and the neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 156 168. Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1989). Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 681 690. Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 5 37. Routledge, C., & Juhl, J. (2010). When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 848 854. Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161 1178. Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 789 803. Schoenrade, P. A. (1989). When I die . . .: Belief in afterlife as a response to mortality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 91 100. Segerstrom, S. C., Tsao, J. C. I., Alden, L. E., & Craske, M. G. (2000). Worry and rumination: Repetitive thought as a concomitant and predictor of negative mood. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 24, 671 688. Sheppes, G., & Gross, J. (2012). Emotion regulation effectiveness: What works when. In H. A. Tennen, & J. M. Suls (Eds.), Handbook of psychology (2nd ed., pp. 391 406). New York: Wiley. Shurick, A. a, Hamilton, J. R., Harris, L. T., Roy, A. K., Gross, J. J., & Phelps, E. A. (2012). Durable effects of cognitive restructuring on conditioned fear. Emotion, 12, 1393 1397. Tamir, M. (2016). Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy of motives in emotion regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20, 199 222. Tamir, M., John, O. P., Srivastava, S., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Implicit theories of emotion: Affective and social outcomes across a major life transition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 731 744. Tangney, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Boone, A. L. (2004). High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271 322. Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J., Brunner, A., Friedman, R., & Jones, M. C. (2017). Cognitive reappraisal and acceptance: Effects on emotion, physiology, and perceived cognitive costs. Emotion, 18, 58 74. Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2013). A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science, 24, 2505 2514. Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture. London: John Murray. Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1288 1300. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94. Vishkin, A., Ben-Nun Bloom, P., Schwartz, S. H., Solak, N., & Tamir, M. (2019). Religiosity and emotion regulation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 50(9), 1050 1074. Vishkin, A., Bigman, Y., Porat, R., Solak, N., Halperin, E., & Tamir, M. (2016). God rest our hearts: Religiosity and cognitive reappraisal. Emotion, 16, 252 262. Vishkin, A., Bigman, Y., & Tamir, M. (2014). Religion, emotion regulation, and well-being. In C. Kim-Prieto (Ed.), Positive psychology of religion and spirituality across cultures (pp. 247 269). New York: Springer. Vishkin, A., Hasson, Y., Millgram, Y., & Tamir, M. (2019). One size does not fit all: Tailoring cognitive reappraisal to different emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vishkin, A., Schwartz, S.H., Ben-Nun Bloom, P., Solak, N., & Tamir, M. (in press). Religiosity and desired emotions: Belief maintenance or prosocial facilitation? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 775 808.

338

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Webber, D., Schimel, J., Faucher, E. H., Hayes, J., Zhang, R., & Martens, A. (2015). Emotion as a necessary component of threat-induced death thought accessibility and defensive compensation. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 142 155. Yerushalmi, Y. H. (1982). Zakhor: Jewish history and Jewish memory. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Further reading Holy Bible, King James Version. (2018). ,https://www.biblegateway.com/. Retrieved 28.07.19. Quran. (2018). ,https://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura 5 2&verse 5 152&to 5 163. Retrieved 28.07.19.

Chapter 23

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Johannes Klackl University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

Humans possess intellectual abilities unmatched by any other species on the planet. We can anticipate events long before they happen, communicate with other humans in highly advanced ways, question our own decisions before making them, and live life guided by long-term goals and abstract values. With these abilities comes great adaptive value in evolutionary terms. However, they also allow us to fully comprehend difficult facts inherent in the human condition: that death is inevitable, that we are ultimately alone in the world, that we are responsible for everything we do, and that life has no meaning a priori. Experimental existential psychology investigates feelings, thoughts, behavior, and coping associated with these existential givens (Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski, 2004; Koole, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2006; Pyszczynski, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2015; Sullivan, Landau, & Kay, 2012), while existential neuroscience attempts to illuminate their neurobiological underpinnings (Inzlicht, Tullett, & Good, 2011a; Quirin & Klackl, 2016; Quirin, Klackl, & Jonas, 2019). Discussing existential topics in concert with religion is more than appropriate. First, existentialists traditionally have had strong thoughts about religion (Hoffman, 2012). Some existentialists including Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and Soren Kierkegaard were actually theologians, whereas Irvin Yalom, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche held negative views on religion. Despite their different opinions about whether religion is useful, they all seem to agree that religion is relevant for dealing with existential givens. Second, since time immemorial, people have faced these existential givens with the aid of religious and spiritual practices, and despite global secularization trends, this is not expected to change any time soon (Baumeister, Bauer, & Lloyd, 2010). To be upfront about it, there seems to be no “religion spot” or “existential spot” that lights up when people engage in religious practices (D’Aquili & Newberg, 1999) or deal with existential givens (Quirin & Klackl, 2016). Religious existential phenomena seem to be enabled by psychological functions based on different neural networks (Johnstone, Bodling, Cohen, Christ, & Wegrzyn, 2012). Consequently, a reasonable scientific understanding of religious and existential phenomena requires a thorough understanding of both the psychological and neural processes they are based upon. Take prayer, for example, addressing God (or a god) in words or thought is likely to activate many psychological processes. Attention is needed to focus on the task, language processes are needed to find the right words, and memory recall or future prospection might tune in. Since prayer revolves around personally salient ideas, emotional, motivational, and affective processes might become activated. Since prayer often serves the goal of reaching a decision, decision-making processes might be engaged. Depending on the experimental design, the investigator will observe a cross fire of multiple neural networks subserving the psychological functions involved. It is therefore not surprising that neural activations during prayer look surprisingly similar to those during “normal” interpersonal interactions (Schjøedt, Stødkilde-Jørgensen, Geertz, & Roepstorff, 2009). Although religion and spirituality are not the same thing, this chapter will not distinguish between religion and spirituality or focus on either. While both involve beliefs of some kind, religious beliefs are usually more aligned with collective belief systems, institutions, practices, and creeds that convey explanations about the creation of the world, the existence of gods, or the purpose of existence. Spiritual beliefs, on the other hand, are typically less institutionalized, relating more to individual beliefs and subjective experiences such as the sense of oneness with everything (Pargament, 1999). Hence, lumping religion and spirituality together might not be appropriate. This chapter is divided into four sections that focus on the four existential concerns as defined by Yalom (1980): death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. For each of these concerns, I will review relevant psychological and neuroscientific work and try to build bridges with religion and spirituality. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00024-X © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

339

340

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Death awareness Of the four major existential threats proposed by Yalom (1980), the awareness of death is the most poignant example of how humans get stabbed in the back by their intellectual abilities. Our desire for self-preservation is constantly at odds with the awareness that death is certain. The awareness of death is also by far the best empirically investigated of the four existential givens. The most prominent psychological theory of death awareness is terror management theory (TMT). It proposes that self-esteem and cultural worldviews provide bulwarks against the terror of inevitable death. Subscribing to cultural worldviews allows humans to achieve symbolic immortality by being part of something that persists beyond their own death. Self-esteem reflects the perceived degree to which one is living up to these worldviews and is eligible for symbolic immortality. These worldviews can be, but do not necessarily have to be, religious in nature (Becker, 1973). The most commonly investigated hypothesis derived from TMT is the mortality-salience hypothesis (Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010): making the existential concern of mortality salient should increase the need for psychological structures that serve as coping mechanisms against existential anxiety (i.e., worldviews and self-esteem). Mortality salience has been manipulated in various ways, including asking participants two open questions about their own death, implicit primes (Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997), or interviewing participants after having passed a funeral home (Pyszczynski et al., 1996). In fact, individuals have been shown to defend their worldviews and bolster their self-esteem when death is salient compared to when it is not salient (Burke et al., 2010).

The neuroscience of death awareness The neuroscience of death concerns has emerged in recent years. Existing qualitative reviews of the neuroscience of death concerns (Quirin & Klackl, 2016; Quirin et al., 2019) have claimed that death-related stimuli are motivationally relevant because they highlight a discrepancy between desired and current conditions. Death reminders activate a salience system consisting of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the amygdala (Jonas et al., 2014; Klackl, Jonas, & Kronbichler, 2014; Quirin et al., 2012). These regions are involved in detecting discrepancies and conflicts between current and desired states, and they may also be involved in causing the sense of unease and anxiety that sometimes haunts us when we reflect on our demise. In addition to these discrepancy-related processes, death-related stimuli have been found to evoke less insula activation than other negative control conditions (Han, Qin, & Ma, 2010; Klackl, Jonas, & Fritsche, 2017; Klackl et al., 2014; Shi & Han, 2013). Because the insula has been proposed to play a vital role in interoceptive awareness, this finding might reflect reduced self-awareness in the face of death. This is consistent with reports of self-awareness avoidance phenomena in response to mortality reminders (Goldenberg et al., 2006; Wisman, Heflick, & Goldenberg, 2015). However, the possibility that the insula mediates these changes in self-awareness is speculative and calls for further investigation. Several prefrontal cortical structures are involved in processing death reminders, notably the ventrolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC and VLPFC, respectively; Klackl, Jonas, & Kronbichler, 2013; Klackl et al., 2014; Yanagisawa et al., 2013, 2015). Mortality salience also produces right frontal activation in the electroencephalogram of anxiety-prone participants (Agroskin, Klackl, & Jonas, 2016), suggesting prefrontal activation dynamics. It is still unclear how these different prefrontal regions contribute to the processing of death stimuli. However, according to Quirin et al. (2019), the right VLPFC mediates the suppression of death-related thoughts because it participates in emotion regulation. The left VLPFC has been implicated in familiarity processing, categorization, assimilation, and symbolic processing (Plailly, Tillmann, & Royet, 2007; Tops, Boksem, Quirin, Ijzerman, & Koole, 2014). Hence, activation in this region might implement processes involved in cultural worldview defense, which is often associated with a desire for the familiar, hard categorizations, and symbolic meaning. The VMPFC, on the other hand, has been proposed to host self-representations (D’Argembeau et al., 2007; Northoff et al., 2006) and might play a role for integrating the knowledge of death with the self. Successful integration of death into the self (i.e., accepting one’s mortality) represents a “growth” type of dealing with mortality as opposed to a “defensive” type suppression of and distraction from mortality (Niemiec et al., 2010), which goes along with VMPFC activation. Existential neuroscientific studies have also discovered a possible connection between mortality awareness and pain perception. Mortality awareness has been found to lower the intensity ratings of auditory and painful stimuli (Valentini, Koch, & Aglioti, 2014). Using the “mortality versus negative affect priming” procedure, another study reported increased pain perception (Wang & Tian, 2018). Simply looking at death-related pictures versus generic threat related pictures does not affect pain sensitivity (Valentini, Nicolardi, & Aglioti, 2017). This might indicate that the effect depends strongly on the specific way in which mortality is made salient. Mortality salience also seems to reduce neural responsiveness of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during the observation of others in pain without actually lowering

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Chapter | 23

341

perceived pain ratings and reported self-unpleasantness in response to others’ suffering (Luo, Shi, Yang, Wang, & Han, 2014). Apart from intensity ratings, mortality salience has been reported to change slow wave delta and alpha spectral activity in response to noxious stimuli (Valentini, Koch, Nicolardi, & Aglioti, 2015; Valentini et al., 2017).

Death awareness and religion In contrast to secular worldviews, which usually provide only symbolic immortality, religious afterlife beliefs directly solve the problem of death by providing hope for literal immortality. Archeological reports of ritual burials suggest that beliefs in various forms of afterlife have been common throughout human history. Therefore for religious individuals, religion might be the remedy of choice against the terror of death (Vail et al., 2010). In fact, death concerns are inversely related to religious belief (Alvarado, Templer, Bresler, & Thomas-Dobson, 1995). Religiosity also seems to reduce the need for secular worldview defense in the face of death reminders (Jonas & Fischer, 2006). The well-known saying “There are no atheists in foxholes” suggests that, in the face of imminent death, humans adopt religious beliefs regardless of religious orientation. Empirical results are only in partial support of this saying. Mortality salience has been found to increase reports of religiosity, divine intervention, and belief in God (Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006). Similar effects have been observed in a combined group of atheists, agnostics, and individuals claiming “no religion” (Willer, 2009), indicating that even nonbelievers recruit religious ideas when facing the existential given of death. Another study suggests that death reminders increase religiosity among agnostics but not atheists (Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012). What neural processes underlie these religious shifts in response to mortality salience? One study (Holbrook, Izuma, Deblieck, Fessler, & Iacoboni, 2016) downregulated ACC, a region involved in detecting discrepancies or conflicts between current and desired states, using transcranial magnetic stimulation prior to having their participants think about death. Stimulation reduced subsequent belief in God, angels, and heaven compared to a sham condition. Interestingly, the same stimulation protocol also reduced derogation of outgroup members, a secular way of dealing with mortality according to TMT. This indicates that religious and secular defenses against mortality awareness both rely on the conflict-detecting function of the ACC. There is further evidence that directly links religiosity and spirituality with decreased sensitivity of the ACC (Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007; Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsh, & Nash, 2009; Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010; Inzlicht, Tullett, & Good, 2011b). I will discuss the findings on religion and the ACC in more detail in the “Religion, neuroscience, and meaning” section. The simplest explanation is that death is less of a problem for religious people and therefore less salient and less motivationally discrepant. Religion might affect the neural circuitry underlying death awareness in other ways as well. First, religion both requires and trains self-regulation and emotion regulation processes that are mediated by various prefrontal regions (Baumeister et al., 2010; McCullough & Willoughby, 2009; McNamara, 2002). Second, religion and spirituality might promote the acceptance of mortality, which involves the activation of brain regions hosting self-representation (Quirin et al., 2019).

Freedom, choice, and responsibility According to existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Sartre, we are often overwhelmed by the realization of having an endless array of options to choose from. In addition, after decisions have been made and actions performed, our capacity for counterfactual thinking allows us to call these decisions and actions into question. This can create both uncertainty about the most suitable course of action both prior to (what if?) and following decisions (If I had only), creating a burden of responsibility (Sullivan et al., 2012). Psychological research on choice and freedom has a predominantly positive view of freedom. Engaging in freely chosen and unconstrained ways seems to increase well-being and satisfaction (Ryan & Deci, 2000). People find restrictions of freedom aversive and want to restore them when threatened (Brehm, 1966; Miron & Brehm, 2006). The ability to choose has also been argued to be rewarding in and of itself because it is a vehicle for perceiving and exercising control over the environment and achieving desired outcomes (Bown, Read, & Summers, 2003; Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010). However, more choice is not always better (Schwartz, 2004). Under high complexity, ambiguity, and risk, fear of failure or anticipated regret arises, and people seem to be happier if they can choose from a smaller set of options (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). To conclude, people like having a choice as long as it is simple and easy and the stakes are low; we become increasingly overwhelmed as complexity, difficulty, risk, and the number of options increase, at which point the choice becomes existential.

342

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Freedom and neuroscience In order to make decisions and guide actions, people seem to rely on the anticipated value of available options (Haber, 2011; Ruff & Fehr, 2014). A system of reward-sensitive brain regions consisting of the striatum, amygdala, and orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortex are critical for the job (O’Doherty, 2004). Being able to make decisions (choice) has been proposed to be rewarding and valuable in and of itself, presumably because it helps exercise control (Leotti et al., 2010). Not surprisingly, anticipating a choice opportunity activates the striatum, a key reward region (Leotti & Delgado, 2011). Reward might also play a role in postdecision attractiveness changes; after choosing from a set of alternatives, people tend to value unchosen alternatives less and chosen alternatives more (Ariely & Norton, 2008; Brehm, 1956; Festinger, 1957), and the selected options also activate the striatum more than the rejected options (Sharot, De Martino, & Dolan, 2009). What about the difficult, aversive, existential type of choice? In a neuroimaging study (Fleming, Thomas, & Dolan, 2010), participants were confronted with easy and difficult choices, and a “default” choice was automatically selected for them. People tended to accept this default more often when the choice was difficult. However, when participants rejected the default choice on difficult trials, activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) was increased, suggesting that the STN is involved in resolving difficult choices (Frank, 2006). In addition to the STN, prefrontal regions such as the lateral prefrontal, orbitofrontal, and anterior cingulate cortices also play an important role in resolving difficult choices. Their role is to render decision-making more flexible and adaptive by responding to dynamic environmental changes, new learning experiences, and errors (Lee, Rushworth, Walton, Watanabe, & Sakagami, 2007; Murray, O’Doherty, & Schoenbaum, 2007). The study previously described found that the STN seemed to communicate with inferior frontal cortex while resolving difficult choices. It is possible that this brain network (rather than single brain regions) may also be involved in resolving “existential” choices.

Freedom and religion So far, we have learned that both too little and too much choice can be aversive (for different reasons) and that a moderate amount of choice seems most desirable. Religious and spiritual practices aim at strengthening individuals in their struggle with choice by putting them in the “sweet spot” between too much and too little choice. Religions typically provide rules, recommendations, guidelines, or moral codes to follow when in doubt (e.g., the Ten Commandments, fasting during Ramadan, pilgrimage to Mecca, the eightfold path, and generally “correct” living and the “right” actions), which helps trim off excessive choice (Baumeister et al., 2010). At the same time, religions embrace and promote ideas of free will, choice, and responsibility (Felthous, 2008), enabling believers to enjoy the rewarding qualities of having choice and exerting freedom of choice. In this way, religion may be able to neutralize the agony of choice and reduce the load on brain regions concerned with resolving difficult choices such as the STN and inferior frontal cortex (Fleming et al., 2010).

Isolation Individuals are often isolated from others and from parts of themselves, but underlying these splits is an even more basic isolation that belongs to existence an isolation that persists despite the most gratifying engagement with other individuals. (Yalom, p. 355)

This statement highlights an important characteristic of existential isolation: it is not the same as being lonely. Existential isolation seems to be somewhat related to neighboring loneliness-related constructs, yet it is also distinct (Pinel, Long, Murdoch, & Helm, 2017). Despite this fundamental difference between the two phenomena, relationships still represent the most important remedy against existential isolation: since every human being is existentially alone, sharing that “aloneness” in loving relationships can compensate for the associated pain. In line with this idea, endorsing communal values is related to lower existential isolation (Helm, Rothschild, Greenberg, & Croft, 2018). Together, the difference in definition and the possibility of mutual compensation indicate that the neural underpinnings of aloneness and loneliness are similar yet different in some regards. Experimental evidence suggests that people like I-sharers (i.e., people who share subjective experiences with others) even more than objectively similar others. People prefer I-sharers especially in conditions of high existential isolation (Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006). There has been little empirical psychological interest in existential isolation (Helm et al., 2018). For this review, I decided to highlight a few findings from social isolation research that might help to stimulate theorizing and research on the similarities and differences between existential and social exclusion. Social exclusion (i.e., being rejected by

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Chapter | 23

343

others) has been found to elicit a rather destructive set of consequences (for a review, see Baumeister, Brewer, Tice, & Twenge, 2007), including aggressiveness (Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001), short-sighted risk-taking, unhealthy behavior, and procrastination (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2002). Social exclusion seems to cause a lethargic state of “cognitive deconstruction” in which people perceive life as meaningless, focus on the present rather than the future, and avoid self-awareness (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2003). Social exclusion also gives rise to a numbness that is apparent in heightened pain thresholds and pain tolerance (DeWall & Baumeister, 2006). It also dampens emotional reactivity and empathy (Twenge et al., 2007). Being rejected by others also hampers self-regulation (Ciarocco, Sommer, & Baumeister, 2001), which partly explains the observed aggressive tendencies. In addition, people seem to attend more to positive affective information that reflects automatic emotion regulation (DeWall et al., 2011). It is unknown whether the phenomena described earlier can also be observed in response to existential isolation. Empirical investigations are necessary to establish the differences and similarities of loneliness and aloneness.

Neuroscience of isolation Although neuroscience has not investigated existential isolation at all, social isolation has received extensive neuroscientific interest. One of the most prominent accounts of social isolation posits that during the course of mammalian evolution, the social-attachment system has piggybacked onto the evolutionarily older pain system (Nelson & Panksepp, 1998). This is reflected in common sayings of “broken hearts” and “hurt feelings.” Indeed, too much distance from significant others results in the experience of pain. The most common way to induce social exclusion in neuroimaging studies is a computerized ball-tossing game called Cyberball in which players stop throwing the ball to participants. There are, however, other common paradigms in which participants are told that others are not interested in them (Guyer, Choate, Pine, & Nelson, 2012; Somerville, Heatherton, & Kelley, 2006). Early neuroimaging work on social exclusion highlighted the importance of the ACC and the anterior insula (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003), which are parts of the physical pain circuitry (Peyron, Laurent, & Garcı´a-Larrea, 2000). However, recent quantitative metaanalyses provided no evidence for an involvement of the physical pain circuitry in social exclusion (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Vijayakumar, Cheng, & Pfeifer, 2017). Neuroimaging evidence for the hypothesis that the pain network has been evolutionarily coopted for social exclusion is therefore mixed. Instead, according to a more recent metaanalysis, social exclusion seems to produce activation of medial, ventrolateral, and orbitofrontal parts of the prefrontal cortex, which might reflect emotion regulation and self-related processes.

Isolation and religion People turn to religion to cope with social exclusion (Aydin, Fischer, & Frey, 2010). One type of religious behavior that can be especially helpful for this is prayer. It allows people to feel in contact with supernatural entities such as God or gods, ancestors, and deceased loved ones. Neuroscientific studies indicate that activation patterns observed during prayer depend strongly on the type of prayer under investigation. Pioneering neuroimaging work has targeted types of meditative prayer that intend to evoke a state of unity or wholeness and approached the brain activation data with a highly specific prediction that religious and spiritual experiences should arise from deafferentation (i.e., cutoff information transfer) of parts of the inferior and posterior parietal lobules. This process is thought to be driven by an interplay between prefrontal regions and the thalamus (D’Aquili & Newberg, 1993; Newberg, 2006). The posterior parietal lobule (PSPL) is concerned with generating a sense of space and spatial coordinates. Deafferentation of the PSPL can therefore lead to a loss of orientation in space, giving rise to the subjective experience of spiritual transcendence or unity with everything and everyone (Johnstone et al., 2012). According to this hypothesis, experienced meditators have learned to intentionally use their prefrontal cortex to “cutoff” information transfer between their PSPL and the rest of their brains. Empirical studies on Tibetan Buddhists have indeed found deactivation in both superior parietal lobes during meditation (Newberg et al., 2001) along with activation in bilateral frontal cortices and the thalamus, supporting the deafferentation theory. Subsequent studies found additional activations during meditation in various brain regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Lazar et al., 2000) and ACC (Cahn & Polich, 2006). In many religious traditions, there are prayer practices that intend to invoke a purposeful sense of giving away personal control and let the mind be “taken over” by religious and spiritual forces. For example, Dikhr, an intense form of Islamic prayer in which prayers experience a lack of personal control and surrender, has been found to decrease prefrontal, frontal, and parietal activation (Newberg et al., 2015). Another example is glossolalia or “speaking in tongues,” a state in which individuals speak a different, incomprehensible language. Importantly, glossolalics claim to have no

344

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

control over their utterances, which partly explains why glossolalia has religious and spiritual meaning both for those who exhibit it and for observers. Being in a state of glossolalia has been associated with decreases in prefrontal cortices, left caudate, and left temporal pole as well as increases in the superior parietal lobule and right amygdala (Newberg, Wintering, Morgan, & Waldman, 2006). Personal prayer has been found to recruit a set of brain regions that coincides with the mentalizing network. This set includes the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporoparietal junction, and the precuneus (Schjøedt et al., 2009). These regions are typically activated when people try to make sense of the minds of others. Formalized prayer, however, activated the reward-sensitive caudate nucleus more than personal prayer.

Meaning If we possess our why of life, we can put up with almost any how. (Nietzsche, 1990, p. 33)

Meaning has been defined in various ways: as mental representations that help us understand our experiences (Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012), as an assessment of whether one’s life has purpose and value (Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker, & Garbinsky, 2013), or simply as having good reasons for living (for a review, see Park, 2010). Despite these different definitions, it seems clear that meaning can be undermined by experiences that question our ability to understand and explain the world. The experience of meaninglessness comes with feelings that existentialists have labeled as the feeling of absurdity (Camus, 1942), while psychologists have used terms such as anxiety, uncertainty, or the summary term disanxiousuncertilibrium (Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012). A lack of meaning can be described as the “inability to believe in the truth, importance, usefulness, or interest value of any of the things that one is engaged in or can imagine doing” (Maddi, 1970). Existential writers such as Camus, Tolstoy, or Sartre have obviously been familiar with these states of meaninglessness, as one of their most important philosophical questions was why one should go on living once one has truly understood that life has no obvious meaning. The existential challenge is that meaning must be willfully construed and maintained. How do religion and spirituality assist in this process, and what neural processes are involved?

Religion, neuroscience, and meaning Neuroscientists have acknowledged that religions are well suited to creating meaning because they are able to account for almost any violation of meaning. For example, Inzlicht et al. (2011a) have proposed “the order [religion] offers is often inscrutable, only knowable to a super-natural, all-knowing, and all-powerful God” (p. 245), effectively preventing meaninglessness and anxiety. Neural evidence suggests that religion reduces neural indicators of anxiety. Evidence for this anxiety-buffering effect of religion comes from work on the error-related negativity (ERN). The ERN is an eventrelated potential that emerges 50 100 ms after making errors and is thought to originate in the ACC, a brain region that is important for detecting conflict between desired and actual states. Religious conviction is associated with decreased ERN amplitude (Inzlicht et al., 2009), and religious primes have been found to lower its amplitude (Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010). Another study suggests that the comforting effects of religion could be due to higher perceptions of order (Tullett, Kay, & Inzlicht, 2014); being presented with the idea that the world is ordered also reduced the ERN relative to being presented with the idea that the world is chaotic and random. Interestingly, the buffering effect of order did not depend upon whether that order was described as comprehensible for humans or to some external agent that has a “master plan.” It is worth pointing out that less neural reactivity to errors might not always be beneficial. For example, smaller ERNs have been shown to correlate with worse academic performance (Hirsh & Inzlicht, 2010). More research is needed on whether the soothing effect of religious beliefs (and other nonreligious beliefs regarding order) comes at the expense of learning from mistakes.

A goal perspective on meaning and religion In answer to the question of what makes a meaningful life, people frequently mention their goals, dreams, and wishes (Emmons, 2005), indicating that meaning might be related to pursuing valued goals and ideals. For example, Klinger (1998, 2013) states that humans are driven to pursue purposeful and meaningful goals and that this drive is a biological necessity rather than a luxury; any biological behavioral system is unable to sustain life without being able to pursue goals of higher purpose and meaning. Religions provide rich sources of meaningful goals and values that can guide behavior (Emmons, 2005). Consistent with this idea, when confronted with threats to meaning, people increase commitment to goals derived from ideologies, personal projects, and religion (McGregor, Gailliot, Vasquez, & Nash, 2007;

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Chapter | 23

345

Nash, McGregor, & Prentice, 2011; Proulx & Heine, 2008; Proulx & Major, 2013; van Tongeren & Green, 2010), as if eagerly pursuing goals would compensate for lost meaning. Motivated goal pursuit critically depends on the brain’s ability to mentally represent and extract reward information from goals, an ability that draws on the brain’s reward system (Berridge, Robinson, & Aldridge, 2009; Schultz, 2000). However, simply reaching out for quick, tangible reward does not seem to be optimal when it comes to existential givens. There is a long-standing distinction between eudaimonic (altruistic, purpose-, meaning-, and growth-oriented) and hedonic (egoistic, pleasure-oriented) motivation that dates back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Evidence suggests that pursuing eudaimonic goals is more helpful in dealing with the given of meaning than hedonic goals (Sheldon, Corcoran, & Prentice, 2018). Neuroscientific evidence has linked this effect to the reward circuitry (Telzer, 2016). In an fMRI study the more the ventral striatum responded to eudaimonic decisions, the more depressive symptoms declined within the following year. On the other hand, activation in the ventral striatum to hedonic decisions predicted increased depressive symptoms within the following year (Telzer, Fuligni, Lieberman, & Galvan, 2014). In another study, higher ventral striatum activation in response to prosocial stimuli (reflecting eudaimonic motivation) among adolescents predicted decreases in drug and alcohol use, aggression, and risky sexual behavior (Telzer, Fuligni, Lieberman, & Galva´n, 2013). Thus to the extent that religion provides eudaimonic goals, it can increase well-being by modulating striatal activation.

Conclusion Religion has accompanied humankind since its dawn because it helps in dealing with the existential givens of mortality, isolation, freedom, and meaning. Neuroscientific research is providing useful insights into how the brain enables existential concerns and the modulatory role of religion. These insights have led me to postulate the following hypotheses. Religion can help deal with existential givens by (1) attenuating the detection of conflict in the ACC, (2) providing a good balance between too much and too little freedom, (3) compensating for isolation using the imagined presence of others, and (4) providing meaning by promoting eudaimonic goal striving. These conclusions are highly preliminary and require refinement. I expect that, due to the diversity of religious phenomena and the vagueness of the definitions of “existential” and “religion,” these conclusions will not be tenable in many contexts. A meaningful approach could be to embrace the complexity of existential givens and religion, carefully formulating specific models for how different religious or spiritual phenomena interact with different existential and nonexistential concerns in different populations. These models need to be informed by the state-of-the-art neuroscientific accounts of the involved psychological phenomena. Theoretical concepts such as motivation, self-regulation, reward, and goal pursuit might provide helpful support in this endeavor.

Outlook The boundaries between Yalom’s (1980) four existential givens (mortality, isolation, freedom, and meaning) are blurred. These four concerns are highly intertwined and often manifest themselves in combination with each other. Take, for example, death, freedom, and isolation; in dying and choosing, we are fundamentally alone. No one can die with one or for one. Similarly, making self-determined choices requires being “one’s own parent” and abandoning the idea that someone else is providing guidance. Moreover, death and freedom have the potential to activate the given of isolation, which in turn reduces meaning (Lambert et al., 2013). More evidence for the intertwined nature of the givens comes from empirical studies. For example, manipulations of mortality thoughts and social isolation produce highly similar effects, including avoidance of self-awareness (Arndt, Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1998; Twenge et al., 2003), positive affective tuning (DeWall & Baumeister, 2007; DeWall et al., 2011), aggression (Leary, Twenge, & Quinlivan, 2006; McGregor et al., 1998), and unhealthy behavior (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008; Twenge et al., 2002). Social isolation and mortality salience have also been found to activate similar neural structures in the prefrontal cortex (for a review, see Quirin et al., 2019). These conceptual and empirical similarities of the existential givens suggest that the lethargic, deconstructed state (Twenge et al., 2003) represents a generic response or “existential syndrome” (Tritt, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012) rather than a response to social isolation per se (Jonas et al., 2014). These commonalities have yet to be explored in depth. I believe many scholars would agree that in principle, religion can serve as a buffer or remedy against all four existential concerns, but this claim has only been partially empirically tested. Doing this with a strong focus on the underlying neural processes seems a reasonable goal for Existential neuroscience.

346

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

References Agroskin, D., Klackl, J., & Jonas, E. (2016). Inhibition underlies the effect of high need for closure on cultural closed-mindedness under mortality salience. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(1583). Available from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01583. Alvarado, K. A., Templer, D. I., Bresler, C., & Thomas-Dobson, S. (1995). The relationship of religious variables to death depression and death anxiety. Journal of Clinical Psychology. Available from http://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(199503)51:2 , 202::AID-JCLP2270510209 . 3.0.CO;2-M. Ariely, D., & Norton, M. I. (2008). How actions create—Not just reveal—Preferences. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.tics.2007.10.008. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1998). Terror management and self-awareness: Evidence that mortality salience provokes avoidance of the self-focused state. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(11), 1216 1227. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1177/01461672982411008. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1997). Subliminal exposure to death-related stimuli increases defense of the cultural worldview. Psychological Science, 8(5), 379 385. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00429.x. Aydin, N., Fischer, P., & Frey, D. (2010). Turning to God in the face of ostracism: Effects of social exclusion on religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167210367491. Baumeister, R. F., Bauer, I. M., & Lloyd, S. A. (2010). Choice, free will, and religion. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1037/a0018455. Baumeister, R. F., Brewer, L. E., Tice, D. M., & Twenge, J. M. (2007). Thwarting the need to belong: Understanding the interpersonal and inner effects of social exclusion. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00020.x. Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Aaker, J. L., & Garbinsky, E. N. (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. Journal of Positive Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.830764. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Berridge, K. C., Robinson, T. E., & Aldridge, J. W. (2009). Dissecting components of reward: “Liking”, “wanting”, and learning. Current Opinion in Pharmacology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2008.12.014. Bown, N. J., Read, D., & Summers, B. (2003). The lure of choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 16(4), 297 308. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1002/Bdm.447. Brefczynski-Lewis, J. A., Lutz, A., Schaefer, H. S., Levinson, D. B., & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available from https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0606552104. Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Available from https://doi. org/10.1037/h0041006. Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press. Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155 195. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352321. Cacioppo, S., Frum, C., Asp, E., Weiss, R. M., Lewis, J. W., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2013). A quantitative meta-analysis of functional imaging studies of social rejection. Scientific Reports. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/srep02027. Cahn, B. R., & Polich, J. (2006). Meditation states and traits: EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies. Psychological Bulletin. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.180. Camus, A. (1950). Der Mythos von Sisyphos: Ein Versuch u¨ber das Absurde [Le mythe de Sisyphe] (Brenner, G. & Rasch, W., Trans.). Bad Salzig: Rauch. (Original work published 1942). Ciarocco, N. J., Sommer, K. L., & Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Ostracism and ego depletion: The strains of silence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201279008. D’Aquili, E. G., & Newberg, A. B. (1993). Religious and mystical states: A neuropsychological model. Zygons. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-9744.1993.tb01026.x. D’Aquili, E. G., & Newberg, A. B. (1999). The mystical mind: Probing the biology of religious experience. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. D’Argembeau, A., Ruby, P., Collette, F., Degueldre, C., Balteau, E., Luxen, A., . . . Salmon, E. (2007). Distinct regions of the medial prefrontal cortex are associated with self-referential processing and perspective taking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(6), 935 944. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2007.19.6.935. DeWall, C. N., & Baumeister, R. F. (2006). Alone but feeling no pain: Effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.91.1.1. DeWall, C. N., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). From terror to joy: Automatic tuning to positive affective information following mortality salience. Psychological Science, 18(11), 984 990. Available from http://doi.org/PSCI2013, [pii]10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02013.x. DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Koole, S. L., Baumeister, R. F., Marquez, A., & Reid, M. W. (2011). Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: Tuning to positivity. Emotion, 11(3), 623 636. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023534. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290 292. Available from https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Striving for the sacred: Personal goals, life meaning, and religion. Journal of Social Issues. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00429.x.

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Chapter | 23

347

Felthous, A. R. (2008). The will: From metaphysical freedom to normative functionalism. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1545109708329345. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fleming, S. M., Thomas, C. L., & Dolan, R. J. (2010). Overcoming status quo bias in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available from https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0910380107. Frank, M. J. (2006). Hold your horses: A dynamic computational role for the subthalamic nucleus in decision making. Neural Networks. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2006.03.006. Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2008). The implications of death for health: A terror management health model for behavioral health promotion. Psychological Review, 115(4), 1032 1053. Available from https://doi.org/2008-14936-002, [pii]10.1037/a0013326. Goldenberg, J. L., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Warnica, G. M., Landau, M., & Thomas, L. (2006). Ambivalence toward the body: Death, neuroticism, and the flight from physical sensation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(9), 1264 1277. Greenberg, J., Koole, S. L., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). Handbook of experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford. Guyer, A. E., Choate, V. R., Pine, D. S., & Nelson, E. E. (2012). Neural circuitry underlying affective response to peer feedback in adolescence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsr043. Haber, S. (2011). Neuroanatomy of reward: A view from the ventral striatum. In Neurobiology of sensation and reward. ,https://doi.org/http://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92797/.. Han, S., Qin, J., & Ma, Y. (2010). Neurocognitive processes of linguistic cues related to death. Neuropsychologia, 48(12), 3436 3442. Helm, P. J., Rothschild, L. G., Greenberg, J., & Croft, A. (2018). Explaining sex differences in existential isolation research. Personality and Individual Differences. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.032. Hirsh, J. B., & Inzlicht, M. (2010). Error-related negativity predicts academic performance. Psychophysiology, 47(1), 192 196. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00877.x. Hoffman, L. (2012). An existential-phenomenological approach to the psychology of religion. Pastoral Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11089-011-0393-0. Holbrook, C., Izuma, K., Deblieck, C., Fessler, D. M. T., & Iacoboni, M. (2016). Neuromodulation of group prejudice and religious belief. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv107. Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. A. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385 392. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x. Inzlicht, M., & Tullett, A. M. (2010). Reflecting on God: Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1184 1190. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610375451. Inzlicht, M., Tullett, A. M., & Good, M. (2011a). Existential neuroscience: A proximate explanation of religion as flexible meaning and palliative. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(3), 244 251. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2011.653537. Inzlicht, M., Tullett, A. M., & Good, M. (2011b). The need to believe: A neuroscience account of religion as a motivated process. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(3), 192 212. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2011.647849, Retrieved from. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995. Johnstone, B., Bodling, A., Cohen, D., Christ, S. E., & Wegrzyn, A. (2012). Right parietal lobe-related “selflessness” as the neuropsychological basis of spiritual transcendence. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.657524. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 553 567. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.553. Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., . . . Quirin, M. (2014). Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach, (1st ed., pp. 219 286). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, (Vol. 49, pp. 219 286). Elsevier Inc. Available from http://doi.org/ 10.1016/B978-0-12-800052-6.00004-4. Klackl, J., Jonas, E., & Fritsche, I. (2017). Neural evidence that the behavioral inhibition system is involved in existential threat processing. Social Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2017.1308880, Advance online publication. Klackl, J., Jonas, E., & Kronbichler, M. (2013). Existential neuroscience: Neurophysiological correlates of proximal defenses against death-related thoughts. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(3), 333 340. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss003. Klackl, J., Jonas, E., & Kronbichler, M. (2014). Existential neuroscience: Self-esteem moderates neuronal responses to mortality-related stimuli. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(11), 1754 1761. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst167. Klinger, E., The search for meaning in evolutionary perspective and its clinical implications. In: The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications (2nd ed.), 1998, New York: Routledge, 23 56. Klinger, E. (2013). The search for meaning in evolutionary goal-theory perspective and its clinical implications. The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications. Available from https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203146286. Koole, S. L., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Introducing science to the psychology of the soul. Experimental Existential Psychology, 15(5), 212 217. Lambert, N. M., Stillman, T. F., Hicks, J. A., Kamble, S., Baumeister, R. F., & Fincham, F. D. (2013). To belong is to matter: Sense of belonging enhances meaning in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213499186. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G., Gollub, R. L., Fricchione, G. L., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2010.06.014.

348

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Leary, M. R., Twenge, J. M., & Quinlivan, E. (2006). Interpersonal rejection as a determinant of anger and aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 111 132. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_2. Lee, D., Rushworth, M. F. S., Walton, M. E., Watanabe, M., & Sakagami, M. (2007). Functional specialization of the primate frontal cortex during decision making. Journal of Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1561-07.2007. Leotti, L. A., & Delgado, M. R. (2011). The inherent reward of choice. Psychological Science. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0956797611417005. Leotti, L. A., Iyengar, S. S., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Born to choose: The origins and value of the need for control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14 (10), 457 463. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.08.001. Luo, S., Shi, Z., Yang, X., Wang, X., & Han, S. (2014). Reminders of mortality decrease midcingulate activity in response to others’ suffering. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 477 486. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst010. Maddi, S. R. (1970). The search for meaning. In M. Page (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 137 186). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014213. McGregor, H. A., Lieberman, J. D., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., Simon, L., & Pyszczynski, T. (1998). Terror management and aggression: Evidence that mortality salience motivates aggression against worldview-threatening others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 590 605. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.590. McGregor, I., Gailliot, M. T., Vasquez, N. A., & Nash, K. A. (2007). Ideological and personal zeal reactions to threat among people with high selfesteem: Motivated promotion focus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(11), 1587 1599. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167207306280. McNamara, P. (2002). The motivational origins of religious practices. Zygon, 37(1), 143 160. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/14679744.00418. Miron, A., & Brehm, J. (2006). Reactance theory—40 Years later. Zeitschrift Fur Sozialpsychologie, 37(1), 9 18. Murray, E. A., O’Doherty, J. P., & Schoenbaum, G. (2007). What we know and do not know about the functions of the orbitofrontal cortex after 20 years of cross-species studies. Journal of Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1556-07.2007. Nash, K. A., McGregor, I., & Prentice, M. (2011). Threat and defense as goal regulation: From implicit goal conflict to anxious uncertainty, reactive approach motivation, and ideological extremism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1291 1301. Available from https://doi. org/10.1037/A0025944. Nelson, E. E., & Panksepp, J. (1998). Brain substrates of infant-mother attachment: Contributions of opioids, oxytocin, and norepinephrine. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0149-7634(97)00052-3. Newberg, A.B. (2006). Religious and spiritual practices: A neurochemical perspective. In McNamara, P. (Ed.), Where God and Science meet: How brain and evolutionary studies alter our understanding of religion (Vol. 2), Westport, CT: Praeger, 15 32. Newberg, A. B., Alavi, A., Baime, M., Pourdehad, M., Santanna, J., & D’Aquili, E. G. (2001). The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during the complex cognitive task of meditation: A preliminary SPECT study. Psychiatry Research—Neuroimaging, 106, 113 122. Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N. A., Morgan, D., & Waldman, M. R. (2006). The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study. Psychiatry Research—Neuroimaging. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2006.07.001. Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N. A., Yaden, D. B., Waldman, M. R., Reddin, J., & Alavi, A. (2015). A case series study of the neurophysiological effects of altered states of mind during intense Islamic prayer. Journal of Physiology Paris. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jphysparis.2015.08.001. Niemiec, C. P., Brown, K. W., Kashdan, T. B., Cozzolino, P. J., Breen, W. E., Levesque-Bristol, C., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). Being present in the face of existential threat: The role of trait mindfulness in reducing defensive responses to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 344 365. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019388. Nietzsche, F. W. (1990). Twilight of the idols and the anti-Christ. In M. Tanner (Ed.), The twilight of the idols and the anti-Christ (p. 208). New York: Random House. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(2), 174 187. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205280251. Northoff, G., Heinzel, A., de Greck, M., Bermpohl, F., Dobrowolny, H., & Panksepp, J. (2006). Self-referential processing in our brain - A metaanalysis of imaging studies on the self. NeuroImage, 31(1), 440 457. O’Doherty, J. P. (2004). Reward representations and reward-related learning in the human brain: Insights from neuroimaging. Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2004.10.016. Pargament, K. I. (1999). The psychology of religion and spirituality? Yes and no. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0901_2. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257 301. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018301. Peyron, R., Laurent, B., & Garcı´a-Larrea, L. (2000). Functional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis. Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0987-7053(00)00227-6. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Landau, M. J., Alexander, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 243 257. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.2.243.

Existential givens, religion, and neuroscience Chapter | 23

349

Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Murdoch, E. Q., & Helm, P. (2017). A prisoner of one’s own mind: Identifying and understanding existential isolation. Personality and Individual Differences. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.09.024. Plailly, J., Tillmann, B., & Royet, J. P. (2007). The feeling of familiarity of music and odors: The same neural signature? Cerebral Cortex, 17(11), 2650 2658. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhl173. Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2008). The case of the transmogrifying experimenter: Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1294 1300. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02238.x. Proulx, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). The five “A” s of meaning maintenance: Finding meaning in the theories of sense-making. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 317 335. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2012.702372. Proulx, T., & Major, B. (2013). A raw deal: Heightened liberalism following exposure to anomalous playing cards. Journal of Social Issues, 69(3), 455 472. Pyszczynski, T., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Experimental existential psychology: Living in the shadow of the facts of life. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Sharver, E. Borgida, & J. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology: Attitudes and social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 279 308). Washington, DC: APA. Pyszczynski, T., Wicklund, R. A., Floresku, S., Koch, H., Gauch, G., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (1996). Whistling in the dark: Exaggerated consensus estimates in response to incidental reminders of mortality. Psychological Science, 7(6), 332 336. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-9280.1996.tb00384.x. Quirin, M., & Klackl, J. (2016). Existential neuroscience: A review and outlook for the case of death awareness. In E. Harmon-Jones, & M. Inzlicht (Eds.), Social neuroscience: Biological approaches to social psychology. New York: Psychology Press. Available from http://doi.org/10.4324/ 9781315628714. Quirin, M., Klackl, J., & Jonas, E. (2019). Existential neuroscience: A review and brain model of coping with death awareness. In C. Routledge, & M. Vess (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory. Academic Press. Quirin, M., Loktyushin, A., Arndt, J., Kustermann, E., Lo, Y. Y., Kuhl, J., & Eggert, L. (2012). Existential neuroscience: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of neural responses to reminders of one’s mortality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(2), 193 198. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsq106. Ruff, C. C., & Fehr, E. (2014). The neurobiology of rewards and values in social decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3776. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020. Schjøedt, U., Stødkilde-Jørgensen, H., Geertz, A. W., & Roepstorff, A. (2009). Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsn050. Schultz, W. (2000). Multiple reward signals in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/35044563. Schwartz, B. (2004). The tyranny of choice. Scientific American. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0404-70. Sharot, T., De Martino, B., & Dolan, R. J. (2009). How choice reveals and shapes expected hedonic outcome. Journal of Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4972-08.2009. Sheldon, K. M., Corcoran, M., & Prentice, M. (2018). Pursuing eudaimonic functioning versus pursuing hedonic well-being: The first goal succeeds in its aim, whereas the second does not. Journal of Happiness Studies. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9980-4. Shi, Z., & Han, S. (2013). Transient and sustained neural responses to death-related linguistic cues. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(5), 573 578. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss034. Somerville, L. H., Heatherton, T. F., & Kelley, W. M. (2006). Anterior cingulate cortex responds differentially to expectancy violation and social rejection. Nature Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1728. Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Kay, A. C. (2012). Toward a comprehensive understanding of existential threat: Insights from Paul Tillich. Social Cognition, 30(6), 734 757. Available from https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.734. Telzer, E. H. (2016). Dopaminergic reward sensitivity can promote adolescent health: A new perspective on the mechanism of ventral striatum activation. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.10.010. Telzer, E. H., Fuligni, A. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Galva´n, A. (2013). Ventral striatum activation to prosocial rewards predicts longitudinal declines in adolescent risk taking. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2012.08.004. Telzer, E. H., Fuligni, A. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Galvan, A. (2014). Neural sensitivity to eudaimonic and hedonic rewards differentially predict adolescent depressive symptoms over time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available from https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1323014111. Tops, M., Boksem, M. A. S., Quirin, M., Ijzerman, H., & Koole, S. L. (2014). Internally directed cognition and mindfulness: An integrative perspective derived from predictive and reactive control systems theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(429). Available from https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2014.00429. Tritt, S. M., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Toward a biological understanding of mortality salience (and other threat compensation processes). Social Cognition, 30(6), 715 733. Available from https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.715. Tullett, A. M., Kay, A. C., & Inzlicht, M. (2014). Randomness increases self-reported anxiety and neurophysiological correlates of performance monitoring. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsu097. Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Stucke, T. S. (2001). If you can’t join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1058 1069. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.6.1058.

350

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2002). Social exclusion causes self-defeating behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.3.606. Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Social exclusion and the deconstructed state: Time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion, and self-awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.409. Twenge, J. M., Liqing, Z., Catanese, K. R., Dolan-Pascoe, B., Lyche, L. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Replenishing connectedness: Reminders of social activity reduce aggression after social exclusion. British Journal of Social Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1348/ 014466605X90793. Vail, K. E., Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288 1300. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167212449361. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351165. Valentini, E., Koch, K., & Aglioti, S. M. (2014). Thoughts of death modulate psychophysical and cortical responses to threatening stimuli. PLoS One. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112324. Valentini, E., Koch, K., Nicolardi, V., & Aglioti, S. M. (2015). Mortality salience modulates cortical responses to painful somatosensory stimulation: Evidence from slow wave and delta band activity. NeuroImage. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.07.025. Valentini, E., Nicolardi, V., & Aglioti, S. M. (2017). Visual reminders of death enhance nociceptive-related cortical responses and event-related alpha desynchronisation. Biological Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.08.055. van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010). Combating meaninglessness: On the automatic defense of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167210383043. Vijayakumar, N., Cheng, T. W., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2017). Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies. NeuroImage. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.02.050. Wang, C., & Tian, J. (2018). Reminders of mortality alter pain-evoked potentials in a Chinese sample. Frontiers in Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01667. Willer, R. (2009). No atheists in foxholes: Motivated reasoning and religious belief. Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification, 1(9), 241 265. Wisman, A., Heflick, N., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2015). The great escape: The role of self-esteem and self-related cognition in terror management. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 60, 121 132. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.05.006. Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Yanagisawa, K., Abe, N., Kashima, E. S., Nomura, M., Yanagisawa, K., & Abe, N. (2015). Self-esteem modulates amygdala-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex connectivity in response to mortality threats. Journal of Experimental Psychology : General. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ xge0000121. Yanagisawa, K., Kashima, E. S., Moriya, H., Masui, K., Furutani, K., Nomura, M., . . . Ura, M. (2013). Non-conscious neural regulation against mortality concerns. Neuroscience Letters, 552, 35 39. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2013.07.027.

Chapter 24

The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations: fundamentalism, quest religiosity, and intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity Andrew A. Abeyta and Elizabeth N. Blake Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ, United States

Religion itself is an ideal of strength and of potential for growth, of what man might become by assuming the burden of his life, as well as being partly relieved of it. Becker (1972, pp. 198).

For many, religion is a source of psychological comfort. Indeed, psychological evidence has established a strong link between religiosity and psychological health and well-being (e.g., Hicks & King, 2008; Pargament, 2002; Park, 2005; Steger & Frazier, 2005), in part because religious participation and practice help satisfy very basic human needs. For example, throughout time people have prayed to God or gods and/or performed religious rituals in an effort to meet basic needs of food, shelter, and safety (e.g., Batson & Stocks, 2004). Moreover, religion helps satisfy the need for social belonging in a number of ways. For example, religious membership involves membership in a community of believers, religious teachings emphasize the importance of family and community, and many religious practices/rituals (e.g., prayer groups and community events) allow for and encourage social interaction and affiliation. In addition to supporting basic needs and the need to belong (Batson & Stocks, 2004; Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003), a number of perspectives suggest that religion helps satisfy basic existential needs and functions to quell existential anxiety (e.g., Abeyta & Routledge, 2018; Becker, 1972, 1973; Park, Edmondson, & Hale-Smith, 2013; Vail et al., 2010; Vail, Soenke, & Waggoner, 2019).

The existential function of religion People have a need to discover and maintain perceptions of meaning in life, defined as the sense that a person’s existence is purposeful, important, and coherent (e.g., Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1964; King, Heintzelman, & Ward, 2016; Ryff & Singer, 1998; Steger & Frazier, 2005). The existential philosopher Sartre (1946/2007) posited that a core aspect of the human dilemma was defining the self and making sense of existence. On the one hand, there is the potential for people to forge their own path and discover a satisfying life’s purpose. Alternatively, there is potential for people to be consumed by the challenge of meaning making and descend into meaninglessness. Adaptive psychological functioning should involve the former; making or discovering meaning/purpose. Indeed, psychological research indicates that perceptions of meaning in life are associated with psychological health and well-being (Heintzelman & King, 2014; Hill & Turiano, 2014; Steger & Frazier, 2005) and that maintaining a sense of purpose in life allows people to overcome threat (Frankl, 1959; Park, 2010). In contrast, deficits in meaning in life are predictive of psychological dysfunction (e.g., Edwards & Holden, 2001; Kinnier et al., 1994; Steger, Mann, Michels, & Cooper, 2009). The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00025-1 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

351

352

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Religion helps satisfy the need for meaning by supporting people’s ability to make sense of existence and discover a satisfying meaning in life (Abeyta & Routledge, 2018). Specifically, one way people derive and maintain meaning in life is by investing in culturally derived beliefs and practices that give them structure, direction, and help them make sense of their experiences (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Park, 2010). Religion, of course, provides people with a set of values and standards that help them make sense of the joys and struggles of day-to-day life (e.g., Park, 2005), navigate questions of morality (e.g., Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski, 2009), and pursue personally meaningful goals (e.g., Mahoney et al., 2005; McCullough & Willoughby, 2009). Religion also helps people to feel like their existence is planned and important. Specifically, many religions have sacred writings and teachings that offer teleological explanations of life on earth and human existence (Park et al., 2013) and give people the sense that they are a part of an existence that transcends the limitations of the physical world (Routledge, 2018). Thus religious beliefs help resolve the tension between meaningfulness and meaninglessness. A related existential burden is the awareness of mortality. A side effect of the advanced cognitive abilities that enable people to understand existence, mentally project forward in time, and solve complex problems, is the awareness that death is inevitable. Cultural anthropologist Becker (1973) posited that the awareness of mortality is a psychological burden because it has the potential to arouse fear and anxiety, and that people manage this fear and anxiety by investing in culture. Culture provides people with ways to symbolically or literally transcend death. Symbolic immortality involves deriving a sense of permanence from being a member of or having an impact on a cultural group. In contrast, literal immortality involves transcending death via an afterlife. Religion helps people achieve both types of immortality. Individuals can achieve symbolic immortality by being members of organized religions (e.g., Christianity and Islam), and because these organized religions have survived the test of time, people can feel like a piece of themselves too can transcend death. Of course, individuals can gain a sense of literal immortality by committing to religious beliefs about life after death. Inspired by Becker’s (1972, 1973) writings, terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986) has provided empirical support for the notion that the awareness of death motivates people to invest in and defend cultural memberships and beliefs, including religious identities and beliefs. For example, one study evidenced that Christians who were reminded of death expressed a stronger preference for individuals of their same religious affiliation, relative to an individual from a different religious background (Greenberg et al., 1990). In addition, research has found that mortality reminders increase specific religious beliefs, like the belief in God (Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006), the belief in religious prophecy (Routledge, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2018), belief in the power of prayer (Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006; Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, & Goldenberg, 2009), and motivate extreme defense of religious beliefs (e.g., religious martyrdom and self-sacrifice, Routledge, Juhl, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2014; Pyszczynski et al., 2006). Research supporting terror management theory also suggests that challenging religious beliefs and identities arouses death-related concerns. For example, one study found that presenting individuals who strongly believed in the Judeo Christian account of creation with information challenging creationist beliefs increased the accessibility of death-related thoughts (Schimel, Hayes, Williams, & Jahrig, 2007). Finally, affirming spiritual beliefs has been found to mitigate defensive responses to mortality reminders. For example, Heflick and Goldenberg (2011) found that arguments supporting the existence of a spiritual afterlife decreased the tendency for theist and atheists to respond to mortality reminders by defending their national identity.

Religious orientations: maintaining faith and managing existential concerns Religious identification and belief help people manage existential anxiety. However, religious beliefs require commitment and faith, since many cannot be objectively verified and are frequently challenged by rivals and/or traumatic life experiences (Kierkegaard, 1813-1855/1983; Park, 2005). Religious people vary in how they maintain their faith and commitment toward their religion. Specifically, variation in religious orientation can be characterized as a continuum where one extreme involves a strict adherence to religious doctrine/authority and the opposite extreme involves an open-minded theological exploration. Research indicates that these religious orientations have a profound impact on how people manage existential threat (for reviews see, Vail et al., 2010, 2019) and specifically predict whether religious people manage existential concerns in a defensive or growth-oriented manner.

The fundamentalist orientation Research on the extreme rigid end of the religious spectrum has focused on individual differences in religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism is an orientation defined as a belief that there is one true and central set of

The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations Chapter | 24

353

religious teachings that must be followed without error (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Therefore individuals high in religious fundamentalism should maintain their faith and combat existential threat by affirming fundamental aspects of their belief and adhering closely to religious doctrine. Indeed, research indicated that writing about dying, relative to experiencing dental pain, led individuals low in religious fundamentalism to embrace secular cultural values but did not among individuals high in religious fundamentalism (Friedman & Rholes, 2008). If religious fundamentalists are not employing secular worldviews as a defense against death thoughts, this suggests that they are utilizing religious defenses. Indeed, the researchers coded the writings and found that religious fundamentalists were more likely to accept death because of their firm beliefs in a spiritual afterlife. Also consistent with the idea that religious fundamentalists manage existential concerns with strict adherence to religious teachings, a series of studies by Vess et al. (2009) found that death reminders increased the view that prayer is legitimate alternative to conventional medical treatments among individuals high, but not low, in religious fundamentalism. Moreover, Routledge et al. (2018) found that existential threat motivated Christians high, but not low, in religious fundamentalism to endorse global crises as being consistent with biblical apocalyptic prophecy. The fundamentalist religious orientation appears to be quite effective at managing existential concerns, with evidence that religious fundamentalism is positively associated with meaning in life (Van Tongeren, Davis, Hook, & Johnson, 2016; Van Tongeren, McIntosh, Raad, & Pae, 2013). Even though the fundamentalist approach is effective in managing existential concerns and preserving meaning in life, it comes with a trade-off (Van Tongeren et al., 2016). In particular, the fundamentalist orientation involves the belief that a persons’ religion is the one true and infallible source of religious truth, and therefore other religious and secular worldviews represent a challenge that must be dealt with. Research indicates that individuals high in religious fundamentalism are particularly sensitive to ideas that challenge their religious teachings (e.g., Beck, 2004; Friedman & Rholes, 2007) and that religious fundamentalism is associated with racial prejudice (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Laythe, Finkel, & Kirkpatrick, 2001), hostility toward homosexuals (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Hunsberger, Owusu, & Duck, 1999), religious ethnocentrism (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992), and lower tolerance of out-groups (Van Tongeren et al., 2016). Thus fundamentalists may respond to rival worldviews by derogating them and otherwise attempting to undermine their legitimacy (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) and doing so might strengthen their security in their religion and function to mitigate existential concerns. The rigid nature of the fundamentalist orientation may also lend itself to more violent defensive responses to out-groups. Indeed, religious fundamentalism has been linked with militaristic beliefs in defense of their worldviews (Beller, 2017) and existential threat has been found to motivate support for violent acts against religious rivals, including supporting martyrdom attacks (Pyszczynski et al., 2006; Rothschild et al., 2009). However, the extreme rigid adherence to scripture does not always lead to conflict with out-groups and religious rivals. Of course, religious scripture also promotes prosocial values such as kindness, compassion, tolerance, and benevolence, and so the religious fundamentalists approach may also involve embracing prosocial values. Indeed, one study found that when controlling for individual differences in authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism became associated with less prejudice (e.g., Laythe et al., 2001). Thus religious fundamentalists may also manage existential concerns by affirming and living in-line with prosocial religious teachings. Rothschild et al. (2009) tested this possibility by examining the combined effect of compassionate religious values and existential threat on support for violent solutions to intergroup conflict as a function of religious fundamentalism. In one study, Rothschild et al. found that existential threat decreased support for extreme military action among predominantly Christian religious fundamentalists who were primed with compassionate Biblical values. In a follow-up study, Rothschild et al. also found this effect in an Iranian sample of Shiite Muslims. In this study, they found that, whereas existential threat increased anti-Western attitudes among Shiite Muslim students who were primed with compassionate secular values, existential threat decreased support for violent anti-Western actions when Shiite Muslim students were primed with compassionate values from the Koran. Taken together, even though religious fundamentalists manage existential concerns by vigorously defending their religious teachings, making salient more positive teachings may offset the tendency for religious fundamentalists to be less tolerant of out-groups.

The religious quest orientation In contrast to the fundamentalist orientation, the opposite extreme of the religious spectrum is not strictly bound by one religious doctrine and instead is characterized by a theological openness. Research on this end of the spectrum has focused on individual differences in religious quest orientation. Religious quest is defined as committing oneself to an unending personal journey of spiritual discovery and growth (Batson, 1976) and is thought to involve a theological openness and a constant questioning and probing of religious ideas and teachings. Thus people with a religious quest

354

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

orientation may maintain faith and combat existential threat by affirming and committing to values of openness/exploration and spiritual/religious growth. Indeed, research indicates that quest orientation is associated with more openness to diverse groups and ideologies (Batson & Stocks, 2004; Van Tongeren et al., 2016) and that existential threat motivates tolerance among individuals high in quest orientation (Beck, 2006) and more generally when cultural values of openmindedness and inclusion are emphasized (Motyl et al., 2011; Pyszcynski et al., 2012). Moreover, research finds that existential threat motivates exploration and creativity among individuals who are less invested in structuring their lives and/or embrace creativity (Routledge & Arndt, 2009; Vess, Routledge, Landau, & Arndt, 2009) suggests that quest oriented religious individuals should respond to existential concerns with growth instead of defensiveness. Even though the commitment to openness, questioning, and discovery may be associated with more positive responses to existential threat, there is evidence that this commitment comes at an existential cost. Specifically, people on the extreme open end of the religious spectrum lack conviction in their beliefs (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991; Beck, 2004) and may be less able to rely on them to preserve a strong sense of meaning in life. Indeed, some research has found the quest religious orientation to be inversely associated with meaning in life and other measures of existential security (Steger et al., 2010; Van Tongeren et al., 2016). People who identify as spiritual but not religious tend to have a more open-minded and contemplative approach to religion, and research has provided evidence that spiritual but not religious individuals are at greater risk for worsening depression (Vittengl, 2018). Finally, one research study indicates that individuals high in religious quest are less able to preserve well-being in the face of existential threat. Specifically, this study found that a mortality salience condition that had participants contemplate their death decreased self-esteem among participants high, but not low, in religious quest (Arrowood, Coleman, Swanson, Hood, & Cox, 2018).

The conventional religious orientations At the center of this religious continuum, is the middle ground between a strict allegiance to religious doctrines and a personally defined spiritual journey. Research on the existential function of conventional orientations has focused on Allport and Ross’ (1967) distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity. The extrinsic religious orientation involves maintaining commitment to religion for external benefits, like access to a supportive community or social status, whereas the intrinsic religious orientation involves maintaining religious commitment for its internal emotional or psychological benefits. Like religious fundamentalism, extrinsic religiosity involves adhering to religious values/standards as defined externally by religious texts and/or religious authority, whereas intrinsic religiosity involves a more internalized religiosity that involves personally defining religious values/teachings. Like quest orientation, intrinsic religiosity involves focusing on growth, but unlike quest typically involves committing to a religious doctrine and using it as a guide for navigating social situations and achieving personal growth. Thus although intrinsic religiosity is more personally defined and self-focused compared to religious fundamentalism, it is still bound by religious doctrine and therefore lacks in openness compared to quest religiosity (Allport & Ross, 1967). In general, intrinsic religiosity has been shown to exhibit greater existential benefits compared to extrinsic religiosity (Chamberlain & Zika, 1988; Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006). Indeed, research indicates that individuals high in intrinsic religiosity can use their beliefs to effectively cope with existential threat to maintain psychological well-being (Van Tongeren et al., 2013). Specifically, correlational research indicates that intrinsic religiosity is positively associated with indicators of well-being and perceptions of meaning in life, whereas extrinsic religiosity is not consistently associated with well-being and meaning (e.g., Chamberlain & Zika, 1988; Horton, 1999; Steger et al., 2006). In addition, experimental research indicates that intrinsic religiosity, but not extrinsic religiosity, has implications for using religious faith to manage existential threat. For example, Van Tongeren et al. (2013) found that having religious people reflect on their religious beliefs reduced death-anxiety among individuals high, but not low, in intrinsic religiosity. Similarly, Jonas and Fischer (2006) provided evidence that affirming religious beliefs buffered the effects of existential threat among intrinsically religious individuals. In the research, participants were given the opportunity to affirm their beliefs at the beginning of the study before a death or control reminder, or at the end of the study. After the death or control reminder, the participants were given the opportunity to affirm the value of the hometown. The results indicated that intrinsic, but not extrinsic, religiosity moderated the effect of religious affirmation on whether people defended their hometown in response to the death reminder. Specifically, the death prime, relative to the control prime, increased defense of one’s hometown among people low in intrinsic religiosity and among people high in intrinsic religiosity who were not given the opportunity to affirm their religious views at the beginning of the study. In contrast, the mortality prime did not lead highly intrinsic people who were given the opportunity to affirm their beliefs at the beginning of the study to defend their hometown. Thus, after affirming their religious beliefs, there was no further need for intrinsically religious people to defend a meaningful identity to manage existential concerns. In a follow-up study,

The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations Chapter | 24

355

Jonas and Fischer (2006) provided evidence that religious affirmation effectively manages death-related cognitions for intrinsically religious people. Taken together, intrinsically religious individuals are able to rely on their religious beliefs to manage existential concerns and doing so mitigates further defensive responses. Instead of responding to existential threat defensively, there is evidence that the intrinsic orientation is associated with more positive responses to existential threat (Fischer, Greitemeyer, Kastenmu¨ller, Jonas, & Frey, 2006). First, because religion effectively buffers existential threat for intrinsic religious individuals without relying on defensive processes, intrinsic religiosity is less predictive of prejudice and intolerance (Allport & Ross, 1967) and intrinsic religiosity decreases defensive intolerant responses to existential threat (Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, Orehek, & Abdollahi, 2012). One study, for example, found that priming religiosity increased intergroup tolerance among religious individuals who scored high in intrinsic religiosity but decreased tolerance among religious individuals who scored low in intrinsic religiosity (Van Tongeren et al., 2013). Moreover, Golec de Zavala et al. (2012) found that intrinsic religiosity decreased the tendency for religious individuals to respond to existential threat by derogating religious out-groups and supporting aggressive counterterrorist policies. Second, managing existential threat can lead to tolerance and psychological growth among intrinsically religious individuals. Specifically, Fischer et al. (2006) found that information highlighting the realistic possibility of a terrorist attack increased positive emotional states and decreased negative states among intrinsically religious individuals. In a follow-up study, Fischer et al. found that whereas nonreligious research participants reported experiencing reduced positive emotions and a lowered sense of coping self-efficacy immediately after a terrorist attack, intrinsically religious individuals did not. Critically, they found that coping-efficacy mediated the relation between religiosity and positive emotions, suggesting that intrinsically religious individuals, compared to nonreligious individuals, are able to maintain their sense of coping self-efficacy following existential threat, which in turn allows them to positively adjust to existential threat. This ability to adjust to existential threat and traumatic life experiences in a positive manner is referred to as posttraumatic growth. In longitudinal research, intrinsic religiosity is generally predictive of posttraumatic growth (Park, Cohen, & Murch, 1996), which appears to be explained, in part, by a strengthening of their religious and spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in suffering, and experiencing spiritual healing (De Castella & Simmonds, 2013).

Conclusion Existential perspectives theorize religion as a response to anxiety related to meaningless and awareness of death (Becker, 1972; Vail et al., 2010, 2019). Indeed, religion has a number of existential benefits, including bolstering meaning in life and offering literal or symbolic immortality to manage death-related concerns. However, many components of religion cannot be objectively verified and thus religiosity involves maintaining faith and commitment. In the current chapter we reviewed evidence on how individual differences in maintaining religious faith and commitment impact the existential function of religion. In particular, the extreme strict fundamentalist approach appears to be effective at maintaining strong perceptions of meaning in life and buffering existential threat. However, the effectiveness of the strict fundamentalist involves a tradeoff; individuals high in religious fundamentalism tend to be intolerant of out-groups and may respond to existential threat with aggressive defensive responses. These defensive responses are not inevitable but may require additional effort of focusing on compassionate aspects of religious teachings to regulate them. In contrast, the quest religious orientation appears to be a less-effective strategy for maintaining a strong sense of meaning in life and buffering existential threat, but people who adopt it tend to respond to existential threat by pursuing religious/spiritual growth and adopting a tolerant and open-minded perspective on those with different views. Finally, the more moderate intrinsic perspective appears to offer the best of both worlds. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity appears to offer the most stable existential security out of the religious orientations, in which individuals react to existential threat not by blindly defending beliefs from rivals, but by trusting in their beliefs and utilizing them as a source of spiritual support and reward. In internalizing religious values and recognizing their personal importance, intrinsic people appear to be able to derive a strong sense of meaning in life from religion.

References Abeyta, A. A., & Routledge, C. (2018). The need for meaning and religiosity: An individual differences approach to assessing existential needs and the relation with religious commitment, beliefs, and experiences. Personality and Individual Differences, 123, 6 13. Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432 443.

356

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113 133. Arrowood, R. B., Coleman, T. J., III, Swanson, S. B., Hood, R. W., Jr, & Cox, C. R. (2018). Death, quest, and self-esteem: Re-examining the role of self-esteem and religion following mortality salience. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 69 71. Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as a prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15, 39 45. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 416 429. Batson, C. D., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Religion: Its core psychological functions. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 141 155). New York: Guilford Press. Beck, R. (2004). The function of religious belief: Defensive versus existential religion. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23, 208 218. Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus existential religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 142 152. Becker, E. (1972). The birth and death of meaning (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Beller, J. (2017). Religion and militarism: The effects of religiosity, religious fundamentalism, religious conspiracy belief, and demographics on support for military action. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 23, 179 182. Chamberlain, K., & Zika, S. (1988). Religiosity, life meaning and wellbeing: Some relationships in a sample of women. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27, 411 420. Crumbaugh, J. C., & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 20, 200 207. De Castella, R., & Simmonds, J. G. (2013). “There’s a deeper level of meaning as to what suffering’s all about”: Experiences of religious and spiritual growth following trauma. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture, 16, 536 556. Edwards, M. J., & Holden, R. R. (2001). Coping, meaning in life, and suicidal manifestations: Examining gender differences. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57, 1517 1534. Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 377 402. Fischer, P., Greitemeyer, T., Kastenmu¨ller, A., Jonas, E., & Frey, D. (2006). Coping with terrorism: The impact of increased salience of terrorism on mood and self-efficacy of intrinsically religious and nonreligious people. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 365 377. Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2007). Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 794 801. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2008). Religious fundamentalism and terror management. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18, 36 52. Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Orehek, E., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Intrinsic religiosity reduces intergroup hostility under mortality salience. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 451 461. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 207). New York: Springer-Verlag. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 308 318. Heflick, N. A., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2011). No atheists in foxholes: Arguments for (but not against) afterlife belief buffers mortality salience effects for atheists. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 385 392. Heintzelman, S. J., & King, L. A. (2014). Life is pretty meaningful. American Psychologist, 69, 561 574. Hicks, J. A., & King, L. A. (2008). Religious commitment and positive mood as information about meaning in life. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 43 57. Hill, P. L., & Turiano, N. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological Science, 25, 1482 1486. Horton, T. G. (1999). The relationship between extrinsic religiosity, intrinsic religiosity, and spiritual maturity to life satisfaction and coping resources. Dissertation Abstracts International, 60(2-B), 0855. Hunsberger, B., Owusu, V., & Duck, R. (1999). Religion and prejudice in Ghana and Canada: Religious fundamentalism, right-wing authoritarianism and attitudes toward homosexuals and women. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9, 181 194. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553 567. Kierkegaard, S. (1983). Fear and trembling (H. V. Hong, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Original work published 1813 1855). King, L. A., Heintzelman, S. J., & Ward, S. J. (2016). Beyond the search for meaning: A contemporary science of the experience of meaning in life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 211 216. Kinnier, R. T., Metha, A. T., Keim, J. S., Okey, J. L., Adler-Tabia, R. L., Berry, M. A., & Mulvenon. (1994). Depression, meaninglessness, and substance abuse in ‘normal’ and hospitalized adolescents. Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, 39, 101 111. Laythe, B., Finkel, D., & Kirkpatrick, L. (2001). Predicting prejudice from religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism: A multiple regression approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 1 10.

The existential implications of individual differences in religious defensive and growth orientations Chapter | 24

357

Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Jewell, T., Magyar, G. M., Tarakeshwar, N., . . . Phillips, R. (2005). A higher purpose: The sanctification of strivings in a community sample. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 239 262. McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 69 93. Motyl, M., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Weise, D., Maxfield, M., & Siedel, A. (2011). Subtle priming of shared human experiences eliminates threatinduced negativity toward Arabs, immigrants, and peacemaking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1179 1184. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174 187. Pargament. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168 181. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion as a meaning-making framework in coping with life stress. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 707 729. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257 301. Park, C. L., Cohen, L. H., & Murch, R. L. (1996). Assessment and prediction of stress-related growth. Journal of Personality, 64, 71 105. Park, C. L., Edmondson, D., & Hale-Smith, A. (2013). Why religion? Meaning as motivation. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. James (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research (pp. 157 171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006). Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The great Satan versus the axis of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 525 537. Pyszczynski, T., Motyl, M., Vail, K. E., Hirschberger, G., Arndt, J., & Kesebir, P. (2012). Drawing attention to global climate change decreases support for war. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18, 354 368. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 816 827. Routledge, C. (2018). Supernatural: Death, meaning, and the power of the invisible world. New York: Oxford University Press. Routledge, C., Abeyta, A. A., & Roylance, C. (2018). Death and end times: The effects of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on apocalyptic beliefs. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 21 30. Routledge, C. D., & Arndt, J. (2009). Creative terror management: Creativity as a facilitator of cultural exploration after mortality salience. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 493 505. Routledge, C., Juhl, J., Abeyta, A. A., & Roylance, C. (2014). Using the past to promote a peaceful future: Nostalgia proneness mitigates existential threat induced nationalistic self-sacrifice. Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 339 346. Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (1998). The contours of positive human health. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 1 28. Sartre, J. -P. (2007). Existentialism is a humanism (C. Macomber, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (Reprinted from L’Existentialisme est un humanisme: 1946, Paris: Editions Gallimard). Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T. J., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 789 803. Steger, M. F., & Frazier, P. (2005). Meaning in life: One chain from religiousness to well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 574 582. Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80 93. Steger, M. F., Mann, J. R., Michels, P., & Cooper, T. C. (2009). Meaning in life, anxiety, depression, and general health among smoking cessation patients. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 67, 353 358. Steger, M. F., Pickering, N. K., Adams, E., Burnett, J., Shin, J. Y., Dik, B. J., & Stauner, N. (2010). The quest for meaning in life: Religious affiliation differences in the correlates of religious quest and search for meaning in life. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 206 226. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94. Vail, K. E., Soenke, M., & Waggoner, B. (2019). Terror management theory and religious belief. In C. Routledge, & M. Vess (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory (pp. 259 285). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Security versus growth: Existential tradeoffs or various religious perspectives. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 77 88. Van Tongeren, D. R., McIntosh, D. N., Raad, J. M., & Pae, J. (2013). The existential function of intrinsic religiousness: Moderation of effects of priming religion on intercultural tolerance and afterlife anxiety. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52, 508 523. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). The terror management of medical decisions: The effect of mortality salience and religious fundamentalism on support for faith-based medical intervention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 728 744. Vess, M., Routledge, C., Landau, M. J., & Arndt, J. (2009). The dynamics of death and meaning: The effects of death-relevant cognitions and personal need for structure on perceptions of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 728 744. Vittengl, J. R. (2018). A lonely search? Risk for depression when spirituality exceeds religion. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 206, 386 389.

Chapter 25

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Louis Hoffman1, Benjamin Ramey2 and Danielle Silveira2 1

Rocky Mountain Humanistic Counseling and Psychological Association, Colorado Springs, CO, United States, 2Saybrook University, Pasadena, CA,

United States

Introduction Whether considered an intervention within a therapeutic modality, an independent practice or modality, an approach integrated with a therapeutic modality (i.e., mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, MBCT), or a spiritual practice used as an adjunct to therapy, mindfulness has become one of the most popular directions in contemporary psychotherapy (Moloney, 2016; Van Dam et al., 2018). Yet, the introduction of mindfulness into psychotherapy is not without controversy. Removing it from its origins in Buddhism for application in therapy and mental health can be seen as appropriating (see Moloney, 2016) or colonizing mindfulness. The use of mindfulness in psychology in the West is often different than its origins in Southeast Asia, and it is used for different ends. Maloney also points out that the research on mindfulness is more complex and not as conclusive as often presented. From an existential perspective, it can be questioned whether what is often conceived of as mindfulness is all that new to therapy. Existential, humanistic, and somatic approaches to psychology have long incorporated applications quite similar to and congruent with what is sometimes described as mindfulness in therapy. Given the problems of appropriation and questions about the newness of mindfulness in therapy, it could be questioned whether the label of mindfulness is an appropriate label when utilized in therapy and counseling. Yet, mindfulness is not going anywhere through relabeling or removal. Attempts to do this would surely prove futile. Furthermore, what is being labeled as mindfulness in psychology has potential to be beneficial to therapy consumers and practitioners alike. In this chapter, we begin through exploring what mindfulness is, which is a complex question that has different answers in various contexts. Next, we give consideration to how mindfulness is incorporated in therapy, particularly existential therapy.

Understanding mindfulness There are varied definitions of mindfulness that will be explored in this section. It is important to recognize the diversity, particularly between the religious and psychological definitions.

Defining mindfulness and variations of mindfulness Mindfulness in psychology. Van Dam et al. (2018) note, “Mindfulness is an umbrella term used to characterize a large number of practices, processes, and characteristics, largely defined in relation to the capacities of attention, awareness, memory/retention, and acceptance/discernment” (p. 37). A more precise definition of mindfulness for psychology is best given within the context of a particular treatment modality. The method of each operationalizes mindfulness in ways that are specific to the aims of that particular therapy, none of which are synonymous with the Buddhist understanding of mental development (Dow, 2009). In the discourse of Western psychology the term “mindfulness” may refer to an inherent process of mind characterized by focused attention and intentional openness to experience, and/or meditative techniques that cultivate this process (Williams, 2010). Mindfulness-oriented therapies can be divided into The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00026-3 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

359

360

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

two categories: those that are mindfulness-based and those that are mindfulness-informed. Mindfulness-based therapies include those that explicitly teach meditation or other techniques that cultivate mindfulness, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (MBCT), and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). Mindfulness-informed is a broad category that includes psychoanalytic, somatic, existential-humanistic, and contemplative psychotherapies conducted by clinicians that are themselves engaged in a contemplative practice (Dow, 2009; Wegela, 1994). Mindfulness in Buddhism. Western psychology is primarily concerned with using mindfulness as a clinical tool that helps a therapist facilitate a specific kind of treatment, whereas in Buddhism, mindfulness is a part of contemplative practices that lead to a spiritual end. For DBT the aim of mindfulness is to develop unity with or acceptance of undesirable feelings and is conceptualized as an “exposure technique” that aids one in becoming accustomed to a particular experience (Pederson, 2015, p. 121). CBT details the goals of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), which are to enhance empathy, develop self-control, and promote “general emotional resilience” (Pantaleno & Sisti, 2018, p. 253). In existential therapy, mindfulness has been used as a “stabilizing or alternatively a deepening adjunct” to the therapeutic process (Dow, 2019, p. 246). Finally, in Buddhism, mindfulness is, “the method for beginning to relate directly with mind, which was taught by Lord Buddha” and is a foundational part of a spiritual practice that ultimately leads to enlightenment (Trungpa, 2005, p. 24). Definitions of mindfulness in Buddhism often begin with an explanation of the Pali word sati, which is often translated as mindfulness, and a discussion on its various translations in English, such as “recollecting the present,” “remembering,” and “keeping in mind” (Bodhi, 2011; Dow, 2009; Gethin, 2011, p. 23). Due to the emphasis of the English language on describing external reality, the intricate, technical terms used in Buddhism to describe internal phenomena are especially difficult to render clearly (Dow, 2009). The significance of the term sati can be found in the traditional Therav¯ada, the original teachings of Buddhism, that contain 37 requisites for enlightenment called bodhipakkhiya¯ dhamma¯ (Say¯adaw, 2007). These requisites for enlightenment are consolidated into seven groups of teachings; the first of the seven is called Satipatthana ¯ and contains the four foundations of mindfulness. The four foundations of mindfulness are mindfulness of ˙˙ body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind, and mindfulness of mind-objects, or Dharma, which refers to the experiential phenomena that comprise the basis of the Buddha’s teachings (Gethin, 2011; Say¯adaw, 2007; Tsultrim, 2013). In the West the practice of mindfulness has come to include much of what is found in the other six groups of teachings, although the foundations of mindfulness comprise only the first (Tsultrim, 2013). Ultimately, to gain an adequate understanding of the use of mindfulness in Buddhist practice, one must engage in meditation according to the procedures of a specific tradition. This ensures that one experiences mindfulness within the entire ethical and philosophical foundation of the system. According to descriptions of mindfulness within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the first three foundations of mindfulness are integral to the practice of shamatha meditation, which is translated as “calm abiding” or “dwelling in peace” (Lhundrub, 2002; Trungpa, 2005; see also Rinpoche, 2003) Calm abiding meditation is a broad practice that can involve concentration on one’s breath, an external object, or a concept such as impermanence in order to see things as they really are, that is, nonconceptually. It is prescribed as the foundational meditation practice because it has the ability to bring a basic level of stillness to the mind. After one has quieted the mind, other meditative practices, such as vipashyana or “insight” meditation, are explored (Tsultrim, 2013). Vipashyana is not identical to mindfulness, rather vipashyana is connected with the last of the four foundations of mindfulness: mindfulness of mind-objects or Dharma (Tsultrim, 2013). Shamatha is a shorter term practice that prepares the mind to receive the insights that are presented in the experiential practice of vipashyana. Shamatha and vipashyana mediation work together in this way and both are required on the path to enlightenment. Foundational insights in Tibetan Buddhist meditation are the experience of emptiness of outward appearances, selflessness, and the elimination of self-grasping (Lhundrub, 2002). The motivation or aim of this practice is to develop compassion for all sentient beings, which means that one wishes for others to experience happiness rather than suffering. Mindfulness in existential psychology. The language inherent in existential psychology shows that its concepts are largely congruent with contemporary mindfulness approaches that are replacing traditional cognitive-behavioral models (Dow, 2009; see also Moloney, 2016). Some authors have argued that the philosophical basis of existential phenomenology and humanistic therapy made way for the advent of mindfulness in therapy (Felder, Aten, Neudeck, ShiomiChen, & Robbins, 2014; Felder & Robbins, 2016). Existential therapy supports being together with the other, which is a way of working with the client in the here-and-now to facilitate “letting-be,” that is an affirmation of the other’s existence (Bugental, 1987, 1999; Hora, 1962; Yalom, 1980). The emphasis on interpersonal relations in existential therapy, which understands the basis of human subjectivity contextually, as being-in-the-world, coupled with the practice of mindfulness, may allow therapist and client to more fully appreciate the full range of human experience (Dow, 2019; Heidegger, 2010).

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Chapter | 25

361

Mindfulness training can be understood as a way of helping therapists become more present in their own lives and therefore more present with their clients (Wegela, 1994). In one qualitative study, third year clinical psychology doctoral students were enrolled in a 10-week course on mindfulness that focused on three themes, facing self, facing other, and facing existence (Rockwell, 2019). As a result, the students found that they were more easily able to pay attention to their own thoughts and emotions and in turn this allowed them to be more present with their clients during the therapy hour and experience more empathy. Contemplative practices such as meditation are a way to cultivate the process of mindfulness within one’s own mind for the benefit of others.

Research on mindfulness The research on mindfulness is complex (Moloney, 2016; Van Dam et al., 2018). Moloney (2016) notes that it is often supposed that the research on mindfulness has confirmed its broad-based effectiveness; however, this is not an accurate portrayal of the research findings. It is dangerous to idealize any method or approach to or within therapy, particularly, as doing so often dismisses the potential risks. Moloney (2016) and Van Dam et al. (2018) both point out that there are many methodological limitations to the research on mindfulness to date, including definitional problems, inconsistencies in application, lack of consideration of potential research bias, reliance upon self-report measures, and lack of attention to potential adverse effects. Despite the limitations, there is a significant body of research on mindfulness that should not be dismissed. The breadth of the research is sufficient to allow for multiple metaanalyses on topics, including psychosis (Khoury, Lecomte, Gaudiano, & Paquin, 2013), smoking cessation (Oikonomou, Arvanitis, & Sokolove, 2016), stress reduction in healthy individuals (Khoury, Sharma, Rush, & Fournier, 2015), and anxiety disorders (Vøllestad, Nielsen, & Nielsen, 2012). While there are limitations to generalizing research that spans different approaches to mindfulness and different disorders, Van Dam et al. (2018) summarize stating that MBIs, “(compared to active controls) were found to have a mixture of only moderate, low, or no efficacy, depending on the disorder being treated” (p. 46). These interventions tended to be better with anxiety, depression, and pain. Thus there is research supporting the effectiveness of mindfulness and a basis for hope that future research addressing the various concerns identified will further clarify the effectiveness of mindfulness. Yet, Moloney (2016) points out the research does not suggest that mindfulness is superior than other interventions or modalities, as is sometimes claimed. Furthermore, many areas of mindfulness research need further development. While the research holds promise, it must also be considered in the context of the risk of adverse effects. For example, Wilson, Mickes, Stolarz-Fantino, Evrard, and Fantino (2015) found that mindfulness meditators are more susceptible to false memories, which they theorize may be connected to impaired reality-monitoring accuracy related to the judgment-free stance of individuals. In another study, Lindahl, Fisher, Cooper, Rosen, and Britton (2017) examined a variety of effects of mindfulness mediation. This revealed potentially negative implications of mindfulness, including the possibility of reexperiencing trauma, or being retraumatized. They note that the participants in this study tended to show few psychological problems and a lower trauma history in general, so it is important to be careful with generalizations. Yet, they also note that there has been a lack of attention, in general, given to the potential adverse effects of mindfulness, noting that this warrants more attention in future research.

Comparison between mindfulness and existential-humanistic psychology There are many close parallels between MBIs and existential-humanistic strategies. In this section, we explore these similarities.

Here-and-now focus Existential-humanistic psychology, similar to mindfulness, values the here-and-now focus on awareness in the present moment. This focus on the here-and-now is often connected with the idea of presence, or the cultivation of presence. In describing the cultivation of presence, Krug (2009) describes presence as “a fundamental principle of existential therapy and is considered by many existential theorists to be central to effecting change” (p. 331). It includes an intentional focus on the here-and-now. As Krug (2009) illustrates, there can be different strategies to the here-and-now. In particular, she distinguished between the intrapersonal focus of James Bugental and the interpersonal focus of Irvin Yalom. For Yalom, the hereand-now focus was on the interpersonal relationship; what is happening between the therapist and client. For Bugental

362

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

the focus was on the intrapersonal aspects of the here-and-now. He directed the clients to look inward, to examine their experience, and become curious about it. This curiosity is implicit in the approach of both Bugental and Yalom. According to Hoffman (2019), cultivating curiosity to one’s experience can be part of the healing process. The curiosity tends to disarm the judgment, discomfort, or resistance that often occurs with emotions, particularly unpleasant emotions. Nonjudgmental awareness, as advocated in mindfulness, is congruent with the use of curiosity.

Accepting and exploring emotions and their meaning While many mainstream approaches to psychotherapy tend to treat emotions as a problem to be solved, existentialhumanistic approaches view emotions as a critically important guide to the therapy process and self-growth (Hoffman, 2019). To some degree, this can be traced back to Kierkegaard’s (1957) The Concept of Dread and May’s (1950) The Meaning of Anxiety. Kierkegaard and May viewed anxiety as a guide into self-understanding. The overarching concept is that anxiety is meant to be accepted or embraced and that there are various ways to mitigate it, specifically around meaning making. The process of embracing or accepting anxiety or other emotions, as can be found in existentialhumanistic psychology, is understood as an experiential process. In other words, it is necessary to experience and work with the emotion instead of trying to control or manage it. Embodiment, from an existential-humanistic perspective, means, in part, that it is natural for human beings to bodily experience their emotions (Bugental, 1987; Hoffman, 2019). Bugental (1999) emphasized that psychotherapy is not about how one thinks but rather how one lives and experiences life in this moment. This is meant to include not just living with emotions, but experientially engaging them. From Bugental’s perspective the idea of death and other givens of life should be recognized and engaged to the extent that they are impacting the present moment. Furthermore, becoming genuinely aware of the givens and the associated emotions may lead the individual to be more accepting of the immediate moment and therefore engage life more deeply. According to Bugental (1999), gaining awareness in this fashion is achieved by helping the individual pay attention to the ways the client exhibits emotions and by coaching the client to become more aware of how they interact with them. This is a gradual process in working toward an acceptance of one’s experience that allows them to open up to aspects of experience outside of one’s awareness or comfort. The goal is not to thrust the individual into the present but to increase their capacity for being present to their emotions. The idea of an individual being able to experience the nonverbal feelings that are held within their body is comparable to Gendlin’s (1978) approach to focusing. Under the supervision of Carl Rogers, Gendlin researched the idea that the lasting positive change is largely driven by the individual’s ability to feel their emotions within their body. “I think is a useful theoretical position to hold that experiencing is an inward sensitivity of the living body” (Gendlin, 1962, p. 27). In Gendlin’s opinion, most of all knowledge is experienced internally and nonverbally. Separation from or ignorance of the experiences in the body leads to greater life dissatisfaction. In existential-humanistic psychology the idea of embracing the felt emotion and the relationship to meaning can be seen as a central theme (Hoffman, Vallejos, Cleare-Hoffman, & Rubin, 2015). Mindful awareness of the moment or mindfulness is consistent with this idea. Gendlin (1962), although not expressly an existential-humanistic psychologist, believed that meaning comes after the feeling, but that the meaning is not always obvious. An example would be that of the individuals who find themselves angry over something that has not yet happened, but that they suppose could happen. Anger was felt in the body and then meaning is assigned. As there were no obvious current sources of the anger, the anger was attributed to the possibility of an event. Through careful nonjudgmental examination of the emotion, the deeper meaning and possibility become evident. As Bugental (1999) conceptualizes, existential-humanistic psychology is not just focused on meaning as a way to mitigate anxiety, or even on lack of meaning as a cause for anxiety, but also as something that can hinder the individual in the moment. In the previous example the individual attributed incorrect meaning to a physical feeling, which led to a block in the moment. Mindfulness would allow for a focusing on the experience without the need to fully attribute the meaning the moment. In the existential-humanistic perspective, meaning may follow emotion, but not necessarily so. Bugental (1987) discussed the process of moving in and out of emotion in the therapy process. The skilled, or artful, therapist often works to subtly guide clients into their emotions to experience them and then back out of the depths of the emotions to connect them to meaning. This process of moving in and out of the emotions signifies the processing of emotion and is an important process of connecting emotion with meaning. However, it is not a process of experiencing emotion then assigning meaning, but rather the back and forth between experiencing and reflecting that connects emotions with meaning. Similarly, Schneider views emotion as closely connected to meaning; however, meaning does not necessary occur after meaning but concurrent with it (Vos et al., 2017). Hoffman (2019) notes that existential-humanistic

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Chapter | 25

363

psychology sees emotion as a way of knowing. As such, it does not privilege other ways of knowing over emotions but considers these different ways of knowing concurrently. This represents a deep valuing of emotions.

Embodied meditation Schneider (2007) and Schneider and Krug (2017) advocated for the use of embodied meditation as an existentialhumanistic practice. This bears similarity to mindfulness in that is comprised of concerted attention to one’s inner experience. For Schneider, this is not the same as mindfulness, although he does believe that mindfulness can be a helpful adjunct to existential integrative therapy. Embodied meditation is a guided process in which the therapist assists the client in engaging in relaxation and focusing strategies to cultivate deeper attentiveness to one’s somatic experience (Schneider, 2007; Schneider & Krug, 2017). It begins with a grounding exercise followed by invitation to become aware of one’s body and tension in one’s body. The client is encouraged to describe the sensations vividly. Next, the client is invited to place their hand in an area of tension. Finally, the client is asked what associations, feelings, and images they connect with this area.

The ego and self in existential psychology and mindfulness The concepts of ego and the self have been debated in psychological, religious, and cultural spheres (Hoffman, Stewart, Warren, & Meek, 2009). In this section, we compare religious and cultural perspectives on the ego and self, and the implications for psychology.

Quieting the ego The idea of quieting the ego, or quiet ego, can be found in the wisdom traditions, particularly wisdom traditions of the major world religions, such as Buddhism (Wolsko, 2012). The excessive focus on the self has also been a concern in psychology, including criticisms of popular psychological constructs such as self-esteem, at times, because of concerns that they may promote narcissism and excessive self-focus. It has been asserted that mindfulness’s influence on quieting the ego is what allows for many of the positive outcomes of mindfulness (Heppner & Kernis, 2018). Conceptions of the quiet ego vary. At times, the quiet ego is used broadly, primarily equated with humility (Kesebir, 2014), while at other times, a more complex understanding is emphasized (Wayment, Bauer, & Sylaska, 2015). Wayment et al. developed more complex, empirically developed view of the quiet ego, which has four components: “inclusive identity, perspective-taking, detached awareness, and growth” (p. 1003). There are important differences between the quieting of the ego or decreased self-focus in psychology as compared to religion. While in psychology the quiet ego is intended to promote psychological well-being, in religion an ethical or spiritual outcome is sought. In Christianity the decreased self-focus has both an ethical (i.e., being compassionate and caring toward others) and spiritual dimension (focusing on God, not self). In Buddhism the quieting of the ego is often considered in the context of meditation and mindfulness as well as in seeking Anatta, “the absence of essence in all things” (Young-Eisendrath, 2009, p. 98), which is the foundation for the recognition of “no self.” Pawle (2009) notes, “The common way of talking about the ego in Zen [Buddhism] is in negative terms, particularly as something which needs to be eliminated” (p. 49). The ego and the self are human constructions without an essence; they are fluid and constantly changing. Yet, the pursuit of no self is not easy and often becomes more elusive when pursued directly. Paradoxically, it requires an ego or self to transcend the self (Epstein, 1995; Snelling, 1998). de Wit (2008) noted that, “According to Buddhism, an ego-centered way of structuring one’s life experience is connected with a lack of confidence in one’s existence as a human being” (p. 8). Yet, as Epstein (1995) illustrates, it is often through analysis of the self that one comes closer to the attainment of no self. In Buddhism, attachment is connected to suffering, and nonattachment, including to one’s self, frees one from this suffering. Conventional Western therapy tends to try to strengthen one’s ego identity and sense of self (Podvoll & Fortune, 2009). Partially due to this, there can be a disconnection between Western approaches to psychotherapy and Buddhist and other Eastern worldviews based upon these different conceptions of the self (Mosig, 2006). The quiet ego also has a long history in psychology, although this terminology and the research on the concept of the quiet ego emerged more recently. Wayment and Bauer (2008) argue that the early roots of quiet ego in psychology can be traced to Freud and Jung, particularly their emphasis on awareness. They maintain that the next two aspects of what is now called the quiet ego emerged from humanistic psychology: growth and compassion. According to Wayment and Bauer, William James played an important role in the development of empirical research on the quiet

364

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

ego, particularly with his concern about the challenges of egoism. Over time, these early roots have been applied and further developed in many branches of psychology, including developmental psychology. The historical contributions outlined by Wayment and Bauer (2008) have paved the way for the development of a significant body of empirical research on quieting the ego with promising results. Wayment, Wiist, Sullivan, and Warren (2011) conducted a study on 117 Buddhist practitioners who practiced an average of 11 years at the time of the study. There results suggested that quiet ego characteristic is related to better physical health. Kesebir (2014) investigated quiet ego and its relation to death anxiety. The results suggested that quiet ego was a better buffer to death anxiety than strategies focusing on self-enhancement, such as boosting self-esteem. However, there were some weaknesses in the conception of quiet ego in this study. Kesebir, although acknowledged the more complex notions of quiet ego, conflated quiet ego with humility in this study. While humility and quiet ego are logically similar, it is problematic to reduce quiet ego to humility. Research on the quiet ego has been bolstered by the development of the quiet ego scale (Wayment et al., 2015). Through use of this scale, quiet ego has also been associated with decreased perceived stress (Wayment & Cavolo, 2019), increased compassion satisfaction and decreased compassion fatigue (Wayment, Huffman, & Eiler, 2019), decreased materialism (Watson, 2018), benevolence and balancing self-other concern (Wayment & Bauer, 2018), and decreased oxidative stress (Wayment, Collier, Birkett, Traustadottir, & Till, 2015). It will be important for future research to clarify the relationship between quiet ego and mindfulness, which is assumed in some of the published scholarship to date. However, a promising foundation for future research has been established.

Ego, self-esteem, and self-acceptance in existential psychology and mindfulness Ego is a controversial term, in part because of the inconsistency in the definitions and usage. In popular culture, ego is often used in a pejorative manner, such as identifying some individuals as being egotistic or having a big ego. In psychology, definitions can range from seeing the ego as representing the self or sense of self to viewing ego as a more contained, discrete aspect of the self (Wayment & Bauer, 2008). Regardless, ego is a self-referent concept. In research reviewed in this chapter, the ego generally has been assumed to be synonymous with the self, the aspect of the self affectively appraising oneself, or the aspect of the self that organizes and structures the self. In all of these the self is closely connected with the identity of a person. Self-esteem is a popular psychological construct; however, it became a source of significant controversy, largely because research failed to prove its ability to predict much (Eromo & Levy, 2017). There were also more philosophical critiques, including concern that it could lead to narcissism or a falsely elevated self-appraisal. Over time, more differentiated understandings of self-esteem emerged with labels such as fragile, but these begin to question the legitimacy of self-esteem as a free-standing, consistent construct. Within humanistic and existential psychology, self-esteem is often seen as less important than concepts such as selfacceptance and self-actualization (Hoffman, Lopez, & Moats, 2013). Self-actualizing is also a misunderstood topic, with many seeing this as a destination or accomplishment. However, in contemporary humanistic literature, selfactualization is understood more frequently in the context of the self-actualizing—or growth oriented—tendency that is assumed part of human nature. This is consistent with the growth component of quiet ego as discussed by Wayment and Bauer (2008). Hoffman et al. (2013) advocated that self-acceptance is a more useful concept than self-esteem from humanistic and existential perspectives. Self-actualization, in Maslow’s (1998) conception, was inclusive of self-acceptance, although it is a broader construct. Humanistic and existential approaches view self-acceptance as being rooted in recognition of one’s basic humanness, which includes the self-actualizing or growth-oriented potential along with accepting human finiteness or limitations (Hoffman et al., 2013). Although self-esteem interventions tend to boost one’s self-appraisal, self-acceptance is rooted in an honest appraisal of oneself including strengths and limitations. Not all existential approaches are hesitant of self-esteem. Terror management theory (TMT), which is rooted in the works of Ernest Becker (1973), gives self-esteem a central placement (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004). Pyszczynski et al. note that, from a TMT perspective, the primary role of self-esteem is to serve in a protective role against terrifying aspects of human existence, particularly the terror of death. They state, “TMT posits that self-esteem is a sense of personal value that is obtained by believing (a) in the validity of one’s cultural worldview and (b) that one is living up to the standards that are part of that worldview” (pp. 426 437). This description is narrower than other perspectives on self-esteem, and rooted more deeply in aligning with one’s culture. It also stands in contrast to the influential existential philosopher Nietzsche (1892/1954), who was highly critical of

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Chapter | 25

365

nonreflective conformity to one’s culture and valued those who were able to make principled stands against one’s culture. This concern about conformity also is central to existential psychology (Hoffman, 2019; May, 1981). Existential perspectives on self-acceptance bear similarity to mindfulness and the quiet ego. Mindfulness and existential psychology both maintain that suffering is inevitable and emphasize a nonjudgmental attitude in relation to the self and one’s reactions. Quiet ego and existential perspectives both emphasize the importance of balance, recognizing potential, and accepting limitations. While these similarities are not intended to suggest full agreement, there are some deeply shared values that can serve as a basis for dialog and integration.

The self in existential psychology Existential perspectives view the self as fluid and ever-changing. In existential-humanistic psychology, this influence can be traced, in part, to Maslow’s (1998) conception of the self-actualizing potential and Rogers’s (1965) emphasis on becoming. May (1981) engaged this through the topic of freedom and destiny, which took seriously the deterministic perspectives that dominated the field at the time. May viewed destiny as the aspects of one’s existence that are determined or determined aspects of existence that exert an influence over who one becomes. The determined aspects include things such as one’s parents and genetic makeup. The determined aspects of existence that exert an influence on the self include one’s culture and social context. While these influences are constant and sometimes strong, they do not eliminate one’s freedom. Freedom can only be truly understood in the context of one’s destiny, or the influences upon oneself that cannot be controlled. Even in contexts where destiny is strong, May asserted that the component of freedom remained highly interesting. This entails freedom of choice, and freedom to influence who one is becoming. Hoffman et al. (2009) built off the work of Schneider and May to advocate for the self as a myth. In accordance with May’s (1991) view on myth, Hoffman et al. view myth as something that cannot be proven to be true but also is not necessarily false. Often, myths are truths that cannot be proven. Relegating the self to a myth is not intended to suggest it is not important, but rather that the reality of the self, or the correct understanding of the self, cannot be proven as any particular thing; it is a social construction that is strongly influenced by culture. As maintained by Mosig (2006), the understanding of the self has important implications for the direction of psychotherapy. Eastern conceptions value nonattachment and no self, whereas Western approaches to building self-esteem or bolstering the ego may be culturally insensitive and potentially harmful. Thus Hoffman et al. (2009) maintain that it is important for therapists to be sensitive to cultural views of the self and, at times, be willing to modify their therapeutic approach to avoid doing harm. Emergent postmodern perspectives also have, at times, questioned the reality of the self and suggested the possibility that multiple selves may be a better construction (Hoffman et al., 2009). It is evident that technological advances have challenged the traditional views of the self (Gergen, 1991; Schneider, 2019). These challenges are not just relevant for intellectual musings of philosophers and psychologists, they have a lived reality in which many individuals have found their sense of self challenged. While conceptions of multiple selves or no self may be a better conception for some individuals, Hoffman et al. maintain that there are dangers in tossing away the idea of a unified self, particularly in Western culture. Instead, they advocate that Schneider’s (1999) paradoxical self is a better metaphor for many in Western culture. The paradoxical self allows for the seemingly incompatible aspects of the self to be integrated into a conception or experience of the whole. The various depth psychotherapies, including psychoanalytic, Jungian, and existential psychotherapies, have long advocated for the importance of integrating seemingly disparate aspects of the self. For people in individualistic cultures, to abandon the self altogether may be experienced as traumatic, particularly if sought abruptly, whereas integration is likely to work better. The idea of the myth of self has pragmatic advantages in which it encourages therapists to attend to complex cultural challenges without imposing a view of self upon clients. In many ways, it is congruent with Buddhist conceptions of the self through recognition that there is not necessarily an entity of the self. However, it allows for flexibility in how clients desire to relate to what is labeled or experienced as the self.

The role of meaning May (1950) defined anxiety as fear generated by the threat to something that the individual places great emphasis on in regard to their “existence as a self” (p. 72). In other words, threats to one’s self-definition or worldview, which are important sources of meaning, are likely to cause anxiety. Humans seem to require meaning and to be without meaning causes crisis (Yalom, 1980). Frankl (1984) found that individuals in concentration camps were unlikely to survive without meaning and went on to pioneer the idea that meaning is an essential part of life.

366

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Meaning, as defined in existential psychology, is coherence or a search for coherence (Yalom, 1980). Coherence can be described as a continuous sense of self and sense of the world. It has been argued that the experience of meaning is closely tied in to how an individual copes with the existential givens, which have been variously conceived, but generally include some conception of death, freedom and responsibility, relationship, and meaning. Becker (1973) viewed meaning as connected to one’s worldview and sense of self and asserted that it was a necessary defense mechanism against death anxiety. Vos (2018) describes meanings applied to the self as “self-oriented types of meaning,” which includes selfacceptance, self-esteem, and autonomy. The objective, therefore, becomes to seek fulfillment through acceptance of all an individual’s inner world and to develop self-acceptance through this (Hoffman et al., 2013). This, then, allows for the individual to develop a coherent sense of self. Wong (2012) summarizes, “one needs a philosophy of life and a narrative construction of self in order to make sense of negative events” (p. 8). Whereas meaning can serve as a defense against anxiety, mindfulness can be a tool aiding individuals in moving toward coherence. In a study completed by Niemiec et al. (2010), it was found that mindfulness can reduce two forms of existential defense, specifically, the defense of worldview and of self-esteem/self-acceptance. In other words the trait of mindfulness can overcome threats to worldview and self-esteem/self-acceptance. Wong (2012) emphasized that meaning ought not to be conceived as merely being a defense mechanism; it is also important for human flourishing and well-being. Meaning serves in many constructive purposes. Mindfulness, in promoting awareness and acceptance of one’s experience, can be an important tool in the discovery or creation of meaning.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter, we have compared mindfulness and quiet ego with existential psychological perspectives. At this point of the chapter, it is important to consider the question of the relevance of mindfulness to existential therapy. In an important dialog on this topic, Nanda (2009, 2010) and Cavill (2010) discuss the relevance of mindfulness for existential therapy. The authors agree on much, including that mindfulness is a simple practice, is a fairly natural human activity that benefits from intentionality, and is congruent with the existential practice. They disagree, to a degree, on how it can be introduced into existential therapy. However, we would suggest a more fundamental question: Is it necessary? Stated differently, does the incorporation of mindfulness add anything to existential therapy? Our answer to this question is, “not necessarily.” As we have discussed in this chapter, there is not anything essentially new that mindfulness adds to existential therapy that is not already there. In reviewing the work of Bugental (1987, 1999), Yalom (1980), see also Krug (2009), Schneider (2007, 2017), and Hoffman (2019), there are similar practices to mindfulness. Existential therapy has always focused on the here-and-now, somatic awareness, and nonjudgmental attentiveness to one’s experience. These are consistent with mindfulness practice. At the same time, mindfulness and existential therapy do not always approach the cultivation of nonjudgmental awareness in the same manner. In particular, existential therapy tends to rely more on interpersonal processes to facilitate the development of awareness, whereas mindfulness is a practice that tends to be more of an intrapersonal process after the initial development of a mindfulness practice. Given the convergences between mindfulness and existential therapy, there is a benefit that can be sought through dialog. These dialogs can enhance creativity in the ways to pursue this nonjudgmental awareness and overcome barriers often encountered. Despite the convergences, it is important to recognize that mindfulness in its Buddhist origins seeks different ends that what is typically sought in existential therapy. While Buddhism does discuss seeking an end to the cycle of suffering, and mindfulness plays an important role in this, the purpose of mindfulness in Buddhism should not be reduced to the promotion of psychological well-being. Mindfulness, at this point in the history of psychology, has been thoroughly appropriated to a degree that it is not realistic to turn back. This is not intended to criticize practitioners who incorporate mindfulness into their practice, or to suggest that they are not committed Buddhist practitioners who integrate mindfulness in a more congruent manner. Rather, it is intended to emphasize that mindfulness is more than a psychological practice. In psychology, mindfulness has even entered the lexicon of evidence-based practice in psychology. Given this status, there are advantages for referring to practices within existential therapy as mindfulness in advocating for the evidence-based foundations of existential-humanistic therapy. Given that many of the definitions of mindfulness in psychology are congruent with aspects of existential therapy, this seems a justified labeling of common existential therapy practices. In reconsidering the question of the appropriateness of incorporating of mindfulness into existential practice, the final answer seems to be a definitive yes and no. It could be maintained that it does not add anything substantive to the

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Chapter | 25

367

existential therapy practice that was not already there. However, dialogs between existential therapy and mindfulness hold potential to deepen understanding and add creativity. Furthermore, utilizing the mindfulness label for processes already common to existential therapy helps to bolster the argument for the evidence-based foundations of existential therapy.

References Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Bodhi, B. (2011). What does mindfulness really mean? A canonical perspective. Contemporary Buddhism, 12(1), 19 39. Available from https://doi. org/10.1080/14639947.2011.564813. Bugental, J. (1999). Psychotherapy isn’t what you think: Brining the psychotherapeutic engagement into the living moment. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig Tucker & CO. Bugental, J. F. T. (1987). The art of the psychotherapist. New York: Norton. Cavill, M. (2010). Mindfulness, nothing special. Existential Analysis, 21(1), 37 40. de Wit, H. F. (2008). Working with existential and neurotic suffering. In F. J. Kaklauskas, S. Nimanheminda, L. Hoffman, & M. S. Jack (Eds.), Brilliant sanity: Buddhist approaches to psychotherapy (pp. 3 17). Colorado Springs, CO: University of the Rockies Press. Dow, M. W. (2009). Mindfulness in the experience of the therapist: A constructivist grounded theory study of psychotherapists integrating mindfulness into psychotherapy (Doctoral dissertation). Colorado Springs, CO: Colorado School of Professional Psychology. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3360040) Dow, M. W. (2019). A contemplative approach to existential psychotherapy: Mindfulness as existential praxis. In (Rev. & expanded ed.L. Hoffman, M. Yang, F. Kaklauskas, A. Chan, & M. Mansilla (Eds.), Existential psychology east-west (Vol. 1Colorado Springs, CO: University Professors Press. Epstein, M. (1995). Thoughts without a thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist perspective. New York: Basic Books. Eromo, T. L., & Levy, D. A. (2017). The rise, fall, and resurgence of “self-esteem”: A critique, reconceptualization, and recommendations. North American Journal of Psychology, 19, 255. ,http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496085825/HRCA?u 5 colosprings&sid 5 HRCA&xid 5 4d098318.. Felder, A. J., Aten, H., Neudeck, J. A., Shiomi-Chen, J., & Robbins, B. D. (2014). Mindfulness at the heart of existential-phenomenology and humanistic psychology: A century of contemplation and elaboration. The Humanistic Psychologist, 42(1), 6 23. Felder, A. J., & Robbins, B. D. (2016). The integrated heart of cultural and mindfulness meditation practice in existential phenomenology and humanistic psychotherapy. The Humanistic Psychologist, 44(2), 105 126. Frankl, V. (1984). Man’s search of meaning. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gendlin, E. (1962). Experiencing and the creation of meaning: A philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Gendlin, E. (1978). Focusing. New York: Bantam Dell. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Gethin, R. (2011). On some definitions of mindfulness. Contemporary Buddhism, 12(1), 263 279. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14639947.2011.564843. Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and time (J. Stambaugh, Trans.). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Heppner, W., & Kernis, M. (2018). “Quiet ego” functioning: The complementary roles of mindfulness, authenticity, and secure high self-esteem. Psychological Inquiry, 18(4), 248 251. Hoffman, L. (2019). Introduction to existential-humanistic psychology in a cross-cultural context. In (Rev. & expanded ed.L. Hoffman, M. Yang, F. J. Kaklauskas, A. Chan, & M. Mansilla (Eds.), Existential psychology east-west (Vol. 1Colorado Springs, CO: University Professors Press. Hoffman, L., Lopez, A., & Moats, M. (2013). Humanistic psychology and self-acceptance. In M. Bernard (Ed.), The strength of self-acceptance: Theory, practice, and research (pp. 3 17). New York: Springer. ,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6806-6_1.. Hoffman, L., Stewart, S., Warren, D., & Meek, L. (2009). Toward a sustainable myth of self: An existential response to the postmodern condition. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 49(2), 135 173. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167808324880. Hoffman, L., Vallejos, L., Cleare-Hoffman, H. P., & Rubin, S. (2015). Emotion, relationship, and meaning as core existential practice: Evidencebased foundations. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 45, 11 20. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-014-9277-9. Hora, T. (1962). Psychotherapy, existence, and religion. In H. M. Ruitenbeek (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and existential philosophy (pp. 70 80). New York: E. P. Dutton & CO., Inc. Kesebir, P. (2014). A quiet ego quiets death anxiety: Humility as an existential anxiety buffer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 610 623. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035814. Kierkegaard, S. (1957). The concept of dread (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Khoury, B., Lecomte, T., Gaudiano, B. A., & Paquin, K. (2013). Mindfulness interventions for psychosis: A meta-analysis. Schizophrenia Research, 150, 176 184. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2013.07.055. Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E., & Fournier, C. (2015). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 78, 519 528. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.03.009. Krug, O. T. (2009). James Bugental and Irvin Yalom: Two masters of existential therapy cultivate presence in the therapeutic encounter. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 49, 329 354. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167809334001.

368

PART | 5 Mechanisms, variations, and individual differences

Lhundrub, N. K. (2002). Three visions: Fundamental teachings of the Sakya lineage of Tibetan Buddhism (L. Dagpa & J. Goldberg, Trans.) (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications. Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLoS One, 12(5), 1 38. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176239. Maslow, A. H. (1998). Toward a psychology of being (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley. May, R. (1950). The meaning of anxiety. New York: Ronald Press Co. May, R. (1981). Freedom and destiny. New York: Norton & Company. May, R. (1991). The cry for myth. New York, NY: Delta. Moloney, P. (2016). Mindfulness: The bottled water of the therapy industry. In R. E. Purser, D. Forbes, & A. Burke (Eds.), Handbook of mindfulness: Culture, context, and social engagement (epub version). New York: Springer. ,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_18.. Mosig, Y. D. (2006). Conceptions of the self in Western and Eastern psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 26, 39 50. Nanda, J. (2009). Mindfulness: A lived experience of existential-phenomenological themes. Existential Analysis, 20(1), 147 164. Nanda, J. (2010). Mindfulness, nothing special, yet special. Existential Analysis, 21(1), 41 50. Nietzsche, F. (1954). Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for none and all (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1892). Niemiec, C., Brown, K., Kashdan, T., Cozzolino, P., Breen, W., Bristol, C., & Ryan, R. (2010). Being present in the face of existential threat: The role of trait mindfulness in reducing defensive responses to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 344 365. Retrieved from ,https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2521/39067dee08e624ab40a6eafcaf3a9070f79b.pdf.. Oikonomou, M. T., Arvanitis, M., & Sokolove, R. L. (2016). Mindfulness training for smoking cessation: A meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trails. Journal of Health Psychology, 22, 1841 1850. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105316637667. Pantaleno, A., & Sisti, M. (2018). Mindfulness. In A. Vernon, & K. A. Doyle (Eds.), Cognitive behavior therapies: A guidebook for practitioners (pp. 247 280). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association. Pawle, R. (2009). The ego in the psychology of zen: Understanding reports of Japanese Zen Masters on the experience of the self. In D. Mathers, M. E. Miller, & O. Ando (Eds.), Self and no-self: Continuing the dialogue between Buddhism and psychotherapy (pp. 45 55). New York, NY: Routledge. Pederson, L. D. (2015). Mindfulness. Dialectical behavior therapy: A contemporary guide for practitioners (pp. 118 124). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Podvoll, E., & Fortune, J. (2009). Psychotherapy as an expression of the spiritual journey based on the experience of shunyata. In F. J. Kaklauskas, S. Nimanheminda, L. Hoffman, & M. S. Jack (Eds.), Brilliant sanity: Buddhist approaches to psychotherapy (pp. 87 97). Colorado Springs, CO: University of the Rockies Press. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 435 468. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.1303.435. Rinpoche, D. (2003). The three levels of spiritual perception (J. Rhoton, Trans.). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Rockwell, D. (2019). Mindfulness and courage: Lifelong training in clinical psychology: Implications and applications of a three-year study. In L. Hoffman, M. Yang, M. Mansilla, J. Dias, M. Moats, & T. Claypool (Eds.), Existential psychology east-west (Vol. 1, pp. 175 196). Colorado Springs, CO: University Professors Press. Rogers, C. R. (1965). On becoming a person. Boston, MA: Houghton Miffin. Say¯adaw, L. V. (2007). The requisites of enlightenment (2nd ed.). Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society. Schneider, K. J. (1999). The paradoxical self: Toward an understanding of our contradictory nature. Amityville, NY: Humanity Books. Schneider, K. J. (2007). Existential-integrative psychotherapy: Guideposts to the core of practice. New York: Routledge. Schneider, K. J. (2019). The spirituality of awe: Challenges to the robotic revolution (Rev. ed.). Colorado Springs, CO: University Professors Press. Schneider, K. J., & Krug, O. T. (2017). Existential-humanistic therapy (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Snelling, J. (1998). The Buddhist handbook: The complete guide to Buddhist schools, teaching, practice, and history. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Trungpa, C. (2005). In C. R. Gimian (Ed.), The sanity we are born with: A Buddhist approach to psychology. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Tsultrim, J. (2013). Mindfulness and self-compassion [Audio]. Retrieved from ,www.nalandaolywa.org/talks.php.. Van Dam, N. T., van Vugt, M. K., Vago, D. R., Schmalzl, L., Saron, C. D., Olendzki, A., . . . Meyer, D. E. (2018). Mind the hype: A critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and mediation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 36 61. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617709589. Vøllestad, J., Nielsen, M. B., & Nielsen, G. H. (2012). Mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 239 260. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.2011.02024.x. Vos, J. (2018). Meaning in life: An evidence-based handbook for practitioners. London, UK: Palgrave. Vos, J., Cooper, M., Hill, C. E., Neimeyer, R. A., Schneider, K., & Wong, T. P. (2017). Five perspectives on the meaning of meaning in the context of clinical practices. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 32, 48 62. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2017.1390511. Watson, D. C. (2018). Self-compassion, the ‘quiet ego’ and materialism. Heliyon, 4, e00883. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.300883. Wayment, H. A., & Bauer, J. J. (2008). The psychology of the quiet ego. In H. A. Wayment, & J. J. Bauer (Eds.), Transcending self-interest: Psychological explorations of the quiet ego (pp. 7 19). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Wayment, H. A., & Bauer, J. J. (2018). The quiet ego: Motives for self-other balance and growth in relation to well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19, 881 896. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9848-z.

Existential therapy, religion, and mindfulness Chapter | 25

369

Wayment, H., Bauer, J., & Sylaska, K. (2015). The quiet ego scale: Measuring the compassionate self-identity. Journal of Happiness Studies, 16, 999 1033. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9546-z. Wayment, H. A., Collier, A. F., Birkett, M., Traustadottir, T., & Till, R. E. (2015). Brief quiet ego contemplation reduced oxidative stress and mindwandering. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1 11. Available from https://doi.org/10/3389/fpsyg.2015.01481. Wayment, H. A., & Cavolo, K. (2019). Quiet ego, self-regulatory skills, and perceived stress in college students. Journal of American College Health, 67, 92 96. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2018.1462826. Wayment, H. A., Huffman, A. H., & Eiler, B. A. (2019). A brief “quiet ego” workplace intervention to reduce compassion fatigue and improve health in hospital healthcare workers. Applied Nursing Research. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2019.05.002. (Advanced Online Version). Wayment, H. A., Wiist, B., Sullivan, B. M., & Warren, M. A. (2011). Doing and being: Mindfulness, health, and quiet ego characteristics among Buddhist practitioners. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 575 589. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9218-6. Wegela, K. K. (1994). Contemplative psychotherapy: A path of uncovering brilliant sanity. Journal of Contemplative Psychotherapy, 9, 27 51. Retrieved from ,http://www.windhorseguild.org/pdf/jcp/vol_9/Vol%209,%20Contemplative%20Psychotherapy.pdf.. Williams, J. A. (2010). What is mindfulness? Buddhist and contemporary scientific perspectives (Master’s thesis). San Francisco, CA: Saybrook University. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No.1482332). Wilson, B. M., Mickes, L., Stolarz-Fantino, S., Evrard, M., & Fantino, E. (2015). Increased false-memory susceptibility after mindfulness meditation. Psychological Science, 26, 1567 1573. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615593705. Wolsko, C. (2012). Transcribing and transcending the ego: Reflections on the phenomenology of chronic social comparison. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 52, 321 349. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167811407503. Wong, P. T. P. (2012). Toward a dual-systems model of what makes life worth living. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications (2nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis, Chapter 1; Kindle version). Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Young-Eisendrath, P. (2009). Empty rowboats: No-blame and other therapeutic effects of no-self in long-term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In D. Mathers, M. E. Miller, & O. Ando (Eds.), Self and no-self: Continuing the dialogue between Buddhism and psychotherapy (2009, pp. 92 99). New York: Routledge.

Further reading Bugental, J. F. T. (1978). Psychotherapy and process: The fundamentals of an existential-humanistic approach. London: McGraw Hill Ryerson. Heery, M., & Bugental, J. (2003a). Meaning and transformation: A journey of client, psychotherapist and supervisor. Retrieved from ,http://www. human-studies.com/articles/meaning-transformation.php.. Heery, M., & Bugental, J. (2003b). Unearthing the moment. Retrieved from ,http://www.human-studies.com/articles/unearthing-the-moment.php.. Witkiewitz, K., Roos, C. R., Colgan, D. D., & Bowen, S. (2017). Mindfulness (Advances in Psychotherapy—Evidence-Based Practice). Ashland, OH: Hogrefe.

Chapter 26

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Bastiaan T. Rutjens1 and Jesse L. Preston2 1

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

How do we understand the relationship between science and religion? Why do they sometimes seem to conflict, sometimes complement each other, and at other times be completely unrelated to each other? Though science and religion differ in underlying assumptions, they share important psychological functions for explanation, control, and meaning. How these functions are fulfilled varies with different religious and scientific beliefs, and so does the nature of the relationship between science and religion. In this chapter, we explore the relationship between science and religion by adopting a functional psychological approach. Differences in underlying processes shape how those functions are fulfilled. This can be seen particularly in how science and religion approach two central existential concerns: morality and mortality. Whether or not science and religion conflict, complement, or operate independently is a result of the particular ways these functions are expressed and whether their explanatory narratives can be reconciled.

Science and religion: a brief history Science and religion have had a long and complicated relationship, as they both serve as means of exploring the meaning of the natural world. The ancients often practiced religion and science hand in hand: observations of the stars and seasons were intertwined with theologies and integrated with important social rituals. As human history progressed, scientific and religious practices each became more elaborate and specialized. By the beginning of the scientific revolution, Christianity had come to dominate European society, impacting on almost every aspect of life—including ideas about the physical world. When Western science started to make important advances at this time, various conflicts with the church ensued. Famous examples include the persecution of Galileo Galilei in the 17th century—for endorsing the heliocentric model that threatened the view that the Earth is the center of the cosmos—and later in the 19th century, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet science and religion have never been entirely adversarial. Many scientists through the ages have been strongly religious and saw their science as evidence for the divine, for example, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, and Faraday. Some prominent 20th century scientists (such as Einstein and Hawking) made allusions to God and the divine in their work, though these may be more metaphorical than a literal devotion to God. And other scientists argue that while neither conflict nor synthesis between science and religion is the answer, the best way is to keep scientific and religious enterprises separate (Gould, 1997). The complicated relationship between science and religion thus seems to take on different forms. Ian Barbour (1997) identified four different general attitudes toward the relationship between science and religion: 1. Science and religion are fundamentally incompatible with each other and must be in conflict. In this view, either science or religion may be correct, but not both. 2. Science and religion are separate enterprises. This is clearly expressed by Stephen Gould’s proposal for “nonoverlapping magisteria,” meaning that they cover different domains of knowledge (Gould, 1997). Here we can use whichever system is most appropriate for the situation. Where religion may be most appropriate for existential questions and morality, science may be most appropriate to answer concrete answers about nature. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00027-5 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

373

374

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

3. Science and religion are both complementary and compatible. Science and religion are ultimately answering the same questions, and although they approach in different directions, they support each other. This is exemplified by the popular idea that “science explains how, religion explains why.” Francis Bacon, and Galileo too, used the allegory of two books (one book is for theologians, and the other is for scientists/philosophers); the two books are complimentary and—crucially—are written by the same author. 4. Science and religion should be in dialog. Religion and science are neither in conflict nor entirely compatible, but this does not mean that they need to be kept separate. Where they are different, they each have much to say to each other and offer the other in wisdom. This view holds that the best relationship between science and religion arises from a mutual respect and dialog from which they may learn from each other. Why do we see such different attitudes toward the relation between science and religion? Common to all these different perspectives is the insight that science and religion share fundamental goals for understanding, order, and ultimately a sense of meaning. As we argue here, the nature of the relationship between science and religion is informed by how each addresses these key psychological functions. After, we describe these shared psychological functions of religion and science in more detail, and how these guide the relationship between them.

Science and religion: key shared functions Various programs of research show that both religions and secular scientific institutions can help manage at least some existential concerns, and the evidence for this is particularly strong for the motivation to maintain perceptions of the world as orderly and under control (Laurin & Kay, 2017; Rutjens, van Harreveld, van der Pligt, Kreemers, & Noordewier, 2013; Rutjens, Sutton, & van der Lee, 2018). Religion has been found to address several key existential concerns; these include the needs to manage the awareness of mortality, to feel unique yet socially connected to others, and to maintain the belief that the world is orderly and controllable, among others (Sedikides, 2010). Crucially, however, sometimes science can also provide for such existential motivational needs (Rutjens, van Harreveld, & van der Pligt, 2013). As scientific advances continue to emerge, they can often have the effect of encroaching on religion’s turf via technological and informational progress. In this chapter, we review some of the available research on the common psychological motivational functions of science and religion—focusing on explanatory needs, need for control, and the need for meaning—and how these functions affect their relationship.

Need for explanation One of the most important functions of religion and science is that they each provide explanations for nature and the world we live in. Throughout history, people have used gods to explain changes in the seasons, weather, historical events, and the passing of life and death itself. Science, too, is driven toward explaining the unexplained, from the origins of life to the end of time. This desire for causal explanation is more than an idle passing, but a primary cognitive and motivational drive (Keil, 2006; Weiner, 1985). Unexplained events immediately draw our attention and cause distress until resolved (Hassin, Bargh, & Uleman, 2002). But some explanations are more satisfying than others. When a single cause is able to explain more phenomena, it becomes more powerful (Thagard, 1989). As an example, a factor known to contribute to one case of a specific kind of cancer is less significant than a cause that contributes to all cases of all forms of cancer. Broadly speaking, religion has extraordinary explanatory power. The concept of gods—especially omnipotent creator gods—potentially may be used to explain everything. The more that religion is used as an explanation, the more meaningful it should become. This was explored experimentally in a series of studies looking at the explanatory power of both religion and science (Preston & Epley, 2005). In one study, people were asked to write few or many things that God’s actions could explain. Those asked to list many phenomena subsequently reported that their belief in God was more meaningful and important to them, compared to those that listed only a few. As religious explanations became more comprehensive, they increased in value. The same was true for scientific explanations. People rated a psychology theory as more meaningful and important when asked to think of many phenomena it explained, compared to those listed, just a few phenomena the theory explained. However, when people listed what could explain the psychological theory (i.e., its mechanisms), the theory became less important and meaningful. This is one instance in which religion has a clear advantage over science. In science, it may be possible to find more and more fundamental mechanisms, diminishing the explanatory power as causation is relegated to a more primary source. In religion, there is no more primary cause than God—the alpha and the omega, or prime mover. Indeed, in these studies, when people were asked to explain God’s actions,

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

375

they were not able to do so (Preston & Epley, 2005). In this way God may serve as an ultimate explanation (Preston & Epley, 2005, 2009)—capable of explaining everything, without itself being explained. Like religion, science also aims to explain all phenomena, and so also has the potential to be an ultimate explanation. One day, physicists may be able to produce a true “theory of everything” that summarizes the fundamental laws of physics into a single equation (Hawking, 2006; Laughlin & Pines, 2000). Indeed, while the questions asked by both science and religion might be the same (e.g., where did we come from?), the answers are often different, and sometimes diametrically opposed. This is where the relation between science and religion becomes complicated because, as ultimate explanations, religion and science compete for the same explanatory space, which leads to conflict (Blancke, De Smedt, De Cruz, Boudry, & Braeckman, 2012; McCauley, 2011; Preston & Epley, 2009; Rutjens, Heine, Sutton, & van Harreveld, 2018; Thagard & Findlay, 2010). As a result, the value of either science or religion as an ultimate explanation can also impact the value of the other: actively using religious explanations reduces positive evaluations of science, and vice versa (Preston & Epley, 2009; Preston, Ritter, & Hepler, 2013). More telling is the “God-of-the-Gaps” effect (Preston & Epley, 2009)—when scientific explanations for the origins of life and the universe seem weak (not being able to explain) positive evaluations of God increase. A similar effect was later found for belief in the soul and the so-called explanatory gap of consciousness (Preston et al., 2013). When neuroscience explanations for important experiences of the mind were given (e.g., conscious will and romantic love), they diminished participants’ belief in a soul, but only when the neuroscience mechanisms provided a strong explanation. When neuroscience was framed as a weak account for these experiences, people reported stronger belief in a soul and were less willing to “sell” their soul to an experimenter. Thus it appears that when science fails to provide explanations for these big questions, people turn to religion as an alternative explanation to fill in the gap. This might also explain why religious orthodox individuals especially struggle to accept science and scientific evidence (Rutjens et al., 2018) or notions of moral progress (Rutjens, van Harreveld, van der Pligt, van Elk, & Pyszczynski, 2016). However, this is not to say that there is always an explanatory conflict between science and religion. Their relationship depends on the particular explanations each relies on. These can be inconsistent explanations; for example, the Big Bang is inconsistent with specific creation myths that specify that the Earth is a few 1000 years old. On the other hand, the idea of a singularity proposed at the beginning of the Big Bang is consistent with the idea of a god that created the universe. In many instances people can synthesize scientific and religious explanations for various processes and phenomena. For example, people can combine scientific explanations with magical thinking in order to explain a disease such as AIDS (Legare, Evans, Rosengren, & Harris, 2012) and are able to endorse various natural and supernatural explanations for unusual events simultaneously, such as winning a large sum of money or being caught in extreme weather for a significant amount of time (Woolley, Cornelius, & Lacy, 2011).

Need for control People are not only motivated to explain the world in which they live but to maintain control over outcomes in the world. While explanation can be considered to be purely epistemological, control is a psychological motivation that is considered a basic human need with far-reaching consequences for health and well-being (e.g., Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995; Rutjens & Kay, 2017; Thompson & Spacapan, 1991). If direct personal control is not possible, people turn to external sources of control (Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982) as a means of providing predictability and order. Science and religion can both function as important sources of control and order in the universe. A major motivation of science is to provide a sense of order and control (for reviews, see Rutjens et al., 2013; Rutjens et al., 2018). Indeed, it is not hard to see how science can help provide order and predictability to the world, and how technology helps humans to affirm and extend their control over the natural world, both on a collective level and on an individual level. As Dawkins (2013) explained, science helps humanity to control the world because it works: planes designed on science fly and medicine based on science cures people. Some kinds of science are better than others at providing control, however. For example, theory of evolution is an undirected process that uses randomness in mutations as its primary impetus—a chaos that is not particularly comforting. As a result, some kinds of scientific ideas may be preferred over others when there is a need for control. This is exactly what was found in an early study on framing of evolutionary theory either conferring order or defying order (Rutjens et al., 2013). People who felt a threat to sense of control preferred to shift away from the theory of evolution, in favor of intelligent design—a theory with more religious implications, and also a clearer sense of order than the random processes of evolution. This push toward intelligent design was no longer found, however, when evolution was presented as an orderly and predictable process. In both cases, evolution provided a strong scientific explanation,

376

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

but framing evolution as orderly (and predictable) had an impact on its appeal to individuals who felt a threatened sense of order. A similar finding was reported in research by Rutjens et al. (2013), which examined whether stage theories in science are more appealing than their continuum theory counterparts, presumably because they offer a more clear-cut and predictable temporal order. By positing clear categories and fixed sequences, stage theories afford a more orderly account of various processes and phenomena than equivalent theories positing continuous processes. In the research, short descriptions of stage theories and continuum theories, for example, about grief and moral development, were presented to participants who were assigned to a control-threat, control-affirmation, or neutral condition. Lower perceptions of control led to an increase in the appeal of stage theories. Interestingly, these effects were found even when the sense of order provided had negative implications; for example, a preference for a pessimistic (yet order-providing) stage theory of Alzheimer’s disease. As another example, although being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease is a negative experience, those who get a diagnosis (as opposed to those whom decided they did not want to know) are happier later on because their diagnosis gave them answers (Heine, Dar-Nimrod, Cheung, & Proulx, 2017). Though counterintuitive, positive experiences can be less appealing and negative experiences more satisfying depending on the predictability these confer (Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015; Rutjens et al., 2013; Wilson, Centerbar, Kermer, & Gilbert, 2005). Interestingly, research has similarly found that some, but not all, religious ideas satisfy the need for order and control. Kay et al. (2008) found that a threat to control led to an increase in belief in God, but only when described as a controlling God. Various follow-up studies have resulted in further evidence for the notion that belief in powerful, controlling gods—as opposed to nonintervening gods, or a god that “works in mysterious ways”—helps fulfill people’s need for order and control (e.g., Khenfer, Roux, Tafani, & Laurin, 2017; Landau, Khenfer, Keefer, Swanson, & Kay, 2018; Laurin & Kay, 2017). Thus for science as well as for religion—both of which are multifaceted and complex belief systems or worldviews—how well they satisfy the needs for order and control depends on the specific interpretation of the worldview. Science and religion can both provide external control and in doing so seem to function in relatively similar ways (i.e., there has to be an element of order and predictability to the worldview). But unlike explanation, control is not easily shared by different sources simultaneously. Either science or religion can provide a source of external control, but not both, at least not within the same domain. Research on compensatory control more generally finds that sources of external control function in hydraulic ways, so that bolstering beliefs in one reduced the need to bolster another. Ultimately, control must lie in a single source, and any synthesis between religion and science requires that power be conceded to one or the other.

Need for existential meaning Another key psychological need is to perceive life as meaningful (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006), and so people search for and invest in belief systems and worldviews that satisfy this need by bestowing existential comfort. Meaning is correlated with various indices of health and well-being (e.g., Steger & Frazier, 2005) and is closely related to religiosity (Abeyta & Routledge, 2018; Newton & McIntosh, 2013; Rutjens & van Elk, 2019; Wojtkowiak, Rutjens, & Venbrux, 2010). Religious systems provide their believers with an invaluable sense of purpose, moral meaning, connection to others, and connection to the past and future. Can science create meaning too? Feelings of meaning are often accompanied by a deep sense of awe and reverence, which can be found through both religion and science. Recalling spiritual experiences activated feelings of awe and spiritual humility (Preston & Shin, 2017), and likewise feelings of awe appear to activate a readiness for spiritual experiences (Van Cappellen, & Saroglou, 2012). But awe can be evoked by scientific explanation as well (Valdesolo, Park, & Gottlieb, 2016) and may help facilitate science learning (Valdesolo, Shtulman, & Baron, 2017). Recently, Rutjens and Van Elk (2019) have investigated whether belief in science and knowledge about science are related to perceptions of meaning in life. Meaning in life was measured using various questionnaires and measures, and samples from various populations (North-America, The Netherlands, and India) were tested. The results were consistent across populations; zero-order correlations revealed that the relation between belief in science and meaning in life were either negative or nonexistent. Knowledge of science was not related to meaning in life. In contrast, religiosity was positively correlated with meaning in life in all studies. In addition, it was found that belief in science did not explain any variance in regression analyses predicting perceptions of meaning, whereas religious faith was a significant positive predictor across populations. However, it was also found that for people scoring low on religious belief, placing more importance on science as central to their identities (Bender, Rothmund, Nauroth, & Gollwitzer, 2016) predicted stronger perceptions of meaning. Likewise, recent work has found that, while belief in science was not correlated with meaning,

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

377

people who felt stronger spirituality of science (Preston & Coleman, 2019)—a sense of transcendence and awe applied to science—reported greater meaning-seeking and personal meaning. Again, experiencing awe through science appears to play a key role to feeling meaning. Indeed, some recent work by Johnson et al. (2019) shows that while science can diminish belief in God by competing logical arguments, science can promote religious belief through awe. This suggests that—at least for some—science is related to the motivation to find meaning, and the quest for meaning might be fulfilled via science (Preston, 2011). Critically, these existential functions are distinct from epistemic functions (i.e., search for causal explanation) and control. English nature writer Richard Jefferies remarked: “I do not venture, for a moment, even to attempt to supply a reason to take the place of the exploded plan. . . I look at the sunshine and feel that there is no contracted order: there is divine chaos” (Jefferies, 1887 in Gray, 2011). The quote highlights the importance of distinguishing between different motivations that underlie belief in science and belief in religion but also suggests that meaning can exist either with or without connections to predictability and order. Order, predictability, and control do not guarantee meaning, awe, and significance. At the risk of being overly reductionist, a useful distinction is that some psychological functions of beliefs and worldviews are primarily epistemic and control-oriented (i.e., need to know, to explain, and to predict), while others are more meaning-oriented and existential (i.e., the moral landscape, the purpose of life; Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1964). This is not to say that this distinction is categorical, but rather that mapping the extent to which psychological functions of beliefs and worldviews lean more toward the “how” versus the “why” can be helpful. In addition, it is important to note that different motivations probably do not always converge, and the relation between science and meaning is perhaps more complex than that between science and explanation and control. Put differently, the meaningoriented functions of science are likely less obvious for many—and more contingent on individual differences in religious beliefs and perhaps educational level and academic interest—than the epistemic or control-oriented functions of science. As an example, consider how the laws of nature as described by evolutionary theory may explain the world and render it orderly and to a certain extent predictable or even controllable, but supplanting creationist beliefs (e.g., intelligent design) with it may leave believers vulnerable to a void in existential meaning. Science and religion both provide key existential functions. Both systems of belief can be personally fulfilling, provide meaning, and even a sense of awe. Meaning in science and religion may be connected to the worldviews they provide, including explanations and sources of control. Because meaning is so important, the value we place on these worldviews can make us defensive and hostile to ideas that might threaten those values. But the meaning derived by science and religion do not need to compete in the way epistemic beliefs do. Unlike explanations and control, meaning is not a zero-sum game. Rather, meaning from science and religion may be additive and enhance each other (as in Bacon and Galileo’s Two Books metaphor mentioned earlier in this chapter).

Differences in processes: assumptions and biases Science and religion share common goals for understanding, order, and meaning. But where the two sharply divide is in their underlying processes, both in terms of the causal mechanisms that each relies on, and the cognitive styles related to scientific and religious thinking. These differences shape the forms that religious and scientific ideas take, and the relationship between the two. First, science and religion differ in basic assumptions about the fundamental causal mechanisms that underlie nature and the universe. Science presumes that the universe is governed by natural, ordinary, physical forces, which can be expressed by set laws. Religion, in contrast, assumes powers that are supernatural, extraordinary, and metaphysical, and that may defy understanding and prediction. That is, science relies on a physical stance toward causal reasoning, rather than an intentional stance where actions are caused by the intentions of an agent (Dennett, 1987). People can variably adopt physical or intentional stances to make sense of either objects or agents, respectively. For example, a physical stance may be useful for understanding why a bus stops working, but an intentional stance is more useful for understanding why a bus driver stops working. But humans are quick to infer agency and intention as a default (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1995; Haselton & Nettle, 2006; Van Elk, Rutjens, van der Pligt, & Van Harreveld, 2016), which appears to be a hypersensitive bias evolved to help detect threats from predators and enemies. As such, people may also default to the intentional stance when faced with fear or uncertainty (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014) and anthropomorphize inanimate objects that seem to behave in unexpected ways (Morewedge, 2009). Intuitive biases to detect agency can be coopted by religious thinking through the belief in unseen gods operating behind the scenes. One view on the origin of religious belief is that it is an ultimate anthropomorphization: perceiving an almighty supernatural god as the embodiment of the machinations of the universe (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1995). One difference between science and religion, therefore,

378

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

may be different inclination toward mechanistic causes versus mentalistic causes. Indeed, religious people seem to possess stronger tendency to perceive minds than less religious individuals (Gervais, 2013a). Relatedly, science and religion rely on different ways of “knowing” as a basis for belief. In science, knowledge is based on reason and empirical evidence: hypotheses are generated based on past observation and scrutinized through rigorous testing. But for religion, evidence is not as important as faith—a trust in knowing that transcends observation. To believe something is to believe something, and faith needs no other basis. Value of faith over evidence reflects an emphasis on intuition and feeling in reasoning. Indeed, the preference for intuitive versus analytical reasoning may predict the system people most believe in, with religious people relying on more intuitive thinking (Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012). These differences are reflected in basic language use—in a sample of Christian and atheist Twitter users, atheists were more likely to use words that reflected cognitive processes, such as “because” (Ritter, Preston, & Hernandez, 2014), suggesting more analytical concerns in general. But more telling, the groups also differed in their specific types of causal language: whereas atheists used more tentative and analytical language (it seems, I think), Christians used language that reflected more emotion and intuition (I know, I feel) in their everyday language. Religious thinking and scientific thinking therefore differ in more than their content, but in their cognitive style. Religious thinking can be more intuitive than scientific thinking and can incorporate many different intuitive biases into religious concepts. Science, however, can sometimes be “radically counterintuitive” (e.g., McCauley, 2011. pp. 107 117). It is not easy for human beings to grasp abstract concepts such as the timescale of evolution or the laws of physics (e.g., the second law of thermodynamics and general relativity). A proper understanding of such insights requires years of scientific training, which has led to the idea that science does not come naturally to humans (McCauley, 2011). In contrast, religious concepts are free to coopt intuitive thinking in a way that science cannot. Various cognitive biases can facilitate religious belief (Barrett, 2000; McCauley, 2011; Norenzayan, 2014; Shtulman & Schulz, 2008)—as described by byproduct theories of religion (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Barrett, 2000). Religious mythologies take on many intuitive characteristics, increasing how compelling they feel to a believer. When religion is counterintuitive, it is often just counterintuitive enough to keep interest (Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006) and to make its ideas more memorable and transmittable to other believers. This different reliance on intuitive biases can be seen through the role of essentialism in religious thinking. Essentialism refers to the perception of the objects, people, and other entities in natural world as emerging from invisible and immutable essences (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014). Essentialism biases shape the judgment and perceptions of both abstract and concrete concepts, found in various populations across the world (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). For example, essentialist thinking about gender is associated with preferences for typically male- and femalerelated professions (Meyer, Cimpian, & Leslie, 2015). Essentialist thinking lends itself easily to religious cognition and is inherent in religious concepts of purity and the sacredness (Durkheim, 1912; Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) that are crucial to religious devotion and rituals (Douglas, 1970). Concepts of divinity are often linked with ideas of purity (Preston & Ritter, 2012), and ideas contrary to religious convictions elicit symbolic disgust (Ritter, Preston, Salomon, & Johnson, 2016). But where essentialist reasoning may be synergistic with religious thinking, it can hinder understanding of scientific processes (Evans, 2001) such as genetics (Heine et al., 2017). In a 2004 US survey, for example, more than 50% of respondents thought that inserting catfish DNA into a tomato would lead the tomato to taste like fish (Hallman, Hebden, Cuite, Aquino, & Lang, 2004). Such essentialist thinking can also lead to misunderstandings of evolution, by treating species as more discrete and homogeneous categories than they in reality are (Evans, 2001; Shtulman & Schulz, 2008). Another way that intuitive thinking fits with religious cognition is through teleological thinking—the perception that outcomes are designed toward that end (Kelemen, 1999, 2004). This includes the assumption that there is purpose in how natural phenomena and species operate (e.g., “It rains so that plants and animals have water to drink and grow”; Lombrozo, Kelemen, & Zaitchik, 2007). The teleological stance is related to the intentional stance that perceives mind behind action but is slanted in particular toward seeing design and purpose to match outcomes. It is easy to see how teleology lends itself to religious ideas. If nature is designed, it must have a designer (i.e., God) that is responsible for devising and crafting these specific forms. Indeed, religious people do rely more on teleological beliefs when reasoning about the causes for events that had an impact on themselves and others (Banerjee & Bloom, 2014). But like essentialism, teleological thinking can lead to some important misunderstandings of science. Intelligent design (Dembski, 2004) explicitly makes use of intuitive teleological thinking but cloaks it in scientific language by arguing that specialized outcomes are too unlikely to have emerged by chance, thus appealing to both a teleological and physical stance. However, this teleological reasoning runs counter to evolution by natural selection—an undirected process that creates positive outcomes by random mutations. Yet even professional scientists are susceptible to the appeal of teleological thinking. Keleman, Rottman, and Seston (2013) found that scientists were prone to errors they reasoned about the natural world

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

379

in teleological ways, but only when under time pressure (preventing the more time-consuming analytic reasoning), suggesting an intuitive teleological bias contrary to their explicit (and potentially analytic) beliefs about the machinations of nature. Religion and science rely on different ways of thinking, especially in the use of faith and intuition over observation and analysis. In some ways, religious cognition has a cognitive advantage over science, because it can make use of intuitive biases that science cannot (McCauley, 2011). But the religious beliefs shaped by these intuitive biases can still be analyzed and tested—perhaps even rejected—by scientific thinking. The nature of the relationship between science and religion therefore largely depends on how they deal with this tension. Are the intuitions of religious thinking also able to withstand the scrutiny of scientific analysis? Do the theories of science satisfy our other intuitive biases about the world? If so, science and religion may find a compatibility or at least be able to dialog with each other in a meaningful way, as outlined by Barbour (1997). But when intuitions and analysis become irreconcilable, the conflict between science and religion emerges becomes intractable.

Science and religion in action: morality and mortality concerns As discussed earlier, key motivations toward explanation, control, and meaning can be addressed by both religion and science. But science and religion are shaped by different processes that affect how these functions are fulfilled. In the final section of this chapter, we reflect on the relationship between religion and science through two major issues: morality (concern for right and wrong) and mortality (concern for life after death). Both morality and mortality concerns are central to religious belief systems, as religion provides specific descriptions of what morality is, and what happens after death. Science does address these questions as well, but with less certainty than religious belief, and often with very different answers. Questions of morality and mortality also reflect concerns related to control, explanation, and meaning. First, morality and mortality are both fundamentally concerned with a fear of chaos and terror and so can elicit the need to establish control over that chaos. Morality and mortality also entail questions about causality: what is the source of moral goodness; what happens when we die? And of course, both morality and mortality are deeply intertwined with existential meaning, and indeed feelings of meaning or meaninglessness can hinge on our answers to these questions.

Morality Moral beliefs provide a guide about how to behave and expect others to behave in a society, and moral concerns are at the core of many religious constructs (Preston, Salomon, & Ritter, 2014), theorized to be one of the primary functions of religion, and essential in its social and cultural evolution (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008; see other chapters in this volume). Moral beliefs also provide important sources of explanation, control, and meaning. In religious systems, morality is literally handed down from the gods, and religion provides a blueprint for a person to lead a good and righteous life. As moral authorities, gods can enact supernatural rewards and punishment, the consequences for our good and bad actions (Johnson & Bering, 2006). This alleviates some of the problems of monitoring moral behaviors in a larger society, because gods provide for second-order monitoring and punishment (Johnson & Kru¨ger, 2004). The chaos of an unpoliced society is tempered by ideas of supernatural policing and control. Even if undetected by our fellow mortals on the earthly plane, our actions will be seen and dealt with by higher beings in the hereafter. Morality concepts are integral to religious belief systems, so much so that morality is sometimes treated as synonymous with religion and the divine. A moral life is often considered a holy life, and immorality is considered sinful and demonic. And vice versa, compared to believers, nonbelievers are seen as immoral, untrustworthy, lacking a moral compass (Gervais, 2013b; Simpson & Rios, 2017). Interestingly, even atheists hold these attitudes toward fellow atheists, showing it is linked to nonbelief itself, and not out-group prejudice more generally (Gervais, 2014). Though moral concerns have always been a central issue in religion, morality was not the primary question tackled by science, which is more closely tied with physical systems. Indeed, whether science ought to be involved in morality at all is a philosophical and epistemological question that science has wrestled with (e.g., Harris, 2010; Shermer, 2015; also see Baumard & Boyer, 2013; De Waal, 2013). Objectivity is a key value of science, and the systematic examination of evidence is intended as a dispassionate investigation of natural laws and principles (Merton, 1973). But the traditional mandate for science to be value-neutral may not reflect the prime directive of science to explain. Some argue it is not possible to achieve an impartial morality any more than a value-neutral science (Houts & Krasner, 1983). If an important aim of science is to explain, then that includes an understanding of morality and moral judgment. Science aims to be objective in its pursuit of truth, and by doing so can try to discover valid and true bases of morality

380

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

(Haan, 1982). Science can also be goal-oriented in addressing practical questions, for example, how to lead a good life, and promoting moral actions such as nudging people to give to charity (Be´nabou & Tirole, 2006). Therefore science may also become interested in morality, just as religion is (Harris, 2010; McKay & Whitehouse, 2015). However, the conclusions drawn from scientific views on morality can directly conflict with religion views. This is not necessarily included in the specific dictums of behavior (e.g., treat others as you would have them treat you), but in the reasons for morality. The very study of the causes of morality from any scientific model may threaten religious authority on morality. In religious belief, gods are not merely the final judge of morality, but the source of morality morality is handed down from the gods, which speaks to the need for control. In science, morality comes from more mundane sources unconnected to the supernatural, such as intuitions pertaining to fairness and feelings of empathy in predicting moral treatment of others (De Waal, 2013; Norenzayan, 2014). No god is required for morality—an atheist, a heathen, or even nonhumans might behave morally under the direction of empathy and a handful of other moral intuitions. Scientific models of morality are also more willing to accommodate ideas of relativism in morality—that morality can be learned and flexible and is shaped by culture (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; McKay & Whitehouse, 2015). In contrast, religion is associated with moral absolutes (Yilmaz & Bahcekapili, 2015). So, where science can accommodate dynamic views of moral change and progress, these can be difficult to reconcile with the notion of an absolute supernatural authority. Ideas of morality diverge sharply between religion and science, but we can see how they are shaped by common goals for explanation, control, and meaning. Moral systems offer an important sense of control and order in the world—being able to predict and control actions of others good and bad may be the most important concern people face. The need for causal explanation shapes how morality is viewed, as absolute or relative, as originating from divine authority or from psychological processes. Of course, moral beliefs also speak to deeper existential concerns, providing a moral lattice to ascribe meaning. For all these reasons, morality can be a heated issue with potential to arouse conflict between science and religion as separate domains of knowledge. Moreover, there is an additional moral value we ascribe to these systems as cherished worldviews that can motivate us to defend them passionately, rather than allow for dialog or respectful disagreement: it is hard for people to be objective about moral beliefs, and seemingly impossible for them to be neutral. But where there is room for compatibility between science and religion on morality may be the recognition that there are some fundamental moral intuitions that are universally revered, such as respect for life and freedom from harm.

Mortality A major component of all religions is the belief in an afterlife that we each have a soul (or similar concept) that lives on beyond the lifespan of our physical bodies. Belief in the soul may be guided by an intuitive dualism (Bloom, 2007) that we intuitively understand minds as separate from bodies. Minds are in a sense, magical (Wegner, 2008)—they seem to operate outside physical forces—and so we understand them in terms of metaphysical properties (as a soul), rather than natural properties. Intuitive dualism combined with a naı¨ve realism may combine to give us a naı¨ve immortality—that is, we do not truly understand that we will die. It is difficult to comprehend the nothingness of death—that mind just goes black upon death—after all, the mind is all we have ever experienced (Preston, Gray, & Wegner, 2006). If the mind does not go black, then what does it do and where does it go? This creates an explanatory need to understand what happens to our minds when our bodies die (Bering, 2006). One way to do this is through religious belief, in particular the concept of a soul. But, if the mind is explained in other ways (i.e., through physical mechanisms of the brain), this seems to reduce the need to believe in a soul (Preston et al., 2013), despite its possibilities for eternal life. Is the belief in afterlife merely an explanatory issue then? No, not completely. The simplest explanation is that we just die, our bodies rot and our personal consciousness disappears. To most human beings, however, the absolute nothingness of death is both terrifying and unacceptable, and so they seek other more comforting explanations. They are motivated to believe that mortality is not final, that (as Bob Dylan professed) death is not the end. The motivation to obtain immortality—literal or symbolic—is at the core of terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997), which is discussed in depth in other chapters in this volume. Terror management theory was originally conceptualized to explain self-esteem striving and other cultural activity as a form of reactance against the ultimate terror of one’s own mortality. Death and mortality arouse deep psychological discomfort and so people are motivated to deny this death through either literal or symbolic immortality. The question of immortality has been primarily the territory of religious and spiritual belief systems (Vail et al., 2010; see also Wojtkowiak & Rutjens, 2011). Religious beliefs assuage the terror of mortality by offering a comforting

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

381

alternative: Although one’s body may die, one’s consciousness and soul can enjoy immortality in an afterlife. But religion also provides important symbolic immortality as well: though one may die as an individual, one’s cherished belief systems can live on through one’s descendants and culture. Thus mortality is strongly linked to meaning—it is the understanding (and fear) of the finality of death that prompts people to establish a legacy, contribute to culture, and find value in their own brief life while they are still alive. Some empirical research has looked at the motivation to obtain immortality through science, utilizing terror management theory as a framework. For example, Farias, Newheiser, Kahane, and de Toledo (2013) found that a manipulation of mortality salience increased faith in science. In their study, participants who were instructed to contemplate their mortality subsequently scored higher on a questionnaire that was designed to measure faith in science and the superiority of the scientific method. Other evidence comes from work on the psychological functions of belief in progress (Rutjens, van der Pligt, & Harreveld, 2009). Here, it was found that a mortality reminder led participants to more strongly believe in progress, and that belief in progress provided a psychological buffer against mortality concerns. This research shows that belief in progress can provide people with a sense of symbolic immortality. However, follow-up research qualified this finding by disentangling beliefs in moral social progress and beliefs in scientific technological progress (Rutjens et al., 2016). Here, it was found that belief in moral social but not scientific technological progress functions as an existential buffer against mortality concerns, and only among participants low in religious belief. Thus solely believing in scientific and technological advance seems to be insufficient to provide in the need for immortality, either literal or symbolic. We can see the importance of symbolic immortality through the protection of cherished worldviews—and both religion and science serve as worldviews. These findings converge with research by Tracy, Hart, and Martens (2011). These researchers looked at preference for Darwin’s theory of evolution versus an intelligent design perspective (also see Rutjens, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2010) and found evidence for an increased acceptance of intelligent design—along with a decreased acceptance of evolutionary theory—as a result of a mortality salience manipulation. Intelligent design may provide existential comfort because it is more predictable than evolution by natural selection, and also because it is consistent with religious beliefs about the origins of life. But, natural science students who have already committed to science as their worldview showed the opposite pattern of results. Thus some initial support for the notion that science can function as an alternative to religion as a meaning-provider was obtained. More specifically, for natural science students, a scientific view on life can be a source of meaning and it seems likely that science was a relatively important value central to those students’ identities. However, other recent work has looked specifically at recent technologies aimed at concretely providing literal immortality, that is, so-called indefinite life extension (ILE) technologies (Lifshin, Greenberg, Soenke, Darrell, & Pyszczynski, 2017; Vail, Soenke, Waggoner, & Mavropoulou, 2019; also see DeGrey & Rae, 2007). This work showed that mortality concerns increased support for such technologies and quelled mortality concerns, but again only among participants low in religiosity. This research further provides evidence that promises of ILE can replace some psychological functions of beliefs in an afterlife. It is possible that the aforementioned work by Rutjens et al. (2016), which found that belief in scientific technological progress does not provide a solution to mortality concerns, might have tapped into a general belief that does not speak to (literal) immortality directly enough. In contrast, the ILE research findings indicate that advances in science and technology might indeed help combat existential concerns and provide in the need for immortality, but likely only when these advances provide direct solutions to the problem of mortality (i.e., through concrete technologies that promise literal immortality). In sum, recent research on the existential functions of ILE provides evidence that science, like religion, may provide ways to muster hope for literal immortality through new technologies such as genetic engineering, cybernetics, or even cryonics. Regardless of whether people really want immortality (what would they do with eternal life? And would immortality ultimately be existentially gratifying? See, e.g., Gray, 2011), the quest for immortality is as long as the history of death itself. New technologies and advances in science may from now on compete with religion as a means to defeat death and obtain literal rather than mere symbolic immortality. The matter of our own death is a deep existential issue that speaks to motivations for control, explanation, and finding meaning in our lives. The mystery of death presents an essential epistemological quandary: why do we die, and more importantly, what happens when we die? The inevitability of death puts us face to face with an absolute loss of control and freedom—the control over our own existence—that we can reestablish through some kind of immortality, or an external sense of order in the universe. And the finality of death prompts us to seek meaning in life, to find a purpose and value for the brief time we are here. Religious beliefs address all these issues through ideas of the soul and the afterlife, and a set of prescribed moral behaviors to achieve that immortality. As a natural, physical issue, problems of death can be addressed by science as well. In the aptly titled The immortalization commission: Science and the

382

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

strange quest to cheat death, it is argued that scientific quest to conquer death was already set in motion in Victorian times (Gray, 2011). Given the close relation between existential needs and immortality motivations, recent developments in science and technology might help one to combat existential concerns by promising a direct solution to the problem of mortality.

Conclusion We started this chapter with a brief introduction to the history and complexities of the relation between science and religion. Oftentimes, there seems to be an incompatibility between the scientific and the religious worldviews (Preston & Epley, 2009), especially when viewed as opposing forces. This brings us to another important question: is there room for religion in science, and vice versa? In a culture that promotes conflict between science and religion, who wins? In some ways, religion has a competitive edge (also see Laurin & Kay, 2017) over scientific beliefs as it employs intuitive thinking styles and directly addresses concerns with absolutism and certainty. But even when science is uncertain, it offers objectivity and a means of approaching truth through systematic analysis (Firestein, 2016). So neither system is likely to win but will likely continue to be employed in different ways that will surely fluctuate with time: the mysteries of today are the scientific breakthroughs of tomorrow. Like others, we argue that religion and science do not necessarily conflict, but can be treated as separate, compatible, or used to inform each other in nonoverlapping but complementary ways. As we have described, science and religion differ in underlying assumptions and processes that shape religious and scientific ideas, and in how they inform important topics like morality and mortality. At the same time, science and religion share key psychological functions for explanation, control, and meaning. The relationship between the two depends on how these belief systems fulfill their key psychological functions for explanation, control, and meaning. When they conflict, science and religion have contradictory explanations, sources of control, or existential conclusions. When they are compatible, these functions work with each other. Either way, these core psychological functions remain central to both science and religion and ultimately provide an important contribution in shaping the nature of their relationship.

References Abeyta, A. A., & Routledge, C. (2018). The need for meaning and religiosity: An individual differences approach to assessing existential needs and the relation with religious commitment, beliefs, and experiences. Personality and Individual Differences, 123, 6 13. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713 730. Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2014). Why did this happen to me? Religious believers’ and non-believers’ teleological reasoning about life events. Cognition, 133(1), 277 303. Barbour, I. G. (1997). Religion and science: Historical and contemporary issues. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in cognitive sciences, 4(1), 29 34. Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2013). Explaining moral religions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 172 180. Be´nabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. American Economic Review, 96, 1652 1678. Bender, J., Rothmund, T., Nauroth, P., & Gollwitzer, M. (2016). How moral threat shapes laypersons’ engagement with science. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 1723 1735. Blancke, S., De Smedt, J., De Cruz, H., Boudry, M., & Braeckman, J. (2012). The implications of the cognitive sciences for the relation between religion and science education: The case of evolutionary theory. Science & Education, 21, 1167 1184. Bloom, P. (2007). Religion is natural. Developmental Science, 10(1), 147 151. Cimpian, A., & Salomon, E. (2014). The inherence heuristic: An intuitive means of making sense of the world, and a potential precursor to psychological essentialism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 461 480. Crumbaugh, J. C., & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 20, 200 207. Dawkins, R. [Nuaim Sarh]. (2013, February 15). Richard Dawkins Science works bitches! [Video File]. Retrieved from ,https://www.youtube. com/watch?v 5 0OtFSDKrq88.. De Grey, A., & Rae, M. (2007). Ending aging: The rejuvenation breakthroughs that could reverse human aging in our lifetime. Macmillan. De Waal, F. (2013). The bonobo and the atheist: In search of humanism among the primates. New York: W.W. Norton. Dembski, W. A. (2004). The design revolution. England: Intervarsity Press. Dennett, D. C. (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Douglas, M. (1970). Natural symbols; explorations in cosmology. New York: Pantheon Books. Durkheim E. (1912). Les formes e´le´mentaires de la vie religieuse [The elementary forms of religious life], Alcan, Paris, France.

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

383

Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217 266. Farias, M., Newheiser, A. K., Kahane, G., & de Toledo, Z. (2013). Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 1210 1213. Firestein, S. (2016). Failure. Why science is so successful. UK: Oxford University Press. Haan, N. (1982). Can research on morality be “scientific”? American Psychologist, 37, 1096. Houts, A. C., & Krasner, L. (1983). Values in science: Comment on Haan. American Psychologist, 38, 1253 1254. Gervais, W. M. (2013a). Perceiving minds and gods: How mind perception enables, constrains, and is triggered by belief in gods. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 380 394. Gervais, W. M. (2013b). In godlessness we distrust: Using social psychology to solve the puzzle of anti-atheist prejudice. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 366 377. Gervais, W. M. (2014). Everything is permitted? People intuitively judge immorality as representative of atheists. PLoS One, 9, e92302. Gould, S. J. (1997). Nonoverlapping magisteria. Natural History, 106, 16 22. Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029 1046. Gray, J. (2011). The immortalization commission: Science and the strange quest to cheat death. Macmillan. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York, NY: Springer. Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 29, pp. 61 139). Academic Press. Guthrie, S. E., & Guthrie, S. (1995). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford: University Press on Demand. Hallman W.K., Hebden W.C., Cuite C.L., Aquino H.L. and Lang J.T., (2004). Americans and GM food: Knowledge, opinion and interest in 2004 (No. 1327-2016-103629). Harris, S. (2010). The moral landscape: How science can determine human values. New York: Free Press. Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D. (2006). The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 47 66. Hassin, R., Bargh, J. A., & Uleman, J. S. (2002). Spontaneous causal inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 515 522. Hawking, S. (2006). The theory of everything. Jaico Publishing House. Heckhausen, J., & Schulz, R. (1995). A life-span theory of control. Psychological Review, 102, 284 304. Heine, S. J., Dar-Nimrod, I., Cheung, B. Y., & Proulx, T. (2017). Essentially biased: Why people are fatalistic about genes. In J. Olson (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 55, pp. 137 192). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61 83. Johnson, D., & Bering, J. (2006). Hand of God, mind of man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary Psychology, 4, 147470490600400119. Johnson, D., & Kru¨ger, O. (2004). The good of wrath: Supernatural punishment and the evolution of cooperation. Political Theology, 5(2), 159 176. Johnson, K. A., Moon, J. W., Okun, M. A., Scott, M. J., O’Rourke, H. P., Hook, J. N., & Cohen, A. B. (2019). Science, God, and the cosmos: Science both erodes (via logic) and promotes (via awe) belief in God. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 103826. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of personality and social psychology, 95(1), 18. Keil, F. C. (2006). Explanation and understanding. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 227 254. Kelemen, D. (1999). Why are rocks pointy? Children’s preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1440 1452. Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15, 295 301. Keleman, D., Rottman, J., & Seston, R. (2013). Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies: Purpose-based reasoning as a cognitive default. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 1074 1083. Khenfer, J., Roux, E., Tafani, E., & Laurin, K. (2017). When God’s (not) needed: Spotlight on how belief in divine control influences goal commitment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 117 123. Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 694. Landau, M. J., Khenfer, J., Keefer, L. A., Swanson, T. J., & Kay, A. C. (2018). When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 71 82. Laughlin, R. B., & Pines, D. (2000). The theory of everything. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97, 28 31. Laurin, K., & Kay, A. C. (2017). The motivational underpinnings of belief in God, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 56, pp. 201 257). Academic Press. Legare, C. H., Evans, E. M., Rosengren, K. S., & Harris, P. L. (2012). The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations across cultures and development. Child Development, 83(3), 779 793. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Soenke, M., Darrell, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2017). Mortality salience, religiosity, and indefinite life extension: Evidence of a reciprocal relationship between afterlife beliefs and support for forestalling death. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1 13.

384

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Lombrozo, T., Kelemen, D., & Zaitchik, D. (2007). Inferring design: Evidence of a preference for teleological explanations in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease. Psychological Science, 18, 999 1006. McCauley, R. N. (2011). Why religion is natural and science is not. Oxford University Press. McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2015). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 447. Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Meyer, M., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2015). Women are underrepresented in fields where success is believed to require brilliance. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 235. Morewedge, C. K. (2009). Negativity bias in attribution of external agency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 535. Newton, T., & McIntosh, D. N. (2013). Unique contributions of religion to meaning. The experience of meaning in life (pp. 257 269). Dordrecht: Springer. Norenzayan, A. (2014). Does religion make people moral? Behaviour, 151, 365 384. Norenzayan, A., Atran, S., Faulkner, J., & Schaller, M. (2006). Memory and mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives. Cognitive Science, 30, 531 553. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322, 58 62. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1126/science.1158757. Preston, J. L. (2011). Religion is the opiate of the masses (but science is the methadone). Religion, Brain, & Behavior, 1, 231 233. Preston J.L. and Coleman T., (2019). Spirituality of science: Evidence for a construct (unpublished manuscript in preparation). UK: University of Warwick. Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2005). Explanations versus applications: The explanatory power of valuable beliefs. Psychological Science, 16, 826 832. Preston, J., & Epley, N. (2009). Science and God: An automatic opposition between ultimate explanations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 238 241. Preston, J., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2006). The Godfather of soul. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 482 483. Preston, J. L., & Ritter, R. S. (2012). Cleanliness and godliness: Mutual association between two forms of personal purity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 1365 1368. Preston, J. L., Ritter, R. S., & Hepler, J. (2013). Neuroscience and the soul: Competing explanations for the human experience. Cognition, 127, 31 37. Preston, J. L., Salomon, E., & Ritter, R. S. (2014). Religious prosociality: Personal, cognitive, and social factors. In V. Saroglou (Ed.), Religion, personality, and social behavior (pp. 149 169). New York: Psychology Press. Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017). Spirituality induces awe through the small self in religious and non-religious individuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 212 221. Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., & Hernandez, J. I. (2014). Happy tweets: Christians are happier, more socially connected, and less analytical than atheists on Twitter. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 243 249. Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., Salomon, E. S., & Johnson, D. R. (2016). Imagine no religion: Heretical disgust, anger, and the symbolic purity of mind. Cognition and Emotion, 30, 778 796. Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 5 37. Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 574. Rutjens, B. T., Heine, S. J., Sutton, R. M., & van Harreveld, F. (2018). Attitudes towards science. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 57, 125 165. Rutjens, B. T., & Kay, A. C. (2017). Compensatory control theory and the psychological importance of perceiving order. In M. Bukowski, I. Fritsche, A. Guinote, & M. Kofta (Eds.), Current issues in social psychology Coping with lack of control in a social world ( (pp. 83 97). New York: Routledge. Rutjens, B. T., Sutton, R. M., & van der Lee, R. (2018). Not all skepticism is equal: Exploring the ideological antecedents of science acceptance and rejection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 384 405. Rutjens, B. T., & van Elk, M. (2019). Can science provide meaning? Belief system predictors of meaning in life tested across different populations (manuscript in preparation). Rutjens, B. T., van Harreveld, F., & van der Pligt, J. (2013). Step by step: Finding compensatory order in science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 250 255. Rutjens, B. T., van Harreveld, F., van der Pligt, J., van Elk, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2016). A march to a better world? Religiosity and the existential function of belief in social-moral progress. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 26(1), 1 18. Rutjens, B. T., van Harreveld, F., van der Pligt, J., Kreemers, L. M., & Noordewier, M. K. (2013). Steps, stages, and structure: Finding compensatory order in scientific theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 313 318. Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2009). Things will get better: The anxiety-buffering qualities of progressive hope. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(5), 535 543. Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2010). Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1078 1080. Sedikides, C. (2010). Why does religiosity persist? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 3 6.

Science and religion: a rocky relationship shaped by shared psychological functions Chapter | 26

385

Shenhav, A., Rand, D. G., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 423. Shermer, M. (2015). The moral arc. New York: Henry Holt. Shtulman, A., & Schulz, L. (2008). The relation between essentialist beliefs and evolutionary reasoning. Cognitive Science, 32, 1049 1062. Simpson, A., & Rios, K. (2017). The moral contents of anti-atheist prejudice (and why atheists should care about it). European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 501 508. Steger, M. F., & Frazier, P. (2005). Meaning in life: One link in the chain from religiousness to well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 574. Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53, 80. Thagard, P. (1989). Explanatory coherence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 435 467. Thagard, P., & Findlay, S. (2010). Getting to Darwin: Obstacles to accepting evolution by natural selection. Science & Education, 19(6 8), 625 636. Thompson, S. C., & Spacapan, S. (1991). Perceptions of control in vulnerable populations. Journal of Social Issues, 47, 1 21. Tracy, J. L., Hart, J., & Martens, J. P. (2011). Death and science: The existential underpinnings of belief in intelligent design and discomfort with evolution. PLoS One, 6, e17349. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94. Vail, K. E., III, Soenke, M., Waggoner, B., & Mavropoulou, I. (2019). Natural, but not supernatural, literal immortality affirmation attenuates mortality salience effects on worldview defense in atheists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0146167219855051. Valdesolo, P., & Graham, J. (2014). Awe, uncertainty, and agency detection. Psychological Science, 25, 170 178. Valdesolo, P., Park, J., & Gottlieb, S. (2016). Awe and scientific explanation. Emotion, 16, 937 940. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ emo0000213. Valdesolo, P., Shtulman, A., & Baron, A. S. (2017). Science is awe-some: The emotional antecedents of science learning. Emotion Review, 9, 215 221. Van Cappellen, P., & Saroglou, V. (2012). Awe activates religious and spiritual feelings and behavioral intentions. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4, 223 236. Van Elk, M., Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & Van Harreveld, F. (2016). Priming of supernatural agent concepts and agency detection. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6(1), 4 33. Wegner, D. M. (2008). Self is magic. In J. Baer, J. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Are we free? Psychology and free will (pp. 226 247). New York: Oxford University Press. Weiner, B. (1985). Spontaneous causal thinking. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 74 84. Wilson, T. D., Centerbar, D. B., Kermer, D. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). The pleasures of uncertainty: Prolonging positive moods in ways people do not anticipate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 5. Wojtkowiak, J., & Rutjens, B. T. (2011). The postself and terror management theory: Reflecting on after death identity buffers existential threat. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 21, 137 144. Wojtkowiak, J., Rutjens, B. T., & Venbrux, E. (2010). Meaning making and death: A Dutch survey study. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 32, 363 373. Woolley, J. D., Cornelius, C. A., & Lacy, W. (2011). Developmental changes in the use of supernatural explanations for unusual events. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 11(3 4), 311 337. Yilmaz, O., & Bahcekapili, H. G. (2015). Without God, everything is permitted? The reciprocal influence of religious and meta-ethical beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 95 100.

Chapter 27

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Cathy R. Cox, Robert B. Arrowood and Julie A. Swets Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, United States

Although there are biblical examples of Jesus’ creaturely nature [e.g., He was born (Luke 2:7), He was hungry and thirsty (John 19:28; Matthew 4:2), He became physically weak (Luke 23:26; Matthew 4:11), and died (Luke 23:46)], there is still much controversy as to whether the son of God took human form. For instance, Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ was boycotted by several fundamentalist religious groups given its portrayed conflict between spirituality (i.e., having Jesus stay on the cross to become a divine Messiah) and humanity (i.e., for Christ to live as a man where He could fall in love, marry, have children, and die of old age). Feelings of ambivalence about the incarnation are not specific to Jesus as individuals prefer to see God as being more than human (e.g., infinite, limitless, pervasive; Barrett & Keil, 1996), or that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and gave birth (i.e., believed by 73% of Americans; Masci, 2013). Even today, many religions follow strict rules to avoid spiritual pollution associated with the creatureliness of the body (e.g., Judaism’s niddah where women are considered “impure” and “unclean” during menstruation; Guterman, Mehta, & Gibbs, 2007). Why do we engage in activities, either spiritual and/or secular, to minimize the connection that we share with other animals (e.g., body products, sex, and pregnancy)? From the perspective of terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), the human body is problematic as it serves as a reminder of our creaturely nature and vulnerability to death (see e.g., Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000). By adhering to cultural belief systems, such as religion, individuals are able to elevate themselves to a higher plane of existence beyond their physical form. Research has found, for example, that reminding people of their similarities with animals increases the accessibility of death-related thoughts (Cox, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, & Weise, 2007), and that individuals prefer to see themselves as distinct from other species when mortality is made salient (Goldenberg et al., 2001). Similar effects have been also found among Christians when thinking about a humanistic Christ (Arrowood, & Cox, in press; Arrowood, Cox, Weinstock, & Hoffman, 2018). The purpose of the present chapter is to examine the associative link between death concerns, spirituality, and human corporeality. This will be accomplished by providing a general overview of TMT and research that has examined people’s negativity toward the creatureliness of the body. Next, we will consider how the existential motivation to see humans as distinct from other species is applicable to religious and spiritual beliefs, with particular emphasis on an incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine. The chapter will then end with a discussion on the objectification and dehumanization of women, as the discomfort that people experience specifically about the female body (e.g., menstruation, childbirth) often shapes religious efforts to maintain a sense of spiritual purity (e.g., isolation, ritualistic behavior).

Terror management and human corporeality I am not an animal! I am a human being! I . . . am . . . a . . . man! John Merrick, The Elephant Man (1980).

Following a range of theorists (e.g., Becker, 1973; Rank, 1952), TMT posits that the awareness of death plays a central role in human motivation and influences a diverse array of personal behaviors. Specifically, Greenberg et al. (1986) The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00028-7 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

387

388

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

argued that people assuage the potential for anxiety inherent in the realization that death is inevitable and can occur at any time for reasons that cannot be anticipated or controlled, by maintaining faith in a cultural worldview and deriving self-esteem from living up to the standards of that worldview. According to TMT, cultural worldviews are humanly constructed beliefs about the nature of reality that imbue individuals with a sense that they are persons of value in a world of meaning. In support, a substantial body of research has shown that people respond to reminders of death by clinging to their worldviews and react more favorably to those who uphold their cultural beliefs and more negatively to those who violate them (see e.g., Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010 for a review). These effects appear to be unique to mortality salience (MS) in that thoughts of failure, embarrassment, physical pain, uncertainty, social exclusion, paralysis, or meaninglessness do not elicit the same defensive responses as reminders of one’s death (see e.g., Cox, Darrell, & Arrowood, 2019 for a methodological review). Although the terror management solution to managing mortality awareness is through symbolic means (i.e., belief validation and self-esteem maintenance), the physical body presents a problem as it serves as a reminder of our animal limitations (e.g., eventual death and decay; Goldenberg, Pyszczynski et al., 2000). This existential dilemma is not unique to TMT as philosophers and theorists have long debated the relation between the mind and the body. For example, Plato (1952) and Descartes (1973) took a dualist approach when suggesting that the soul (i.e., mind) existed prior to and apart from individuals’ physical form. It is the mind, according to Plato, that survives the death of the body to achieve immortality. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Freud (1962) believed that similar to other animals, humans acquired basic needs (e.g., aggression, sex) in order to survive and reproduce (see e.g., Darwin, 1859). A psychic conflict arises when people try to pursue these unconscious desires (e.g., Oedipal or Electra complex—i.e., children’s feelings of desire for an opposite sex parent) within the confines of society. As an extension of Freud, existential thinkers, such as Becker (1973, 1975), Brown (1959), and Rank (1998), proposed that cultural efforts designed to manage the animal needs of humans were not for socialization purposes (i.e., Freud), but rather, an effort to deny human vulnerabilities associated with the awareness of mortality. In Becker’s (1973) words, “. . . man is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish . . . His body is a material fleshy casing in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die” (p. 26). Building on Becker (1973), the central argument of this chapter, along with TMT research on the creatureliness of the body, is that the need for humans to see themselves as distinct from other species stems (in part) from existentially related mortality concerns. In one of the first studies to examine this idea, researchers had participants write about their death (vs a control topic) followed by completing a measure of disgust sensitivity (Goldenberg et al., 2001). Goldenberg et al. found that prompting individuals to think about their mortality led to a higher disgust response toward body products (i.e., vomit, unflushed bowel movements) and animals (i.e., cockroaches, maggots). These effects only emerged in response to a delay—that is, when reminders of death were outside of focal attention but on the fringes of consciousness (see e.g., Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). This indicates that heightened disgust sensitivity serves as a symbolic defense against mortality awareness rather than a rational threat response. In a different study, Goldenberg et al. primed participants with MS, after which they were asked to evaluate an essay describing the biological similarities between humans and animals (e.g., “the boundary between humans and animals is not as great as most people think . . . what appears to be the result of complex thought and free will is really just the result of our biological programming”) or one that emphasized the uniqueness of humans (e.g., “human beings are truly unique . . . [we are] complex individuals with a will of our own, capable of making choices, and creating our own destinies”). The results showed that reminders of death led participants to prefer an essay that described humans as distinct from other animals over that which portrayed their similarities. Given that individuals primed with MS exhibited a greater preference for the humanistic essay when compared to their control counterparts, this suggests that people are likely to defend against existential anxieties through the symbolic aspects of the human condition. This is in addition to separating themselves from that which is creaturely. To the extent that reminders of death lead people to see themselves as distinct from other animals, then priming thoughts surrounding the creatureliness of the body should increase mortality-related concerns. To test this idea, Cox et al. (2007) utilized a word-stem completion task (e.g., DE _ _ ) to measure whether participants were thinking about death (e.g., “dead”) or not (e.g., “dear”). In the first study, individuals were asked to read one of two essays that primed human/animal similarities or differences (Goldenberg et al., 2001). This was followed by viewing disgust eliciting pictures (e.g., an unflushed toilet) or neutral images (e.g., a chair). Regardless of essay condition, participants experienced heightened death-thought accessibility (DTA) after viewing the disgusting versus neutral pictures. Using a milder disgust elicitor (i.e., items taken from the Disgust Sensitivity Questionnaire; Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994), a second study found that activating thoughts of human creatureliness resulted in greater mortality awareness as compared to a

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

389

control (i.e., human uniqueness). These results are important as they suggest subtle reminders of the physicality of the body (e.g., a cut finger, using a public restroom, hearing someone clear a throat full of mucus) has the potential to make thoughts of death salient. Heightened MS, in turn, can affect individuals’ attitudes and behavior, with over 30 years of research demonstrating increased negativity (e.g., prejudice, aggression, and stereotyping) toward others (see e.g., Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015 for a review). In many cases, reminders of human corporeality are escapable; for instance, when confronted with blood, excrement, or the like, one can walk away or clean it up. In contrast, sexual intercourse is an anomalous physical act—although it is highly visceral, and potentially associated with the awareness of death, the act itself also leads to pleasure, intimacy, and the creation of new life (Birnbaum, Hirschberger, & Goldenberg, 2011; Goldenberg, Cox, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2002; Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, McCoy, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). From a TMT perspective, people, through their cultural beliefs, elevate the corporeal, animalistic act of sex to a position of symbolism and meaning. For example, through religion, sex is sanctified as an act of holiness (e.g., a source of shared pleasure and intimacy between a husband and wife; an act of procreation), which is often regulated across different faiths (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism; Arousell & Carlbom, 2016). Sex can also transcend its animal nature by being transformed into an expression of love or a profound emotional bond between individuals (Goldenberg et al., 2002; Goldenberg et al., 1999). Or, finally, specific societal regulations and expectations can make intercourse a more direct mechanism for obtaining self-esteem, thus acting as a distal defense against mortality awareness (Birnbaum et al., 2011; Goldenberg, McCoy, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000). In an initial series of studies, Goldenberg et al. (1999) were interested in the associative link between the physical aspects of sex, reminders of death, and an anxiety response that is characteristic of people high in neuroticism. The researchers hypothesized that given the ineffectiveness of neurotic individuals’ cultural shield against mortality awareness (i.e., cultural worldviews, self-esteem), they should report increased aversiveness toward the physicality of the body when thoughts of death are made salient. A first study demonstrated that high (as opposed to low) neurotic participants responded with less interest in the physical (e.g., “tasting sweat,” “having an orgasm”), but not romantic (e.g., “emotional connection,” “expressing love”), aspects of sex following a MS manipulation. In a second experiment, Goldenberg et al. found that neurotic persons experienced a heightened accessibility of death-related thoughts after answering items about physical sex but not love. Not only is sex considered aversive for those who score high on neuroticism, but the physicality of the act has the potential to increase the awareness of death. In an attempt to reduce this effect, researchers conducted a final study wherein they had participants write about being in love versus eating a good meal (a pleasurable act not related to sex). Replicating the results of the previous study, neurotic individuals experienced a heightened accessibility of death-related thoughts after thinking about the physical aspects of sex combined with the meal (i.e., control) condition. The opposite pattern of results emerged when thinking about love in that persons high in neuroticism reported reduced DTA following a physical sex prime. This suggests that chronically ineffective terror management systems can be momentarily improved by elevating the act of sex from an instinctual biological necessity to a meaningful interpersonal connection. One question is whether the aforementioned results can be generalized to individuals regardless of whether they are neurotic or not. To answer this, Goldenberg et al. (2002) sought to weaken the effectiveness of participants’ cultural worldviews by randomly assigning them to read one of two essays highlighting either creatureliness or cultural distinctiveness between humans and animals (see e.g., Goldenberg et al., 1999). The essay prime in the first experiment was followed by a MS manipulation, after which individuals rated the appeal of both the physical and romantic aspects of sex. The results revealed that reminders of death, combined with reading about how humans are animals, led to less interest in the physical, but not romantic (i.e., uniquely human), aspects of sex. Liking for sex, however, was rated more highly in the human uniqueness condition, as it was not associated with animalistic behaviors. In a second study, participants were primed with human creatureliness by reading one of two essays, followed by answering statements about the physical versus romantic aspects of sex. Death-thought accessibility (DTA) served as the primary dependent variable of interest. Findings showed that, when persons were reminded of their animal nature (but not when human distinction was primed), a physical sex prime (as opposed to romance) led to heightened mortality awareness. These experiments collectively suggest that the association between death concerns and sex is not specific to a certain personality type. Rather, it is the underlying threat of the creatureliness of the body that can lead us all to find sex—and its potential to activate existential anxieties—to be particularly aversive. One of the challenges with this work is that sex is often surrounded by societal norms, religious restrictions, and moral taboos. This makes it difficult to understand whether the aforementioned results are specific to creaturely concerns about the body or restrictions enacted by one’s culture. To help rule out this alternative explanation, Goldenberg et al. (2006) conducted a series of studies to examine people’s attitudes toward physical sensations for which there are

390

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

no prohibitions. Researchers induced MS by having participants write about their thoughts and feelings associated with death or the control topic of dental pain. Following this, individuals were instructed to submerge their arm into freezing water (Study 1), to use an electronic foot massager (Study 2), or to engage in exercise (Study 3). For persons high in neuroticism, they were more likely to avoid physical sensations, both pleasant (i.e., foot massage) and unpleasant (i.e., cold pressor task), following reminders of death. Interestingly, such individuals did not avoid stimulation in regard to nontactile modalities (i.e., listening to music), suggesting that it is the threat of the physical body and not societal restrictions that people prefer to avoid following MS. Before ending this discussion on the body aversiveness that people experience when death concerns are salient, it seems important to review work within the disgust domain, which has yielded similar results. Disgust, according to researchers (e.g., Angyal, 1941; Haidt, Rozin, McCauley, & Imada, 1997; Miller, 1997; Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 1993), is a uniquely human emotion that is associated with disdain and/or superiority in regard to food (e.g., spoiled), body products (e.g., feces, urine, vomit), animals (e.g., cockroaches, rats), hygiene, body envelope violations (e.g., blood, mutilation), infection, and death (e.g., dead bodies, organic decay; Haidt et al., 1994). Although this definition is in line with disgust’s role in pathogen avoidance from an evolutionary perspective (e.g., Darwin, 1965; also see Curtis, Aunger, & Rabie, 2004; Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2009), the emotion may also protect persons from culturally and morally repugnant acts [e.g., dishonesty, vulgarity, sexually inappropriate behaviors (incest, rape, homosexuality, bestiality, etc.), obesity, & racism; Haidt, 2001]. Core as opposed to moral disgust can be understood as the human need to see oneself as distinct from other animals in an effort to deny human vulnerabilities against the awareness of death (Rozin & Fallon, 1987). This is supported by research by Haidt et al. (1994), who found that contact with the dead was more predictive of general disgust as compared to other types of elicitors. Adding to this, they demonstrated that individual differences in disgust sensitivity were positively associated with a greater fear of mortality. Combined with the results of Goldenberg et al. (2001) and, Cox, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski et al. (2007), these findings provide further evidence for a TMT approach to understanding human corporeality. To the extent that humans deny their animal nature to defend against anxiety associated with the awareness of death, how might this analysis extend to religious and spiritual domains in which the physicality of the body is often regulated?

Death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave. Henry (1899, p. 358).

From the perspective of TMT, cultural beliefs (i.e., worldviews) are important because they help to alleviate the potential for anxiety resulting from the awareness of death (see e.g., Pyszczynski et al., 2015 for a review). Thus both secular and religious worldviews provide a meaningful conception of reality, enabling individuals to achieve symbolic and/or literal immortality (e.g., Soenke, Landau, & Greenberg, 2013; Vail et al., 2010). For example, by adhering to the “publish or perish” mentality, academics hope to leave something of significance behind (e.g., a book chapter) to make their mark on future generations. Further, with respect to Judaism, many people adhere to Mizvot (i.e., commandments) by committing good deeds (e.g., feeding the poor, helping a stranger) in the name of God (Eisenberg, 2005). Most cultures also provide some form of literal immortality with a continued existence after death in the form of heaven, reincarnation, or an afterlife. Christians, for instance, adhere to the religious teachings of the Bible in an attempt to be reunited with God and loved ones in Heaven upon dying. Because cultural worldviews are fragile social constructions, people are motivated to defend the validity of their secular and religious beliefs to obtain meaning and value in response to mortality awareness. In support, research has found that (1) reminders of death increase persons’ desire for religion and that of an afterlife (e.g., Lifshin, Greenberg, Soenke, Darrell, & Pyszczynski, 2018; Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006); (2) that threatening the validity of individuals’ spiritual beliefs increases the accessibility of mortality-related thoughts (e.g., Schimel, Hayes, Williams, & Jahrig, 2007); and (3) bolstering, or having deeply held religious worldviews, reduces DTA and general defensiveness (Friedman & Rholes, 2008; Jonas & Fischer, 2006). Although much work has been done in examining the importance of religion through a terror management framework (see e.g., Soenke et al., 2013; Vail et al., 2010), very little research has explored the role of creaturely concerns in such effects. Among some Christians, for example, there is a positive emphasis on the body in that persons were created in God’s image and that Jesus was incarnated in physical form (Jacobson, Hall, Anderson, & Willingham, 2016). The idea of the body and soul being interconnected is mentioned in the Bible (e.g., Romans 8:13; 1 Corinthians 15:35-49), as well as being discussed by several early church figures (e.g., De Trinitate Augustine). It is according to this

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

391

perspective that the body is associated with sin but is redeemed with that of the soul (Jacobson et al., 2016). Alternatively, many religions take a dualist approach to the creatureliness of the body, emphasizing the soul over people’s physical form (i.e., a fallen body tainted by sin; Hall & Thoennes, 2006; Jacobson et al., 2016). Some Christian and Jewish traditions consider the body unclean if it engages in certain acts either voluntarily (e.g., eating certain meats, engaging in premarital sex) or involuntary (e.g., menstruation, physical deformities). Once the body is unclean, believers must purify or ostracize themselves before they are allowed to rejoin the religious group or enter a holy place (e.g., ritualistic washing in Hinduism). Many religions (e.g., Christianity) see salvation as being “released” from the sins of the body or they are bothered by the thought of Jesus taking fully human form (Beck, 2009, 2011). Even when the natural world is downplayed in different faiths, the physicality of humans is something that should be avoided (Barsalou, Barbey, Simmons, & Santos, 2005). There is cross-cultural evidence to suggest that creaturely concerns associated with the body (i.e., sickness) increase people’s need for religion (Pelham et al., 2018). Utilizing a TMT perspective, demonstrating that thoughts of health (e.g., cancer, smoking, tanning, binge drinking, risky sex) are connected to death (e.g., Arndt, Cook, Goldenberg, & Cox, 2007; Grover, Miller, Solomon, Webster, & Saucier, 2010; Hansen, Winzeler, & Topolinski, 2010; Jessop & Wade, 2008; Routledge, Arndt, & Goldenberg, 2004), researchers utilized Google Trends with the expectation that lifethreatening search topics (e.g., “cancer,” “heart attack”) would increase religious inquiries 1 week later (e.g., “God,” “prayer”). The results of five studies, over the course of 12 years and across 16 different countries (e.g., United Kingdom, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, India, Japan), revealed that conducting searches on Google for terminal illnesses led people to subsequently think about religion. This included a wide range of topics, including spiritual deities (e.g., “Jesus,” “Allah”), prayer, different religious texts (e.g., “Bible,” “Vedas”), and various faith-based worldviews (e.g., “Christianity,” “Buddhism”). These effects held when controlling for (1) search terms around different religious holidays (e.g., Christmas, Easter), (2) searches with respect to nonthreatening illnesses (e.g., “sore throat”), and (3) recent past and annual variations in spiritual search data. Given the associative nature of this data, Pelham et al. explored reverse causation as to whether an interest in religion predicts greater thoughts of sickness. Although the results were also significant, the effect sizes were half as large as when illness searches predicted religiosity. (Adding to this, search volumes changed as a function of religious holidays, which was not observed in the initial analyses.) Taken together, this research suggests that animal nature concerns about the body with associative links to death (i.e., lifethreatening illnesses) has the potential to increase people’s cross-cultural need for religion. In addition to illness, another source of contention regarding the creatureliness of the body has to do with the use of profanity. Returning to the results of Goldenberg et al. (1999, 2002) demonstrating that the physical (vs romantic) aspects of sex are threatening because of animal nature disgust and mortality concerns, Beck (2009) argues that there are different connotations when sexual partners express a desire to “f***” in lieu of “making love.” (In other words, on one hand, sex is a disgusting reminder of our bodily functions and dependencies, whereas on the other, it can be a spiritually transcendent experience where “two fleshes become one;” e.g., Genesis 2:24; Mark 10:8). It falls from this analysis that if there is a relationship between body-nature disgust and MS, then curse words regarding human/animal similarities [i.e., “piss” (urine), “sh**” (feces), and “f***” (sex)] should be more offensive to those who are religious. To explore this possibility, Beck had participants complete measures of disgust sensitivity (i.e., the animal-nature subscale of The Disgust Scale; Haidt et al., 1994), death anxiety (i.e., Templer Death Anxiety Scale; Templer & Ruff, 1971), defensive theology (i.e., The Defensive Theology Scale; Beck, 2006), religious orientation (i.e., Christian Orthodoxy Scale; Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982) and then report the extent to which they were offended by the three aforementioned swear words. Correlation and regression analyses showed that death anxiety and defensive theology predicted greater animal-nature disgust. Heightened disgust sensitivity, in turn, was associated with greater offense of body-related profanity. Religious laws against cussing (e.g., Colossians 3:8 “But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth;” James 3:10 “From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not be so”) may thus serve as a protective shield against the very acts that elicit mortality awareness (Beck, 2011). The research reviewed to this point has focused on the normative connection between creaturely concerns, MS, and religious belief. One question, however, is how might individual differences related to religiosity moderate these results? Religious fundamentalism is characteristic of persons who believe in the absolute certainty of their faith (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). For instance, within the TMT literature, research has found that fundamentalists are more certain in the existence of an afterlife (Friedman & Rholes, 2008), are aggressively defensive of their religious beliefs (Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski, 2009), and are more likely to forgo medical treatment for spiritual reasons following reminders of death (Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, & Goldenberg, 2009). Given that many religions separate humans from the natural world, Vess, Arndt, and Cox (2012) tested the assumption that MS would lead religious

392

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

fundamentalists to disconnect themselves from nature.1 In three experiments, participants were asked to complete a measure of death cognition (i.e., a word-stem completion task) or were randomly assigned to a MS manipulation. After completing Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (2004) revised religious fundamentalism scale, everyone responded to items about their connection to nature (e.g., “I often feel a sense of oneness with the natural world around me”), or the inclusion of nature as part of the self (i.e., overlapping circle task; Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992). A similar pattern of results emerged for all studies—that is, religious fundamentalists primed with thoughts of death were less likely to feel connected with the natural world. Not only are there implications of this work in terms of studying ecological issues (e.g., climate change), but also these findings suggest that a heightened separation between the body and soul is more characteristic of a fundamentalist orientation. Whereas Vess et al. (2012) studied attitudes toward nature more generally, Beck (2008) explored religious fundamentalists’ incarnational ambivalence toward Christ. According to this work, a physical Jesus (i.e., having bad breath, experiencing illness, engaging in nocturnal emissions) is threatening because he was vulnerable to the forces of death and decay that affect us all. Alternatively, a “superhuman” Jesus—that is, someone who does not experience pain or has bodily functions—can rescue humanity from their material existence. Beck thus suggests that a humanistic Christ is problematic, especially for persons high in religious fundamentalism, as believers are reminded of their own biological nature and, subsequently, their mortality. In this work, similar to Beck’s (2009) research on profanity, participants were asked to complete measures of death anxiety and defensive theology and to report their religious orientation. Unique to this study, however, individuals completed a scale on incarnational ambivalence about Jesus’ life on the Earth (e.g., body fluids, hygiene, physical vulnerabilities, body flaws), followed by Batson’s Interactional Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). This served as a proxy of religious fundamentalism, as low scorers are more rigid in their spiritual beliefs (see e.g., Batson, 1976). The results demonstrated that increased death anxiety was associated with a heightened negativity toward a human, and thus creaturely, Jesus. These effects were stronger for those with more closed and defensive religious’ beliefs (i.e., fundamentalists). Building on TMT work showing that people distance themselves from their animal nature to avoid existential anxieties (e.g., Goldenberg et al., 1999), so too are we to separate the Divine from humanity as an anxiety-buffering mechanism against the awareness of death. Building on Beck’s (2008) work, Arrowood and Cox (in press) conducted a series of studies to provide further evidence for a TMT analysis on heightened negativity toward a creaturely Christ. Given that we experienced problems with Beck’s Incarnational Ambivalence Scale due to a ceiling effect on different items (e.g., nocturnal emissions), we created two essays, modeled after Goldenberg et al. (1999), to explore people’s attitudes toward an animalistic or biblical Jesus. For example, the creaturely essay said, . . . Jesus spent much of his time traveling. He would walk for weeks or months at a time leaving him hungry and tired with bad breath and body odor. Jesus also suffered from illnesses including vomiting and diarrhea . . . All of this suggests that Jesus was just a physical man. He was subject to weariness, hunger, thirst, agony and pain the physical limitations of human nature.

The neutral essay, in turn, included information about Christ’s “lost years”: . . . scholars have claimed that Jesus spent the “lost years” traveling the world to countries such as India, Nepal, China, and Tibet. Here he continued his education learning about different eastern philosophies . . . Although there are many theories

1. Beyond fundamentalism, there is much literature within the terror management tradition to suggest an ambivalent relationship between existential concerns and that of the natural world (see e.g., Fritsche & Hoppe, 2019 for an extensive review). Koole and van den Berg (2005), for example, showed that reminders of death led participants to report an increased liking for well-cultivated landscapes (e.g., manicured lawns) as compared to the wilderness (e.g., thick overgrowth, impenetrable forests). In a different experiment, individuals experienced heightened DTA in response to primes of nature versus urban environments (Koole, & van den Berg, 2005). The dislike of nature following MS may stem from people’s need to control the uncontrollable as participants are more likely to believe that natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes) are explained by God’s will (Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, & Hamedani, 2012). These results are consistent with other work demonstrating that persons express increased acceptance of intelligent design over evolutionary theory (i.e., a random process) when thoughts of mortality are salient (Tracy, Hart, & Martens, 2011). The need to distance from nature after MS influences not only people’s esthetic preferences but also their environmental attitudes. Individuals, for instance, are less environmentally conscious when thoughts of death are salient in comparison to a control condition (i.e., dental pain; Fritsche & Ha¨fner, 2012). The extent to which persons engage in proenvironmental action following mortality awareness has been found to vary as a function of preexisting beliefs (Selimbegovi´c, Chatard, Er-Rafiy, & Pyszczynski, 2016), self-esteem (Vess & Arndt, 2008), nature identification (Fritsche & Ha¨fner, 2012), action orientation (Koole & van den Berg, 2005), and through the activation of prosocial behavior (i.e., observing someone pick up trash; Fritsche, Jonas, Niesta Kayser, & Koranyi, 2010).

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

393

about the life of Jesus during these years, there isn’t much solid evidence to support any one of them; this period of his life is largely open to speculation.

Similar to Beck, Arrowood and Cox found that low quest individuals (i.e., those who are certain in the absolute truth of their religion) expressed greater negativity toward Jesus’ animal nature as compared to his spirituality. The effects were exaggerated (i.e., fundamentalists became increasingly more hostile toward the incarnation of Christ) following a MS manipulation (i.e., completing a death-related vs neutral word search puzzle; Maxfield et al., 2007). To make the case that Jesus’ creaturely nature is threatening due to associative existential anxieties, a third experiment examined the accessibility of death-related thoughts as a function of people’s religious orientation (i.e., quest) and exposure to one of the two essays. The results revealed that fundamentalist Christians experienced heightened mortality awareness after reading about an animalistic Christ. Persons high in quest and low in fundamentalism, however, reported diminished DTA in response Jesus’ creatureliness (presumably because of the general openness they have for alternative religions and beliefs). Parallel effects have also been found for intrinsically religious individuals (i.e., persons with an internalized and genuine religious faith; Arrowood et al., 2018). These studies (i.e., Beck; Arrowood & Cox; Arrowood et al.) collectively suggest that for persons with rigid, closed, or noninternalized beliefs, biological processes attributed to Jesus seemingly take away from his divinity and devalue his ability to serve as an important part of their worldview. A Jesus who is human can (and did according to religious texts) die, with direct implications for the mortality of His followers. On the other hand, those with an open religious style, or persons who have internalized their beliefs, appear to be shielded due to their natural openness and coping abilities. Before ending this discussion, it is important to consider the creaturely consequences of the Divine with respect to larger religious activities. For instance, the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem is sometimes portrayed quite graphically (e.g., blood, pain) during religious services and/or through other media outlets (e.g., The Passion). Although this may be comforting to some (i.e., the sacrifice that Jesus made for mankind), it also has the potential to increase existential anxieties and worldview defense (see e.g., Pyszczynski et al., 2015). This might explain why many works depicting Christ’s image, even during His crucifixion, do not involve the physicality of what occurred (see e.g., The Crucifixion by Matthias Gru¨newald). In addition, Jesus and His disciples are often offset from lesser humans by being displayed with halos or additional lighting (i.e., a glow) to exemplify their holiness (Schiller, 1971). The Sermon on the Mount by Henrik Olrik, for example, depicts a cleanly clothed and well-groomed Christ despite the fact that He had been traveling though the wilderness for long periods of time. By beautifying images of the Divine, persons are able to distance God, Jesus, and other spiritual figures from their creaturely impulses, allowing for religious defenses to remain intact and “holy.” In addition to exploring how natural depictions of Christ (i.e., a creaturely vs spiritual being) influence DTA and heightened defensiveness, it is also important to rule out alternative explanations in these effects. For example, as previously mentioned, Pelham et al. (2018) demonstrated an associative link between Google searches for life-threatening illness and people’s need for religion in the following weeks. This effect may be accounted for by an evolutionary psychology perspective in which pathogen threat, rather than death, is important to the development of religious and collectivistic societies (Fincher, Thornhill, Murray, & Schaller, 2008). Research in support of this position has found that illness threat (i.e., 2014s Ebola outbreak) predicted a shift in Republican voting in nonconservative states, indicative of worldview defense (Beall, Hofer, & Schaller, 2016). It is important to note, however, that evolutionary psychologists have focused predominantly on pathogen threat as opposed to life-threatening illnesses such as cancer. Adding to this, Arrowood et al. (2017) showed that heightened mortality awareness following an Ebola prime (both naturally occurring and laboratory induced) led to greater defense of people’s cultural worldviews. Although this evidence suggests that existential concerns, rather than disease salience, is the mechanism behind secular and religious belief striving, future work should continue to examine the relationship between illness and death and implications they have for incarnational ambivalence about the Divine. Finally, aside from Pelham et al.’s (2018) cross-cultural research, most work on mortality-related attitudes toward the creaturely body has been specific to Christian samples residing within the United States (van Cappellan, 2018). This presents a problem as many Abrahamic religions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam) emphasize a distinction between the physical world and the spiritual realm whereby souls are able to transcend the limitations of people’s physical forms. This is quite different from more animalistic faiths which often see an interconnection between religiosity and the body. Among the Beng tribe of the Ivory Coast, for instance, men and women consider menstruation to be like the flower on a tree in that shrubbery must bloom before it can produce fruit (Gottlieb, 1982). Further, in some parts of Ghana, West Africa, young girls who start menstruating are asked to sit under beautiful, ceremonial umbrellas during which their families give gifts and pay homage (Buckley & Gottlieb, 1988). As noted by Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, et al. (2000),

394

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

although there may be some cultures who are more connected to animals and the natural world, they too are imbued with supernatural power and significance (e.g., the worship of sacred trees in Israel by Muslims; Dafni, 2007). Natural entities are thus anthropomorphized to help solve existential dilemmas associated with biochemical and physical processes. One direction for future study is to explore cultural variations, along with individual differences within these societies, on how humanity is construed as being part of, or distinct from, the natural world. Although the aforementioned examples present the female body in a favorable light, most religious ideologies consider women to be a source of sin, dirt, and/or pollution. The following section will expand upon the religious regulation of various biological functions (e.g., menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding) in females as a way to contend against existential concerns.

Dehumanization and objectification of women To the woman He said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children, your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’ Genesis 3:16, New Testament Bible.

As the abovementioned quote illustrates, Christians’ condemnation of women stems (in part) from the curse that God bestowed on Eve after she ate forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. The role that menstruation plays in reproduction can also be seen as part of His punishment (i.e., “the curse”) in that all women must suffer for the sins of one. Faith-based limitations on menstruating women are found in almost every religion, from Rastafarianism to Shintoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and to Christianity (see e.g., Guterman et al., 2007; see Bhartiya, 2013; for a review). For example, for Orthodox Jews, a woman must refrain from kissing, hugging, touching, and having sex with her husband for the 5 days of her period plus an additional 7 days, along with having to wear white underwear to ensure that she is “clean” (Guterman et al., 2007). Jewish females can only achieve purification following menstruation and childbirth by bathing in a mikveh, a ritual pool, before they may resume marital relations with their husbands [Meacham (leBeit Yoreh), 2009]. In addition, in the Islamic faith, women are unable to fast, engage in daily prayers, step into a mosque, or read a copy of the Quran during menses or following the birth of a child (Engineer, 1987; Fisher, 1978; Guterman et al., 2007; Maghen, 1999). Isolation, including banishment to menstrual huts in some cultures, may drive women to be more devote in their spirituality. Being unable to enter places of worship (or even to pray privately as found in some religions) can also lead to heightened feelings of desolation (Sharma, 2017). There is much evidence to suggest that women’s creaturely bodies are threatening because of reproductive functions associated with the female form (i.e., menstruation, pregnancy, and breastfeeding). Roberts, Goldenberg, Power, and Pyszczynski (2002), for instance, conducted a study wherein participants interacted with a female confederate who dropped an object from her bag during the course of the conversation. In the experimental condition, a new, unwrapped tampon fell from her purse, while in the control condition, she accidently dropped a hair clip. In comparison to the hair clip condition, persons who witnessed the discarded tampon were more likely to rate the confederate as incompetent, they liked her less, and they physically distanced themselves from her at a later time. These results are consistent with other work demonstrating that menstruating women are perceived as being unclean, impure, and are seen as having negative dispositions (e.g., irritable, angry, sad; Forbes, Adams-Curtis, White, & Holmgren, 2003). Findings like these may explain why females report increased disgust and shame when thinking about their own menstruating bodies (JohnstonRobledo, Sheffield, Voigt, & Wilcox-Constantine, 2007; Kowalski & Chapple, 2000; Roberts, 2004). Aversive reactions also emerge in response to women who are expecting children. For example, people are more likely to stare at and stand away from pregnant women as compared to their nonpregnant counterparts (Taylor & Langer, 1977); individuals are less likely to invade the personal space of someone who is expecting (Davis & Lennon, 1983); and “pregnant” females (i.e., persons wearing a prosthetic) experience more hostility and rudeness from store employees when shopping and applying for jobs (Hebl, King, Glick, Singletary, & Kazama, 2007). Taylor and Langer found that people’s avoidance of and staring at expectant mothers was comparable to their interactions with stigmatized groups (i.e., the physically disabled). While there is anecdotal evidence that individuals’ attitudes toward pregnancy are not entirely positive, the current chapter would argue that this negativity is explained (in part) by people’s creaturely reactions to the human body. In support, Goldenberg, Goplen, Cox, and Arndt (2007) found that, after reading an essay priming the similarities between humans and animals, participants rated a naked and pregnant picture of Demi Moore as more offensive when compared to a naked and nonpregnant picture of her. Parallel effects were demonstrated in a second experiment in which persons rated a pregnant (vs a nonpregnant) Gwyneth Paltrow as being less competent when creaturely concerns were made salient.

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

395

The aforementioned results are concerning for a couple of reasons. First, pregnant women experience lower wellbeing to the extent that they focus on the physicality of their bodies. Rubin and Steinberg (2011), for instance, found that expectant mothers who engaged in greater body surveillance experienced heightened feelings of depression and, although not statistically significant, tended to engage in unhealthy prenatal eating, exercising, and sleeping. This is consistent with a large body of work from an objectification theory perspective (i.e., the tendency to engage in increased body monitoring; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) in which women are willing to put their lives at risk (and, in this case, those of their newborns) when they are overly focused on their physical form (see e.g., Roberts, Calogero, & Gervais, 2018 for a review). A second concern is that negativity toward pregnancy can influence how women view and choose methods of childbirth. As argued by Andrist (2008), females may elect for caesarian births over vaginal ones in an attempt to “sanitize” the creatureliness of the body through surgical means. Although the World Health Organization (2015) recommends that only 10% 15% of births be done by cesarean, approximately 32% of all deliveries in the United States are by surgery (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018a). Adding to this, 47% of women indicate that cesarean births should be performed at maternal request without medical indication (Dursun et al., 2011). Finally, although breastfeeding is often medically advocated (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018b), it too inspires negative reactions in persons. In a national survey of US adults, only 43% of persons believed that women should have the right to breastfeed in public (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office on Women’s Health, 2011). Similar to attitudes toward menstruation, breast milk has been described as being disgusting (Fallon & Rozin, 1983; JohnstonRobledo, Wares, Fricker, & Pasek, 2007), dirty (Morse, 1989), or just plain “yucky” (Miller, 2005). Cox, Goldenberg, Arndt, et al. (2007) conducted a series of studies to examine the associative link between breastfeeding and creaturely concerns about the body. In this work, researchers randomly assigned participants to write about their mortality (vs a control condition) and then explained that they would be interacting with a woman in the next room who was either feeding her infant from a bottle or the breast. The results revealed that thoughts of death led to harsher evaluations and physical distancing from a breastfeeding but not bottle-feeding female. To further explore the connection between breastfeeding concerns and existential anxieties, Cox, Goldenberg, Arndt, et al. showed that participants experienced a heightened accessibility of creaturely-related thoughts following MS combined with the possibility of interacting with a breastfeeding woman. Together, these studies suggest that reproductive concerns (i.e., menstruation, pregnancy, and breastfeeding) are threatening due to the creatureliness of the female body and its connection to death. As a result, women (in general) and their reproductive behaviors (in particular) may be at risk for increased condemnation from others. Given females’ close connection to nature, how might we transform that which is ominous into a cultural symbol of beauty? As argued by Goldenberg and Roberts (2004), women (as compared to men) may be held to a higher standard of attractiveness in an attempt to reduce the threat associated with their animal nature. Specifically, according to objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), females engage in a psychological process whereby they internalize observers’ perspectives about their bodies and come to monitor their appearance. Sexual objectification occurs when women’s bodies, their feminine body parts (e.g., breasts), or sexual functions are believed to represent them as persons (see Roberts et al., 2018; for a recent review of theory and research). Objectification can transpire in dehumanizing and cruel ways when, for example, females are used in human trafficking (e.g., prostitution), sex industries, and pornography. But sexual objectification can also occur in seemingly benign ways, such as when women and their body parts are used to sell food (e.g., Hooters), website domains (e.g., GoDaddy.com), and sports cars. Research has examined how objectification can be used as a psychological resource to reduce creaturely threats associated with the female form. For instance, returning to the results of Roberts et al. (2002), researchers found that participants not only rated a confederate more negatively when she dropped a tampon (vs a hair clip) but also placed greater emphasis on the attractiveness of women in general following the animal nature prime. In other words, individuals, regardless of gender, valued appearance-oriented standards of beauty in females when thoughts of creatureliness were made salient. Interestingly, a dropped hair clip did not elicit the same response, although it is more closely tied to standards of beauty in American culture. Other work, from a TMT perspective, has found that reminders of death increase the extent to which people are likely to objectify women (Grabe, Routledge, Cook, Andersen, & Arndt, 2005). Whereas male participants rated feminine beauty as being important across all conditions (i.e., a ceiling effect), female participants objectified women just as much as men did only when reminders of death were made salient. Recent evidence suggests, however, that there are variations in the way that women are objectified following MS (Morris & Goldenberg, 2015; Morris, Goldenberg, & Heflick, 2014). On one hand, when females are sexualized (i.e., when focus is placed on sexual body parts, attributes, and/or functions), they are more closely tied to the animal nature of humans. This is consistent with research on dehumanization, which has shown that sexually objectified women

396

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

(as compared to men) are associated with creaturely concepts (e.g., Vaes, Paladino, & Puvia, 2011), along with being seen as having less agency (i.e., self-control) and increased experience (i.e., emotion)—two characteristics seen in animals (e.g., Gray, Knobe, Sheskin, Bloom, & Barrett, 2011). On the other hand, literal objectification is the extent to which individuals focus on the superficial appearance or beauty of others (Morris & Goldenberg, 2015). From the perspective of TMT, appearance-focused objectification (and any resulting associations) should serve an anxiety-buffering function against existential anxieties because objects, as opposed to humans, do not die (Morris et al., 2014). In support of this reasoning, Morris et al. (2014) conducted a series of studies within the context of women’s selfobjectification. In one experiment, researchers randomly assigned participants to write about their death versus a control topic (i.e., experiencing intense physical pain). This was followed by having individuals view one of two pictures: (1) a nonpregnant female with her belly slightly exposed versus (2) the same person in a doctored photo where she was clearly pregnant. In response to reproduction (i.e., pregnancy) and MS primes, women (but not men) placed greater emphasis on their physical features relative to their competency (i.e., Self-Objectification Questionnaire; Noll & Fredrickson, 1998). Females were also less likely to see themselves as human but more like an object (Haslam, 2006). The extent to which women engaged in literal objectification in response to reminders of death were extended to menstruating (i.e., Study 2) and breastfeeding (i.e., Study 4) behaviors. Although this work suggests that females are likely to focus on their appearance to defend against the awareness of death, Morris et al. further found that engagement in literal objectification following creaturely (i.e., breastfeeding) and MS primes led to a reduction in death-related thoughts (i.e., Study 5). This suggests that the increased body focus of females in response to creaturely primes (e.g., menstruation, pregnancy, and breastfeeding) is important as it serves an anxiety-buffering function against existential concerns. Although it is quite clear that the reproductive nature of women’s bodies is a cross-cultural threat (e.g., Guterman et al., 2007), with the potential for literal objectification to serve as a protective shield, research has yet to examine the role of religion in accounting for such effects. This is an important direction for future study given the implications it has for women’s well-being. Landau et al. (2006) found that reminders of death led heterosexual males to report decreased attraction toward a sexually alluring (vs a more wholesome) female (also see Morris & Goldenberg, 2015 for similar results). Importantly, men’s level of attraction led to more leniency when punishing a male who aggressed against a woman (in comparison to when a man aggressed against another male). Endorsing violence toward women was believed to have stemmed from male participants’ need to reduce threats associated with the creatureliness of the female form (Landau et al., 2006). According to the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs (2016), at least 30 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East perform some type of genital mutilation (i.e., the partial or total removal of external genitalia) on females due to religious traditions of the culture. Adding to this, although not endorsed by any particular faith, many persons engage in honor killings (i.e., the murder of a woman or girl by male family members due to alleged sexually immoral actions) worldwide in the name of religion (e.g., Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; Chesler, 2010; United Nations Population Fund, 2000). When considering the results of Landau et al., combined with the regulation and condemnation of women across various religious faiths (see e.g., Guterman et al., 2007), the animal nature of females—and any associated existential concerns that arise—may provide justification for increased aggressiveness and hostility. Further, women may engage in health-compromising behaviors to the extent that creaturely concerns are made salient through their religion. For example, Goldenberg, Arndt, Hart, and Routledge (2008) conducted a series of studies to examine the associative link between animal nature disgust, MS, and breast self-exam (BSE) intentions. The results revealed that female participants reported a reduced willingness to perform BSEs, in addition to spending significantly less time in conducting an exam on a breast model, following reminders of death and/or after reading an essay that primed human animal similarities. Of note, these findings were independent of women’s worry about cancer, suggesting that it is the exam itself, rather than the disease outcome, that poses a threat. Similar results have also been found with respect to conducting a mammography. Goldenberg, Routledge, and Arndt (2009), for instance, found that when mortality was made salient, reminding female participants of the creatureliness of the body (as opposed to humans’ uniqueness) reduced their willingness to have a mammogram and increased discomfort among women actually receiving one. The extent to which females engage in risky health activities when thoughts of death are salient has been found with respect to restricted eating (Goldenberg, Arndt, Hart, & Brown, 2005) and a heightened willingness to tan (Cox et al., 2009; Routledge et al., 2004). When applied to religion, the creaturely (and hence mortal) threat associated with women’s bodies may help to explain why some females may place their lives at risk by fasting during pregnancy, refusing medical and pharmaceutical treatments, and using contraceptives in lieu of their religious faith (see e.g., Arousell & Carlbom, 2016). Lastly, there are individual differences in the extent to which people adhere to their religion. Much research within the TMT tradition has found that that religious fundamentalists are more likely to respond to thoughts of death with

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

397

greater investment in and defense of their worldviews (see Vail et al., 2010 for a review). In a series of studies conducted by Vess et al. (2009), for example, persons scoring high (as opposed to low) on religious fundamentalism were more likely to endorse prayer as a substitute for medical treatment when thoughts of mortality were made salient. Such individuals also adhere to literal interpretations of the Bible (e.g., Mark 16:18, “They shall take up serpents”) by expressing increased interest in snake handling practices following reminders of death (Arrowood, Cox, Silver, & Hood, 2018). With respect to the dehumanization and objectification of women, females may be treated more negatively to the extent that persons cling more strongly to their faith (notably, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Quran all stipulate that the religious duty of women is to be subservient to men). For instance, Islamic fundamentalists are likely to adhere to the laws of sharia, making it possible to deny women the right to an education, medical care, and to be flogged, stoned, exiled, or executed in response to a punishable transgression. Alternatively, whereas fundamentalist religious beliefs are often associated with increased prejudice and hostility (e.g., Vail et al., 2010), individuals who follow a more intrinsic orientation (Allport & Ross, 1967), or who score high on quest (Batson, 1976), may perceive the creatureliness of the female form as less of a threat. This is consistent with prior work demonstrating that both religious orientations (i.e., intrinsic and quest) become less defensive when reminders of death are salient (Arrowood, Cox, & Vail, 2018; Jonas & Fischer, 2006).

Conclusion I was once emptying the cistern of nature, and making water at the wall. At the same time, there came a dog, who did so too, before me. Thought I; ‘What mean and vile things are the children of men . . . How much do our natural necessities abase us, and place us . . . on the same level with the very dogs!’ My thought proceeded. ‘Yet I will be a more noble creature; and at the very time when my natural necessities debase me into the condition of the beast, my spirit shall (I say at that very time!) rise and soar’ . . . I resolved that it should be my ordinary practice, whenever I step to answer the one or other necessity of nature to make it an opportunity of shaping in my mind some holy, noble, divine thought. Cotton Mather, Puritan Minister (Thomas, 1984, p. 38).

The natural world is threatening to humans as it serves as a reminder of the fragility of life. However, as the abovementioned quote illustrates, religions, and the supernatural beliefs and potential afterlives that come with them, separate individuals from the creatureliness of the body. Utilizing a terror management perspective on human motivation, there is much evidence to suggest that (1) people experience greater body-nature disgust when thoughts of death are salient; (2) having participants think about different physical activities (e.g., sex, body fluids) increases the accessibility of mortality-related thoughts; and (3) women are particularly vulnerable to increased negativity following thoughts of death due to their close connection to nature (e.g., menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding). Similar effects have also been found in religious domains in regard to spiritual need (Pelham et al., 2018), the expression of bodynature disgust (Arrowood, & Cox, in press; Arrowood et al., 2018; Beck, 2008, 2009), and engagement in faith-based (i.e., worldview) defensiveness (Vess et al., 2012). Although we acknowledge that people’s spirituality and religiosity serve other important functions beyond the management of death concerns (e.g., feelings of social connection, perceptions of control, providing an understanding of the world), alternative theoretical explanations are unable to fully account for the existential concerns demonstrated in the aforementioned studies. While researchers have been able to establish a connection between religiosity, creaturely threats, and mortality awareness, no work (to our knowledge) has explored possible ways, aside from individual differences (e.g., quest and intrinsic orientations), to reduce these negative outcomes. Research on metaphors (i.e., the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, through the use of another) may be one potential avenue for study. For example, researchers have demonstrated a temporal bias in which God concepts are associated with being “up,” while the Devil and worldly vices are connected with going “down” (Meier, Hauser, Robinson, Friesen, & Schjeldahl, 2007). Alternatively, the color white has been shown to evoke feelings of purity or cleanliness, whereas black elicits concerns about impurity or immorality (Sherman & Clore, 2009). It thus seems possible that viewing temporal shifts in Jesus’ crucifixion (i.e., having Him presented higher vs lower on the cross) may override creaturely (and death) concerns aroused by his beaten and bloody form. (In a similar vein, the brightening of a picture through Christ’s holy “glow” should be interpreted much differently than an image of Him with a darkened background.) This is consistent with other work demonstrating that the religious defense (i.e., a heighted disgust response) of Christians against Muslims was eliminated when participants washed their hands, thereby returning to a “pure” state (Ritter & Preston, 2011; also see Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006). Within TMT, research has shown that religious fundamentalists are more likely to support extreme military action (e.g., the use of chemical and nuclear weapons) against outgroup members when reminders of death are made salient

398

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

(Rothschild et al., 2009). However, when participants were primed with compassionate values from the Bible for Christians (e.g., “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ forgave you;” Ephesians 4:32) or the Quran for Muslims (e.g., “Mohammad, Allah’s messenger says: Be kind to others”), individuals high on religious fundamentalism demonstrated decreased support for military might following thoughts of mortality. Based on these results, activating thoughts of body acceptance through religious scripture (e.g., “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?;” Corinthians 6:19) may reduce death-related disgust in general and/or among those who more strongly adhere to their religious faith (i.e., fundamentalists, extrinsically orientated individuals). In sum, one of the problems with our physical form is that it challenges beliefs associated with an eternal life—that is, being exempt from the prospect of death. Spirituality is very much a product of humans’ yearning for immortality (either literal or symbolic). By reflecting on our quest for an unending existence, we might find that it is possible to live without one. This is what makes life valuable—if we stop hoping for an indefinite future, then maybe we can live a better existence in the here and now.

References Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432 443. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113 133. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2004). A revised religious fundamentalism scale: The short and sweet of it. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 47 54. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1401pass:4. Andrist, L. C. (2008). The implications of objectification theory for women’s health: Menstrual suppression and “maternal request” cesarean delivery. Health Care for Women International, 29, 551 565. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07399330801949616. Angyal, A. (1941). Disgust and related aversions. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 36, 393 412. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ h0058254. Arndt, J., Cook, A., Goldenberg, J. L., & Cox, C. R. (2007). Cancer and the threat of death: The cognitive dynamics of death-thought suppression and its impact on behavioral health intentions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 12 29. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.92.1.12. Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596 612. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.596. Arousell, J., & Carlbom, A. (2016). Culture and religious beliefs in relation to reproductive health. Best Practice & Research: Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 32, 77 87. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2015.08.011. Arrowood, R. B. & Cox, C. R. (in press). Taking the divinity from the divine: The interaction between death concerns and religiosity on the evaluation of a human Jesus. Journal of Religion and Health. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., Kersten, M., Routledge, C., Shelton, J. T., & Hood, R. (2017). Ebola salience, death-thought accessibility, and worldview defense: A terror management theory perspective. Death Studies, 41, 585 591. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07481187.2017.1322644. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., Silver, C., & Hood, R. W., (2018). And they shall take up serpents. . . to deny their inevitable death. Manuscript in preparation. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., & Vail, K. E. (2018). An existential quest for meaning: An analysis of the function of religious doubts following mortality salience. Manuscript submitted for publication. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., Weinstock, M., & Hoffman, J. (2018). Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 21, 534 545. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2018.1512564. Barrett, J. L., & Keil, F. C. (1996). Conceptualizing a non-natural entity: Anthropomorphism in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219 247. Available from https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1996.0017. Barsalou, L. W., Barbey, A. K., Simmons, W. K., & Santos, A. (2005). Embodiment in religious knowledge. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 14 57. Available from https://doi.org/10.1163/1568537054068624. Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15, 29 45. Available from https:// doi.org/10.2307/1384312. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 416 429. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1387277. Beall, A. T., Hofer, M. K., & Schaller, M. (2016). Infections and elections: Did an Ebola outbreak influence the 2014 US federal elections (and if so, how)? Psychological Science, 27, 595 605. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616628861. Beck, R. (2006). Spiritual pollution: The dilemma of sociomoral disgust and the ethic of love. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 43, 53 65. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710603400106. Beck, R. (2009). Profanity: The Gnostic affront of the seven words you can never say on television. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 37, 294 303. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710903700405.

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

399

Beck, R. (2011). Unclean: Meditations on purity, hospitality, and mortality. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. Beck, R. A. (2008). Feeling queasy about the incarnation: Terror management theory, death, and the body of Jesus. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 36, 303 313. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710803600406. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press. Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. (2016). Faith-inspired development engagement. In L. Herzog, & W. Z. Mui (Eds.), Faith and development in focus: Senegal (pp. 43 61). Washington, DC: Berkley Publishing. Bhartiya, A. (2013). Menstruation, religion, and society. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 3, 523 527. Available from https:// doi.org/10.7763/IJSSH.2013.V3.296. Birnbaum, G., Hirschberger, G., & Goldenberg, J. (2011). Desire in the face of death: Terror management, attachment, and sexual motivation. Personal Relationships, 18, 1 19. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01298.x. Brown, N. O. (1959). Life against death: The psychoanalytical meaning of history. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press. Buckley, T. C. T., & Gottlieb, A. (1988). Blood magic: The anthropology of menstruation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 155 195. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352321. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018a). Births: Final data for 2016. Retrieved from ,https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/delivery.htm . . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018b). Breastfeeding. Retrieved from ,https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/index.htm.. Chesler, P. (2010). Worldwide trends in honor killings. Middle East Quarterly, 17(2), 3 11. Cox, C. R., Cooper, D. P., Vess, M., Arndt, J., Goldenberg, J. L., & Routledge, C. (2009). Bronze is beautiful but pale can be pretty: The effects of appearance standards and mortality salience on sun-tanning outcomes. Health Psychology, 28, 746 752. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0016388. Cox, C. R., Darrell, A., & Arrowood, R. B. (2019). The method behind the science: A guide to conducting terror management theory research. In C. Routledge, & M. Vess (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory (pp. 85 116). London: Elsevier. Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2007). Mother’s milk: An existential perspective on negative reactions to breast-feeding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 110 122. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206294202. Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., & Weise, D. (2007). Disgust, creatureliness and the accessibility of death-related thoughts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 494 507. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.370. Curtis, V., Aunger, R., & Rabie, T. (2004). Evidence that disgust evolved to protect from risk of disease. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 271, 131 133. Available from https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2003.0144. Dafni, A. (2007). Rituals, ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees with a special reference to the middle east. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 3, 28. Available from https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-3-28. Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of the species by means of natural selection, or preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: Murray. Darwin, C. (1965). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1872). Davis, L. L., & Lennon, S. J. (1983). Social stigma of pregnancy: Further evidence. Psychological Reports, 53, 997 998. Available from https://doi. org/10.2466/pr0.1983.53.3.997. Descartes, R. (1973). The philosophical works of Descartes (E. S. Haldane & G. R. T. Ross, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Dursun, P., Yanik, F. B., Zeyneloglu, H. B., Baser, E., Kuscu, E., & Ayhan, A. (2011). Why women request cesarean section without medical indication? Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 24, 1133 1137. Available from https://doi.org/10.3109/14767058.2010.531327. Eisenberg, R. L. (2005). The 613 mitzvot: A contemporary guide to the commandments of judaism. Rockville, MD: Schreiber Pub. Engineer, A. A. (1987). Status of women in Islam. New Delhi: Ajanta Publications. Fallon, A. E., & Rozin, P. (1983). The psychological bases of food rejections by humans. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 13, 15 26. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.1983.9990728. Fincher, C. L., Thornhill, R., Murray, D. R., & Schaller, M. (2008). Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/ collectivism. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 275, 1279 1285. Available from https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094. Fisher, A. E. (1978). Women’s worlds: NIMH supported research on women. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health. Forbes, G. B., Adams-Curtis, L. E., White, K. B., & Holmgren, K. M. (2003). The role of hostile and benevolent sexism in women’s and men’s perceptions of the menstruating woman. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 27, 58 63. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.t01-200007. Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173 206. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x. Freud, S. (1962). The ego and the id (J. Riviere, Trans.). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1927). Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2008). Religious fundamentalism and terror management. International Journal for The Psychology of Religion, 18, 36 52. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610701719322. Fritsche, I., & Ha¨fner, K. (2012). The malicious effects of existential threat on motivation to protect the natural environment and the role of environmental identity as a moderator. Environment and Behavior, 44, 570 590. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916510397759. Fritsche, I., & Hoppe, A. (2019). We supernaturals: Terror management and people’s ambivalent relationship with nature. In C. Routledge, & M. Vess (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory (pp. 157 178). London: Elsevier.

400

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., Niesta Kayser, D., & Koranyi, N. (2010). Existential threat and compliance with pro-environmental norms. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 67 79. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.08.007. Fullerton, J. T., & Hunsberger, B. (1982). A unidimensional measure of Christian orthodoxy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 21, 317 326. Available from https://doi.org/10.2307/1385521. Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., Hart, J., & Brown, M. (2005). Dying to be thin: The effects of mortality salience and body mass index on restricted eating among women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1400 1412. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205277207. Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., Hart, J., & Routledge, C. (2008). Uncovering an existential barrier to breast self-exam behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 260 274. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.05.002. Goldenberg, J. L., Cox, C. R., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2002). Understanding human ambivalence about sex: The effects of stripping sex of meaning. Journal of Sex Research, 39, 310 320. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552155. Goldenberg, J. L., Goplen, J., Cox, C. R., & Arndt, J. (2007). “Viewing” pregnancy as an existential threat: The effects of creatureliness on reactions to media depictions of the pregnant body. Media Psychology, 10, 211 230. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260701375629. Goldenberg, J. L., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Warnica, G. M., Landau, M., & Thomas, L. (2006). Ambivalence toward the body: Death, neuroticism, and the flight from physical sensation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1264 1277. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167206289505. Goldenberg, J. L., McCoy, S. K., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2000). The body as a source of self-esteem: The effects of mortality salience on identification with one’s body, interest in sex, and appearance monitoring. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(1), 118 130. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2000). Fleeing the body: A terror management perspective on the problem of human corporeality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 200 218. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0403pass:[_]1. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Kluck, B., & Cornwell, R. (2001). I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 130(3), 427 435. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., McCoy, S. K., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). Death, sex, love, and neuroticism: Why is sex such a problem? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1173 1187. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1173. Goldenberg, J. L., & Roberts, T.-A. (2004). The beast within the beauty: An existential perspective on the objectification and condemnation of women. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 71 85). New York: Guilford. Goldenberg, J. L., Routledge, C., & Arndt, J. (2009). Mammograms and the management of existential discomfort: Threats associated with the physicality of the body and neuroticism. Psychology & Health, 24, 563 581. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/08870440701864546. Gottlieb, A. (1982). Sex, fertility and menstruation among the Beng of the Ivory Coast: A symbolic analysis. Africa, 52(4), 34 47. Grabe, S., Routledge, C., Cook, A., Andersen, C., & Arndt, J. (2005). In defense of the body: The effect of mortality salience on female body objectification. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 33 37. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2005.00165.x. Gray, K., Knobe, J., Sheskin, M., Bloom, P., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). More than a body: Mind perception and the surprising nature of objectification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1207 1220. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a002588. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Grover, K. W., Miller, C. T., Solomon, S., Webster, R. J., & Saucier, D. A. (2010). Mortality salience and perceptions of people with AIDS: Understanding the role of prejudice. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32, 315 327. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01973533.2010.519252. Guterman, M., Mehta, P., & Gibbs, M. (2007). Menstrual taboos among major religions. The Internet Journal of World Health and Societal Politics, 5 (2), 1 2. Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814 834. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814. Haidt, J., McCauley, C., & Rozin, P. (1994). Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 16, 701 713. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(94)90212-7. Haidt, J., Rozin, P., McCauley, C., & Imada, S. (1997). Body, psyche, and culture: The relationship between disgust and morality. Psychology & Developing Societies, 9, 107 131. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/097133369700900105. Hall, M. E., & Thoennes, E. (2006). At home in our bodies: Implications of the incarnation for embodiment and Christian higher education. Christian Scholar’s Review, 36(1), 29 45. Hansen, J., Winzeler, S., & Topolinski, S. (2010). When the death makes you smoke: A terror management perspective on the effectiveness of cigarette on-pack warnings. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 226 228. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.09.007. Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 252 264. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_4. Hebl, M. R., King, E. B., Glick, P., Singletary, S. L., & Kazama, S. (2007). Hostile and benevolent reactions toward pregnant women: Complementary interpersonal punishments and rewards that maintain traditional roles. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1499 1511. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1499. Henry, M. (1899). A commentary on the Holy Bible: With practical remarks and observations (Vol. 5). New York: Funk and Wagnalls. (Original work published in 1710).

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

401

Jacobson, H. L., Hall, M. L., Anderson, T. L., & Willingham, M. M. (2016). Religious beliefs and experiences of the body: An extension of the developmental theory of embodiment. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 19, 52 67. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2015.1115473. Jessop, D. C., & Wade, J. (2008). Fear appeals and binge drinking: A terror management theory perspective. British Journal of Health Psychology, 13, 773 788. Available from https://doi.org/10.1348/135910707X272790. Johnston-Robledo, I., Sheffield, K., Voigt, J., & Wilcox-Constantine, J. (2007). Reproductive shame: Self-objectification and young women’s attitudes toward their reproductive functioning. Women Health, 46, 25 39. Available from https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v46n01_03. Johnston-Robledo, I., Wares, S., Fricker, J., & Pasek, L. (2007). Indecent exposure: Self-objectification and young women’s attitudes toward breastfeeding. Sex Roles, 56, 429 437. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9194-4. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553 567. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.553. Koole, S. L., & van den Berg, A. E. (2005). Lost in the wilderness: Terror management, action orientation, and nature evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 1014 1028. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.1014. Kowalski, R. M., & Chapple, T. (2000). The social stigma of menstruation. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24, 74 80. Available from https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01023.x. Landau, M. J., Goldenberg, J. L., Greenberg, J., Gillath, O., Solomon, S., Cox, C., . . . Pyszczynski, T. (2006). The siren’s call: Terror management and the threat of men’s sexual attraction to women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 129 146. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1037/0022-3514.90.1.129. Lifshin, U., Greenberg, J., Soenke, M., Darrell, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2018). Mortality salience, religiosity, and indefinite life extension: Evidence of a reciprocal relationship between afterlife beliefs and support for forestalling death. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8, 31 43. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1238841. Maghen, Z. (1999). Close encounters: Some preliminary observations on the transmission of impurity in early Sunni jurisprudence. Islamic Law and Society, 6, 348 392. Available from https://doi.org/10.1163/1568519991223784. Masci, D. (2013). Most Americans believe in Jesus’ virgin birth. Retrieved from ,http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/25/most-americansbelieve-in-jesus-virgin-birth/.. Maxfield, M., Pyszczynski, T., Kluck, B., Cox, C. R., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Weise, D. (2007). Age-related differences in responses to thoughts of one’s own death: Mortality salience and judgments of moral transgressions. Psychology and Aging, 22, 341 353. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.22.2.341. Meacham (leBeit Yoreh), T. (2009). Female purity (niddah). In: Jewish women: A comprehensive historical encyclopedia. Retrieved from ,https:// jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/female-purity-niddah . . Meier, B. P., Hauser, D. J., Robinson, M. D., Friesen, C. K., & Schjeldahl, K. (2007). What’s “up” with God?: Vertical space as a representation of the divine. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 699 710. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.699. Miller, M. (2005). Breasts: Baby feeders or sexual objects? Retrieved from ,http://www.sexscrolls.net/breasts_sex_objects.html.. Miller, W. I. (1997). The anatomy of disgust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morris, K. L., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2015). Objects become her: The role of mortality salience on men’s attraction to literally objectified women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 56, 69 72. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.09.005. Morris, K. L., Goldenberg, J. L., & Heflick, N. A. (2014). Trio of terror (pregnancy, menstruation, and breastfeeding): An existential function of literal self-objectification among women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 181 198. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036493. Morse, J. M. (1989). “Euch, those are for your husband!” Examination of cultural values and assumptions about breastfeeding. Health Care for Women International, 11, 223 232. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/07399339009515890. Noll, S. M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). A mediational model linking self-objectification, body shame, and disordered eating. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 22, 623 636. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1998.tb00181.x. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174 187. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205280251. Oaten, M., Stevenson, R. J., & Case, T. I. (2009). Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 303 321. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014823. Pelham, B. W., Shimizu, M., Arndt, J., Carvallo, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2018). Searching for God: Illness-related mortality threats and religious search volume in Google in 16 nations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 290 303. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0146167217736047. Plato. (1952). The dialogues of Plato (B. Jowett, Trans.). Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835 845. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.106.4.835. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. L. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From Genesis to Revelation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 1 70. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2015.03.001. Rank, O. (1952). The trauma of birth. New York: Robert Brunner. (Original work published 1924). Rank, O. (1998). Psychology and the soul (G. C. Richter & E. J. Lieberman, Trans.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1930). Ritter, R. S., & Preston, J. L. (2011). Gross gods and icky atheism: Disgust responses to rejected religious beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1225 1230. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.05.006.

402

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Roberts, T. (2004). Female trouble: The menstrual self-evaluation scale and women‘s self-objectification. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 28, 22 26. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2004.00119.x. Roberts, T., Calogero, R. M., & Gervais, S. J. (2018). Objectification theory: Continuing contributions to feminist psychology. In C. B. Travis, J. W. White, A. Rutherford, W. S. Williams, S. L. Cook, & K. F. Wyche (Eds.), APA handbook of the psychology of women: History, theory, and battlegrounds (pp. 249 271). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Available from http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1037/0000059-013. Roberts, T., Goldenberg, J. L., Power, C., & Pyszczynski, T. (2002). “Feminine protection:” The effects of menstruation on attitudes towards women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 131 139. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.00051. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 816 827. Available from https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.05.016. Routledge, C., Arndt, J., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2004). A time to tan: Proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on sun exposure intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1347 1358. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264056. Rozin, P., & Fallon, A. E. (1987). A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review, 94, 23 41. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037//0033295X.94.1.23. Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (1993). Disgust. In M. Lewis, & J. Haviland (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 575 594). New York: Guilford. Rubin, L. R., & Steinberg, J. R. (2011). Self-objectification and pregnancy: Are body functionality dimensions protective? Sex Roles, 65, 606 618. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9955-y. Schiller, G. (1971). Iconography of Christian art. London: Lund Humphries. Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 789 803. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.92.5.789. Selimbegovi´c, L., Chatard, A., Er-Rafiy, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2016). Nuclear accident reminders and support for nuclear energy: Paradoxical effect. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 48, 87 100. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.09.004. Sharma, C. (2017). Gender equality: Access to worship places. In A. Singh, & M. Yadav (Eds.), Alexis review volume 1 (pp. 85 116). Lucknow, India: Alexis Foundation. Retrieved from ,http://www.alexis.in/publications.html.. Sherman, G. D., & Clore, G. L. (2009). The color of sin: White and black are perceptual symbols of moral purity and pollution. Psychological Science, 20, 1019 1025. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02403.x. Soenke, M., Landau, M. J., & Greenberg, J. (2013). Sacred armor: Religion’s role as a buffer against the anxieties of life and the fear of death. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research (pp. 105 122). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Stephens, N. M., Fryberg, S. A., Markus, H. R., & Hamedani, M. G. (2012). Who explains Hurricane Katrina and the Chilean earthquake as an act of God? The experience of extreme hardship predicts religious meaning-making. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44, 606 619. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022112454330. Taylor, S. E., & Langer, E. J. (1977). Pregnancy: A social stigma? Sex Roles, 3(1), 27 35. Templer, D. I., & Ruff, C. F. (1971). Death Anxiety Scale means, standard deviations, and embedding. Psychological Reports, 29, 173 174. Available from https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1971.29.1.173. Thomas, K. (1984). Man and the natural world: Changing attitudes in England 1500 1800. London: Penguin Publishing. Tracy, J. L., Hart, J., & Martens, J. P. (2011). Death and science: The existential underpinnings of belief in intelligent design and discomfort with evolution. PLoS One, 6(3), e17349. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017349. United Nations Population Fund. (2000). Violence against women and girls: A human rights and health priority. Lives together, worlds apart: Men and women in a time of change (pp. 25 30). New York: UNFPA. U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office on Women’s Health (2011). The Surgeon General’s call to action to support breastfeeding: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD. ,https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52682/ . . Vaes, J., Paladino, P., & Puvia, E. (2011). Are sexualized women complete human beings? Why men and women dehumanize sexually objectified women. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 774 785. Available from https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.824. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84 94. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1088868309351165. Van Cappellen, P. (2018). Opening remarks. Atlanta, GA: Welcoming address at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality preconference. Vess, M., & Arndt, J. (2008). The nature of death and the death of nature: The impact of mortality salience on environmental concern. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1376 1380. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2008.04.007. Vess, M., Arndt, J., & Cox, C. R. (2012). Faith and nature: The effect of death-relevant cognitions on the relationship between religious fundamentalism and connectedness to nature. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 333 340. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1948550611420303.

Of flesh and blood: death, creatureliness, and incarnational ambivalence toward the Divine Chapter | 27

403

Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Exploring the existential function of religion: The effect of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on faith-based medical refusals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334 350. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015545. World Health Organization. (2015, April). WHO statement on caesarean section rates. Retrieved from ,https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/ publications/maternal_perinatal_health/cs-statement/en/.. Zhong, C. B., & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science, 313, 1451 1452. Available from https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1130726.

Chapter 28

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Jaı¨s Adam-Troı¨an1 and Matt Motyl2 1

Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France, 2New York University, New York, NY, United States

Religion permeates human history. The archeological record shows many elaborate death rituals that celebrate life but also ease the transition from life to some sort of afterlife (Culotta, 2009; Mithen, 1998). For example, the Egyptians erected the Great Pyramids of Giza and filled them with riches and all that deceased pharaohs may need as they reanimate into the next world (Taylor, 2001). And, today, naturalists infuse themselves with essential oils, wrap themselves in banana leaves, and are planted into the ground as nourishment for Gaia (Beal, 2007). This latter case does not require the existence of another world or some supernatural afterlife, but rather a literal transition to a symbolic afterlife in becoming one with nature. Similar symbolic rituals are not limited to death-specific practices but pervade throughout people’s lives and can be seen in synchronous prostrations before a deified leader or in singing anthems to a nation, party, or cause. These practices are a small subset of the countless behaviors people perform to display their commitment to a worldview that includes an object of devotion and frame of orientation governing social conduct via moral principles (Durkheim, 1897; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008). Using this definition, religion can be viewed as an evolved mechanism (Henrich, 2015). Specifically, if religions effectively coordinate the actions and beliefs of many people, it can promote cooperation within a group and improve its competitive advantage against other groups of people lacking the coordination that religions provide (Roes & Raymond, 2003; Wilson, 2003). These advantages result in religious groups out-surviving nonreligious groups over time, particularly when resources are scarce (cf. Alcock, 2017; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008). Despite the survival benefit religions confer upon groups, religion paradoxically is not so beneficent toward individual group members. Specifically, effective religions cultivate extreme commitment, or identity fusion, in its adherents, which increases individual group members’ willingness to engage in self-sacrificial behavior such as going to war or participating in suicide bombings to kill members of other groups (Swann & Buhrmester, 2015). Yet, religion also has many positive effects for individuals, such as improved social connectedness and well-being (Lim, 2015). In this chapter, we seek to address the contradictions in the literature and advance our understanding of religion from a comprehensive perspective integrating evolutionary, existential, psychological, and sociological thought.

Motivating religion Prayer does not change God, but it changes him [sic] who prays. Soren Kierkegaard.

Religions and the religious beliefs they contain have a massive impact on human behavior (e.g., Vail et al., 2010). Religions, as systems of meaning, impose meaning, order, and predictability on the chaos that is life and provides a sense of identity for individuals, all of which are indicators of proper human functioning (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006). Though these are important parameters, we deliberately maintain a birds-eye view focusing on the function, and not the substance, of religious beliefs (Bellah, 2011). We will now get into the detail of the main motives that encourage individuals to join religious organizations and adhere to their sacred creeds (i.e., Heine et al., 2006; Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006), starting with one of the most studied ones: existential threat. The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00029-9 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

405

406

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

The belief in an afterlife exorcizes death From a Terror Management Theory (TMT; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989) perspective, death awareness is thought as a defining feature of human-evolved psychology, because, unlike other species, modern humans have cognitive abilities that allow them to project themselves in the future to the point that they can anticipate their eventual deaths. This awareness of one’s finitude is terrifying and needs to be mitigated. Therefore TMT proposes that people embed themselves within cultural worldviews that consist of shared beliefs, social norms, and help to make life feel more meaningful and predictable (Rosenblatt et al., 1989). Stated differently, these cultural worldviews are religious in nature, as they contain objects of devotion, provide frames of understanding the world, and prescribe proper behavior. These worldviews promise pathways to immortality. In many traditional religions, these afterlives are literal where upon dying, individuals who lived in good accordance with the conduct ordered by their belief system may rise to an eternal paradise. Yet, this immortality can also be symbolic and may manifest in the form of lifetime achievement awards and statues in one’s honor. Both types of immortality buffer against the anxiety generated by death-related thoughts (Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992). Consequently, worldviews provide individuals with a sense of purpose in a universe they may fear is meaningless and contains just one certainty—that they will die—and allow them to cope with their fear of death (Dechesne et al., 2003). TMT therefore postulates that religion has evolved as a response to allow people to do more than wallow in their despair and overcome their death anxiety (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015). More specifically, TMT argues that religion helps manage the potential death-related terror by offering a sense of psychological security and hope for immortality (see Vail et al., 2010). Diverse methods from many different research laboratories in many countries have amassed ample evidence for this point. For example, when people’s worldviews are threatened, they display increased death-related cognitions (Schimel, Hayes, Williams, & Jahrig, 2007; Vail, Arndt, Motyl, & Pyszczynski, 2009). Consistent with TMT, worldview threats only increase death-related cognition among adherents of the targeted worldview, and not adherents of competing worldviews (Hayes, Schimel, & Williams, 2008). For example, Canadian nationalists displayed increased death-related cognition when reading an article criticizing Canada, but not when reading an article criticizing another country (Schimel et al., 2007). Similarly, Christian fundamentalists displayed increased death-related cognition when reading about inconsistencies in the Bible, and nonbelievers displayed increased death-related cognitions when reading a convincing argument in favor of intelligent design and refuting evolution (Friedman & Rholes, 2007; Hayes et al., 2008). Together, these findings suggest that worldviews may shield people from their fear of death. If worldviews are these anxiety buffers, then, logically, reminding people of their deaths should lead them to cling more strongly to their worldviews and use those worldviews as a shroud hiding them from the terror before them. Indeed, reminding people of death increases their commitment to their worldviews, liking for other people sharing their worldview, and support for aggressive actions against people holding competing worldviews (Greenberg et al., 1990; McGregor et al., 1998; Pyszczynski et al., 2006). Specifically, when people are reminded of death, they become more likely to believe in an afterlife and more religious (Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973; Schoenrade, 1989). Furthermore, these effects are robust across religions (e.g., among orthodox Jews, Pirutinsky, 2009) with research showing that death reminders increased religiosity among agnostics, Muslims, and Catholics but not atheists (Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012). Also, it seems that under mortality threat, any kind of belief is better than none, at least for religious individuals. In fact, experimental investigation has demonstrated that believers (but not nonbelievers) tended to be more persuaded by articles describing evidence for the efficacy of prayer to God (Christian), Buddha (Buddhism) and Spirits (Pagan), which translated to increased faith for all these supernatural agents. Conversely, death reminders have been found to decrease problem solving capacities if the solution entails using a religious symbol (e.g., a Crucifix) in a disrespectful way (Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1995). As would be expected if religion fulfilled death anxiety regulation functions, threatening religious beliefs (by exposing believers to disconfirming/contradictory evidence for their beliefs) does increase death thought accessibility (and not negative thought accessibility in general) among religious individuals (e.g., Schimel et al., 2007). As we have seen, there is a large body of converging evidence supporting the idea that religious worldviews are connected to human concerns about mortality and their awareness of it. Though an important feature to religion, mortality salience should not be considered as an overarching determinant of religious beliefs because, as Norenzayan and Shariff (2008) point out, not all religions explicitly offer literal immortality around the world but are still attractive to their believers. In fact, let us now turn to another, core existential motive that drives religiousness: meaning.

Religion provides global meaning and significance Historically, thinkers have pointed at meaning concerns as a fundamental aspect of human cognition. In fact, the whole philosophical school of thought known as Western Existentialism (e.g., Kierkegaard) held as a central tenet the notion

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

407

that humans spend their lives searching for meaning. Accordingly, meaning-making is indeed at the heart of many important social behaviors (Heine et al., 2006; Kunda, 1990). Meaning creates goals for action, allow individuals, and provide them with a sense of control over the environment (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), to the point that human beings have been shown to possess a need for meaning (i.e., a need to feel that one’s life has purpose and significance; Baumeister, 1991; Frankl, 1963; Park, 2005; Steger, Oishi, & Kashdan, 2009; Stillman & Baumeister, 2009). It is over the past decades, research on meaning and significance has established important findings such as that meaning systems (i.e., beliefs, including religious beliefs) buffer anxiety (Greenberg et al., 1992), that meaning violations constitute threats in and of themselves (see Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, 2010) and that individuals will react to various threats by increasing their adherence to meaning systems (Lieberman, Solomon, Greenberg, & McGregor, 1999; Navarrete, Kurzban, Fessler, & Kirkpatrick, 2004). As meaning systems, religions have been found to have specific properties that render them particularly suitable to address meaning motivations compared to other ones (e.g., ideologies). First, because of their prevalence worldwide, religions serve as primary meaning-making sources for most individuals (McIntosh, 1995). Another feature that renders religions unique is their focus on values that individuals hold “sacred” (Pargament, Magyar-Russell, & Murray-Swank, 2005). The sacredness of religious values makes them particularly suitable to be readily accessible and to provide a ready buffer against meaning threats in a wide variety of situations (Proulx et al., 2010). In fact, the nature of these sacred beliefs pertains to resistance to compromise, negotiation, and social influence that may hinder them, thereby generating a meaning threat in the first place (Atran, 2016; Ginges & Atran, 2009). This property makes religious beliefs more immune to falsification (Spilka, Shaver, & Kirkpatrick, 1985). But there is also evidence showing that religious meaning to existential interrogations are typically deemed more satisfactory than secular ones (Pargament et al., 2005). Religious beliefs, understood as a quest (i.e., a process involving existential doubt through which significance and meaning can be gained), have been found to increase in the face of existential threats that involve loss of meaning and uncertainty such as familial conflicts and personal tragedies (Burns, Jackson, Tarpley, & Smith, 1996). This sacred component to religious beliefs, their greater comprehensiveness (over scientific-based beliefs systems which are inherently more complex), and their social orientation can explain part of their attractiveness to satisfy meaning motives (Newton & McIntosh, 2013). In addition, every prominent religion provides their members with structure, behavioral regulation, and a set of goals to perform (with guidance to achieve them, Geertz, 1966). Moreover, some researchers have shown that religious extremization could be understood as stemming from basic significance motivation. As such, Significance Quest Theory (see Kruglanski et al., 2014) puts significance/meaning motives at the heart of religious radicalization (Jasko, LaFree, & Kruglanski, 2017). In line with the conceptualizations and findings from the threat regulation approach to human behavior, Significance Quest Theory sees radical behavior and adherence to extreme religiosity as a way for individuals to satisfy existential needs (that one’s life has sense, is meaningful and important). In fact, this theory assumes that significance quest may fuel violent extremism (Webber et al., 2018). Accordingly, Significance Quest researchers have found that realistic threats and loss of social significance predicted display of religiously motivated violence (Jasko et al., 2017), and there is evidence that adherence to extreme religiousness increase after loss of significance and is mediated by higher levels of need for cognitive closure (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994) among samples of incarcerated violent extremists in the Philippines and in Sri Lanka (Webber et al., 2018). It is a clear signature that Quest for Significance motivates individuals to satisfy their need for Closure or Structure, and those measurable shifts in epistemic needs reflect the temporary motivation of individuals to resolve a loss of significance by trying to attain goals that will ward off feelings of meaninglessness and existential anxiety, by adhering more extremely to their prior religious beliefs for instance (Kruglanski & Orehek, 2011). In sum, psychological science highlights myriad ways religions could provide individuals with meaning. But besides issues of significance and self-transcendence, the need for meaning is linked with yet other existential motives that pertain to more “practical” matters. Because meaning pertains to extraction and projection of sets of logical relationships from and toward one’s psychological environment (Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012), it is a crucial element for goals planning and achievement. This whole process entails yet another class of psychological needs for control and mastery, whether perceptual or literal. We will now review some of the important control compensatory functions of religious beliefs.

External agents are in control so we can feel free Decades of converging evidence from social, clinical, and cognitive psychology have highlighted the centrality of feelings of personal control for individuals’ well-being and healthy functioning. For instance, early work on causal attribution shows that individuals automatically make inferences about the causality of events in their surroundings to make sense out of situations and act upon it efficiently (Kelley, 1973; Zuckerman, 1979). Moreover, the importance of rapid

408

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

causal attributions to making sense of and responding to environments seems to stem from a need for personal control (Pittman & Pittman, 1980). Furthermore, beliefs about one’s ability to cause effective change or to successfully enact behaviors are linked with both physical and psychological well-being (e.g., Lerner, 1980; see Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), to the point that successive failures to achieve control over stressful situations (i.e., learned helplessness) are likely to trigger anxiety and to lead to depression (Klein, Fencil-Morse, & Seligman, 1976; Miller & Seligman, 1975). In fact, one of the strongest predictors of successful health behavior change remains self-efficacy, the tendency to perceive oneself as able to correctly perform a given behavior, which help make the world seem less confusing (Ajzen, 2002; Bandura, 1982; Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010). Consequently, control threats have been shown not only to lead to a host of so-called compensatory behaviors but also to compensatory cognitions that are at the basis of religious beliefs (e.g., illusory pattern perception; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008) and which aim to restore a sense of at least perceptual control (if not material). Control threats, through the anxiety they trigger, motivate individuals to restore feelings of control through extremization of adherence to accessible meaning systems (Jonas et al., 2014) and to actively seek out meaningful patterns to extract from their surroundings (by a process called abstraction; Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012). These two types of reactions may explain, again, the appeal of religion under loss of control. Nevertheless, it may be argued that religions, because of their focus on supernatural agents being in control, might be less suitable for satisfying personal control needs since they could potentially deprive individuals of their sense of agency (Skinner, 1995). Quite on the contrary, feelings of personal control have more to do with finding meaningful explanations to situations so that they seem at least psychologically manageable. To some extent, when it comes to personal control, to understand an issue is already to solve it. Accordingly, research on compensatory control demonstrates that individuals will respond to control loss by increasing their adherence to external structures that fit their worldviews (e.g., the State for seculars, Religion for believers; Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009). These reactions appear cross-culturally and in response to various kinds of threats. From increases in superstitions under times of economic uncertainty in Western countries (Sales, 1973) to perpetuation of fishing related rituals due to constant exposure to unexpected storms among tribes in Pacific islands (Malinowski & Redfield, 1948), control motives seem to be at the root of many religious behaviors. Moreover, the appeal of ordered hierarchical structures common to large cultural and religious belief systems is tied to control motives, such as differences in individuals’ need for structure or situational contexts of control loss (Friesen, Kay, Eibach, & Galinsky, 2014). Research shows that control threats increase the defense of external structures in the form of higher beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008) and that beliefs in supernatural agents typically increases after manipulations that lower personal control, thus lending support to the idea that religious beliefs serve as compensatory personal control in the face of uncertainty and randomness (Kay et al., 2010). These effects are even more pronounced given that religious groups often constitute homogenous social groups that are more likely to be perceived as efficient in providing a source of external control under uncertainty (i.e., a source of group-based control see Fritsche et al., 2013). Thus it is clear from the literature that religious beliefs stem not only from meaning-related motives but also from existential concerns about one’s control over one’s life and environment, in a (very nonlinear) world rife with random and unexpected events. But, as we have seen, there is also an important component to religion that provides individuals with a sense of control. This next motive we will now explore pertains to the social integration aspect of religious organizations and their fulfillment of belonging needs.

I believe, therefore I am Human primates have been labeled a hyperprosocial and ultrasocial species (Decety, Pape, & Workman, 2018). Hyperprosociality entails that humans live in groups of conspecifics. To date, many findings point to the functionality of group membership and social networks in terms of well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2000), material/physical safety (Navarrete et al., 2004; Pickett & Brewer, 2001), sharing of information relevant to one’s survival (Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003), and anxiety reduction (Buss & Shackelford, 1997). Social interactions and integration to social groups are vital to survival (Caporael, 2001; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Maslow, 1943; Postmes, Baray, Haslam, Morton, & Swaab, 2006). In fact, across an individual’s lifespan, conspecifics are needed to ensure survival, from for infants’ growth and normal functioning (Beckes, Simpson, & Erickson, 2010; Nylen, O’Hara, & Engeldinger, 2013; Over, 2016) to elders’ autonomy (e.g., Blazer, 1982). This tremendous adaptive value of group belongingness has shaped human psychology to the point that belonging has become one fundamental need driving many of the everyday behavior of human beings (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Leary & Baumeister, 2017).

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

409

Consequently, ample evidence suggests that religion does serve an affiliative function (see Bloom, 2005), which is able to satisfy individuals’ need to belong. Because conformity and perceptual similarity is at the basis of selfcategorization processes (see the role of normative/descriptive fit in the psychological mechanism of one’s identification as part of a group, Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), seemingly “irrational” rituals and codes (e.g., specific clothing, ceremonies, fasting, and forbidden foods) can be thought as having an important effect on the way religious group members feel integrated, coordinated, and bonded with their community of “like-minded others” (Graham & Haidt, 2010; Hogg, 2000; Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010). It is even suggested that religious beliefs, independent of their content, are a very specific form of shared beliefs. According to Bar-Tal (2012), shared beliefs provide group members with a sense of collective control over the environment. More importantly, they fulfill individuals’ affiliative needs, allowing them to draw a psychological boundary between “us” and “them.” This tendency leads to people with similar backgrounds and beliefs gravitating toward one another, which, over time, leads to increasing similarity within these groups. This similarity of backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, and goals assists in the development of distinctive social identities (see Bar-Tal, 2000; Hogg, Hardie, & Reynolds, 1995), and religious beliefs do help maintain a sense of shared reality and in-group coordination (Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008). In line with this observation, self-reported religiosity has been found to correlate positively with shared reality motivations (see Hennes, Nam, Stern, & Jost, 2012). Also, laboratory manipulations of social exclusion threats increase both religiosity (intrinsic and extrinsic) and positive attitudes toward religious rituals (Aydin, Fischer, & Frey, 2010). The affiliative motivation at play behind religion is so powerful that even subliminal attachment threats can increase self-reported religiosity (with attachment style-linked moderators; see Birgegard & Granqvist, 2004; Magee & Hardin, 2010). Nevertheless, living in large groups is not without negative consequences. In addition to increased stress and competition for resources, larger groups bring higher rates of freeloading (individuals enjoying access to material resources without contributing to their creation, Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008). Therefore anthropological investigations have demonstrated that the moral content of religious beliefs depends on group size: larger groups seem to bring more morally concerned deities (enforcing strong rules to regulate individual behavior; Roes & Raymond, 2003). So far, this nonexhaustive review of the motivational underpinnings of religious beliefs considers the conjoint role of both existential and social concerns for adequately understanding religion. In the next section, we argue that the blend of identity and significance motives that pervade religious beliefs is a unique feature of religion. We believe that the defining characteristic of religion is the way these kinds of meaning systems resonate with human psychological needs to produce a moral property which strongly merges social identity with beliefs. Besides the well replicated findings that theists are perceived as more moral and trustworthy than their atheist counterparts around the world (even by atheists themselves; Brown-Iannuzzi, McKee, & Gervais, 2018), this specificity leads to important consequences at the community level. For instance, an analysis of life expectancy of 200 “communes” established in 19th century America revealed that religious communes were four times more likely to survive than secular ones despite several relevant control variables accounting for historical events and other confounds (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). This moralized component of religion is so strong that it sometimes lead believers to display extreme forms of zealous behaviors, such as total commitment, to their community, including willingness to die for “cause and comrades” (a potent combination of group fusion and sacred values which can also be found in “sacralized” secular ideological groups, see Atran, Axelrod, & Davis, 2007; Atran, 2016). We will now review how religious morality echoes fundamental social existential needs and why this is important to understand religion-related phenomena.

Religion, morality, and identity Religion and morality There exists a deeply rooted idea that morality cannot be achieved without religion. In fact, a 2007 poll revealed that 57% of Americans believe religion to be a necessary condition for morality. As mentioned before, many studies show strong implicit and explicit links between atheism and immorality (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011; Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013), despite the fact that this relationship does not hold under empirical scrutiny (e.g., Decety et al., 2015). Over the past decades, work on morality (i.e., what is a “right” or “wrong” behavior; Haidt & Kesebir, 2010) has emphasized its cognitive aspects (e.g., Kohlberg, 1969). However, because moral reasoning only partially predicts moral behavior (Blasi, 1980; Hardy & Carlo, 2011), research has recently shifted on understanding the motivational components at play behind morality. Building upon evidence from evolutionary psychology and cross cultural investigations of moral values from anthropology, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT, see Graham et al., 2013, 2018)

410

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

approaches morality as being driven by different motivational concerns. According to MFT, moral values have an innate component that is expressed differently based on the environmental, thus reconciling evidence in favor of the diversity of the human moral landscape with findings highlighting the universal features of morality (e.g., Schwartz & Bilsky, 1990). As such, MFT postulates the existence of at least five dimensions to morality (i.e., moral foundations): concerns with care/harm (hurting people is wrong), fairness/cheating fairness is good), loyalty/betrayal (individuals should be true to their in-group), authority/subversion (social hierarchy is to be respected), sanctity/degradation (one’s body is sacred, cleanliness and health is good), and liberty/oppression (people want autonomy, and curtailing autonomy is bad; see Graham et al., 2018). Each of these foundations is linked with specific evolved capacities for solving environmental problems. For example, the sanctity/degradation moral foundation may have emerged as a way to minimize people’s contact with infectious diseases and various pathogens. Accordingly, there is evidence that moral foundations entertain specific links with religion. Experimental studies have uncovered that religious priming could improve cooperation (Ahmed & Salas, 2011; Benjamin, Choi, & Fisher, 2010; Xygalatas, 2013) and especially with other in-group members (Preston, Ritter, & Ivan Hernandez, 2010) which may be indicative of loyalty motives. Furthermore, religious priming can lead to decreased cheating (i.e., fairness motives; Aveyard, 2014; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008), greater intentions to help conspecifics (i.e., care motives Malhotra, 2010; Saroglou & Pichon, 2009), and increased self-control (i.e., potentially authority or liberty motives; Friese & Wa¨nke, 2014; Harrison & McKay, 2013). Recent lines of research have also mapped that different types of religious orientations were linked with different moral foundations (except for care concerns; see Bulbulia, Osborne, & Sibley, 2013). As such, fairness predicts increased Quest orientations (the tendency to perceive religion as a process to answer existential doubts) while Loyalty positively predicted extrinsic religiosity and authority negatively predicts Quest orientation and intrinsic religiosity. Finally, Sanctity, as the strongest predictors among the tested foundations, entertained a positive link with intrinsic religiosity, of magnitude so high the authors argued those two constructs might be indistinguishable to believers (Bulbulia et al., 2013). Despite the evidence for the linking religion and moral foundations, questions remain. First, because both morality and religion involve a series of independent cognitive mechanisms (Boyer, 2001) “although often connected by narratives, doctrines, songs, and other culturally distributed networks of ideas, [morality and religion] are the outcomes of quite distinct psychological processes and functions” (McKay & Whitehouse, 2015, p. 448). In addition, because “religion not only is particularly concerned with morality as an external correlate but also includes morality as one of its basic dimensions” these authors conclude that “inquiry into the effects of ‘religion’ as a whole on ‘morality’ as a whole may be a circular, and therefore futile, enterprise.” And, in fact, when decomposing the different factors driving both constructs, it may be argued that religion’s links with morality may have more to do with overlap in their determinants and historical contingency. As we have seen, both religious beliefs and moral foundations have evolutionary underpinnings as solutions to adaptive problems, but it seems that existential motives also drive moral foundations (see Kesebir & Pyszczynski, 2011). Existential anxieties (e.g., death anxiety, loss of control, and isolation) drive strong responses to moral violations of the harm care foundation (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997; Kesebir & Pyszczynski, 2011). It also drives fairness/reciprocity concerns to produce harsh intergroup sanctions (Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000; Welch, 1993) and even genocides (Dutton, Boyanowsky, & Bond, 2005) to restore a sense of fairness (Hirschberger et al., 2016). Moreover, in-group loyalty is bolstered under existential anxiety and can take varied forms such as patriotism, nationalism, or extreme conformity to in-group norms (e.g., Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002; Landau et al., 2004). Similarly, authority/ respect concerns, when violated, lead to feelings of humiliation and insignificance (Ginges & Atran, 2009; Kruglanski et al., 2014) while a whole line of TMT research demonstrated that mortality concerns are at the root of people’s disgust for any reminder of their “creatureliness” (i.e., sexual behavior, body fluids; Cox, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, & Weise, 2007; Goldenberg et al., 2001; Motyl et al., 2013). For all these reasons, we think that the efficiency of religion as a meaning system that satisfies social existential needs cannot be understood through its links with morality per se (because political ideologies also emphasize different moral values; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009).

From morality to community Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. Friedrich Nietzsche.

Given the importance of social existential motives in the formation of both religious and moral beliefs, we argue that the specificity of religion might lie in the way it merges social identity with moral beliefs to produce strong

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

411

meaning systems immune to falsification and that can be defended at any cost. We think that religion is existentially efficient because it creates moral identity (when morality is interiorized and seen as central for one’s identity, see Hardy & Carlo, 2011). In sum, moral identity, not morality “binds and blinds” (Haidt, 2012). This potential of moral values for generating social cohesion was already observed by Emile Durkheim more than a century ago (see Durkheim, 1897). As Haidt (2008) sums it, “Durkheim believed that people need constraints to flourish and that a cohesive society provides a regulative force that plays the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs” (Haidt, 2008, p. 66). In fact, Durkheim’s main idea for applying sociology at the time was that of secularization. He thought that religion was so powerful in generating strong bonds through morality that modernization in France would need sociological guidance to educate children with secular values in a way that would generate the same outcomes in terms of social cohesiveness, feelings of belonging, and morality than religious values. Furthermore, Durkheim’s conception of morality was already based on the link between existential motives and social outcomes. It included a significant focus on societal goals and a common vision as means of generating strong community bonds (Durkheim, 1897; Haidt, 2008), which, if lacking, could lead individuals to display extreme behavior. For instance, in his analysis of suicide behavior, Durkheim (1897) insists on the social relational factors that can lead to such extreme outcomes. For the first time, he introduces Anomie, which is described as a societal state leading individuals to progressively detach themselves from society and to reject the prevailing morality of their original communities. An Anomic community generates perceived “normlessness” among its inhabitants (Durkheim, 1897). In line with this analysis, other sociological approaches to deviant behavior revolved around the idea that in the case fulfilling socially ascribed goals is impossible, perceived normlessness will lead individuals to use undesirable (i.e., nonnormative) means to achieve their ends (Merton, 1938). If Anomie is a property of social systems, other lines of research uncovered one of its individual psychological consequences: anomia. Anomia is a psychological condition that can stem from societal Anomie but is distinct from it. It typically occurs whenever one’s values strongly conflict with the values and norms of their group or society (Meier & Bell, 1959; Srole, 1956; Zhao & Cao, 2010). Anomia manifests itself through the feelings of normlessness, but integrative work showed that this is only one out five dimensions to this syndrome. Consequently, anomia comprises feelings of meaninglessness (that one’s life has no purpose), powerlessness (that one’s actions have no consequences), social isolation (that one’s values do not fit with those of one’s society), normlessness (that behavior is not efficiently socially regulated), and self-estrangement (that one’s daily actions are motivated by external factors such as working for the wage only; Levina, Perejolkina, Martinsone, Mihailova, & Kolesnikova, 2018; Seeman, 1959; Smith & Bohm, 2008). Anomia is higher in societies undergoing major stresses such as economic crises or threats (e.g., terrorism) but is chronically present within some marginal parts of society (see Teymoori et al., 2016). When individuals do not use shared norms and moral values because their community prohibits them from doing so, a social psychological phenomenon of anomia occurs among individuals. Because moral norms provide individuals with meaning (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), influence goal setting and aspirations (Giddens, 1971), and because religions provide individual with a strong moralized identity, it is easy to see how they constitute potent forms of meaning systems to buffer existential anxiety in the form of anomia. This is very important because anomia is a construct integrating the various social existential motives at play behind individuals’ aspirations. And abovementioned research on the effects of these social existential motives shows that, in the absence of efficient buffers (e.g., through one’s participation in a cohesive social group with core beliefs providing one with a sense of higher purpose), anomia can have dramatic consequences. Amongst them can be a situation of social alienation (Castel, 1995) that can eventually lead to suicide. For example, in 68 countries, social integration was negatively linked with suicide rates (Lenzi, Colucci, & Minas, 2012). Similarly, in all 50 states within the United States, social integration corresponded with suicide rates (Classen & Dunn, 2010). This analysis is at the basis of modern conceptions of human niche construction (i.e., the way individuals modify their habitat, and how that habitat modifies its inhabitants) and community formation. These see meaning systems as a fundamental element around which individuals will organize their everyday lives precisely because of their satisfaction of human basic social existential needs. For instance, Worldview Enclavement Theory (WET; Motyl, 2016; Motyl, Prims, & Iyer, in press) states that our natural inclinations toward homophily and our automatic recognition of worldview traces in our social ecology inevitably lead to the geographical clustering of individuals into more and more ideologically homogeneous communities. Moreover, WET highlights a fundamental mediating mechanism at play behind enclavement: perceptions of fitting in with one’s fellow in-group members and neighbors. People seem to have accurate, albeit nonexplicit knowledge a community’s worldview (Motyl, 2016; Motyl et al., in press). Individuals can indeed predict others’ attitudes above chance from short video clips, suggesting that physical similarity conveys attitude similarity (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson, 2011). This

412

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

is because, as some social psychological theories of moral reasoning propose, intuitions (i.e., preconscious emotional perceptions) guide reasoning (see Haidt, 2001, 2007). Based on this theoretical framework, WET, therefore, claims that people intuitively pick up worldview cues in small geographical areas (e.g., neighborhoods), through both their immediate social and physical environment. But people use those cues to determine which social milieu they fit (or would like to fit) whether these are explicit social cues or more subtle environmental cues. Explicit social cues convey information about one’s belongingness (or lack of). For instance, experimental studies have shown that women felt less belonging in STEM lectures when the video they were exposed to displayed a majority of males than when it showed a balanced male/female ratio (Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007). Similar effects have been found with ethnic cues (e.g., Lewis, Yang, Jacobs, & Fitchett, 2012) and personality-related ones (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002). Therefore a community’s perceived homogeneity may be particularly attractive to satisfy individuals’ social existential needs (notwithstanding the fact that being surrounded by like-minded others is reassuring; see Hardin & Higgins, 1996; Motyl et al., 2011; Swann, 1987). The idea that individuals are driven by their social existential needs to actively seek out and join worldviewvalidating, congenial communities has important implications for the study of the existential underpinnings of religion. First, it helps understand the formation and maintenance of religious communities or enclaves built around churches for instances. In fact, most work on worldview enclavement to date pertains to political ideologies and shows that liberal and conservative neighborhoods differ greatly in terms of their social environment (i.e., ratio of book stores to gun stores, types of cars on the road, and types of religious institutions present; Gampa, Wojcik, Motyl, Nosek, & Ditto, 2019; Pew Research Center, 2014, Motyl, 2016). While primarily studied in the context of political ideologies, religious enclaves are common and are likely rife with different cues of religious worldviews and what beliefs are best accepted in a given enclave. For example, adherents of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster may feel like they do not belong in Nebraska following a District Court ruling that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is not, in fact, a religion (Wofford, 2016). Yet, adherents of the more widely adopted religion of Christianity in the state of Nebraska may feel an improved sense of belonging and worldview validation as the number of Flying Spaghetti Monster adherents dressed as pirates and wearing sacred colanders on their heads diminishes. Moreover, WET provides for another interesting hypothesis: social existential motives should lead individuals to move, seek out communities according to their worldview fit, hence leading to phenomena of worldview migration. Humans are known to have migrated their basic needs (e.g., securing access to food, water, and safety from hostile out-groups; see Li, Cohen, Weeden, & Kenrick, 2010), but individuals also do so to satisfy social existential needs (i.e., significance, sense belonging in a community; Motyl, Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter, & Nosek, 2014). WET, therefore, hypothesizes that one source of influence on individual’s migration choices could be fit (Byrne, Clore, & Smeaton, 1986; Motyl, 2016) and/or misfit with one’s community (Byrne et al., 1986). Migration can be seen as a response to one’s feeling disgusted or existentially threatened with one’s current community (Haidt & Graham, 2007; Pyszczynski, Vail, & Motyl, 2009). As Motyl (2016) points out, this phenomenon of ideological migration seems to be at play behind many instances of segregation of ideological and religious groups across the globe (e.g., Serbians, Croatians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians; Lim, Metzler, & Bar-Yam, 2007). Moreover, investigations support the hypothesis that people move away from ideologically misfitting groups toward fit (Bishop, 2009; Motyl et al., 2014). Therefore we argue that worldview migration could well explain why religious people engage in pilgrimage and heritage tourism (Huntsinger & Ferna´ndez-Gime´nez, 2000; Murray & Graham, 1997; Turner & Turner, 1978). More importantly, worldview migration sheds light on individuals’ engagement in armed struggles for a “religious” cause. In fact, the departure of youth with an immigration background from their European communities to Syria fits very well this analysis. Instead of talking being a symptom of “religious radicalization,” violent extremists’ migration patterns may be a reflection of their attempt to satisfy their social existential motivations under high levels of anomia following their exposure to discrimination (e.g., Kaya & Karakoc¸, 2012) and to a religiously misfit environment.

Grave questions for future research Though much scientific progress has been made in understanding the antecedents and consequences of religions and religious beliefs, there are countless questions still lacking answers. One important area to explore is whether religious identification and belief actually corresponds with lower cognitive ability as is often reported in the literature (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, Hall, 2013). Though cognitive ability is often associated with lower levels of traditional religiosity, this link may pertain more to differences in the inhibition of intuitive responses than IQ deficits in general (see Daws & Hampshire, 2017). Moreover, this deficit approach to

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

413

religious cognition neglects important contextual and environmental features, such as resource scarcity and identity threats, which may drive the apparent negative relationship between cognitive ability and traditional religiosity (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2007). The correlational evidence underlying the deficit approach to religious cognition could also stem from ideological bias on the behalf of the predominantly nontheistic social scientists who may create a hostile climate for religious research participants (Buss & von Hippel, 2018; Jussim, Crawford, Anglin, Stevens, 2015; Stevens et al., 2017; von Hippel & Buss, 2017). Indeed, contextual cues that reinforce the stereotype that religious people may not be particularly competent in science impair religious people’s performance on scientific tasks (Rios, Cheng, Totton, & Shariff, 2015). When removing those stereotype-reinforcing cues, the relationship between religiosity and performance on the scientific task vanished. Given the importance and ubiquity of religion, it is imperative to study it cautiously. Otherwise, science runs the risk of providing a (biased) perspective that can be used to justify the stigmatization of and violence toward particular religious groups (Motyl, 2016). Moreover, stigmatized groups may perceive resentment from their stigmatizers and become more inclined to support violent extremist groups who advocate the use of terrorism against those stigmatizers (Mitts, 2019). Therefore we encourage scientists to take steps to mitigate the influence of ideological bias in their work through preregistered open science and through adversarial collaborations with competing hypotheses. In addition, the investigation of religion’s adaptive features would benefit from an increasingly multidisciplinary perspective. For instance, socially adaptive features might not be observed, let alone theorized, if one does not take into account the recent developments in evolutionary biology pertaining to the existence of multilevel selection processes (cultural adaptations selected because they entail behaviors that optimize survival rates at the group and not necessarily individual level, see Turner, Geertz, Petersen, & Maryanski, 2018) though there is still much debate over the validity of multilevel selection against natural selection processes (see Alcock, 2017). Another outcome of using a multidisciplinary perspective can be reflected in our work on ideological fitness and anomia as constructs directly derived from integrating a Durkheimian sociological perspective in our work on the existential underpinnings of moral, religious, and political beliefs. As described above, anomia has the advantage of bridging the gap between concurrent threat regulation models in a way that goes beyond the unified threat-defense model (Jonas et al., 2014) by taking account the very social-oriented ultimate motives of threat compensation (which, we argue, are not about anxiety regulation per se but social integration, which entails anxiety regulation as a mediating mechanism). For instance, our recent investigations showed that anomia is linked with intentions to display violent extremism in four countries (France, Belgium, Turkey, and Brazil) independently of political ideology (see Adam-Troian et al., 2019. Moreover, current work we are carrying out points at feelings of anomia as a key mediator of Loss of Significance related effects in the context of both Jihadi motivated and Yellow Vests violence. We, therefore, argue that future research should be conducted to investigate whether this construct is linked with extrinsic religiosity and could be buffered by, for instance, imagined integration to mainstream religious communities, thereby reducing violent extremism intentions through increased perceptions of ideological fit (knowing that terrorism is linked with poor religious literacy see Roy, 2014). Other research could be conducted to test whether religious priming directly reduces anomia, and thus existential anxiety at large, which would be a mediator of positive mental health outcomes/well-being, including life-threatening behaviors (e.g., suicide, substance abuse; Durkheim, 1897).

Conclusion Religions, as sets of organized meaning systems, play a unique role in shaping modern humans’ lives. Besides addressing humans’ unique concerns for their own mortality, as we have seen, religions successfully generate a blend of strong moral values that are interiorized by individuals. Psychologically speaking, this internalization of moral codes link religions with one’s identity and render them even more immune to challenge and instability, hence efficiently addressing existential concerns of meaning, control, and significance by giving people clear-cut guidance in their everyday lives. However, by creating moralized identities, religious communities also homogenize their adherents’ behaviors, creating perceptual similarity, and thus heightening a sense of belonging to the religion. Higher behavioral synchrony (through performance of rituals), worldview fit (through displays of symbols), and increased parochial prosociality satisfy individuals’ relational needs. These potent effects explain why religions are particularly suitable to buffer existential anxiety, specifically in the form of anomia and why they also might cluster communities better than any other forms of secular meaning system. In this review, we showed that while the substance of religious beliefs may vary widely, the functions served are quite similar. Religious beliefs help make sense of a chaotic world with a certain, but indeterminate end point for all living beings—death.

414

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

References Adam-Troian, J., Bonetto, E., Araujo, M., Baidada, O., Celebi, E., Dono Martin, M., . . . Yurtbakan, T. (2019). Positive associations between anomia and intentions to engage in political violence: Cross-cultural evidence from four countries. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000385, Advance online publication. Ahmed, A. M., & Salas, O. (2011). Implicit influences of Christian religious representations on dictator and prisoner’s dilemma game decisions. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(3), 242 246. Ajzen, I. (2002). Perceived behavioral control, self-efficacy, locus of control, and the theory of planned behavior 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 665 683. Ambady, N., Bernieri, F. J., & Richeson, J. A. (2000). Toward a histology of social behavior: Judgmental accuracy from thin slices of the behavioral stream, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 201 271). Academic Press. Atran, S. (2016). The devoted actor: unconditional commitment and intractable conflict across cultures. Current Anthropology, 57(13), 192 203. Atran, S., Axelrod, R., & Davis, R. (2007). Sacred barriers to conflict resolution. Science, 317(5841), 1039 1040. Alcock, J. (2017). Human sociobiology and group selection theory. On human nature (pp. 383 396). Academic Press. Aveyard, M. E. (2014). A call to honesty: Extending religious priming of moral behavior to Middle Eastern Muslims. PLoS One, 9(7), e99447. Aydin, N., Fischer, P., & Frey, D. (2010). Turning to God in the face of ostracism: Effects of social exclusion on religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(6), 742 753. Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37(2), 122. Bar-Tal, D. (2000). Shared beliefs in a society: Social psychological analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Bar-Tal, D. (2012). Group beliefs: A conception for analyzing group structure, processes, and behavior. Springer Science & Business Media. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497 529. Beal, C. A. (2007). Natural burial; the ultimate back-to-the-land movement. From ,https://www.beatree.com/2007/09/natural-burial-.html. Retrieved 08.08.19. Beckes, L., Simpson, J. A., & Erickson, A. (2010). Of snakes and succor: Learning secure attachment associations with novel faces via negative stimulus pairings. Psychological Science, 21(5), 721 728. Bellah, R. N. (2011). Religion in human evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Benjamin, D. J., Choi, J. J., & Fisher, G. W. (2010). Religious identity and economic behavior (No. w15925). National Bureau of Economic Research. Birgegard, A., & Granqvist, P. (2004). The correspondence between attachment to parents and God: Three experiments using subliminal separation cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(9), 1122 1135. Bishop, B. (2009). The big sort: Why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Blasi, A. (1980). Bridging moral cognition and moral action: A critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 88(1), 1. Blazer, D. G. (1982). Social support and mortality in an elderly community population. American Journal of Epidemiology, 115, 684 694. Bloom, P. (2005). Is God an accident? The Atlantic, 296(3), 105 112. Boyer, P. (2001). And man creates God: Religion explained. New York: Basic Books. Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., McKee, S., & Gervais, W. M. (2018). Atheist horns and religious halos: Mental representations of atheists and theists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(2), 292. Bulbulia, J., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2013). Moral foundations predict religious orientations in New Zealand. PLoS One, 8(12), e80224. Burns, C. T., Jackson, L. M., Tarpley, W. R., & Smith, G. J. (1996). Religion as quest: The self-directed pursuit of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(10), 1068 1076. Buss, D. M., & von Hippel, W. (2018). Psychological barriers to evolutionary psychology: Ideological bias and coalitional adaptations. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6(1), 148. Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective. Clinical Psychology Review, 17(6), 605 619. Byrne, D., Clore, G. L., & Smeaton, G. (1986). The attraction hypothesis: Do similar attitudes affect anything? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1167 1170. Caporael, L. R. (2001). Parts and wholes: The evolutionary importance of groups. In C. Sedikides, & M. B. Brewer (Eds.), Individual self, relational self, collective self (pp. 241 258). New York: Psychology Press. Castano, E., Yzerbyt, V., Paladino, M. P., & Sacchi, S. (2002). I belong, therefore, I exist: Ingroup identification, ingroup entitativity, and ingroup bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(2), 135 143. Castel, R. (1995). Les pie`ges de l’exclusion [The traps of social exclusion]. Lien social et Politiques, 34, 13 21. Cialdini, R. B., & Trost, M. R. (1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (pp. 151 192). New York: McGraw-Hill. Classen, T. J., & Dunn, R. A. (2010). The politics of hope and despair: The effect of presidential election outcomes on suicide rates. Social Science Quarterly, 91(3), 593 612. Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., & Weise, D. (2007). Disgust, creatureliness and the accessibility of death-related thoughts. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(3), 494 507. Culotta, E. (2009). On the origin of religion. Science, 326(5954), 784 787.

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

415

Daws, R. E., & Hampshire, A. (2017). The negative relationship between reasoning and religiosity is underpinned by a bias for intuitive responses specifically when intuition and logic are in conflict. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 2191. Decety, J., Cowell, J. M., Lee, K., Mahasneh, R., Malcolm-Smith, S., Selcuk, B., & Zhou, X. (2015). The negative association between religiousness and children’s altruism across the world. Current Biology, 25(22), 2951 2955. Decety, J., Pape, R., & Workman, C. I. (2018). A multilevel social neuroscience perspective on radicalization and terrorism. Social Neuroscience, 13 (5), 511 529. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., Van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 722 737. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227 268. Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 629. Durkheim, E. (1897). Le Suicide. Paris: Felix Alcan. Dutton, D. G., Boyanowsky, E. O., & Bond, M. H. (2005). Extreme mass homicide: From military massacre to genocide. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10(4), 437 473. Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1997). Fear of death and the judgment of social transgressions: A multidimensional test of terror management theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 369. Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logetheraphy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2007). Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(5), 794 801. Friese, M., & Wa¨nke, M. (2014). Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 56 59. Friesen, J. P., Kay, A. C., Eibach, R. P., & Galinsky, A. D. (2014). Seeking structure in social organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(4), 590. Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., Ablasser, C., Beyer, M., Kuban, J., Manger, A. M., & Schultz, M. (2013). The power of we: Evidence for group-based control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(1), 19 32. Gampa, A., Wojcik, S. P., Motyl, M., Nosek, B. A., & Ditto, P. H. (2019). Ideo) Logical reasoning: Ideology impairs sound reasoning. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1948550619829059. Geertz, C. (1966). Person, time and conduct in Bali. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336(6080), 493 496. Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189. Giddens, A. (1971). Capitalism and modern social theory: An analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. Cambridge University Press. Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2009). What motivates participation in violent political action. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 115 123. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Kluck, B., & Cornwell, R. (2001). I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(3), 427. Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(3), 379. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140 150. Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 55 130). Academic Press. Graham, J., Haidt, J., Motyl, M., Meindl, P., Iskiwitch, C., & Mooijman, M. (2018). Moral foundations theory: On the advantages of moral pluralism over moral monism. Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029. Greenberg, J., Porteus, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1995). Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(11), 1221 1228. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 308. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Chatel, D. (1992). Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one’s worldview? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 212. Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814. Haidt, J. (2007). The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science, 316(5827), 998 1002. Haidt, J. (2008). Morality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 65 72.

416

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Chicago: Vintage. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 98 116. Haidt, J., & Kesebir, S. (2010). Morality. In S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed, pp. 797 832). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Hardin, C. D., & Higgins, E. T. (1996). Shared reality: How social verification makes the subjective objective. In R. M. Sorrentino, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition. Handbook of motivation and cognition, Vol. 3. The interpersonal context (pp. 28 84). New York: The Guilford Press. Hardy, S. A., & Carlo, G. (2011). Moral identity: What is it, how does it develop, and is it linked to moral action? Child Development Perspectives, 5 (3), 212 218. Harrison, J. M. D., & McKay, R. T. (2013). Do religious and moral concepts influence the ability to delay gratification? A priming study. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, 10(1), 25 40. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., & Williams, T. J. (2008). Fighting death with death: The buffering effects of learning that worldview violators have died. Psychological Science, 19(5), 501 507. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 88 110. Hennes, E. P., Nam, H. H., Stern, C., & Jost, J. T. (2012). Not all ideologies are created equal: Epistemic, existential, and relational needs predict system-justifying attitudes. Social Cognition, 30(6), 669 688. Henrich, J. (2015). Culture and social behavior. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 84 89. Hirschberger, G., Pyszczynski, T., Ein-Dor, T., Shani Sherman, T., Kadah, E., Kesebir, P., & Park, Y. C. (2016). Fear of death amplifies retributive justice motivations and encourages political violence. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 22(1), 67. Hogg, M. A. (2000). Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Review of Social Psychology, 11(1), 223 255. Hogg, M. A., Hardie, E. A., & Reynolds, K. J. (1995). Prototypical similarity, self- categorization, and depersonalized attraction: A perspective on group cohesiveness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25(2), 159 177. Huntsinger, L., & Ferna´ndez-Gime´nez, M. (2000). Spiritual pilgrims at Mount Shasta, California. Geographical Review, 90(4), 536 558. Jasko, K., LaFree, G., & Kruglanski, A. (2017). Quest for significance and violent extremism: The case of domestic radicalization. Political Psychology, 38(5), 815 831. Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., . . . Quirin, M. (2014). Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 49, pp. 219 286). Academic Press. Jost, J. T., Ledgerwood, A., & Hardin, C. D. (2008). Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 171 186. Jussim, L., Crawford, J. T., Anglin, S. M., & Stevens, S. T. (2015). Ideological bias in social psychological research. Social psychology and politics (pp. 107 126). Psychology Press. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., McGregor, I., & Nash, K. (2010). Religious belief as compensatory control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14 (1), 37 48. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18. Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264 268. Kaya, Y., & Karakoc¸, E. (2012). Civilizing vs destructive globalization? A multi-level analysis of anti-immigrant prejudice. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 53(1), 23 44. Kelley, H. H. (1973). The process of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107 128. Klein, D. C., Fencil-Morse, E., & Seligman, M. E. (1976). Learned helplessness, depression, and the attribution of failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33(5), 508. Kesebir, P., & Pyszczynski, T. (2011). A moral-existential account of the psychological factors fostering intergroup conflict. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(11), 878 890. Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive development approach to socialization. In D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory (pp. 347 480). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., Be´langer, J. J., Sheveland, A., Hetiarachchi, M., & Gunaratna, R. (2014). The psychology of radicalization and deradicalization: How significance quest impacts violent extremism. Political Psychology, 35, 69 93. Kruglanski, A. W., & Orehek, E. (2011). The role of the quest for personal significance in motivating terrorism. In J. Forgas, A. Kruglanski, & K. Williams (Eds.), The psychology of social conflict and aggression (pp. 153 166). New York: Psychology Press, Chapter. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480. Lakin, J. L., Jefferis, V. E., Cheng, C. M., & Chartrand, T. L. (2003). The chameleon effect as social glue: Evidence for the evolutionary significance of nonconscious mimicry. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27(3), 145 162. Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(9), 1136 1150.

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

417

Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2017). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. In R. Zukauskiene (Ed.), Interpersonal development (pp. 57 89). London: Routledge. Lenzi, M., Colucci, E., & Minas, H. (2012). Suicide, culture, and society from a cross-national perspective. Cross-Cultural Research, 46(1), 50 71. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world. The belief in a just world (pp. 9 30). Boston, MA: Springer. Levina, J., Perejolkina, V., Martinsone, K., Mihailova, S., & Kolesnikova, J. (2018). The relationship between anomia and maladaptive personality traits. In SHS web of conferences (Vol. 40, p. 02006). EDP Sciences. Lewis, T. T., Yang, F. M., Jacobs, E. A., & Fitchett, G. (2012). Racial/ethnic differences in responses to the everyday discrimination scale: a differential item functioning analysis. American Journal of Epidemiology, 175(5), 391 401. Li, Y. J., Cohen, A. B., Weeden, J., & Kenrick, D. T. (2010). Mating competitors increase religious beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(2), 428 431. Lieberman, J. D., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H. A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior: Official Journal of the International Society for Research on Aggression, 25(5), 331 348. Lim, C. (2015). Religion and subjective well-being across religious traditions: Evidence from 1.3 million Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(4), 684 701. Lim, M., Metzler, R., & Bar-Yam, Y. (2007). Global pattern formation and ethnic/cultural violence. Science, 317(5844), 1540 1544. Mackinnon, S. P., Jordan, C. H., & Wilson, A. E. (2011). Birds of a feather sit together: Physical similarity predicts seating choice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(7), 879 892. Magee, M. W., & Hardin, C. D. (2010). In defense of religion: Shared reality moderates the unconscious threat of evolution. Social Cognition, 28(3), 379 400. Malhotra, D. (2010). (When) are religious people nicer? Religious salience and the “Sunday effect” on pro-social behavior. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 138 143. Malinowski, B., & Redfield, R. (1948). Magic, science and other essays. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370. Mazar, N., Amir, O., & Ariely, D. (2008). The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45 (6), 633 644. McGregor, H. A., Lieberman, J. D., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., Simon, L., & Pyszczynski, T. (1998). Terror management and aggression: Evidence that mortality salience motivates aggression against worldview-threatening others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 590. McIntosh, D. N. (1995). Religion-as-schema, with implications for the relation between religion and coping. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 5, 1 16. McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2015). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 447. Meier, D. L., & Bell, W. (1959). Anomia and differential access to the achievement of life goals. American Sociological Review, 24(2), 189 202. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672 682. Miller, W. R., & Seligman, M. E. (1975). Depression and learned helplessness in man. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84(3), 228. Mithen, S. (1998). The prehistory of the mind. London: Phoenix. Mitts, T. (2019). From isolation to radicalization: Anti-Muslim hostility and support for ISIS in the West. American Political Science Review, 113(1), 173 194. Motyl, M. (2016). Liberals and conservatives are (geographically) dividing. Social psychology of political polarization (pp. 17 47). Routledge. Motyl, M., Hart, J., Cooper, D. P., Heflick, N., Goldenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2013). Creatureliness priming reduces aggression and support for war. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52(4), 648 666. Motyl, M., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Weise, D., Maxfield, M., & Siedel, A. (2011). Subtle priming of shared human experiences eliminates threatinduced negativity toward Arabs, immigrants, and peace-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(6), 1179 1184. Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Oishi, S., Trawalter, S., & Nosek, B. A. (2014). How ideological migration geographically segregates groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 1 14. Motyl, M., Prims, J.P. and Iyer, R. (in press). How ambient cues facilitate political segregation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0146167219875141. Murray, M., & Graham, B. (1997). Exploring the dialectics of route-based tourism: The Camino de Santiago. Tourism Management, 18(8), 513 524. Murphy, M. C., Steele, C. M., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Signaling threat: How situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings. Psychological Science, 18(10), 879 885. Navarrete, C. D., Kurzban, R., Fessler, D. M., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Anxiety and intergroup bias: Terror management or coalitional psychology? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 370 397. Newton, T., & McIntosh, D. N. (2013). Unique contributions of religion to meaning. The experience of meaning in life (pp. 257 269). Dordrecht: Springer. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2013). The origins of religious disbelief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(1), 20 25. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(2), 174 187. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322(5898), 58 62. Nylen, K. J., O’Hara, M. W., & Engeldinger, J. (2013). Perceived social support interacts with prenatal depression to predict birth outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 36(4), 427 440.

418

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Osarchuk, M., & Tatz, S. J. (1973). Effect of induced fear of death on belief in afterlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 256 260. Over, H. (2016). The origins of belonging: Social motivation in infants and young children. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371, 20150072. Pargament, K. I., Magyar-Russell, G. M., & Murray-Swank, N. A. (2005). The sacred and the search for significance: Religion as a unique process. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4), 665 687. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion and meaning. Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 357 379. Pew Research Center. (2014). Political polarization in the American Public. In Technical report. Pickett, C. L., & Brewer, M. B. (2001). Assimilation and differentiation needs as motivational determinants of perceived in-group and out-group homogeneity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37(4), 341 348. Pirutinsky, S. (2009). The terror management function of Orthodox Jewish religiosity: A religious culture approach. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 12(3), 247 256. Pittman, T. S., & Pittman, N. L. (1980). Deprivation of control and the attribution process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(3), 377. Postmes, T., Baray, G., Haslam, S. A., Morton, T. A., & Swaab, R. I. (2006). The dynamics of personal and social identity formation. In T. Postmes, & J. Jetten (Eds.), Individuality and the group: Advances in social identity (pp. 215 236). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Preston, J. L., Ritter, R. S., & Ivan Hernandez, J. (2010). Principles of religious prosociality: A review and reformulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 574 590. Proulx, T., Heine, S. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2010). When is the unfamiliar the uncanny? Meaning affirmation after exposure to absurdist literature, humor, and art. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(6), 817 829. Proulx, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). The five “A” s of meaning maintenance: Finding meaning in the theories of sense-making. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 317 335. Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006). Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The great Satan versus the axis of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(4), 525 537. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1 70). Academic Press. Pyszczynski, T., Vail, K. E., III, & Motyl, M. S. (2009). The cycle of righteous killing: Psychological forces in its prevention and the promotion of peace. Home-grown terrorism: Understanding and addressing the root causes of radicalisation among groups with an immigrant heritage in Europe, 60, 227. Rios, K., Cheng, Z. H., Totton, R. R., & Shariff, A. F. (2015). Negative stereotypes cause Christians to underperform in and disidentify with science. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(8), 959 967. Roes, F. L., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(2), 126 135. Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1989). Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(4), 681. Roy, O. (2014). Holy ignorance: When religion and culture part ways. Oxford University Press (UK). Sales, S. M. (1973). Threat as a factor in authoritarianism: An analysis of archival data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 44 57. Schimel, J., Hayes, J., Williams, T., & Jahrig, J. (2007). Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 789. Schoenrade, P. A. (1989). When I die. . . Belief in afterlife as a response to mortality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15(1), 91 100. Schwartz, S. H., & Bilsky, W. (1990). Toward a theory of the universal content and structure of values: Extensions and cross-cultural replications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(5), 878. Seeman, M. (1959). On the meaning of alienation. American Sociological Review, 24(6), 783 791. Skinner, E. A. (1995). Perceived control, motivation, and coping. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Smith, H. P., & Bohm, R. M. (2008). Beyond anomie: Alienation and crime. Critical Criminology, 16(1), 1 15. Saroglou, V., & Pichon, I. (2009). Religion and helping: Impact of target thinking styles and just-world beliefs. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 31(2), 215 236. Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews: Issues, News, and Reviews, 12(6), 264 274. Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1985). A general attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), 1 20. Srole, L. (1956). Social integration and certain corollaries: An exploratory study. American Sociological Review, 21(6), 709 716. Steger, M. F., Oishi, S., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Meaning in life across the life span: Levels and correlates of meaning in life from emerging adulthood to older adulthood. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(1), 43 52. Stevens, S. T., Jussim, L., Anglin, S. M., Contrada, R., Welch, C. A., Labrecque, J. S., . . . Edlund, J. (2017). Political exclusion and discrimination in social psychology: Lived experiences and solutions. Politics of social psychology (pp. 220 254). Psychology Press. Stillman, T. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Uncertainty, belongingness, and four needs for meaning. Psychological Inquiry, 20(4), 249 251. Swann, W. B. (1987). Identity negotiation: where two roads meet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(6), 1038. Swann, W. B., Jr, & Buhrmester, M. D. (2015). Identity fusion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 52 57. Taylor, J. (2001). Death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt. University of Chicago Press.

Religion: more essential (and existential) nutrient than opiate for the masses Chapter | 28

419

Teymoori, A., Jetten, J., Bastian, B., Ariyanto, A., Autin, F., Ayub, N., . . . Cui, L. (2016). Revisiting the measurement of anomie. PLoS One, 11(7), e0158370. Todd, P. M., & Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Environments that make us smart: Ecological rationality. Current directions in psychological science, 16(3), 167 171. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Turner, J. H., & Turner, P. R. (1978). The structure of sociological theory. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press. Turner, J. H., Geertz, A. W., Petersen, A. K., & Maryanski, A. (2018). Explaining the evolution of religion: A response to commentators. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1 14. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288 1300. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Compassionate values and presidential politics: Mortality salience, compassionate values, and support for Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 9(1), 255 268. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Van den Bos, K., & Miedema, J. (2000). Toward understanding why fairness matters: The influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 355. Von Hippel, W., & Buss, D. M. (2017). Do ideologically driven scientific agendas impede the understanding and acceptance of evolutionary principles in social psychology? Politics of social psychology (pp. 17 35). Psychology Press. Webber, D., Babush, M., Schori-Eyal, N., Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, A., Hettiarachchi, M., Be´langer, J. J., . . . Gelfand, M. J. (2018). The road to extremism: Field and experimental evidence that significance loss-induced need for closure fosters radicalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 270. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (6), 1049. Welch, M. R. (1993). Participation and commitment among American catholic parishioners. In D. A. Roozen, & C. Kirk Hadaway (Eds.), Church and Denominational Growth. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322(5898), 115 117. Wilson, D. S. (2003). Evolution, morality and human potential. Evolutionary psychology ( (pp. 55 70). Boston, MA: Springer. Wofford, T. (2016). Flying spaghetti monster not divine, says court. Newsweek. From ,https://www.newsweek.com/flying-spaghetti-monster-parodyreligion-447535. Retrieved 15.07.19. Xygalatas, D. (2013). Effects of religious setting on cooperative behavior: A case study from Mauritius. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 3(2), 91 102. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60 71. Zhao, R., & Cao, L. (2010). Social change and anomie: A cross-national study. Social Forces, 88(3), 1209 1229. Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47(2), 245 287. Zuckerman, M., Silberman, J., & Hall, J. A. (2013). The relation between intelligence and religiosity: A meta-analysis and some proposed explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 325 354. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868313497266.

Further reading Atran, S., & Ginges, J. (2008). Humiliation and the inertia effect: Implications for understanding violence and compromise in intractable intergroup conflicts. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8(3 4), 281 294. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(6), 713 730. Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29 34. Burling, J. W. (1993). Death concerns and symbolic aspects of the self: The effects of mortality salience on status concern and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19(1), 100 105. Durkheim, E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: Free Press. (Original work published 1912). Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). Creating social connection through inferential reproduction: Loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and greyhounds. Psychological Science, 19(2), 114 120. Gray, K. (2017). How to map theory: Reliable methods are fruitless without rigorous theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(5), 731 741. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. New York: Guilford. Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1 62). Academic Press. Norenzayan, A., Dar-Nimrod, I., Hansen, I. G., & Proulx, T. (2009). Mortality salience and religion: Divergent effects on the defense of cultural worldviews for the religious and the non-religious. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39(1), 101 113.

420

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Oishi, S., & Graham, J. (2010). Social ecology: Lost and found in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 356 377. Proulx, T., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(5), 285 291. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 816 827. Travis, R. (1993). The MOS alienation scale: An alternative to Srole’s anomia scale. Social Indicators Research, 28(1), 71 91. Wilson, D. (2010). Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zuckerman, P. (2007). Atheism: Contemporary numbers and patterns. In M. Martin (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to atheism (pp. 47 65). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 29

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems for satisfying the need for order Steven Shepherd1 and Aaron C. Kay2 1

Oklahoma State University, Spear’s School of Business, Stillwater, OK, United States, 2Duke University, Durham, NC, United States

Over the course of history the relationship between religious and sociopolitical systems (i.e. “the overarching institutions, organizations, and social norms within which [people] live and the rules that they, to at least some extent, are required to abide” p. 158, Kay & Zanna, 2009) has been complex and defined by both strategic alliances and conflicts. Theocratic societies are ultimately governed by rules and norms that are dictated by interpretation of religious texts by religious authorities. Monarchies have a more secular form of government but often with a “divinely ordained” king or queen, and the role of this monarchy can vary considerably, from ultimate authority to purely symbolic figurehead. In the United States the separation of church and state that is enshrined in the constitution does not preclude much of American society from being influenced by religion, nor prevent religion being symbolically associated with the nation and the sociopolitical system. For example, “In God We Trust” is the official motto of the United States and is printed on its currency, and many perceive the United States to be a “Christian nation.” In these instances and others, sociopolitical systems are to varying degrees merged with the divine and religious systems, often to the mutual benefit to each. Conversely, other sociopolitical systems, such as communism in the former Soviet Union, took the alternative strategy of suppressing religious institutions and influence. That is, they sought to compete with religion as a guiding worldview rather than make bedfellows with it. While the historical and contemporary relationships between these systems have generally been the purview of fields such as history and political science, psychologists have also begun to contribute to an understanding of how sociopolitical and religious systems interact with one another. Specifically, psychologists can contribute an understanding of microlevel processes to this broad political and social phenomenon. These differing and complex relationships between secular and religious systems are perhaps not surprising, given that they serve several overlapping psychological needs. A large literature of research has now shown that both sociopolitical and religious systems satisfy existential and epistemic needs, including belonging, uncertainty, meaning in life, and assuaging concerns about one’s own mortality (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010; Jonas & Fischer, 2006; Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Landau et al., 2004; Park, 2005; Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012; Vail, Arndt, Motyl, & Pyszczynski, 2009; Vail et al., 2010; Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010). Our own program of research, which will be discussed in this chapter, focuses on how sociopolitical and religious systems serve the overlapping need to see the world as orderly and nonrandom. Specifically, our program of research developing compensatory control theory (CCT) (Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009; Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015) has not only sought to learn how both sociopolitical and religious systems might satisfy this need but also how they might be substitutable with one another in satisfying this need, and also whether they can be symbolically merged to mutually benefit one another (e.g., bolstering perceptions of legitimacy and efficacy). This chapter outlines how CCT can help one make sense of the variety of ways that people turn to political and religious systems to satisfy the psychological need to see the world as orderly and nonrandom. In addition, CCT can help explain the variety of ways that secular and religious sources of control and order relate to one another and potentially The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00030-5 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

421

422

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

benefit one another. The research and observations synthesized later illustrate the ways in which people can flexibly turn to a variety of sources of order and control, in different ways, at different times, and in different combinations.

Compensatory control theory Numerous studies support the notion that people have a psychological need to perceive the world as orderly and structured (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Kay et al., 2008; Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006; Landau et al., 2004; Shepherd, Kay, Landau, & Keefer, 2011; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). To perceive otherwise is anxiety provoking and psychologically aversive (Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Pennebaker & Stone, 2004; Proulx & Heine, 2008; van den Bos & Lind, 2002), as a chaotic world without order is unpredictable, uncertain, and undermines the purpose of one’s existence. At least in Western cultures, an emphasis on personal control is one convenient means of satiating this need. When one is perceived to be personally responsible for what happens in one’s life—achieving desired outcomes and avoiding negative outcomes—then these outcomes are necessarily nonrandom, as they are perceived to be caused by the individual (Lerner, 1980). That is, the path that they are on is of their own choosing or design. Theorists such as May (1953), Fromm (1994), and Becker (1964, 1969) posited that believing that the world is structured and orderly provides a foundation with which one can exercise a sense of personal agency and pursue goals. Personal control is only effective to the extent that the environment that one occupies works in an organized and predictable way; conversely, a chaotic system void of cause and effect quickly undermines a sense of efficacy and one’s ability to navigate the world (Landau et al., 2015). To this point, experimental research has supported the notion that a belief in personal control gives people the confidence to make and pursue long-term goals (Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008), and likewise, reminders of structure in the world increase willingness to pursue goals (Kay, Laurin, Fitzsimons, & Landau, 2014). In short, there is an inherent relationship between seeing the world as orderly and structured, and one’s personal sense of control. An orderly world is one where a person can act with agency and anticipate that one’s choices and behavior have a reliable cause and effect, and perceiving personal control over outcomes reinforces the notion that the world does indeed operate in an orderly way. However, despite the fact that the need to perceive a structured, orderly world is relatively unyielding, perceptions of personal control cannot always be maintained and fluctuate across situations and contexts (Burger, 1989; Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Pepitone & Saffiotti, 1997; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984). CCT (Kay et al., 2008; Kay et al., 2009) suggests that people can fluidly turn to sources of control—both internal and external to the self—in service of perceiving the world as an orderly, nonrandom place. Although placing faith in external systems does not necessarily or directly restore one’s belief in personal control, it can reassure the individual that the world is under control—that things are not happening randomly—even if that control is not being imposed by the individual him or herself. In other words, to the extent people are motivated to believe in a nonrandom world, and to the extent personal control is a limited means for maintaining that belief, belief in external control may be elevated to compensate for lowered perceptions of personal control. Indeed, research has demonstrated that when feelings of personal control are experimentally lowered or perceptions of randomness are otherwise heightened, people increasingly place their faith in external sources of control and order— two prominent examples being god and the government (Kay et al., 2008; Kay, Shepherd, Blatz, Chua, & Galinsky, 2010; Kay et al., 2009; Rutjens, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2010; Shepherd et al., 2011; Sullivan, Landau, & Rothschild, 2010; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). Critically, the effect of control threat and randomness salience on belief and confidence in these entities tends to be focused on their control-affirming qualities (Kay et al., 2008, 2010; Rutjens et al., 2010). For example, control threat increases belief in a controlling god, but not necessarily an uncontrolling god (Kay et al., 2008).

God as a source of control and order The order-conferring properties of god or some supernatural force are found in most religions (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004), and random events often lead people to turn to religion and god to make sense of these events and to provide a sense of order to one’s life (Park, 2005). For most of human history, life has been considerably less predictable and more precarious than it is today, and religion and spiritual beliefs would have been a critical means of maintaining a belief in an orderly world. Religious and spiritual beliefs helped to make sense of the world long before societies could offer the level of stability, peacefulness, and the quality of life that can be seen today in many countries. For example, causes of death via disease were poorly understood, and as such, various religious and spiritual beliefs (e.g., demonic possession; god’s will) filled these gaps in knowledge and offered explanations for outcomes that were otherwise

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

423

random and threatening. The psychological utility of religious beliefs remains today, as belief in some kind of divine force or power serves as a particularly appealing source of external control. An omnipotent and omniscient being such as a god provides a robust source of external control that can assuage concerns about randomness; just about any seemingly random outcomes, both good and bad can be attributed to god or some divine force. Moreover, divine figures are also often seen as infallible, meaning that any outcome decided by them is necessarily good and necessary. For these reasons, religious sources of external control can be particularly useful to people in maintaining the belief that the world operates in an orderly, nonrandom way. Many experiments have provided evidence for the utility of religious beliefs in assuaging concerns about lack of control and randomness. Kay et al. (2008) experimentally decreased people’s immediate sense of personal control through a memory recall task. These tasks typically ask people to recall and write about a time that they either had or lacked control over an event, and how it made them feel. Results showed that those who thought about a time they lacked control reported increased belief in a god who can intervene and control events in the world. This effect did not emerge for belief in a god who created life and the universe. Likewise, Rutjens et al. (2010) found that reminders of one’s lack of control increased belief in evolution, but only as an orderly process (e.g., an “intelligent design” process that is guided by god) as opposed to evolution as an unguided/random process. Laurin et al. (2008) found that when personal control was threatened, self-reported anxiety was associated with increased belief in a controlling god. Shepherd and Kay (2019) found that concerns about randomness (but not concerns unrelated to randomness and control) increased religious participants’ desire for religious products. Other research has come to similar conclusions. For example, asking psychology students to complete an impossible statistical assignment (i.e., one has little to no personal control over task success) led to increased religious conviction (McGregor, Haji, Nash, & Teper, 2008). Similar increases in religious conviction were observed after uncertainty threat (McGregor, Nash, & Prentice, 2010). Religious beliefs can also serve a control-affirming function vicariously (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982). For example, people may feel more powerful or have a heightened sense of control via their relationship with god (e.g., praying for desired outcomes; Krause, 2005). Individual difference variables associated with the need for order and nonrandomness yield similar effects. For example, a personal need for structure in one’s life, the need for cognitive closure, dogmatic thinking, intolerance of ambiguity, and less openness to new experiences are all correlated with religiosity (for a review, see Jost et al., 2014). In addition because personal resources (financial or otherwise) are essential for being able to act according to one’s desires and needs, it follows that disadvantaged groups ought to be more religious. This appears to the case; for example, those low in socioeconomic status tend to be more religious (Pargament, 1997). Thus numerous lines of research show that when personal control or a sense of order and nonrandomness is situationally or chronically low, people increasingly turn to god and religion as a means of providing a sense of control in one’s life. While the abovementioned research focuses on adherence to organized religion and belief in god, similar effects can be observed with other semireligious and spiritual beliefs. Belief in fate to determine outcomes has been shown to increase when people are faced with difficult decisions with uncertain outcomes. For example, in the context of the 2012 US presidential election, people who (1) chronically had a difficult time deciding between the candidates and (2) who were experimentally induced to see them as more similar (vs dissimilar) reported an increased belief that fate would determine the outcome of the election (Tang, Shepherd, & Kay, 2014). Correlational and experimental research has shown that a lack of control (e.g., experimental manipulations of personal control, or experiencing personal crises such as unemployment or divorce) is related to belief in astrology and astrological predictions (Lillqvist & Lindeman, 1998; Wang, Whitson, & Menon, 2012).

Secular and sociopolitical systems as a source of control and order As already stated, religion and spiritual beliefs are not the only means by which people can maintain beliefs of an orderly and nonrandom world. A central thesis in Hobbes’s Leviathan is that governments can create order and stability in what would otherwise be chaotic and unpredictable lives subject to any number of hostile or indifferent forces. Governments, to varying degrees across time and nations, provide people with resources and social programs. At the extreme, authoritarian regimes seek to control every aspect of people’s lives and reduce individual freedom in the interests of creating social stability. The control-affirming properties of the sociopolitical institutions are supported across lines of research. For example, Kay et al. (2008) find that across nations, less personal control is associated with a desire for the government to have more presence in people’s lives by providing for them; however, this effect was limited to when the government was generally seen as benevolent. Decreased personal control was also associated with increased system justification (seeing

424

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

one’s sociopolitical system as legitimate, fair, and just), in the form of perceived government efficacy and resistance to government change. Shepherd et al. (2011) found that following control threat, participants increasingly endorsed the value of following social norms, as well as politicians who emphasized providing control, order, and predictability in society. Rutjens and Loseman (2010) likewise find higher levels of system justification following “ego depletion” (i.e., when one’s capacity to control one’s self and the environment is lowered; Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). Finally, control threat increases perceptions of the strength of the sociopolitical systems (e.g., increased efficacy and stability), but only when the system was previously described as orderly as opposed to disorderly (Sullivan et al., 2010). Other secular institutions have also been shown to have control-affirming properties and that stable and structured organizations can buffer against control threat. For example, Proudfoot and Kay (2018) found that those who highly identify with an organization (e.g., one’s employer) showed higher levels of personal control, particularly when the organization itself was stable. Other signals of structure are also desired by people as well, particularly when personal control is low. Friesen, Kay, Eibach, and Galinsky (2014) found that people see hierarchical (vs egalitarian) organizations as more structured and orderly, and that hierarchy is seen as more desirable when personal control is low. Likewise, ambiguous workplaces, such as when roles are ill defined and there are only loose guidelines, are more aversive when personal control is low (Ma & Kay, 2017). Relatedly, research also shows that when important social domains are complex and poorly understood, people feel more dependent on social systems (e.g., government) to manage them, in turn leading to bolstered trust in that social system to manage the issue at hand (Shepherd & Kay, 2012). Uncertainty about a complex domain means that the individual lacks the necessary information and efficacy to act or assert agency. Likewise, dependence can be thought of similar to lacking control, in that important outcomes are decided by others for oneself. Not being able to exercise control over outcomes and being reliant on others to look out for one’s best interests (and their ability to do so) are psychologically uncomfortable, and one way to alleviate this is to bolster trust in those that one is dependent on. Other research also finds that both dependence and powerlessness is an antecedent to system justification and system trust (van der Toorn et al., 2015; van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011). These findings are also consistent with past work on various systems justifying ideologies. For example, a belief in a just world implies that outcomes are fair and deserved (Lerner, 1980), and therefore this ideology inherently presents the world as acting in an orderly way. Similarly, belief in meritocracy implies that the social system is fair and just, whereby those who are skilled and work hard experience favorable outcomes, whereas those who are lazy or lack motivation experience negative outcomes of their own doing. Research shows that threats to personal control increase beliefs in meritocracy (Goode, Keefer, & Molina, 2014) and that priming meritocratic beliefs increases system justification (McCoy & Major, 2007). Finally, various individual difference variables related to concerns about randomness and the need for order and control are consistently related to system justification and system justifying ideologies. These include the need for order, a lack of openness (e.g., to experiences and ideas), death anxiety, ambiguity intolerance, perceptions of a dangerous world (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Jost et al., 2007). The relationship between the need for order and increased trust in the sociopolitical systems and secular systems more generally is consistent with numerous observations regarding people’s fluctuating support for the government and other secular institutions over time. During the Great Depression, there was a noted uptick in interest in socialism, support for labor unions, and desire for government intervention (Lipset & Marks, 2000). Despite the numerous issues with the former Soviet Union, many Russians express regret over its collapse, citing above all else the destruction of the single economic system as their primary reason for this regret (Taylor, 2016). That is, the relative stability of the old communist system was preferable to the unpredictability of the new market economy (Taylor, 2016). Belief in a strong government does not necessarily mean supporting left-leaning, socialist, or communist ideologies. Recently, within the United States, “economic anxiety” was frequently cited as a reason for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election. Recent evidence suggests, however, that fear of America losing global power and White Americans’ perceptions of threat to their group status instead explain his support (Mutz, 2018). Either way, both reflect issues of and concerns about control and order. To this point, research has shown that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is associated with concerns about order and predictability (Jost et al., 2007). In summary, both religious and sociopolitical systems are capable of assuaging concerns about randomness and lack of control in one’s life. This is observed when considering the parallel effects that control threat manipulations and situational changes in personal control have on support for or belief in these systems, as well as the parallel effects that individual difference variables (e.g., personal need for structure, uncertainty avoidance, and ambiguity intolerance) have on both religious beliefs and support for the sociopolitical system. Moreover, research shows that anterior

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

425

cingulate cortex activity, which is a region of the brain associated with distress and anxiety, is reduced when participants are exposed to both religious and nonreligious sources of control (Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsh, & Nash, 2009; Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010). Therefore there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that both religious and sociopolitical institutions, beliefs, and ideologies can be turned to as a means of maintaining perceptions of a controlled, orderly, nonrandom world.

The substitutable nature of god and government Given that sociopolitical systems and religious systems help one satisfy similar existential and epistemic needs—of primary relevance here, the need for order and nonrandomness—it follows that these systems are at least partly substitutable for one another. In other words, by finding a sense of order and nonrandomness in one external source of control, there is less need for the other. A similar kind of substitutability can be found in various areas of psychology. At the most basic level, various physiological states (e.g., hunger and thirst) can be met via one source, rendering others less necessary or desired; many children are told that they will spoil their dinner if they eat too soon beforehand. Numerous theories state that psychological needs too can be satiated by any number of substitutable sources (Heine et al., 2006; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). Combined with research on goal pursuit and satiation (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001; Fo¨rster, Liberman, & Higgins, 2005), it follows that once a psychological need is met via one means, it renders other competing means of satiation less necessary. In some of our own research (Kay et al., 2010), we highlight this substitutability between sociopolitical and religious systems in satiating a need to see the world as orderly and nonrandom. For example, data collected in Malaysia before and after an election showed that perceptions of national stability increased after (vs before) the election, which was associated with increased government support. This is also consistent with past work showing that people will rationalize and increasingly approve of an election outcome after it happens and becomes the new status quo (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002). This increase in perceived stability, and in turn, defense of the government, predicted decreased confidence in a controlling god. In a Canadian sample, reading a passage that described the political situation in Canada as unstable and unpredictable leads to increased confidence in the existence of a controlling god. Notably, this decrease was specific to a god that offers control and intervenes in the world, as opposed to god as a source of meaning in life. Finally, the substitutability of god and government in providing a sense of control was further illustrated by presenting participants with an article suggesting that it is either very possible or not at all likely that god or some intelligent being intervenes in world affairs. When it was described as possible that god intervenes in the world, support for the government decreased relative to when god was described as being unlikely to intervene in worldly matters. Zuckerman, Li, and Diener (2018) obtained similar results, finding a longitudinal relationship between better government services and decreased religiosity, both in cross-national data and longitudinal data. The Gallup World Poll data from 2005, including over 450,000 responses across 155 countries, found that higher quality of life and more government services predicted lower levels of religiosity. Similarly, within the United States, Zuckerman et al. (2018) found that states with a higher quality of life (e.g., lower death rate, higher personal income, lower poverty, more health coverage, and lower infant mortality) and more government services (total state and local spending as percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)) were also lower in religiosity. Therefore across these findings it is clear that secular means of removing chaos, disorder, and unpredictability from people’s lives appear to diminish or at least are associated with declining religiosity. It has been noted that as governments and secular institutions become more stable and efficacious, religiosity tends to decline. Norris and Inglehart (2004) convincingly argue via analyses of cross-national datasets that societies tend to become less religious as social and political stability increases. Countries with lower homicide rates and higher life expectancies also tend to be less religious (Paul, 2005). Conversely, vulnerable populations for whom basic existential security needs are not met tend to be more religious (Norris & Inglehart, 2004), and countries with greater income inequality and shorter life expectancy tend to be more religious (Pew Research Center, 2018). Gill and Lundsgaarge (2004) similarly note that while churches have historically provided social welfare for citizens, this task has been increasingly taken over by the government. As such, cross-national data shows an inverse correlation between government welfare spending and religiosity (Gill & Lundsgaarge, 2004). Similar patterns can also be observed when looking at the sociopolitical systems and lack of religiosity across the Northern European and Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, The Netherlands). These nations offer a strong social safety net in the form of publically funded education and healthcare and have lower income inequality, rates of crime, and poverty; overall, they are among the happiest countries in the world (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2018; OECD, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2018; U.S. News & World Report, 2019). They are also among the

426

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

least religious nations in the world. The rates at which religion is rated as “very important” range from 9% (Denmark) to 20% (Norway) (Pew Research Center, 2018). Although there are numerous explanations for these observations, both Norris and Inglehart (2004) and Gill and Lundsgaarge (2004) state that their effects are consistent with and support secularization theory, which posits that when people experience more existential security and as survival is less precarious, they will be less religious. This is consistent with the hypothesis that government and god serve as two substitutable means of meeting a number of psychological needs, such as the need for order and nonrandomness. The fact that both sociopolitical and religious systems can satiate important psychological goals has perhaps been intuited by both religious and secular institutions alike. Several secular governments have proactively suppressed religious institutions and expression, either tacitly or explicitly acknowledging that they are, in effect, competing with religious and spiritual beliefs for the hearts and minds of its citizenry. In the former Soviet Union and contemporary communist China, the government took/takes on an authoritarian role and both implement/implemented policies that limit religious organization and expression. Similarly, religion often seeks to suppress the influence of secular government and institutions in people’s lives, seeking to form a comprehensive worldview that has little need for external influences. By no means the majority, it is not uncommon for religious individuals to treat health issues with prayer in lieu of traditional medicine. This practice at its extreme clashes not only with the medical system but also the legal system, as evidenced by legal cases of religiously motivated medical neglect of children (Asser & Swan, 1998). Other religious groups also occupy the extremes of this phenomenon, completely eschewing secular society. While different Amish groups in North America are integrated into mainstream society to varying degrees, many live lives that are as disconnected from the secular world as possible. Other extreme examples were the Branch Davidians and the Peoples Temple cult. In both cases, members lived isolated lives and opposed government influence and involvement in their affairs. The Branch Davidians are forever associated with the Waco siege, which resulted in many deaths and is often held up as an example of government overreach and reason to distrust the government. In the case of the Peoples Temple, a US Congressman was killed visiting their Jonestown community in Guyana, and later a mass suicide killed hundreds of members. Other research and observations are also consistent with the finding that religious institutions are relied on more and are more appealing when secular sociopolitical institutions fail (e.g., Kay et al., 2010). For example, the economy is typically thought of as being under the government’s purview, and during economic downturns, an increase in conversion rates to high-control religions can be observed (Sales, 1972). The political and religious beliefs of people at different points on the political spectrum are also consistent with the substitutability hypothesis. Liberals tend to be more in favor of government intervention and regulation that contribute to social well-being (i.e., programs such as publically funded healthcare and education) and at the same time tend to be less religious than conservatives. Conversely, conservatives tend to be more in favor of smaller government and less government intervention (at least in terms of providing various social services and assistance) and tend to be more religious. That is, the substitutability observed at the cross-national level discussed previously can be observed within the liberal/progressive versus conservative political ideological spectrum. Incidentally, while libertarians tend to reject numerous forms of government intervention and tend to be less religious than traditional conservatives, they place heightened emphasis on personal control and responsibility (Critchlow, 2007). How different ends of the political spectrum respond to randomness can perhaps be seen in data showing that while only 20% of American conservatives reported positive attitudes toward socialism during the 2008 economic crisis, 61% of liberals reported favorable attitudes (Newport, 2010). The prioritization of one source of control over another can also be seen from the perspective of those who are more versus less religious. Religious individuals, naturally, are more inclined to turn to god and religious organizations as a source of order and control than nonreligious people. Illustrative of this is current Vice President Mike Pence when he famously stated that “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” (Groppe, 2016). As another example, a church in South Carolina made national news when it flew the Christian flag above the US flag in response to the Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage (Blumberg, 2015). Christian conservatives have more favorable evaluations of religious services—in prison, youth, and teen pregnancy counseling—than their secular counterparts (Wuthnow, 2004). Consistent with the above experimental findings, one can frequently observe religious citizens blaming natural disasters, unrest, and chaos on a lack of religious morals and declining religiosity. This is consistent with work showing that negative outcomes that are unpredictable and reflect a disorderly chaotic world are often seen as caused by agents (Gray & Wegner, 2010; Schein & Gray, 2017; Sullivan et al., 2010). Evangelical Christians such as televangelist Pat Robertson have suggested that hurricanes are the result of gay marriage and the LGBT community, as punishment from God. Jerry Falwell stated that the terrorist attacks of September 11 were caused by abortion

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

427

providers and gay rights proponents, claiming that “the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable” (Niebuhr, 2001). In short, because sociopolitical and religious systems are both capable of satiating the need for order and help people see the world as controlled and nonrandom, this means that relying on one to satiate this need renders the other less needed. One system (religion or government) can be more attractive than the other depending on numerous cultural and contextual factors (e.g., social unrest and economic turmoil), as well as individual differences and dispositions (e.g., political orientation and level of religiosity).

Symbolic alignment between sociopolitical and religious sources of control and order As we have covered already, the nature of the relationship between god and government has been subject to conflicting interpretations. Some have emphasized distinct religious and secular spheres of influence such as Jesus’ admonition that his people should “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s,” St. Augustine’s influential delineation of the contrasts between “the City of God” and “the City of Man,” and Thomas Jefferson’s insistence on the importance of maintaining “a wall of separation between Church and State.” These ideas too seem to intuit that each entity ought to stick to its own domains and roles in people’s lives, perhaps maintaining peace between two entities that in many ways are substitutable for one another in satiating important psychological needs. However, the abovementioned observations along with the aforementioned research on the substitutability of sociopolitical and religious systems do not fully capture the relationship between sociopolitical and religious systems that can be observed both contemporarily and historically. The substitutability discussed this far does not explain the numerous instances where religion and sociopolitical systems become bedfellows. Among Western democratic countries, this is perhaps most strongly observed in the United States, which is an outlier in its level of religiosity (Fahmy, 2018). It is also a country where religion is both subtly and explicitly infused into the sociopolitical system. “In God We Trust” is enshrined on the US currency. The United States is frequently referred to as a “Christian nation,” and the song “God Bless America” is sung and played at numerous public events and broadcasts and essentially serves as a second national anthem. While there is a separation of church and state outlined in the constitution, the reality is that religious influence—particularly a Judeo Christian influence—is evident in the rules and laws of the United States. Moreover, religious texts are often used to defend the nation’s norms and values, and to justify and maintain certain rules and laws. Domke and Coe (2010) illustrate through text analysis that when addressing the public, US presidents routinely and have increasingly invoked God and religious concepts (blessing, prayer) and have increasingly symbolically associated the nation with God (e.g., suggesting that the United States is favored by God or that God has a plan for the nation). In the case of theocratic governments, the merging of sociopolitical and religious systems is much more explicit, whereby a governing body is made up of religious officials, and rules and laws are entirely defined by religious doctrine. Contemporary examples include Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Vatican City. Monarchies also illustrate this phenomenon, where a king or queen is given power by divine right and is not subject to any authority other than god. The desire to symbolically or literally merge sociopolitical and religious systems is not just initiated by governments but also citizens. Consider the aforementioned cases of evangelical Christian leaders blaming disasters on what they perceive to be the expulsion of God and religion from the public sphere. This perhaps reflects the belief that society as a whole may be protected to the extent that it lives according to God’s will and is in God’s good graces, or alternatively, may face God’s wrath for living sinfully and deviating from God’s will. Given the general distrust of atheists (Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011), only 50% of the Americans would vote for an atheist as president (Lipka, 2014). More Americans think that politicians talk too little about faith and prayer (40%) than think that politicians talk too much about faith and prayer (27%) (Pew Research Center, 2016). The motivation to align government with god (as opposed to directly competing with god and religious systems) is perhaps not surprising given our discussion so far. Numerous domains and related issues (e.g., the economy and economic downturns) are largely under the purview of the government and failure to manage these domains may undermine confidence in them and decrease perceptions of efficacy and legitimacy. Governments are inherently made up of humans who are flawed and whose influence and resources are limited to the observable material world. Conversely, god is often seen as an infallible, omniscient, omnipresent entity whose influence and agency is infinite. Thus while god and government may be substitutable in satiating the psychological need for order and nonrandomness, governments have stiff competition when it comes to being people’s preferred means of satiating this need. For example, Governor of Texas Rick Perry’s plea for the public to pray for rain to relieve Texas of its drought (Castaneda, 2011) perhaps is a tacit admission that the government is powerless to solve this large and complex problem.

428

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

In short, whereas the former Soviet Union sought to compete directly with religion as a source of control, other nations have leveraged religious beliefs—either strategically or incidentally—to justify government policy and maintain perceptions of legitimacy when confidence in the government might otherwise wane. It has even been argued that the Soviet Union could have maintained greater support for the regime had they instead leveraged the legitimizing power of popular religious beliefs and institutions (Froese, 2008). To make sense of these observations, recent empirical work has sought to investigate whether or not, and among whom, symbolic alignments between the nation and god serve to increase or maintain perceptions of sociopolitical legitimacy and efficacy (Shepherd, Eibach, & Kay, 2017). That is, is it possible for one source of control to effectively align itself with another, in essence “piggybacking” off of the legitimacy and control-affirming properties of another? Such a possibility is consistent with past work on assimilation and contrast effects (Bless & Schwarz, 2010) and work on contagion and sympathetic magic, whereby the qualities or essence of one entity can be transferred to another through literal or symbolic contact (Frazer, 1925; Rozin, Markwith, & Ross, 1990; Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986). Support for this hypothesis was found in a series of studies using a variety of methodologies (Shepherd et al., 2017). When analyzing and coding 367 presidential speeches (covering most major addresses to the public from F. D. Roosevelt to Obama), speeches that addressed threatening events (e.g., war, economic difficulty, national tragedy) contained more religious references, including references to God’s ability to intervene and the symbolic association between the United States and God (e.g., claiming that God has a plan for the United States). Thus events that might challenge the sociopolitical system seemed to elicit more religious language from US presidents when addressing the public. This process perhaps can be seen in numerous instances throughout US history. During the Civil War, there were appeals to include reference to God on US coins as an explicit attempt for the nation to recognize God and to symbolically align the nation with God. A letter to the US Treasury by Reverend M. R. Watkinson stated that recognizing God on US currency would “relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism” and “place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed” (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2011). The fact that such an appeal was made during such a tumultuous time was not accidental, as the Reverend added, “From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.” In 1956 Congress voted to make “In God We Trust” the official motto of the nation as a direct response to the US conflict with the areligious communism of the Soviet Union. In 2011, citing a “crisis of national identity,” the motto was reaffirmed in the House of Representatives in a 396-9 victory (Steinhauer, 2011). Thus real-world evidence suggests that at least in a US context, governments have historically appealed to God as an external source of control during times of threat; that is, times that may undermine people’s confidence in a purely secular sociopolitical system. Experimental evidence further showed that these kinds of symbolic alignments between the nation and god serve to increase trust in the system among those who are more as opposed to less religious. When asked to read and reflect on a quote from FDR that symbolically associated the United States with God (e.g., “As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God”), participants who were higher in religiosity rated a variety of (ostensibly) American politicians as more trustworthy based merely on a photo of them, relative to less religious participants. Reading and reflecting on this quote also increased trust ratings among more religious participants relative to (1) a comparable secular patriotic quote and (2) a quote that invoked God but did not associate the nation with God. It was also shown that these effects are unique to one’s social system; no such effects were found when American participants rated the trustworthiness of (ostensibly) French politicians. Finally, using archival data, it was shown that while perceptions of national decline were associated with less confidence in the sociopolitical system, this effect was significantly attenuated among those who saw God as having a plan for the United States. That is, belief that God has a plan for the United States appeared to buffer the negative effect of perceived national decline on one’s faith in the sociopolitical system. These experimental findings are also consistent with observed phenomena. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, schools increasingly posted images with the phrase “In God we trust” (Howlett, 2002). Ninety percent of Americans surveyed in poll supported the inscription of “In God we trust” on currency (Newport, 2003). Thus it appears that citizens are often motivated to draw on God’s control for national matters and to symbolically align the nation with God in order to maintain perceptions of control and order. Such alignments with religious systems are also advantageous to sociopolitical systems because it allows them access to qualities and a legitimacy that is fairly unique to god and religious institutions. For example, god is seen as an ultimate authority, and thus to be convincingly aligned with god is to be just and morally right. Religious beliefs are also seen as unfalsifiable and immune to empirical scrutiny (Friesen et al., 2014). Shepherd and Kay (2019) find that

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

429

consumer products that are imbued with spiritual significance (essential oils, religious products) are seen as having a kind of efficacy that is nonmaterial and less falsifiable than secular products. While products are not the same as sociopolitical institutions, the same logic ought to apply, whereby policy and decisions that are perceived to be divinely inspired or part of god’s will may too be seen as more efficacious and less subject to scrutiny. Even in the United States with (supposed) separation of church and state, religious beliefs and scripture are often appealed to in political rhetoric around many issues, including banning same-sex marriage, restricting, or banning abortion. Such religious arguments are arguably treated differently (i.e., treated with more deference) than purely secular or scientific arguments. The aforementioned research by Friesen et al. (2014) and Shepherd and Kay (2019) suggest that this quality is appealing to people. These results help to provide empirical evidence for the political currency of aligning the sociopolitical system and nation with god and religious beliefs. How this has manifested in contemporary American society can also be seen in various ideologies. Jost et al. (2014) synthesize numerous findings and observations to argue religious belief systems are often system justifying; that is, religious belief systems are either designed to maintain the social status quo or have the consequence of justifying and maintaining the status quo. In a non-Western, non-Christian context, karma is presented as the religious concept that people deserve their current lot in life, and also that those of the lower classes will be rewarded in the next life and thus ought not to disrupt the current social hierarchy or seek to improve their status (Jost et al., 2014; Weber, 1963). The New Testament contains several passages that emphasize submitting to government authorities and that those authorities are ultimately established by God. Religious arguments have also been used to justify and maintain various sociopolitical arrangements, including slavery and conquests (Jost et al., 2014). The ideology of Protestant work ethic (PWE) is foundational in the dominant ideology of individualism that is observed in numerous Western countries (Quinn & Crocker, 1999) and is the belief that “provided moral justification for the accumulation of wealth” (Mirels & Garrett, 1971), and that hard work is moral and leads to success, and therefore lack of success is tied to moral failings (Quinn & Crocker, 1999). This ideology is firmly embedded in American society and its emphasis on individualism, individual success, and personal responsibility. As such, while it does have religious roots (as its name suggests), it is now widely accepted across various religious and political groups. For example, Protestants and Catholic participants endorse just world beliefs more than atheists and agnostics (Jost et al., 2014). Fair market ideology—the belief that the economic system and outcomes created by a market-based system are fair and legitimate—is also significantly associated with religiosity, with Catholics and Protestants scoring higher than other groups (Jost et al., 2014). RWA has also been shown to relate to religiosity (Napier & Jost, 2008); across 19 democratic countries, religiosity was significantly related to RWA, obedience to authority, and conventionalism (Napier & Jost 2008). In a US sample, more religious participants showed more positive attitudes to various sociopolitical institutions and their agents, including the government, police, military, and politicians (Jost et al., 2014). Finally, there is a significant relationship between religiosity and scores on the system justification scale, political system justification, and economic system justification (Jost et al., 2014). In short, many system-justifying ideologies are more frequently adopted by more religious individuals (although variation can be found between religions and denominations), and likewise, ideologies that have roots in religious beliefs (i.e., PWE) are adopted by societies more broadly and influence sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs. To our knowledge, no social psychological research has been devoted to understanding how religion benefits from the alignment of sociopolitical and religious systems. However, one can speculate as to how such an arrangement might benefit religious systems. Religious and spiritual phenomena may be seen as relatively abstract or disconnected from the material world, and thus alignments with secular powers may give them a level of legitimacy and provide a more concrete representation (e.g., a monarchy that serves as god’s representative(s) on earth). Relatively new religions or those that exist on the fringes of society may be seen as illegitimate without the “blessing” of secular sociopolitical systems. In the case of Christianity, Emperor Constantine legitimized the religion and made it the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. More recently, Mormonism has grown considerably as a religion, and attitudes toward the religion have benefitted from having a member (Mitt Romney) as a presidential candidate. While knowledge of Mormonism did not change as a result of Mitt Romney’s running for president, a positive shift in attitudes toward Mormons and Mormonism was observed between 2011 and 2012 (the year Mitt Romney ran for president). Conversely, Scientology serves as a good example of how lack of support (or active suppression) from the sociopolitical system can hinder growth and acceptance. Many nations do not recognize Scientology as a religion, and France even classifies it as a sect or cult. Without secular legitimacy, religions may face hostility or fail to confer the benefits of being officially labeled a religious organization. In the United States, organized religions enjoy tax-exempt status. It is estimated that in the United States, local, state, and federal governments subsidized upwards of 71 billion dollars every year (Cragun, Yeager, & Vega, 2012). As a comparison, it was estimated in 2012 that homelessness could be eradicated in the United States for about $20 billion (Lowrey, 2012).

430

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

State religions, such as Anglicanism in England and Lutheranism in Demark, Sweden, and Norway, specifically, enjoy many additional benefits, including the suppression of competing religions. Finke and Stark (1992) argue through historical and sociological analysis that, ironically, many European nations are not particularly religious because they have a singular official religion for the state. These state religions are often protected, including the suppression or lack of acknowledgment of other would-be competing religions. Being state supported, these religions are not reliant of high congregation numbers to keep their doors open1. In contrast, they argue that the free market of religions in the United States leads to more a demanding but engaging, appealing, and desirable product. Therefore while certain benefits may be conferred by having strong support by the state, Finke and Stark argue that this ironically can lead to declining religiosity. Finally, religions benefit from alignment with the sociopolitical system by leveraging it to enact and legally encode religious doctrine. Recent debates in the United States regarding gay marriage and abortion rights have largely been legal and political in nature, whereby religious individuals, groups, and politicians wish to change state and federal law so as to be in alignment with what they perceive to be religious doctrine. The choice to withhold commercial and government services from certain groups (e.g., non-heterosexuals) has also been argued to be a right of religious expression. For example, the recent (2013 14) Supreme Court case ruling that religious organizations such as Hobby Lobby are not legally obligated to follow the Affordable Care Act’s rule that employers must make healthcare plans available to employees that cover contraception. The Supreme Court also recently ruled in favor of a Colorado bakery who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding due to religious objection (de Vogue, 2018). Future research may also further explore the features of different kinds of threats that determine which people turn to different ideological tools in their ideological toolbox. While it is not unheard of for people to attribute economic prosperity or decline to god’s will, it is more often treated as the domain of the sociopolitical system; or, for economic free-market conservatives, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (a metaphor that helps create perceptions of order and nonrandomness without advocating for left-wing policies). Conversely, natural disasters and random accidents are often attributed to god, and/or god is turned to as a source of control following these events. It may be that certain events more instinctively turn people toward god as a source of control, whereas other events turn people toward the sociopolitical system. A better understanding of the underlying features of these events that lead people toward one source of control or another could add further refinement to CCT. Perhaps one unique feature of god is often that (at least among religious people) his benevolence and wisdom are relatively unquestioned. Therefore people can attribute both positive and negative events to god while also turning to god for guidance, support, or control following said events. Conversely, it is less likely that people will turn to the sociopolitical system for support when their competence or benevolence is called into question, such as when their perceived incompetence or malevolence is seen as the cause of the threat.

Conclusion CCT has allowed researchers to make sense of a number of phenomena related to god, government, and the relationship between the two. Likewise, these two systems of control have provided fertile ground for testing and advancing CCT. Early CCT research found that both sociopolitical and religious systems can be turned to as external sources of control when personal control is threated (Kay et al., 2008). Given that both can satiate the same need, Kay et al. (2010) found that god and government are substitutable for one another; such that the failings or lack of agency among one leads people to turn to the other. Finally and most recently, Shepherd et al. (2017) found that by symbolically aligning the nation with God, perceptions of trustworthiness of the sociopolitical system could be heightened among religious individuals, and perceptions of efficacy and system support maintained even when system support might otherwise wane.

References Asser, S. M., & Swan, R. (1998). Fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect. Pediatrics, 101, 625 629. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713 770. 1. While the same could be said for modern theocracies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, these nations obviously remain highly religious societies. It is possible that these examples are anomalies. One speculative hypothesis is that in Europe, state religions exist alongside democratic (as opposed to autocratic/authoritarian forms of government) that offer secular sources of control.

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

431

Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A. Y., Barndollar, K., & Troetschel, R. (2001). Bypassing the will: Automatic and controlled selfregulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1014 1027. Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252 1265. Becker, E. (1964). Revolution in psychiatry. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1969). Angel in armor. New York: Free Press. Bless, H., & Schwarz, N. (2010). Mental construal and the emergence of assimilation and contrast effects: the inclusion/exclusion model, Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 42). Elsevier. Blumberg, A. (2015). Pastor flies Christian flag above American flag to protest gay marriage. ,https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pastor-christian-flag_us_559d6900e4b05b1d028f8ba0.. Burger, J. M. (1989). Negative reactions to increases in perceived personal control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 246 256. Castaneda, T. (2011). Gov. Rick Perry asks Texans to pray for rain. ,https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gov-rick-perry-asks-texans-pray-rain/story? id 5 13439686.. Cragun, R. T., Yeager, S., & Vega, D. (2012). Research report: How secular humanists (and everyone else) subsidize religion in the United States. Free Inquiry, 39 46. Critchlow, D. T. (2007). The conservative ascendancy: How the GOP right made political history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de Vogue, A. (2018). Supreme court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case. ,https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado-gay-marriage-cake-supreme-court/index.html.. Domke, D., & Coe, K. (2010). The God strategy: How religion became a political weapon in America. New York: Oxford. Fahmy, D. (2018). Americans are far more religious than adults in other wealthy nations. ,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/31/americans-are-far-more-religious-than-adults-in-other-wealthy-nations/.. Finke, R., & Stark, R. (1992). The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in America’s Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fo¨rster, J., Liberman, N., & Higgins, E. T. (2005). Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 220 239. Frazer, J. G. (1925). The golden bough: A study in magic and religion (Abridged). New York: Macmillan. Friesen, J. P., Kay, A. C., Eibach, R. P., & Galinsky, A. D. (2014). Seeking structure in social organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 590 609. Froese, P. (2008). The plot to kill God: Findings from Soviet experiments in secularization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fromm, E. (1994). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt Paperbacks. (Original work published 1941). Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189 1206. Gill, A., & Lundsgaarge, E. (2004). State welfare spending and religiosity: A cross-national analysis. Rationality and Society, 16, 399 436. Goode, C., Keefer, L. A., & Molina, L. E. (2014). A compensatory control account of meritocracy. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2, 313 334. Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Blaming God for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 7 16. Groppe, M. (2016). Pence in his own words: 24 key quotes. ,https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/07/15/mike-pence-keyquotes/87100512/.. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88 110. Available from https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1. Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2018). World happiness report 2018. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertainty-identity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 72 83. Howlett, D. (2002). “In God we trust” pressed for schools. ,http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/20/usat-posters.htm. Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20, 385 392. Inzlicht, M., & Tullett, A. M. (2010). Reflecting on God: Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors. Psychological Science, 21, 1184 1190. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press. Ji, L., Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (2000). Culture, control, and perception of relationships in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 943 955. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553 567. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339 375. Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2014). Belief in a just God (and just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34, 56 81.

432

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 260 265. Jost, J. T., Napier, J. L., Thorisdottir, H., Gosling, S. D., Palfai, T. P., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Are needs to manage uncertainty and threat associated with political conservatism or ideological extremity? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 989 1007. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18 35. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.95.1.18. Kay, A. C., Laurin, K., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Landau, M. J. (2014). A functional basis for structure-seeking: Exposure to structure promotes willingness to engage in motivated action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 486 491. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0034462. Kay, A. C., Jimenez, M. C., & Jost, J. T. (2002). Sour grapes, sweet lemons, and the anticipatory rationalization of the status quo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1300 1312. Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For God (or) country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 725 739. Available from https://doi.org/ 10.1037/a0021140. Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 264 268. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x. Kay, A. C., & Zanna, M. P. (2009). A contextual analysis of the system justification motive and its societal consequences. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 158 181). New York: Oxford University Press. Available from https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916.001.0001. Krause, N. (2005). God-mediated control and psychological wellbeing in late life. Research on Aging, 27, 136 164. Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases. New York: Plenum Press. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing”. Psychological Review, 103, 263 283. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 879 892. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.90.6.879. Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Martens, A., Goldenberg, J. L., & Solomon, S. (2004). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 190 210. Available from https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.87.2.190. Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 694 722. Laurin, K., Kay, A. C., & Moscovitch, D. M. (2008). On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1559 1562. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.007. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum. Lillqvist, O., & Lindeman, M. (1998). Belief in astrology as a strategy for self-verification and coping with negative life-events. European Psychologist, 3, 202 208. Lipka, M. (2014). Americans are somewhat more open to the idea of an atheist president. ,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/29/americans-are-somewhat-more-open-to-the-idea-of-an-atheist-president/.. Lipset, S. M., & Marks, G. (2000). It never happened here: Why socialism failed in the United States. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lowrey, A. (2012). Homeless rates in U.S. held level amid recession, study says, but big gains are elusive. ,https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/us/ homeless-rates-steady-despite-recession-hud-says.html?_r 5 1&.. Ma, A., & Kay, A. C. (2017). Compensatory control and ambiguity intolerance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decisions Processes, 140, 46 61. May, R. (1953). Man’s search for himself. New York: Norton. McCoy, S. K., & Major, B. (2007). Priming meritocracy and the psychological justification of inequality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 341 351. McGregor, I., Haji, R., Nash, K. A., & Teper, R. (2008). Religious zeal and the uncertain self. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30, 183 188. McGregor, I., Nash, K. A., & Prentice, M. (2010). Reactive approach motivation (RAM) for religion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 148 161. McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 472 488. Mirels, H., & Garrett, J. (1971). The Protestant ethic as a personality variable. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 36, 40 44. Mutz, D. C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115, E4330 E4339. Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008). The anti-democratic personality revisited: A cross-national investigation of working class authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 64, 595 617.

Politics and religion: commutable, conflicting, and collaborative systems Chapter | 29

433

Newport, F. (2003). Americans approve of public displays of religious symbols: Majority of Americans favor displays of all religions, not just Christian. ,https://news.gallup.com/poll/9391/americans-approve-public-displays-religious-symbols.aspx.. Newport, F. (2010). Socialism viewed positively by 36% or Americans. Gallup politics. ,http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/socialism-viewed-positivelyamericans.aspx.. Niebuhr, G. (2001). After the attacks. Finding fault; U.S. “secular” groups set tone for terror attacks, Falwell says. ,https://www.nytimes.com/2001/ 09/14/us/after-attacks-finding-fault-us-secular-groups-set-tone-for-terror-attacks.html?scp 5 3&sq 5 Pat 1 Robertson&st 5 nyt/.. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. OECD. (2017). Health at a glance 2017: OECD indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. NewYork: Guilford Press. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion as a meaning-making framework in coping with life stress. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 707 729. Paul, G. S. (2005). Cross-national correlations of quantifiable societal health with popular religiosity and secularism in the prosperous democracies. Journal of Religion & Society, 7, 1 17. Pennebaker, J. W., & Stone, L. D. (2004). Translating traumatic experiences into language: Implications for child abuse and long-term health. In L. J. Koenig, L. S. Doll, A. O’Leary, & W. Pequegnat (Eds.), From child sexual abuse to adult sexual risk: Trauma, revictimization, and intervention (pp. 201 216). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pepitone, A., & Saffiotti, L. (1997). The selectivity of nonmaterial beliefs in interpreting life events. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 23 35. Pew Research Center. (2016). Faith and the 2016 campaign. ,http://www.pewforum.org/2016/01/27/faithand-the-2016-campaign/.. Pew Research Center. (2018). The age gap in religion around the world. ,https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-variesby-country-among-people-of-all-ages/.. Proudfoot, D., & Kay, A. C. (2018). How perceptions of one’s organization can affect perceptions of the self: Membership in a stable organization can sustain individuals’ sense of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 104 115. Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2008). The case of the transmogrifying experimenter: Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19, 1294 1300. Quinn, D. M., & Crocker, J. (1999). When ideology hurts: Effects of belief in the Protestant ethic and feeling overweight on the psychological wellbeing of women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 402 414. Rothbaum, R., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 5 37. Rozin, P., Markwith, M., & Ross, B. (1990). The sympathetic magical law of similarity, nominal realism, and neglect of negatives in response to negative labels. Psychological Science, 1(6), 383 384. Rozin, P., Millman, L., & Nemeroff, C. (1986). Operation of the laws of sympathetic magic in disgust and other domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 703 712. Rutjens, B. T., & Loseman, A. (2010). The society-supporting self: System justification and cultural worldview defense as different forms of selfregulation. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13, 241 250. Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2010). Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1078 1080. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.009. Sales, S. M. (1972). Economic threat as a determinant of conversion rates in authoritarian and nonauthoritarian churches. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23, 420 428. Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2017). The theory of dyadic morality: Reinventing moral judgment by redefining harm. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22, 32 70. Shepherd, S., Eibach, R. P., & Kay, A. C. (2017). “One nation under God”: The system-justifying function of symbolically aligning God and government. Political Psychology, 38, 703 720. Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2012). On the perpetuation of ignorance: System dependence, system justification, and the motivated avoidance of sociopolitical information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 264 280. Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2019). “Jesus take the wheel”: The appeal of spiritual products in satiating concerns about randomness. Journal of Marketing Management, 35, 467 490. Shepherd, S., Kay, A. C., Landau, M. J., & Keefer, L. A. (2011). Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 949 958. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.026. Steinhauer, J. (2011) In God we trust, with the house’s help. ,https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/us/house-of-representatives-affirms-in-god-wetrust-motto.html.. Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2010). An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 434 449. Available from https:// doi.org/10.1037/a0017457. Tang, S., Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2014). Do difficult decisions motivate belief in fate? A test in the context of the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. Psychological Science, 25, 1046 1048. Taylor, A. (2016). Why do so many people miss the Soviet Union? ,https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/21/why-do-somany-people-miss-the-soviet-union/?noredirect 5 on&utm_term 5 .97367bfbdf8c..

434

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2011). History of ‘In God We Trust’. ,https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx.. U.S. News & World Report. (2019). Best countries: Quality of life. ,https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings.. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Compassionate values and presidential politics: Mortality salience, compassionate values, and support for Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 9, 255 268. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, atheists, and agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1288 1300. Vail, K. E., III, Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, K. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion, Personality and Social Psychology Review (14, p. 84). van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1 60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. van der Toorn, J., Feinberg, M., Jost, J. T., Kay, A. C., Tyler, T. R., Willer, R., & Wilmuth, C. (2015). A sense of powerlessness fosters system justification: Implications for the legitimation of authority, hierarchy, and government, Political Psychology (36, pp. 93 110). van der Toorn, J., Tyler, T. R., & Jost, J. T. (2011). More than fair: Outcome dependence, system justification, and the perceived legitimacy of authority figures, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (47, pp. 127 138). Wang, C. S., Whitson, J. A., & Menon, T. (2012). Culture, control, illusory pattern perception. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 630 638. Weber, M. (1963). In E. Fischoff (Ed.), The sociology of religion. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1922). Weisz, J. R., Rothbaum, F. M., & Blackburn, T. C. (1984). Standing out and standing in: The psychology of control in America and Japan. American Psychologist, 39, 955 969. Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322, 115 117. Available from https://doi. org/10.1126/science.1159845, 268. Wuthnow, R. (2004). Saving America: Faith-based services and the future of civil society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 60 71. Zuckerman, M., Li, C., & Diener, E. (2018). Religion as an exchange system: The interchangeability of god and government in a provider role. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 1201 1213.

Chapter 30

The paradox of faith: how existential concerns motivate both prosocial and antisocial religious behaviors Spee Kosloff1 and Sheldon Solomon2 1

California State University, Fresno, CA, United States, 2Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, United States

Religion opens up the depth of man’s spiritual life which is usually covered by the dust of our daily life and the noise of our secular work. It gives us the experience of the Holy, of something which is untouchable, awe-inspiring, an ultimate meaning, the source of ultimate courage. This is the glory of what we call religion. But beside its glory lies its shame. . . . It makes its myths and doctrines, its rites and laws into ultimates and persecutes those who do not subject themselves to it. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (1959, p. 9).

The iconic religious teachings of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha share more in common than is commonly recognized. Each in his own way professed profoundly positive messages about humans’ potential to live together in unity and peace. Their transformative lessons emphasized the possibility of sustaining hope in the face of adversity and pursuing an inherently good, interconnected life of authentic faith and feeling (Rosen, 2010). Through to the present day, many religious groups make tireless efforts in arenas of civic service, volunteerism, donation, and human rights advocacy. Emphasis on the value of charitable action is reflected in Judaism’s practice of tzedakah (“Draw out thy soul to the hungry”; Isaiah 58:10 King James Version), Islam’s zakat (“Allah will deprive usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of charity”; Surah Al-Baqarah, Verse 276), Hinduism’s and Buddhism’s dana ¯ (“Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food and feeble”; Rig Veda, Hymn 117), and Christianity’s giving of alms (“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret”; Matthew 6:3
4 English Standard Version). Moreover, and contrary to some social critics’ characterization of religion as a corrosive social influence (e.g., Harris, 2004; Hitchens, 2007), religious investment predicts rejection of military attacks on civilians in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (Gallup, 2011). Yet the antisocial nature of some religious conduct cannot be overlooked. Under the rule of conquerors and regimes eager to consolidate power, religious conflicts have collectively claimed the lives of 49.8 million people and constitute 13 of the 100 worst atrocities in human history (White, 2012). Such actions stand in stark contrast to the prosocial intentions of religious founders and followers. With the rise and conversion of the Emperor Constantine (CE 312), for instance, Christianity was transformed from a persecuted outlier cult in the Pagan world to the official religion of Rome, paving the way for The Christian Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, and other bloody sieges purportedly undertaken in Christ’s name (Carroll, 2001). Religious behavior thus has both a prosocial, self-transcending character, and a malevolent dark side. Why have these diametrically opposed trends persisted over time? Why are believers drawn to religions both as solemn and selfless modes of betterment, and as tribalistic systems of social dominance and control? The present chapter applies terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2015) to explain how these divergent tendencies originate from common sources of existential anxiety.

Terror management and the motivational underpinnings of religion Rooted in the works of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1962, 1973, 1975); TMT proposes that much of human behavior reflects efforts to manage potential anxiety stemming from the awareness of mortality. As puny apes imbued The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00031-7 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

435

436

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

with abstract symbolic intelligence, people are acutely aware of the chance nature of things and the limited time any organism—including oneself—has on earth. Homo sapiens’ prefrontal cortex is 202% the size expected for an ape of its body size (Deacon, 1997), affording unbridled ingenuity and sociability, but also potentially crippling awareness of the physical world’s brutal indifference, the arbitrary nature of existence, one’s ultimate smallness in the universe, and the inevitability of death. Coping with these elements of the existential condition cannot simply be accomplished in the material world by virtue of some physical prowess. In the animal kingdom, human bodies stand out as slow, weak, thin-skinned, and poorly insulated. The human motor strip—a part of the brain responsible for implementing motor activity—is severely underrepresented at 35% its expected size, though one need not be a neuroscientist to recognize the profound helplessness of human infants at birth and ensuing forms of social dependency that continue throughout the lifespan. TMT, following Becker, thus proposes that human beings rely on two socially derived psychological mechanisms to manage the terror of death. First, an individual must maintain faith in a cultural worldview: a shared set of beliefs about the nature of reality that places objects, people, institutions, and events in a meaningful narrative context and prescribes norms of valued conduct so individuals know how to lead good and righteous lives. Though grounded in a social environment, the cultural worldview is an individual construct; it is the psychological lens through which a person perceives significance, consistency, and endurance in the world. Second, an individual must acquire self-esteem: the feeling that one is meeting or exceeding standards of value espoused by one’s worldview. It is not enough to believe one apprehends reality; one must also personally sense oneself as a positive embodiment of the worldview’s value system—as a cosmic hero who looks good through his own lens on reality. Doing so yields the ultimate death-transcending prize: immortality. By perceiving themselves as agents of value in a meaningful universe, human beings can believe they will overcome the limits of their mortality: either literally, in the sense that their immortal soul will carry on after the body perishes; or symbolically, in the sense that their earthly accomplishments will endure as emblematic legacies of value and power. Worldviews are multifaceted, comprising beliefs linked to philosophic, nationalistic, political, racial, ethnic, and other central social identities. Yet, fundamentally, they are faith-based metaphysical systems. Theological components of individuals’ worldviews thus appear particularly well-equipped to address terror management needs, insofar as they provide direct, explicit guarantees that life does not end with death. Concepts of infinite realms or states are ubiquitous across religious cosmologies, as with the Christian notion of Heaven, Judaism’s Olam Ha-Ba (the world to come), Islam’s Jannah (garden), Hinduism’s Swarga Loka (good kingdom), and Buddhism’s Nirvana (liberation). Religious texts center around seminal supernatural events and entities capable of transcending the limits of physical reality, as when Moses spoke to God through a burning bush, Jesus walked on water, Muhammad chatted with the archangel Gabriel, Krishna was born from Devaki after Vishnu put one of his head hairs in her womb, and Buddha achieved enlightenment beneath a Bodhi tree. Such narratives buttress believers’ sensed connection to a world unencumbered by corporeal constraints and the laws of nature. From this existential perspective, religion evolved as a palliative for the psychological torment of conscious existence, offering existentially stunned apes protection from potentially debilitating death anxiety. But how can a single source of anxiety be sufficient to explain both prosocial and antisocial religious behavior? One insight into this apparent paradox is found in Becker’s (1975) final, posthumously published work, Escape from Evil. This integrative anthropological analysis of spiritual behavior traces a legacy of worship from primitive ritualism to the modern megachurch, delineating how faith-based action to mitigate death anxiety has undergone monumental changes throughout history. Early primitive peoples trafficked in primal totems, animal sacrifice, and various appeasements directed to unseen forces behind the veil of nature (e.g., the sun god). In return for such magical gifts, people received good harvests, benevolent protections, and, most importantly, existential security. Spiritualized action was fundamentally humble, originating from fears of terrifying invisible forces, and focused on constantly repaying the gods so that all may benefit in this life and the next one. Over time, however, religious leaders became savvy to their power. Shamans and chieftains, and later priests and kings, realized they could team up like gangsters to subjugate the masses by controlling ritualistic practices, ultimately in pursuit of power and riches. In this way, religious behavior became deeply tied to the selfserving motivations of all-too-human institutions. Expressions of faith became inextricably entangled with service to sovereigns and defense of their worldly dominions. Antisocial aspects of religion may thus be understood as malignant manifestations of fundamentally prosocial beliefs and practices co-opted in the service of consolidating and maintaining political and economic power. Moreover, Diamond (1997) argued that such “kleptocratic” religions are necessary for small noncentralized kin-based societies to evolve into large centralized groups of genetically unrelated individuals. Alternatively, prosocial and antisocial aspects of religion may have arisen concurrently. For example, David Sloan Wilson (2002), following E´mile Durkheim, posited

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

437

that religion evolved to foster social cohesion and coordination based on group selection (i.e., that the group is the relevant unit of selection). Indeed, the word religion is derived from the Latin word religare, meaning “to tie, to bind.” From this perspective, denigration of, and hostility toward, outgroups is an adaptive feature of religion in the service of advancing group interests; and, individual adherence to religious beliefs and behavior in the service of assuaging existential anxieties constitutes a proximate explanation for the ultimate goal of maximizing social solidarity. If, however, religion originally evolved as a remedy for existential excruciations, terror management would provide both proximate and ultimate explanations (see Solomon et al., 2015 for an evolutionary account of the origin of religion), Regardless of their origins, it is clear that prosocial and antisocial trends in religious behavior persist to the present day. Among religious people seeking existential security from death-related concerns, there resides potential for humanistically oriented action but also tribal defense of identities and institutions. What are the conditions under which these contrasting responses occur? Scientific studies of TMT provide valuable answers to this question.

Empirical evidence for the death-denying function of pro- and anti-social religious behaviors Hypotheses derived from TMT have been tested around the globe in correlational and experimental settings, involving participants from diverse cultural, regional, and demographic backgrounds. The results converge to support the broad premise that cultural beliefs and practices function to ameliorate death-related concerns. Intimations of mortality impel people to seek solace by nurturing their self-worth and fortifying faith in various elements of their worldview—including its nationalistic, racial, political, and theological dimensions.

Testing for the existential allure of faith A temporarily heightened awareness of mortality (mortality salience; MS) can be engendered by having participants complete death anxiety questionnaires, view gory accident footage, stand near a funeral parlor, or, most typically, complete two open-ended questions about their death: “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead” (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989). Responses from MS participants are usually compared to those from control groups exposed to aversive stimuli or topics that lack death-related content (e.g., thoughts of pain or failure). Effects of such manipulations transpire unconsciously. Materials are embedded in various distractor surveys or superfluous tasks, and participants pay little conscious regard to the death-related contents. Comparable findings arise from analogous procedures in which death-related stimuli are presented below the threshold of consciousness, and the primary mechanism underlying MS effects is automatic, subconscious activation of death-related thoughts (for a review, see Kosloff, Anderson, Nottbohm, & Hoshiko, 2019). Studies routinely show that participants exposed to MS exhibit pronounced reliance on cultural sources of meaning and value, including those of a religious nature. For example, Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi (2012) found that MS increased self-reported religiosity and faith in a higher power among Christians, Muslims, and Agnostics, as well as Christians’ belief in Jesus, Muslims’ belief in Allah, and Agnostics’ belief in multiple religious figures (Jesus, Buddha, and Allah). These findings are complimented by large-scale archival research outcomes. Pelham et al. (2018) aggregated results of Google search trends from 2004 to 2016 in 16 countries throughout the world (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela). Analyses of these massive data sets showed that above-average weekly search volume for death-related terms (e.g., cancer, diabetes) predicted increased search volume for religious terms (e.g., God, prayer) a week later. The prospect of securing life after death explains why thoughts of mortality so strongly propel people toward religion. Allusions of immortality offer iron-clad proof that death is no big whoop. Indeed, Christians and Muslims who are confidently faithful in their religion’s teachings and characterizations of the next life show relatively low death anxiety, whereas those who experience religious doubt show elevated death anxiety levels (Henrie & Patrick, 2014; Mohammadzadeh & Najafi, 2018). Similar patterns arise in the lab. Dechesne et al. (2003) observed that MS caused people to defend their worldview by exacting particularly strong punishments against those who violated its moral principles (e.g., a frustrated burglar who destroyed a sculptor’s masterpiece before his very eyes). Yet MS-induced punitiveness was eliminated if individuals were first presented with (made-up) scientific evidence for life after death.

438

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Religious tribalism as the default response to mortality salience If all humans are in ardent pursuit of immortality, why can’t we all just get along, recognize we are in the same existential boat, and sail on through to the hereafter while helping others do the same along the way? This utopian vision is undermined by the mutually exclusive nature of most religions. Despite some shared spiritual aspirations, the particular contents of religious worldviews vary widely (e.g., in their creation stories, icons, visions of the afterlife and specific conduct that will yield access to it). Institutional forces, perhaps driven by group selection pressures, may intentionally accentuate such differences, drawing fine lines between believers and infidels, thereby instigating clashes of religious worldviews—earthly disputes aimed at proving the ultimate validity of a particular immortality ideology. Moreover, at the individual level, the existence of alternative theological accounts threatens to undermine absolute faith in one’s own. Worldviews are tenuous symbolic constructions requiring routine reinforcement if they are to adequately buffer potential death anxiety. Cultural environments promoting rigid us-versus-them characterizations of religious groups may thus instill in people a sense that their existential security hinges on establishing the relative superiority of their religious designation and the relative inferiority of others’. This helps explain why Vail et al. (2012) found not only that MS increased Christians’ and Muslims’ faith in their respective religions, but also that it intensified Christians’ denunciation of Allah and Muslims’ denunciation of Jesus. Most TMT studies similarly show that existential concerns elicit favoritism toward religious ingroups. Greenberg et al. (1990) initially demonstrated this phenomenon by presenting Christians with profiles describing the attitudes and characteristics of a Christian and a Jew. Participants rated each target’s intelligence, knowledge of current events, morality, and adjustment, and how enjoyable it would be to work with him. In the nonmortality salient condition, the Christian and Jew were evaluated similarly; but MS participants showed more positive ratings of the Christian target and more negative ratings of the Jew. Analogous evaluative bias occurs with respect to inanimate, symbolically charged religious stimuli. Beck, McGregor, Woodrow, Haugen, and Killion (2010) found that MS increased Christian participants’ preference for Christian over non-Christian artwork, and Greenberg, Simon, Porteus, Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1995) observed pronounced hesitation and discomfort among MS participants coaxed into treating a crucifix inappropriately (i.e., using it to hammer a nail into a wall). While this research literature has often relied on Christian samples, MS has been shown to elicit analogous intergroup bias among Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. In Israel, 11-year-old Jewish Israeli-born children responded to MS with pronounced acceptance of other Israeli-born Jews and rejection of Jewish immigrants from Russia (Florian & Mikulincer, 1998). In China and Japan, predominantly Buddhist samples likewise responded to MS with rejection of cultural outgroups (Heine, Harihara, & Niiya, 2002; Tam, Chiu, & Lau, 2007). In India, MS caused Hindu farmers to more strongly derogate and punish a foreigner who spoke mockingly about meditation practices and the Hindu custom of removing shoes before entering a temple (Fernandez, Castano, & Singh, 2010). And in Iran, MS increased Muslim college students’ advocacy for the use of martyrdom attacks against enemies of Allah (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). Institutional forces exacerbate such tribalistic responses. This has been evident in post-9/11 research examining escalating tensions between the predominantly Christian United States and certain Islamic factions in the Middle East and Africa. Fiery, histrionic rhetoric from leading figures on both sides has fueled profound antagonism between religious worldviews: as when former US President George W. Bush referred to the American War on Terror as a “crusade” endorsed by God (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2001a, 2001b); when Bush’s Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, declared “we in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God, have been raised for such a time as this. . . . They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation” (Cooper, 2003); and when Osama bin Laden and his associates proclaimed: We . . . call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. . . . to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them. bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Taha, Hamzah, and Rahman (1998).

Such ferocious incitements starkly illustrate the entanglement of political and religious institutions, and the danger that can unfold when powerful extremists equate divine providence with violence. In such contexts, earthly rulers who promise to eradicate the enemy get exalted to god-like status. MS has been shown to increase Americans’ support for politicians who hawkishly guarantee the extermination of Islamic extremism, including George W. Bush (Landau et al., 2004) as well as former Presidential candidate John McCain (Vail, Arndt, Motyl, & Pyszczynski, 2009) and current US President Donald Trump (Cohen, Solomon, & Kaplin, 2017). And just as MS motivates people to fawn over their saviors-on-Earth, so too does it intensify fear and loathing of outgroups deemed evil and unholy. MS increases

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

439

Americans’ support for severe antiterrorist policies (Landau et al., 2004), punishment of people with Muslim names (Kugler & Cooper, 2010), resistance to the building of mosques on American soil (Cohen, Soenke, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2013), and willingness to use chemical and nuclear weaponry in the hunt for terrorist leaders even if doing so would entail massive civilian casualties (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). Ultimately, calamitous responses like these reflect defensive striving for immortality. Existentially insecure groups exhibit radical, xenophobic tendencies in order to gain reassurance that their particular lifestyle is the valid way of transcending death. (As Boykin put it, “I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol”; Cooper, 2003). Consequently, quelling people’s motivation for immortality can reduce their disparaging responses to religious outgroups. In a study by Kastenmu¨ller, Greitemeyer, Ai, Winter, and Fischer (2011), participants viewed either grisly images of terrorist attacks in Madrid and New York or neutral pictures (e.g., a basket, a spoon). The terror pictures amplified belief that Muslims are a threat to world peace; yet this effect was eliminated if, at the outset of the study, participants were presented with supposed scientific evidence for an afterlife (Dechesne et al.’s, (2003) immortality salience induction). However, just as participants derive psychological security from the prospect of their ingroup’s immortality, so too does the death of religious outgroupers yield existential solace. Hayes, Schimel, and Williams (2008) presented Christian participants either with a news report that Muslim groups were overrunning Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth, or a neutral article about the aurora borealis. Exposure to the Nazareth article increased participants’ subjective feelings of threat, elicited negative attitudes about Muslims (as well as various other religious outgroups), and even triggered unconscious activation of death-related thoughts. Yet all of these defensive, threat-based reactions were eliminated in a third condition, in which the Nazareth article was followed by a brief “in other news” comment reporting that 117 Muslims died in a plane crash while departing the city. Westerners’ fear, intolerance, and hatred of Muslims is rooted in unfortunate stereotypes stemming from the actions of rogue terrorist organizations. Groups like Al Qaida and the Islamic State do not represent the world’s Muslim majority. In fact, Islamic extremists spend most of their time and money targeting Muslim people (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2011), which explains why the vast majority of Muslims denounce them (Pew Research Center, 2014). Zealous terrorist factions epitomize the inauthenticity of institutionalized religion. They rely on physical displays of power, exalt charismatic demagogues, recruit vulnerable young people into rigid systems of behavioral control, and misappropriate religious labels in the service of material gain and regional domination. The confusion such cults create regarding Islamic identity has contributed to existential strife not only in America but within predominantly Muslim nations as well. Ezeh, Mefoh, Nwonyi, and Aliche (2017) recently examined how horrific acts by the Nigerian jihadist militant organization Boko Haram have exacerbated tensions between two of the country’s ethno-religious minorities: the largely Christian Igbos of Eastern Nigeria, and the Islamic Hausas located in the North and South-East. In service to its ideology of anti-Westernization and pursuit of a “pure” Islamic state governed by Sharia law, Boko Haram implemented a violent insurgency to the tune of 10,000 lives, often targeting Igbo churches and civilian centers. In the minds of the Igbos, the Hausas became synonymous with the existential threat posed by Boko Haram. Accordingly, Ezeh et al. (2017) examined if reminders of mortality would heighten Igbos’ expression of prejudice against Hausas. Indeed, following MS, Igbo participants exhibited intensified resistance to the idea of entering into various kinds of relationships and exchanges with Hausa people (e.g., friendship, business partnership, disclosing a secret, cooperating to get a task done, helping out in time of trouble). It is a tragic irony that the same underlying existential concern—death—can heighten opposing groups’ negative intentions toward one other. The research reviewed thus far makes it seem as though thoughts of mortality inevitably promote aggressive, antisocial religious behaviors. But the picture becomes more complex, and perhaps more hopeful, when individual differences in religious orientation are taken into account.

The moderating role of intrinsic religiosity The specter of mortality looms large for us all. It directly opposes biological instincts for self-preservation that each human being shares with every living organism. However, people differ markedly from one another in the manners by which they obtain existential security. There is massive variation in the beliefs and values comprising distinct cultural worldviews; but further, individuals differ in the particular ways they adhere to their respective ideological systems. A large portion of TMT research has concentrated on identifying personality factors and other forms of interindividual variation that explain differences in people’s cognitive and behavioral responses to encounters with mortality (for a review, see Kosloff, Maxfield, & Solomon, 2014). This work helps reveal some conditions under which death-related concerns contribute to prosocial religious action.

440

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Some people orient to their worldview in notably rigid ways. They emphasize obedience to the commands of institutions and their figureheads, and the value of attaining symbolic indicators of approval and inclusion. Such focus on externally localized, contingent bases of meaning and value is termed extrinsic. By contrast, other people exhibit a relatively intrinsic orientation; their beliefs and values are thoroughly internalized and readily experienced as rewarding in themselves, regardless of external inducements. In the context of religion, psychologists have noted potential positive consequences of intrinsically oriented faith, and the dubious nature of its extrinsic counterpart: Intrinsic [religiosity] . . . regards faith as a supreme value in its own right. It is oriented toward a unification of being, takes seriously the commandment of brotherhood, and strives to transcend all self-centered needs. Dogma is tempered with humility. . . . A religious sentiment of this sort floods the whole life with motivation and meaning . . . Extrinsic [religiosity] . . . is strictly utilitarian; useful for the self in granting safety, social standing, solace, and endorsement for one’s chosen way of life. Allport (1966, p. 455).

Extrinsically religious people focus rather narrowly on the institutional context of their faith. Lacking internally anchored feelings of spiritual connection, they rely on volatile social dynamics: the vicissitudes of inclusion and exclusion, and the relative standing of ingroups and outgroups. Extrinsics show pronounced prejudice (e.g., Allport & Ross, 1967; Donahue, 1985) and reliance on building coalitions within their religious communities (Cohen, Hall, Koenig, & Meade, 2009). Intrinsically religious people instead experience relatively strong and stable subjective connections between themselves and their theological worldview. The basis of their faith resides within them; it persists reliably despite external challenges and, consequently, affords a particularly sound basis of psychological security. Whereas extrinsic investments increase physical and psychological distress, intrinsic investments diminish such vulnerabilities (Kasser & Ryan, 1993, 1996; Maltby & Day, 2004). In the TMT realm, studies show that religion serves as a particularly robust anxiety buffer for intrinsically oriented people. Van Tongeren et al. (2017) found that belief in literal immortality predicted lower death anxiety, but only among intrinsically religious people (those particularly likely to agree that, e.g., “My whole approach to living is shaped by my spiritual or religious beliefs”). Moreover, this buffering effect occurred precisely because literal immortality beliefs functioned to increase intrinsic participants’ sense of meaning in life. In related work, Lee, Piotrowski, Ro´z˙ ycka, ˙ and Zemojtel-Piotrowska (2013) revealed a fascinating interplay between intrinsic religiosity and engagement in spiritual rites and rituals. Specifically, engaging in regular religious practices decreased death anxiety among individuals with intrinsically oriented faith, yet increased death anxiety among nonintrinsically oriented believers. Intrinsics derived security from autonomous behavioral expressions of their deeply felt faith, while nonintrinsics were discomfited by compulsory acts of religious obligation. Intrinsically religious people may thus be liberated in the expression of their worldview: relatively unrestricted by the need to prove to others that their beliefs are valid. This freedom may facilitate a broad spectrum of spiritually guided behavior. Internalized surety about one’s theological worldview may, for instance, afford individuals the flexibility to put their self-interests aside in the expression of prosocial religious principles (e.g., compassion, modesty). Consistent with this account, research indicates that intrinsically religious people respond to MS with prosocial tendencies. For example, Wilson and Bernas (2011) presented participants with descriptions of various interpersonal transgressions (e.g., hate crimes, infidelity). In each case, the transgressor expressed regret for their actions and sought forgiveness, and participants were asked to imagine they were the victimized party and indicate the extent to which they would forgive the perpetrator. Following MS, participants low in intrinsic religiosity exhibited a trend toward lower levels of forgiveness, but those high in intrinsic religiosity instead responded to MS by becoming significantly more forgiving. Along similar lines, intrinsic religiosity reduces MS-induced antisocial defensiveness. Jonas and Fischer (2006) presented German participants with two essays: one espousing the many cultural, educational, and architectural virtues of Munich, and another complaining that Munich was becoming increasingly unworldly, expensive, and overcrowded. Among low intrinsics, MS increased preference for the author of the pro-Munich essay over the anti-Munich essay’s author. Yet high intrinsics—particularly those who had received an opportunity to affirm their intrinsic religiousness— did not show biased preference for the ingroup author after MS. A null effect on defensiveness is one thing; but does MS inspire resistance to intergroup conflict among intrinsics? Additional work by Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, Orehek, and Abdollahi (2012) showed it does. Among people with low intrinsic religiosity, MS intensified Christian and Jewish participants’ support for aggressive counterterrorism measures, as well as Muslim participants’ negativity toward Christians. Yet among participants high in intrinsic religiosity, MS had the reverse effects: decreasing those culturally aggressive and derogatory responses.

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

441

Such findings are consistent with Allport’s (1966) proposal that, for intrinsically religious people, dogma is tempered with humility. However, ultimate confidence in one’s religious engagement may, alternatively, incline people toward particularly extreme defensive zeal. Indeed, research based on extensions of Allport’s ideas has linked intrinsic religiosity to prejudicial tendencies and egoistic motivations (e.g., Batson, Eidelman, Higley, & Russel, 2001; Batson et al., 1989). Some studies show that intrinsically religious people have self-glorifying tendencies to see themselves in terms of their religious ingroup’s ideal attributes (Burris & Jackson, 2000), and want those qualities to be recognized by others (Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). At first glance, this diminishes confidence in the authenticity of intrinsic religiosity and its utility in promoting reliable prosocial behavioral intentions. Yet the TMT research reviewed above suggests that intrinsics do indeed follow beneficial, humanistically oriented pathways to existential security. Accordingly, rather than throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, it is useful to consider how conceptual and methodological issues may contribute to divergent findings regarding intrinsics. Most noteworthy in this context is potential overlap between intrinsic religious orientation and a neighboring dimension of religiosity: fundamentalism.

The curious case of fundamentalism Religious fundamentalism is a belief in the literal and absolute authority of sacred texts and tenets: . . . the belief that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental, basic, intrinsic, essential, inerrant truth about humanity and deity; that this essential truth is fundamentally opposed by forces of evil which must be vigorously fought; that this truth must be followed today according to the fundamental, unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and follow these fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity. Altemeyer and Hunsberger (1992, p. 118).

Fundamentalism is positively associated with a variety of antisocial attitudes and behavioral intentions, including racial prejudice, religious ethnocentrism, and militarism (e.g., Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Henderson-King, Henderson-King, Bolea, Koches, & Kauffman, 2004). Of central importance to the present discussion, religious fundamentalism correlates positively with intrinsic religiosity and negatively with extrinsic religiosity (e.g., Draˇce, Efendi´c, & Hadˇziahmetovi´c, 2015; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004). Unlike extrinsics’ need for external social validation, and yet akin to intrinsics’ fully embraced experience of faithfulness, the fundamentalist has totally internalized a black-and-white set of institutional dictates. On the surface, this seems like yet another blow to the case for intrinsic religiosity. Is it merely a generalized form of fundamentalism? This is more or less what some theorists have concluded (e.g., Batson et al., 1989; Herek, 1987; Rowatt, Franklin, & Cotton, 2005). Yet additional research suggests that intrinsic religiosity is a multidimensional construct, composed in part of fundamentalist leanings but also of authentic investment in tolerant values. For example, Fulton, Gorsuch, and Maynard (1999) observed that Christians’ antihomosexual sentiment was positively associated both with their levels of religious fundamentalism and their levels of intrinsic religiosity. However, when statistically controlling for fundamentalism, the association between intrinsic religiosity and antigay sentiment either reduced to zero or, in fact, became negative. Intrinsic religiosity, it thus appears, is not monolithic. Rather, it operates through a Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic: on one hand, precipitating thought and behavior consistent with prosocial religious values, and, on the other, contributing to rigid fundamentalist mentalities. One might speculate that the combination of high intrinsic religiosity and low fundamentalism would anticipate particularly pronounced prosocial responses to MS; however, the strong positive correlation between these constructs constrains their theoretical dissociability, reducing the chances that a given individual will present as high in one and low in the other. Nevertheless, a meaningful distinction remains possible and worth exploring. TMT researchers have yet to examine the joint, interactive influence of these two factors on MS-induced religious behavior. Studies have examined the moderating influence of fundamentalism, yielding results similar in some ways to the role of intrinsic orientation but also some peculiar outcomes that may be particular to fundamentalism. Considering such findings with an eye to the potential separability of these constructs may yield insight into the existential foundations of pro- and antisocial religious behavior. Take, for instance, Friedman and Rholes’ (2008) examination of religious fundamentalism and terror management. Their college-attending participants were presented with two statements: one advocating that campus traditions should be strictly followed (e.g., removing one’s hat during a chant at a home football game), and the other saying such traditions should not be enforced. Low fundamentalists responded to MS with increased relative preference for the protradition author, but highly fundamentalist participants did not. At first blush, these findings bear striking resemblance to the

442

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

reduced defensiveness Jonas and Fischer (2006) observed among intrinsically oriented subjects. Yet there were important differences. Jonas and Fischer’s intrinsic participants were buffered only when they had a chance to affirm their intrinsically oriented faith (i.e., by completing an intrinsic religiosity scale). Friedman and Rholes (2008) administered their fundamentalism scale at the end of the study session, so the buffering observed did not stem from the momentary activation of beliefs. There are several reasons why rendering participants’ intrinsic orientation salient may have reduced interpersonal defensiveness. Doing so may have activated subconscious thoughts related to humanistic religious values (e.g. the promotion of goodwill to all), which has been shown to condition effects of MS in prosocial directions (e.g., Jonas et al., 2008). In addition, thoughts of intrinsic beliefs may have strengthened participants’ faith in their ability to accept challenges. Consistent with this account, Fischer, Greitmeyer, Kastenmuller, Jonas, and Frey (2006) observed German participants to show an understandable decline in positive mood the day of an al-Qaida suicide bombing in Istanbul. Yet intrinsically religious participants were buffered from the attack’s mood dampening impact, precisely because they marshaled strong confidence in their capacity to overcome real-world adversity. Specifically, the relationship between intrinsic orientation and depressed mood was mediated by self-efficacy (i.e., endorsement of phrases like “I always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough” and “Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations”). Intrinsic religiosity appears to have insulated individuals from psychological threat via enhanced subjective capacities for concrete, effective action instead of otherworldly allusions. Notably, Fischer et al. (2006) did not examine these processes with respect to fundamentalism, so empirical questions remain as to whether such mediational outcomes would also occur regarding that orientation. However, further studies support the idea that fundamentalists derive psychological security via their strong affinity for the “next world.” To explain why their fundamentalist participants seemed nondefensive after MS, Friedman and Rholes (2008) coded the extent to which participants responded to the MS induction by expressing positive feelings surrounding their death. The results showed that reduced worldview defense only occurred among highly fundamentalist participants who expressed positive emotion about their mortality. Fundamentalists who did not exhibit a positive emotional tone when writing about their death showed pronounced relative preference for the protradition author. Follow-up work by Friedman (2008) further showed that, when fundamentalists wrote about their death, they tended to use cognitively simple and emotionally positive language that focused on the next world (e.g., “Joyful for eternal life” and “It makes me happy to know that I will be in a better place”; p. 227). Assessing whether intrinsic religiosity anticipates a different pattern of psycholinguistic responses when writing about mortality represents an important avenue for future research— one that might fruitfully inform the distinction between these constructs. Fundamentalists thus gain psychological security from mortality by blithely embracing the World to Come. They appear to care little for earthly squabbles over campus traditions; rather, their minds’ eyes are fixed on the ultimate reward they and their fellow righteous believers will receive when relieved of the sinful physical world. Indeed, studies show that fundamentalists obtain solace by giving up on this life in favor of the next one. Routledge, Abeyta, and Roylance (2018) presented participants with a narrative describing recent rises in cataclysmic global events: increased frequency of natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes, outbreaks of infectious disease such as the Ebola virus, terrorist access to chemical and nuclear weaponry, and threats from outer space such as rogue asteroids and solar storms. Religious scholars and scientists, it was stated, have come to agree these catastrophes signify the coming end of the world. Participants then indicated the extent to which that view was consistent with apocalyptic biblical prophecies, and whether human efforts to alleviate such threats would constitute a blasphemous affront to God’s plan. Following MS, individuals low in religious fundamentalism showed pronounced rejection of apocalyptic beliefs, whereas highly fundamentalist participants embraced them with particularly strong fervor. Related work shows that existentially spooked fundamentalists disavow their ties to the physical world and the people and resources in it. Vess, Arndt, and Cox (2012) observed that, following MS, fundamentalists reported greater disconnection from nature (e.g., disagreement with the phrase “Like a tree can be part of a forest, I feel embedded within the broader natural world”; p. 335). Friedman and Rholes (2009), found that contemplating interconnections between oneself and close others functioned to deactivate subconscious death-related cognitions among low fundamentalists, but had no such securing influence for high fundamentalists. Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, and Goldenberg (2009) further showed that exposing fundamentalists to MS amplified their belief that prayer is a more effective health intervention than actual medical treatment. Intense fixation on a dogmatic path to death transcendence comes at the expense of feeling and reason, but also human life. The actions of suicide bombers and other single-minded religious crusaders throughout history clearly show that quests for spiritual transcendence to the “next world” can foment hatred and carnage in “this world.” Although the fundamentalist worldview seems rock solid on its surface, in fact it is quite susceptible to threat. Fundamentalists cling

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

443

tenaciously to an unbending vision of reality, and thus are readily disquieted by instances that undermine their strict institutionalized religious outlook. Friedman and Rholes (2007) illustrated this vulnerability by presenting Christian participants with selections from the four gospels’ account of Jesus’s resurrection. The researchers manipulated whether or not participants were induced to identify inconsistencies between the respective accounts (all of which disagree about who went to Jesus’s tomb). The results showed that exposure to the biblical inconsistencies triggered the subconscious activation of death-related thoughts, but only among participants with relatively high levels of fundamentalism. Furthermore, this effect occurred even when controlling for participants’ levels of intrinsic religiosity, and exposure to biblical errors did not awaken unconscious death thoughts among highly intrinsically oriented participants. Such findings arguably constitute the best evidence to date for distinct roles of fundamentalism and intrinsic religiosity in the context of terror management processes. Research by Arrowood, Cox, Weinstock, and Hoffman (2018) likewise speaks to the comparative resilience of intrinsics. Christian participants read an essay that either did or did not emphasize the physical vulnerabilities that Jesus would have experienced as a normal human being (e.g., getting cut and bleeding while working as a carpenter). Reading about a human Jesus increased self-reported fear of death among participants low in intrinsic religiosity, but highly intrinsic participants were not existentially rattled as such. Similarly, Beck (2008) had Christian participants imagine Jesus experiencing diarrhea, nocturnal emissions, vomiting, scarring, tooth decay, near-sightedness, malformation, bad breath, body odor, dandruff, chronic back pain, and chronic headaches. Although participants generally found this task uncomfortable and insulting, those with a relatively nondefensive religious orientation were less negatively affected.

Who, then, follows the light? Most people think Great God will come from the skies Take away everything And make everybody feel high But if you know what life is worth You will look for yours on earth And now you see the light, you stand up for your rights
Jah! Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, Get Up, Stand Up (1973).

The research reviewed thus far permits a tentative delineation of conditions under which people respond to deathrelated concerns with prosocial or antisocial religious behavior. By and large, humans respond to reminders of mortality by defensively clutching the theological components of their worldview. MS elicits tribalistic motivations to enhance perception of religious ingroups’ privileged status and disparage or even seek to destroy religious outgroups. Consistent with Becker’s (1975) analysis, these tendencies appear linked to the institutionalized nature of modern religion. Intimate ties between political and religious leadership create a confusing context for followers. Alternatively, it may be that intergroup antagonism (potentiated by group selection pressures) is an inevitable consequence of religiosity, regardless of ensuing secular influences (e.g., Wilson, 2002). Whichever account is ultimately correct, it is clear that death-related concerns function proximately to motivate antagonistic and destructive faith-based behaviors. Yet beneath the surface of this default tendency resides potential for a brighter way. Evidence suggests that intrinsically religious people respond to death reminders with inclinations toward expressing prosocial religious values: fighting the good fight to imbue this world with tolerance, forgiveness, and rejection of intergroup violence. Although it is challenging to disentangle intrinsic faith from its nefarious counterpart, fundamentalism, these two orientations may differentially moderate responses to MS. Research reviewed in the previous section suggests that intrinsics exhibit readiness to encounter life challenges and securely strive for peace and acceptance, while fundamentalists hitch their existential wagon to the next life, affixing themselves to traditions and bylaws in particularly rigid, assailable ways. Significant empirical questions remain regarding the dissociability of these constructs; but the empirical breadcrumb trail followed thus far raises the possibility that—somewhere along the spectrum of religious orientations—there resides a meaningful distinction between modes of faith: between those focused on fortifying theological institutions and

444

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

literalism at the expense of real life, and those focused on integrating spiritual and humanistic aims in pursuit of harmonious coexistence on planet Earth. Is it possible that the latter orientation can proliferate untethered from groups and leaders who rigidly fixate on otherworldly aspirations? Probably not entirely. However, additional TMT research suggests potential pathways to the partial deinstitutionalization of faith.

Can religious worldviews be deinstitutionalized? If we assume that the human animal is not well-positioned to fully liberate itself from the woes of its existential condition and that religious institutions won’t relinquish their power any time soon, the question then arises: how can worldviews, including their religious components, become less bounded by the narrow prescriptions of figureheads and the blood parades in which they continually celebrate themselves? How can faith become more expansive and less constrained by institutional dictates and prerogatives? Part of the responsibility rests with society at large and, specifically, the types of norms and values broadly endorsed by nations and communities. Part also depends on individuals’ willingness to adjust their religious outlooks, and to soberly engage with the reality of death. We consider each of these prospects in turn.

Changes at the societal level Nietzsche (1887/1974) famously proclaimed—with very intentionally used quotation marks—that “‘God is dead’ . . . the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable” (p. 279). In Europe, these fateful words ushered in the fin de sie`cle, a period of intense spiritual and political uncertainty beginning at the end of the 19th century. Intellectual discourse emphasized the profound challenges modern humans face when seeking meaning in expanding industrialized civilizations. On one hand, the threat of fascism loomed large; on the other, the proliferation of new ideas, technologies, and freedoms was overwhelming. The plurality of available meanings contributed to 20th century people’s experience of alienation, as they scrambled in vain to find something to believe in: In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. Fromm (1955, p. 101).

The picture hasn’t changed much in the new millennium. Uncertainty, alienation, and neurotic fumbling are as prevalent as ever, even as technology enables exponential increases in digital proximity. Adolescents’ use of social media, for instance, contributes to depression, anxiety, loneliness, and negative social comparison (e.g., Hogue & Mills, 2019; Hunt, Marx, Lipson, & Young, 2018; Mills, Musto, Williams, & Tiggemann, 2018). The impersonal vacuum of online communication permits interpersonal aggression uncurbed by empathy (e.g., “cyberbullying”; Schneider, O’Donnell, Stueve, & Coulter, 2012). Left unchecked, one might expect the average individual to continue seeking flimsy, fleeting, sources of self-esteem, and increasingly tribalistic forms of faith. Alternatively, social contexts that emphasize healthy, humanistic norms and values might steer individuals toward relatively accepting and fulfilling forms of spiritual engagement.

Salient prosocial norms TMT research shows that salient prosocial values shift responses to mortality reminders in positive directions. For example, Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Chatel (1992) found that presenting individuals with statements advocating tolerance (e.g., “It is important to be tolerant of those with different opinions”) eliminated the effect of MS to elicit defense of their nationalistic worldview. Likewise, Vail, Courtney, and Arndt (2019) found tolerance salience to wipe out American participants’ MS-induced favorability toward a US Congressman’s anti-Islamic statements. Analogous results were obtained in a series of experiments conducted by Jonas et al. (2008). In one study, participants first completed a word-search puzzle composed of a matrix of letters. Embedded in the puzzle were terms related either to proself norms (e.g., power, status, dominance) or prosocial norms (e.g., tolerance, peace, equality). In the proself condition, participants responded to MS with decreased willingness to help disadvantaged children; yet, among participants primed with prosocial norms, MS instead increased their willingness to help. Similarly, Jonas et al.

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

445

observed that participants primed with pacifism-related words responded to MS with increased support for peace-promoting organizations (e.g., the Red Cross, Amnesty International) and decreased support for violent military interventions. And, in a final study, the researchers varied whether participants witnessed an act of kindness. In one condition, the experimenter “accidentally” dropped pens and envelops on the ground, and a confederate actor helped pick up the materials. In the control condition, no such assistance was observed. Among participants who witnessed the helping behavior, MS increased willingness to help others in various situations (e.g., with their homework, or by offering a car ride despite the 15-minute detour it would entail). The power to model positive values is similarly present in religious teachings. To illustrate this, Rothschild, Abdollahi, and Pyszczynski (2009) examined effects of MS on Americans’ advocacy for using chemical and nuclear weapons to defend American interests abroad in the War on Terror. The results showed that religious fundamentalists were much more likely to condone militarism than nonfundamentalists; the religious implications of ongoing conflict between the United States and countries in the Middle East likely elicited pronounced disdain from fundamentalists committed to the righteousness of their theological conception of reality. However, after MS, fundamentalists showed diminished support for extreme force if they had earlier been exposed to compassionate bible teachings (e.g., “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ forgave you—Ephesians 4:32”). Importantly, MS did not elicit reductions in fundamentalists’ militarist intentions if the compassionate quotes presented lacked biblical authority (i.e., came from a nonbiblical source). This suggests, ironically, that fundamentalists’ commitment to the hereafter can be redirected toward the reduction of violent intentions in the physical world—as long as salient prosocial elements of their metaphysical system are authoritatively prescribed. In another study, Rothschild et al. obtained analogous effects in a sample of Iranian Shiite fundamentalists. MS was observed to increase negative sentiment toward the United States and allied nations (e.g., “We cannot trust the United States and its European allies; they are our enemies”). This was noteworthy because—as earlier described—MS does not typically elicit worldview defense among fundamentalists. Again, however, the context of US
Iranian relations is heavily colored by its religious implications, whereas prior null MS effects among fundamentalists have been observed on dependent measures less laden with potential religious ties. But most importantly here, the MS-induced defensiveness among Iranian fundamentalists was eliminated if participants had first been induced to review compassionate teachings from the Koran (e.g., “The Holy Koran, Ghasas (77) says: do goodness to others because Allah loves those who do good”). Salient sacred teachings thus have the power to pierce the armor of fundamentalist mentalities, evoking existentially motivated leanings toward acceptance and harmony. Pathways to peace thus exist, even among individuals heavily entrenched in institutionalized religion. Nevertheless, strict adherence to scripture—even when positively oriented—constitutes an inflexible brand of behavior. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that fundamentalist leaders would be willing to cherry-pick teachings that elicit prosocial strivings from their existentially vulnerable followers, not when there is so much death-transcending power to be gained by riling up the masses in service to the conquest of evil outgroups. Accordingly, it will be useful to consider other ways to promote meaningful awareness of prosocial values.

Common human experiences One fruitful avenue might be to draw attention to the fact that all humans, regardless of the specific beliefs they adhere to, are essentially in the same boat. We have more in common than in difference. Aside from our shared fate in death, people from every race, region, and religion have families, need self-esteem, feel love, heartache, and economic hardship, and possess deep inner yearnings to experience the fullness of life. Each person is, as Rank (1936/1978) artfully described, a “temporal representative of the cosmic primal force” (p. 4). Inspiring people to embrace the value of their shared connection to the process of living may be amongst humanity’s best hopes for finding nondogmatic paths to spiritual transcendence. Consistent with this line of thinking, Motyl et al. (2011) showed that MS-induced biases are eliminated when individuals are led to think about cross-culturally shared human experiences. In one study, White American participants viewed pictures of people having typical family engagements (e.g., having dinner, playing games). The researchers varied whether the people in the photos formed a culturally diverse group, or an all-White group. The results showed that MS increased participants’ tendency to unconsciously associate Arab names (e.g., Akbar, Sharif, Wahib) with negative terms (awful, nasty, evil), but this implicit anti-Arab bias was eliminated among participants who had viewed the diverse group pictures. In another study, Motyl et al. had White Americans read descriptions of people’s favorite childhood memories, and the researchers varied whether the authors were from the United States or from a diverse array of countries

446

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

(Bangladesh, India, and Mexico). Participants were then asked to recall memories from their own childhood that were similar to those described in the vignettes. The results showed that MS intensified participants’ hostility toward immigrants and support for national border walls, unless participants had connected their memories to those of the diverse authors. Inversely, a final study showed MS reduced American’s support for peace-making efforts in the War on Terror, unless participants had contemplated similarities between their own painful childhood memories and those of people from other countries. Related research has examined moderating effects of concerns with global environmental catastrophe. Climate change knows no boundaries; it threatens all life regardless of the arbitrary borderlines drawn between nation states. Consequently, when thoughts of global disaster are salient, people should seek existential security through the pursuit of common human interests. To test this idea, Pyszczynski et al. (2012) induced American participants to contemplate the consequences either of global climate change (e.g., rising sea-levels and temperatures, severe storms, droughts, forced migrations) or of a localized disaster (e.g., an earthquake in San Francisco, massive flooding in China). Among participants who had pondered climate change, MS elicited pronounced support for the use of diplomacy in the Middle East and diminished support for military action against Iran. Analogous findings were obtained in a sample of Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel, during the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza. Among participants with strong preexisting beliefs in common humanity (e.g., “All people are linked to each other in a shared human bond”), thinking of global climate change and personal mortality increased support for peaceful coexistence (e.g., “As difficult as it is, we need to find a way to live in peace with the Jews”).

Cash 6¼ king Promoting salient humanistic values and a sense of common humanity may partly extricate people from the grips of institutionalized worldviews. There remain many pragmatic questions surrounding the process of redirecting cultural value systems, but one major obstacle stands out: people’s deep and abiding obsession with money. On the surface, the pursuit of money seems insipidly rational; but a deeper dive reveals its roots in human aspirations for divine power. Following the trenchant analysis of Brown (1959), Becker (1975) expertly unmasked the unconscious holiness of cash. With the rise of civilization came the worship of man-god kings, who commanded ritualism and stood as the apex of all power and value. Human incarnations beheld supernatural force which, in turn, could be transferred onto emblems. Coins emblazoned with the likenesses of rulers, and crafted from the most enduring metals, could be obtained by average rule-abiding citizens, permitting visible proof of their privileged access to infinity: Money is . . . a living myth, a religion. . . . The first banks were temples and the first ones to issue money were the priests. . . . The first mints were set up in the temples of the gods, whence our word “money”—from the mint in the temple Juno Moneta, Juno the admonisher, on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. . . . The king got his powers from the heavens and radiated them in his own person to the people with the help of the priests, to benefit the patriarchal families. We might say that money coinage fit beautifully into this scheme, because now cosmic power could be the property of everyone, without even the need to visit temples: you could now traffic in immortality in the marketplace. . . . A new man emerged . . . a man who based the value of his life—and so his immortality—on a new cosmology centered on coins. Becker (1975, pp. 76
80).

Aspirations to acquire and spend copious amounts of wealth reflect a codified, systematized, rationalized pursuit of spiritual power. Such aims are inauthentic. They entail a form of worship tethered to lords who set the market, whimsically withhold economic access, and encourage consumerist fetishism. It is thus disheartening—though not surprising— when studies show death reminders to intensify reflexive monetary urges. MS has been shown to increase individuals’ excitement about found money (e.g., stumbling upon a $20 bill while out on a walk; Solomon & Arndt, 1993), heighten attraction to high-status objects (e.g., a Lexus car and a Rolex watch; Mandel & Heine, 1999), and elicit optimism regarding one’s future financial worth and ability to spend on luxury items (Kasser & Sheldon, 2000). Like religious fundamentalism, death-denying materialism fosters detachment from the natural world and its inhabitants. Measuring the value of oneself and others in financial terms reduces people to products, amplifies alienation, incentivizes greed, and restricts avenues for heroism to those associated with sufficient monetary gain. Kasser and Sheldon (2000) observed perilous environmental consequences of existentially motivated avarice. Participants were presented with a forest-management scenario, in which they considered the short-term profits and long-term environmental damage associated with logging. Participants were told to imagine they were competing with other logging companies and had to decide how much of 100 acres of forestland they intended to harvest this year. Participants

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

447

who received MS showed pronounced motivation to financially best their competitors, and consequently harvested significantly more acreage. The worship of money is profoundly fixed in contemporary civilization. It enables a concrete, seemingly objective calculus to mask the modern fragmentation of meaning. Is it possible to usher in social changes that eclipse the coin and help us believe cash isn’t really king? Doing so might open doors to spiritual living that is less alienated and socially comparative, and more oriented toward common human concerns. Unfortunately, such aims would not appease power-hungry and economically entrenched leadership, nor average individuals so accustomed to garnering deathdenying self-worth through acquisitive action. It is therefore important to identify steps individuals themselves can take towards embracing less defensive theological worldviews.

Changes at the individual level TMT researchers have often noted that, existentially speaking, the individual is stuck between a rock and a hard place (e.g., Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). People must solidly bind themselves to death-denying ideologies, yet doing so precipitates antisocial trends symptomatic of institutionalized faith. Alternatively, humans might seek to divest themselves of absolutisms in the service of openness, but then risk flooding their conscious minds with death anxiety and triggering self-destructive means to escape it (e.g., drugs, suicide). There is likely no perfect solution. Yet research suggests some intraindividual changes that could foster relatively flexible outlooks on spirituality and death.

Conversion First, individuals might convert to religions that proscribe violence. As noted earlier, religions universally advise some forms of prosocial behavior (e.g., following the golden rule); but do they all similarly include/exclude conflicting teachings about violence, slavery, treatment of women, treatment of infidels, animals, earthly dominion, and so on? For instance, a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim might strictly follow Biblical/Quranic passages, including those condoning slavery or subjugation of women or calling to defend the “righteous” (from the infidels) with violence if need-be, whereas followers of syncretic religions like Baha´’ı´ Faith or Unitarian Universalism would arguably not encounter such content and might instead strictly follow spiritual principles of nonviolence. A fundamentalist Jainist may be so averse to violence that they avoid harming even miniscule forms of life: A rise of Jain fundamentalism would endanger no one. In fact, the uncontrollable spread of Jainism throughout the world would improve our situation immensely. We would lose more of our crops to pests, perhaps (observant Jains generally will not kill anything, including insects), but we would not find ourselves surrounded by suicidal terrorists or by a civilization that widely condones their actions. Harris (2005, p. 148).

However, nonviolent, humanistically oriented religions have historically been minority groups oppressed by mainstream, exclusive religions. It is hard to predict how the behavior of theological minorities would change as they grow in popularity, regional reach, and political infrastructure. Disconcerting examples of this progression have occurred in some extensions of Buddhism. Buddhism espouses ethical tenets of nonviolence in thought and action, a code prescribed unmistakably in the Buddha’s teaching (“victory breeds hatred. Happily the peaceful live, giving up victory and defeat . . . [because] hate is not overcome by hate; by Love (Metta) alone his hate appeased. This is an eternal law”; 8 Dhammapada XV.201, Dhammapada 1.5). Yet intermingling of Buddhism and secular government has occurred throughout history, including when, in founding China’s Liang Dynasty (502
57), Emperor Wu used Buddhist religious precepts for blatantly political purposes in order to secure and maintain his earthly power (De Rauw, 2008). Fortunately, Wu’s efforts were largely egalitarian and nationally unifying; but such has not been the case with recent sectarian violence perpetrated by Buddhist groups. Since 2012, Burmese-Buddhist nationalists have been ethnically cleansing Myanmar of Rohingya Muslims, killing thousands by both conventional means and more barbaric methods like mass execution, beheading, and live burial (Beech, 2017; Lone, Soe, Lewis, & Slodkowski, 2018). Since 1983, Sri Lanka’s civil war between Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus has eradicated 80
100k lives, carnage which regional leaders have fallaciously endorsed as consistent with Buddhist scripture: For example, the Venerable Ampitiye Silavamsatissa contended that the karmic consequence of an act is in relation to its intention (cetana) and not the action itself. He similarly affirmed: “cetana is the thing at the root. Soldiers don’t take guns

448

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

with the intention of killing. More than killing, they take them with the principal intention of saving the country, the race, and the religion.” Chavez-Segura (2014, p. 109).

The disheartening prospect thus remains that even ideologies with peaceful core beliefs will be used to justify nefarious acts once critical masses of followers and rigid institutionalization emerge. What, then, about converting to a purely secular, nonreligious identification? Perhaps atheists or secular humanists possess a worldly focus, unobscured by denial-based aspirations for immortality, and can therefore rationally direct their motivations toward promoting peace on Earth. However, from a TMT perspective, every member of Homo sapiens must cling to a symbolic system of values in order to mitigate potential death anxiety, and therefore possesses potential to defend their worldview when push comes to shove and mortality is salient. Consistent with this view, Vail, Soenke, Waggoner, and Mavropoulou (2019) observed MS-induced nationalistic worldview defense in large samples of American atheists. That outcome was not eliminated if participants were first presented with the prospect of a supernatural afterlife, suggesting atheists’ existential security-seeking does not stem from underlying heavenly aims. But the atheists’ worldview defensive responses were eliminated if participants first reviewed evidence suggesting that medical science may soon enable biological immortality for humans. Even among the godless, the existential condition subconsciously triggers derogatory social responses and fuels the urge to immortality. In sum, perhaps the world would be a better place if all believers converted to purely pacifist religions or abandoned the metaphysics of faith entirely. And yet, perhaps majority adherence to any ideology inevitably begets corruption, ethnocentrism, and egoistic yearnings for immortality. In light of such complexities, we return to the topic of religious orientations that any person—regardless of their theological identification—may choose to explore.

Quest orientation One approach entails subjecting oneself to spiritual uncertainty, and embracing the process of doing so as an integral part of religious living. This mentality is referred to as quest orientation. Quest orientation entails openness to religious change and existential questioning, as reflected in agreement with phrases like: “For me, doubting is an important part of what it means to be religious” and “Questions are far more central to my religious experience than are answers” (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). Quest orientation correlates negatively both with fundamentalism and with reliance on religion as a defensive consolation for the worries, uncertainties, and randomness of life (e.g., Beck, 2006; Friedman & Rholes, 2007; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004). Inversely, it is positively associated with open-mindedness, tolerance, and reduced prejudice (e.g., Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Beck, 2006; Hall, Matz, & Wood, 2010). If fundamentalism is the rock, quest orientation may be the hard place. Religious individuals who step out to the ledge of their faith and consciously confront theological doubts may be less psychologically insulated from their existential concerns. Arrowood, Coleman, Swanson, Hood, and Cox (2018) observed that, following MS, greater quest orientation predicted reduced self-confidence and well-being. Likewise, the uncertainty inherent in quest-oriented religious worldviews may impede individuals’ ability to seek existential security through prosocial religious behavior. As noted earlier, Golec de Zavala et al. (2012) found MS to reduce intercultural aggression among Christians, Jews, and Muslims with an intrinsic orientation; yet quest orientation exerted no such moderating influence. Can questers’ existential security be bolstered? Research suggests it might, but perhaps only in cultural environments affording an enriched sense of meaning. Vess, Routledge, Landau, and Arndt (2009) illustrated this in research examining terror management and personal need for structure (PNS): an individual difference in the desire for clearly structured and unambiguous understanding of reality (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). Like fundamentalists, high PNS individuals respond to MS with resolute confidence that the world is meaningful and orderly. Akin to questers, however, low PNS individuals respond to MS with a diminished sense of life’s meaning. Vess et al. observed that, after MS, low PNS people tried to fill their existential void through the exploration of novel cultural information (e.g., viewing a documentary about living in America from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant). Further, when given opportunities to do so, presenting low PNS individuals with MS increased their belief in life’s meaning. Arrowood, Cox, and Vail (2019) observed comparable effects in samples of questers. Consistent with their search for new forms of meaning, questers responded to MS with enhanced tolerance of cultural others; but, consistent with their theological uncertainty, MS also made questers feel further away from God. However, if first induced to meaningfully examine their religious doubts and uncertainties, MS ceased to elicit spiritually avoidant responses from questers. Accordingly, perhaps questers and low PNS folks can get the best of both worlds: having openness to alternative conceptions of reality while retaining a sense of significance. Achieving such a fine balance depends on the presence of diverse inroads to meaning in the individuals’ social
psychological environment. Relatedly, findings from Pirutinsky (2009) suggest that religious questers who encounter new and convincing meanings acquire an intrinsically oriented

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

449

existential buffer. Among Orthodox Jews who had switched their Orthodox subgroup affiliation or converted to Orthodoxy from a nontraditional religious background, MS increased self-reported intrinsic religiosity.

Consciousness of mortality For centuries, humanity has dedicated itself to erecting cultural barriers against the awareness of death. Perhaps the time has come to break some of those down and cultivate conscious awareness of mortality. As with quest orientation, doing so must be met with some net of comforting cultural meaning, so that we’re not flooded with terror in the face of oblivion. But consciousness is essentially an expanding play of metaphors; our symbolic manner of apprehending reality feeds on the incorporation of new tokens of thought (Jaynes, 1976). So perhaps individuals can labor actively to acknowledge the emotional toll that death awareness has on the human mind, and in so doing achieve spiritual peace rooted in the appreciation of life in its many forms. The alternative—to continue repressing death awareness into the unconscious—will fuel further iterations of violence and despair that have already cycled through history time and again. As Carlos Castaneda (1972) wrote, “one of us here has to ask death’s advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them” (p. 35). Research on trauma and recovery supports the potential benefits of direct confrontation with mortality. Individuals who experience life-altering traumatic events often come away with a newfound appreciation of the preciousness of life and the importance of doing authentic good during one’s limited time on Earth. Many trauma sufferers exhibit heightened intentions to pursue deinstitutionalized paths to spiritual awakening, and diminished interest in acquiring of symbolic indicators of worth (e.g., Kinnier, Tribbensee, Rose, & Vaughan, 2001). These effects are particularly pronounced among religious people. Hui, Chan, Lau, Cheung, and Mok (2014) found that Chinese Christians who had recently experienced a traumatic encounter with illness, injury, or death showed lessened interest in material life goals (e.g., wealth, job promotion). Laufer, Solomon, and Levine (2010) examined similar effects among Israeli adolescents exposed to terror events. Terrorism exposure increased participants’ intrinsic religiosity, and the extent to which it did so mediated personal posttraumatic growth (e.g., sensed connections with others, spiritual change, appreciation of life). Notably, extrinsic religiosity had no such mediating effect. Can individuals undergo transformative growth without suffering a trauma? Evidence suggests it can. Consciously focalizing on mortality in a concrete manner diminishes defensive responses to mortality. Kosloff and Greenberg (2009) observed that, immediately after MS, when death-related thoughts were active in current focal attention, participants showed reduced interest in extrinsic pursuits of self-worth (e.g., money, fame, physical attractiveness). However, a few minutes later, this effect diminished and, in fact, reversed. If distractor tasks followed the MS induction—thus displacing death thoughts to the unconscious—participants exhibited increased investment in extrinsic aims. Cozzolino, Staples, Meyers, and Samboceti (2004) similarly demonstrated diminished socially contingent pursuits of worth following thorough reflection upon death. Participants were informed they would be entered into a $100 raffle, and received an opportunity to take as many raffle tickets as they wanted. Individuals with pronounced preexisting investment in extrinsic values tended to selfishly take more than their fair share of tickets, unless they had first been induced to imagine dying in a house fire and extensively reflect on that experience in manners that mimicked growth-oriented ponderings common to near-death-experiencers. Inversely, this death reflection procedure increased extrinsically oriented participants’ reported levels of spirituality. Like quest orientation, engagement with one’s mortality is a double-edged sword. Relatively relaxed, casual, experiential states of mind have been found to amplify defensive responses to MS, partly because they facilitate the fluidity with which death-related concerns drift out of consciousness and into the unconscious mind (Simon et al., 1997). However, the opposite may be true of individuals who actively work to establish routine, stable engagements with their phenomenological states: that is, those who are high in trait mindfulness. Niemiec et al. (2010) found that when highly mindful individuals received standard MS inductions, they willfully spent extensive time expressing elaborate, honest thoughts about their death, and did not exhibit worldview defense (even when it came to values theoretically associated with mindfulness). Furthermore, immediately after MS—when people typically exhibit an active suppression of unconscious death thoughts—mindful individuals instead showed elevated implicit death thought activation (as if their minds were not unconsciously resisting the reaper). In related research, Park and Pyszczynski (2019) observed reduced suppressive and defensive responses to reminders of death among individuals who engaged in routine meditation practices and nonmeditators who had recently undergone an initial mediation experience. However, neither Niemiec et al. (2010) nor Park and Pyszczynski (2019) measured worldview defense immediately after MS (when implicit death thoughts were unsuppressed). Further studies are thus needed to determine whether mindfuls and meditators are truly nondefensive following MS or if, alternatively, the time-course of their defensive reactions is shifted.

450

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Conclusion In a sense, Becker viewed his enterprise—creating an interdisciplinary science of human nature—as a platform for enabling collective meditation on mortality, one that might unite people of different faiths in the process of excavating unconscious fears, rationally accounting for the historical causes of evil, and affirming life: The task of social theory is to show how society aggravates and uses natural fears, but there is no way to get rid of the fears simply by showing how leaders use them or by saying that men must “take them in hand.” . . . The task of social theory is not to explain guilt away or to absorb it unthinkingly in still another destructive ideology, but to neutralize it and give it expression in truly creative and life-enhancing ideologies. . . . A science of society . . . will be a critique of idolatry, of the costs of a too narrow focus for the dramatization of man’s need for power and expiation. Becker (1975, p. 162).

Exploring such phenomena through the lens of critical inquiry may be essential to humanity’s quest for authentic spirituality. Doing so forces investigators to confront the paradox of faith while meaningfully revealing humans’ place in nature. We can understand that each person needs something to believe in, and simultaneously analyze the historical and psychodynamic underpinnings of that need. “History,” Steven Dedalus pronounced, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” (Joyce, 1922/2002, p. 34). Becker’s intellectual advancements aid such awakening. There always remains the risk that any form of belief—even the most rigorous scientific formulation—will ossify into an unreliable, institutionalized burden. Further, as Freud (1948) warned, words are merely a halfway house to cure. Yet perhaps certain words, expressed on the basis of valid observations, can foster peaceful spiritual living and recognition of the dilemmas all humans share.

References Allport, G. W. (1966). The religious context of prejudice. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5, 447
457. Allport, G. W., & Ross, M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432
443. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113
133. Arrowood, R. B., Coleman, T. J., III, Swanson, S. B., Hood, R. W., Jr., & Cox, C. R. (2018). Death, quest, and self-esteem: Re-examining the role of self-esteem and religion following mortality salience. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 69
76. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., & Vail, K. E., III (2019). The existential quest: Doubt, openness, and the exploration of religious uncertainty. Fort Worth, TX: Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University, Unpublished manuscript. Arrowood, R. B., Cox, C. R., Weinstock, M., & Hoffman, J. (2018). Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 21(5), 534
545. Batson, C. D., Eidelman, S. H., Higley, S. L., & Russel, S. A. (2001). “And who is my neighbor?” II: Quest religion as a source of universal compassion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 39
50. Batson, C. D., Oleson, K. C., Weeks, J. L., Healy, S. P., Reeves, P. J., Jennings, P., et al. (1989). Religious prosocial motivation: Is it altruistic or egoistic? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 873
884. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: I. Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 416
429. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus existential religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34(2), 143
153. Beck, R. (2008). Feeling queasy about the Incarnation: Terror management theory, death, and the body of Jesus. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 36(4), 303
313. Beck, R., McGregor, D., Woodrow, B., Haugen, A., & Killion, K. (2010). Death, art and the fall: A terror management view of Christian aesthetic judgments. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 29(4), 301
307. Becker, E. (1962). The birth and death of meaning. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press. Beech, H. (2017). At least 6,700 Rohingya died in Myanmar crackdown, Aid Group Says. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/12/14/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-deaths.html?module 5 inline. Brown, N. O. (1959). Life against death: The psychoanalytical meaning of history. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. bin Laden, S. U., al-Zawahiri, A., Taha, A. R. A., Hamzah, S. M., & Rahman, F. (1998). Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved from www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm/.

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

451

Burris, C. T., & Jackson, L. M. (2000). Social identity and the true believer: Responses to threatened self-stereotypes among the intrinsically religious. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 257
278. Carroll, J. (2001). Constantine’s sword: The church and the Jews. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Castaneda, C. (1972). Journey to Ixtlan: The lessons of Don Juan. New York: Washington Square Press. Chavez-Segura, A. (2014). Hijacking the “Buddhadharma”: Violence and war in Buddhist societies. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 15 (1), 105
111. Cohen, A. B., Hall, D. E., Koenig, H., & Meade, R. (2009). Social versus individual motivation: Implications for normative definitions of religious orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 48
61. Cohen, F., Soenke, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2013). Evidence for a role of death thought in American attitudes toward symbols of Islam. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 189
194. Cohen, F., Solomon, S., & Kaplin, D. (2017). You’re hired! Mortality salience increases Americans’ support for Donald Trump. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 17(1), 339
357. Cooper, R. T. (2003). General casts war in religious terms. The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2003/oct/16/nation/na-general16. Cozzolino, P. J., Staples, A. D., Meyers, L. S., & Samboceti, J. (2004). Greed, death, and values: From terror management to transcendence management theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 278
292. De Rauw, T. (2008). Beyond Buddhist apology: The political use of Buddhism by emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty (r. 502
549) (Doctoral dissertation). Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. Deacon, T. W. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: Norton. Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 722
737. Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton. Donahue, M. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: Review and meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 400
419. Draˇce, S., Efendi´c, E., & Hadˇziahmetovi´c, N. (2015). The relation among intrinsic religiosity, religious fundamentalism and attitudes toward outgroups in Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Primenjena Psihologija, 8(4), 379
394. Ezeh, V. C., Mefoh, P. C., Nwonyi, S. K., & Aliche, J. C. (2017). Mortality salience and prejudice towards ethno-religion minorities: Results and implications of a Nigerian study. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 27(5), 420
426. Fernandez, S., Castano, E., & Singh, I. (2010). Managing death in the burning grounds of Varanasi, India: A terror management investigation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41(2), 182
194. Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1998). Terror management in childhood: Does death conceptualization moderate the effects of mortality salience on acceptance of similar and different others? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1104
1112. Fischer, P., Greitmeyer, T., Kastenmuller, A., Jonas, E., & Frey, D. (2006). Coping with terrorism: The impact of increased salience of terrorism on mood and self-efficacy of intrinsically religious and nonreligious people. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 365
377. Freud, S. (1948). Collected papers (Volume IV). New York and London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Friedman, M. (2008). Religious fundamentalism and responses to mortality salience: A quantitative text analysis. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18(3), 216
237. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2007). Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(5), 794
801. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2008). Religious fundamentalism and terror management. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18 (1), 36
52. Friedman, M., & Rholes, W. S. (2009). Religious fundamentalism and terror management: Differences by interdependent and independent selfconstrual. Self and Identity, 8(1), 24
44. Fromm, E. (1955). The dogma of Christ. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Fulton, A., Gorsuch, R., & Maynard, E. (1999). Religious orientation, antihomosexual sentiment, and fundamentalism among Christians. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38, 14
35. Gallup. (2011). “Views of Violence: What drives public acceptance and rejection of attacks on civilians 10 years after 9/11” [Survey report]. Retrieved from ,https://news.gallup.com/poll/157067/views-violence.aspx.. Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Orehek, E., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Intrinsic religiosity reduces intergroup hostility under mortality salience. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(4), 451
461. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189
212). New York: Springer-Verlag. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 308
318. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Porteus, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1995). Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1221
1228. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Chatel, D. (1992). Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one’s worldview? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 212
220.

452

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2010). Why don’t we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 126
139. Harris, S. (2004). The end of faith: Religion, terror, and the future of reason. New York and London: Norton. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., & Williams, T. J. (2008). Fighting death with death: The buffering effects of learning that worldview violators have died. Psychological Science, 19(5), 501
507. Heine, S. J., Harihara, M., & Niiya, Y. (2002). Terror management in Japan. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 5(3), 187
196. Henderson-King, D., Henderson-King, E., Bolea, B., Koches, K., & Kauffman, A. (2004). Seeking understanding or sending bombs: Beliefs as predictors of responses to terrorism. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 10, 67
84. Henrie, J., & Patrick, J. H. (2014). Religiousness, religious doubt, and death anxiety. The International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 78 (3), 203
227. Herek, G. M. (1987). Religious orientation and prejudice a comparison of racial and sexual attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13 (1), 34
44. Hitchens, C. (2007). God is not great: How religion poisons everything. New York: Hachette Book Group. Hogue, J. V., & Mills, J. S. (2019). The effects of active social media engagement with peers on body image in young women. Body Image, 28, 1
5. Hui, C. H., Chan, S. W. Y., Lau, E. Y. Y., Cheung, S., & Mok, D. S. Y. (2014). The role of religion in moderating the impact of life events on material life goals: Some evidence in support of terror management theory. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 17(1), 52
61. Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751
768. Jaynes, J. (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 553
567. Jonas, E., Martens, A., Niesta, D., Fritsche, I., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2008). Focus theory of normative conduct and terror management theory: The interactive impact of mortality salience and norm salience on social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1239
1251. Joyce, J. (2002). Ulysses. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 410
422. Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1996). Further examining the American dream: Differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 280
287. Kasser, T., & Sheldon, K. M. (2000). Of wealth and death: Materialism, mortality salience, and consumption behavior. Psychological Science, 11, 348
351. Kastenmu¨ller, A., Greitemeyer, T., Ai, A. L., Winter, G., & Fischer, P. (2011). In the face of terrorism: Evidence that belief in literal immortality reduces prejudice under terrorism threat. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(3), 604
616. Kinnier, R. T., Tribbensee, N. E., Rose, C. A., & Vaughan, S. M. (2001). In the final analysis: More wisdom from people who have faced death. Journal of Counseling and Development, 79(2), 171
177. Kosloff, S., Anderson, G., Nottbohm, A., & Hoshiko, B. (2019). Proximal and distal terror management defenses: A systematic review and analysis. In C. Routledge, & M. Vess (Eds.), The handbook of terror management theory (pp. 31
63). New York: Elsevier. Kosloff, S., & Greenberg, J. (2009). Pearls in the desert: Death reminders provoke immediate derogation of extrinsic goals, but delayed inflation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 197
203. Kosloff, S., Maxfield, M., & Solomon, S. (2014). Multimethod assessment of existential concerns: A terror management perspective. In B. Bornstein, & C. Hopwood (Eds.), Multimethod Clinical Assessment (pp. 121
149). New York: Guilford. Kugler, M. B., & Cooper, J. (2010). Still an American? Mortality salience and treatment of suspected terrorists. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40, 3130
3147. Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., . . . Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136
1150. Laufer, A., Solomon, Z., & Levine, S. Z. (2010). Elaboration on posttraumatic growth in youth exposed to terror: The role of religiosity and political ideology. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 45(6), 647
653. ˙ Lee, S. A., Piotrowski, J. P., Ro´z˙ ycka, J., & Zemojtel-Piotrowska, M. A. (2013). Associations between death fascination, death anxiety and religion among Polish college students. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 44(4), 439
448. Lone, W., Soe, Oo, K., Lewis, S., & Slodkowski, A. (2018). Massacre in Myanmar: How Myanmar forces burned, looted and killed in a remote village. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rakhine-events/. Maltby, J., & Day, L. (2004). Should never the twain meet? Integrating models of religious personality and religious mental health. Personality and Individual Differences, 36, 1275
1290. Mandel, N., & Heine, S. J. (1999). Terror management and marketing: He who dies with the most toys wins. Advances in Consumer Research, 26, 527
532. Marley, B., & Tosh, P. (1973). Get up, stand up [The Wailers]. On Burnin’ [Vinyl]. Kingston, Jamaica: Tuff Gong, Island. Mills, J. S., Musto, S., Williams, L., & Tiggemann, M. (2018). “Selfie” harm: Effects on mood and body image in young women. Body Image, 27, 86
92.

The paradox of faith Chapter | 30

453

Mohammadzadeh, A., & Najafi, M. (2018). The comparison of death anxiety, obsession, and depression between Muslim population with positive and negative religious coping. Journal of Religion and Health. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-018-0679-y. Motyl, M., Hart, J., Pyszczynski, T., Weise, D., Maxfield, M., & Siedel, A. (2011). Subtle priming of shared human experiences eliminates threatinduced negativity toward Arabs, immigrants, and peacemaking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1179
1184. Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 113
131. Niemiec, C. P., Brown, K. W., Kashdan, T. B., Cozzolino, P. J., Breen, W. E., Levesque-Bristol, C., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). Being present in the face of existential threat: The role of trait mindfulness in reducing defensive responses to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 344
365. Nietzsche, F. W. (1974). The gay science. New York: Random House. (Original work published in 1887). Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (2011). “The National Counterterrorism Center Report on Terrorism” [Research report]. Retrieved from ,https://fas.org/irp/threat/nctc2011.pdf.. Park, Y. C., & Pyszczynski, T. (2019). Reducing defensive responses to thoughts of death: Meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(1), 101
118. Pelham, B. W., Shimizu, M., Arndt, J., Carvallo, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2018). Searching for God: Illness-related mortality threats and religious search volume in Google in 16 nations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(3), 290
303. Pew Research Center. (2014). “Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East” [Survey report]. Retrieved from ,http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/.. Pirutinsky, S. (2009). The terror management function of Orthodox Jewish religiosity: A religious culture approach. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12(3), 247
256. Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006). Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The Great Satan versus the Axis of Evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 525
537. Pyszczynski, T., Motyl, M., Vail, K. E., III, Hirschberger, G., Arndt, J., & Kesebir, P. (2012). Drawing attention to global climate change decreases support for war. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18(4), 354
368. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rank, O. (1978). Truth and reality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published in 1936). Rosen, H. (2010). Founders of faith: The parallel lives of god’s messengers. Wilmette, IL: Baha´’ı´ Publishing. Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1989). Evidence for terror management theory I: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 681
690. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 816
827. Routledge, C., Abeyta, A. A., & Roylance, C. (2018). Death and end times: The effects of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on apocalyptic beliefs. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 21
30. Rowatt, W. C., & Franklin, L. M. (2004). Christian orthodoxy, religious fundamentalism, and rightwing authoritarianism as predictors of implicit racial prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 125
138. Rowatt, W. C., Franklin, L. M., & Cotton, M. (2005). Patterns and personality correlates of implicit and explicit attitudes toward Christians and Muslims. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(1), 29
43. Schneider, S. K., O’Donnell, L., Stueve, A., & Coulter, R. W. S. (2012). Cyberbullying, school bullying, and psychological distress: A regional census of high school students. American Journal of Public Health, 102(1), 171
177. Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2010). Social desirability and religiosity: A meta-analytic test of the religiosity as self-enhancement hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 17
36. Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Harmon-Jones, E., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., & Abend, T. (1997). Cognitive-experiential self-theory and terror management theory: Evidence that terror management occurs in the experiential system. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1132
1146. Solomon, S., & Arndt, J. (1993). Cash is king: The effect of mortality salience on the appeal of money. Skidmore College, Unpublished data. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The worm at the core: On the role of death in life. New York: Random House. Tam, K. P., Chiu, C. Y., & Lau, I. Y. M. (2007). Terror management among Chinese: Worldview defence and intergroup bias in resource allocation. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 10(2), 93
102. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2001a, September 16). Remarks by the President upon arrival [Press release]. Retrieved from ,https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html.. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2001b, September 20). Address to a joint session of Congress and the American people [Press release]. Retrieved from ,https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288
1300. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., Motyl, M., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Compassionate values and presidential politics: Mortality salience, compassionate values and support for Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 Presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 9, 255
268.

454

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Vail, K. E., III, Courtney, E., & Arndt, J. (2019). The influence of existential threat and tolerance salience on anti-Islamic attitudes in American politics. Political Psychology. Available from https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12579. Vail, K. E., III, Soenke, M., Waggoner, B., & Mavropoulou, I. (2019). Natural, but not supernatural, literal immortality affirmation attenuates mortality salience effects on worldview defense in atheists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167219855051. Van Tongeren, D. R., Pennington, A. R., McIntosh, D. N., Newton, T., Green, J. D., Davis, D. E., & Hook, J. N. (2017). Where, O death, is thy sting? The meaning-providing function of beliefs in literal immortality. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 20(5), 413
427. Vess, M., Arndt, J., & Cox, C. R. (2012). Faith and nature: The effect of death-relevant cognitions on the relationship between religious fundamentalism and connectedness to nature. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(3), 333
340. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). The terror management of medical decisions: The effect of mortality salience and religious fundamentalism on support for faith-based medical intervention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334
350. Vess, M., Routledge, C., Landau, M. J., & Arndt, J. (2009). The dynamics of death and meaning: the effects of death-relevant cognitions and personal need for structure on perceptions of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(4), 728
744. White, M. (2012). The great big book of horrible things: The definitive chronicle of history’s 100 worst atrocities. New York and London: Norton. Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, K. M., & Bernas, R. (2011). A good man is hard to find: Forgiveness, terror management, and religiosity. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 126
140.

Chapter 31

Religion and health: building existential bridges Tyler Jimenez, Michael N. Bultmann and Jamie Arndt University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States

Throughout much of human history, religion and health have been interwoven threads in the tapestry of life. Monks in the Middle Ages believed that demonic possession caused mental disorders (Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001), across the ocean, Indigenous people of the Americas sought help from spiritual healers for internal pains believed to have supernatural origins (Lyon, 1998); in the Indus Valley, priests treated ills with amulets, incantations, and dancing rituals (Prioreschi, 1995). Although health and medicine have been increasingly understood in physical rather than supernatural terms as the centuries have ticked by, the connection between religion and health remains. Approximately 80% of Americans report having prayed for the health of themselves or loved ones (Levin, 2016). In the middle of the 20th century, scientific interest in the religion health connection grew with research focusing on the health outcomes associated with religious belief and participation. For example, early work established that church attendees had lower mortality rates than the general population (Comstock & Partridge, 1972). In the following decades, thousands of scientific articles, books, and even entire journals (e.g., Journal of Religion and Health) have been devoted to the topic. Most of this research has continued to find a positive relationship between religion and health. Health issues as varied as heart, kidney, and cerebrovascular disease, cancer, and immune system functioning have all been shown to be negatively associated with religious belief and participation (e.g., Koenig et al., 2001). Explanations have tended to focus on two general factors. First, religion may be associated with better health because religious people perform more healthy behaviors or at least those that lower risk for adverse health outcomes. For example, Christians drink less alcohol and have fewer sexual partners than do the nonreligious (Michalak, Trocki, & Bond, 2007; Simons, Burt, & Peterson, 2009). Second, religiosity often provides social support systems, coping strategies, and other emotional benefits. As such, religious individuals may be less prone to stress, which has been linked to immune and cardiovascular system functioning among other outcomes (e.g., Segerstrom & Miller, 2004). Religion, with its many aspects, including belief and social participation, may be particularly suited to promote health. Despite these important insights, we suggest that existential bridges can fortify understanding of the religion health connection. Consider, for example, a recent finding that both the most religious and the most secular fared better than those in between on a variety of health outcomes (Brammli-Greenberg, Glazer, & Shapiro, 2018). In the increasingly popular language of existential psychology, health was associated with the certainty of worldview beliefs. Consistent with this idea, Moore and Leach (2016) found that “existential dogmatism”—that is, the strength of one’s existential beliefs—correlated with health among Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and nonreligious people. As the empirical science of existential psychology has gained momentum, so too has its potential to offer generative insights into the nature of the relationship between religion and health. This is the focus of the present chapter. Using an existential lens may help us better understand the multifaceted ways through which religion influences health, and to some extent, how health influences religious belief.

The framework of an existential religion health perspective As noted in the previous chapters, human evolution has produced a unique set (or degree) of capacities. Humans can think temporally, abstractly, and self-reflectively—conceptualizing and imagining distant pasts and futures; participating in complex symbolic systems of belief and ritual; knowing not only that they are alive, but also knowing that they The Science of Religion, Spirituality, and Existentialism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817204-9.00032-9 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

455

456

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

know, ad infinitum. In addition to these cognitive capabilities, humans are born into the world physically and mentally immature and thus initially need, and thereafter desperately want, social connection. These features, among others, set the stage for a powerful set of existential concerns. Yalom (1980) compellingly articulated four central existential concerns—death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom—which emanate from human ontology. Following the classic insights of Rank (1958), Tillich (1952), Becker (1971, 1973), and the contemporary refinement and testable articulation of these ideas with terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2015), we regard awareness of mortality as an especially critical existential catalyst of human behavior. Thus much of this chapter focuses on the interface between awareness of mortality, religion, and health. Yet we also examine how each of the concerns identified by Yalom may buttress understanding the connection between religion and health. We examine these connections with an eye toward novel avenues of future research. To help guide this exploration, we offer a heuristic model, as shown in Fig. 31.1, of how these existential concerns can interface with religious belief and identification to impact health outcomes. The model begins by positing that these existential concerns are powerful motivating forces of human behavior that religious belief and identification can help address. A couple of initial caveats are in order. We posit that existential concerns are important motivators of religious belief, not that they are only ones. Nor do we devote attention in this chapter to the likely complex interplay of socialization, personality, and cultural influences that dispose some people to endorse a religious worldview while others do not. Our guiding perspective is that using psychological investment in religious belief to (try to) resolve existential concerns may have potent consequences for one’s health perceptions, decisions, and coping, and in turn, impact various health outcomes. Further, we suggest that a dynamic reciprocal process emerges wherein health outcomes and vulnerabilities—or at least the perception thereof—may then feedback and impact the nature of an individual’s existential concerns.

Using the awareness of mortality to bridge religion and health Religion solves the problem of death Becker (1973, p. 203).

Given the centrality of death awareness to the existential landscape, to understand how it is interconnected with health and religion, it is first necessary to consider the basic psychological mechanisms that people use to manage this awareness. As previous chapters have discussed terror management theory and research, here we provide only a very brief review.

Basic processes for managing awareness of mortality Terror management theory regards culture as, in part, a shared symbolic system of beliefs (i.e., worldview) that assuage the existential implications of mortality awareness by affording the perception that life is coherent, purposeful, and enduring. Worldviews also provide culturally sanctioned roles through which people can derive self-esteem and thus qualify for literal or symbolic forms of transcendence. Together, cultural worldviews and self-esteem allow people to believe that they are valuable members of a purposeful and enduring world. Two generative hypotheses that have guided terror management research are the death-thought accessibility and mortality-salience hypotheses. The death-thought accessibility hypothesis posits that if cultural worldviews and selfesteem manage the awareness of death, then threatening these constructions should leave one vulnerable to cognitions about death. This hypothesis has been supported by a wide range of studies. Exposing participants to information that undermines valued aspects of their worldview, such as the sanctity of religious belief or one’s sense of self-worth, FIGURE 31.1 A conceptual model of how existential concerns can interface with religion to impact health outcomes.

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

457

increases the accessibility of death-related cognitions (i.e., death thought accessibility; see Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010 for a review). The mortality-salience hypothesis posits that if worldview engagement and defense, as well as self-esteem striving, are motivated in part by awareness of mortality, then each should increase following reminders of death. Hundreds of studies support this notion; for example, reminding people of death leads them to support their cultural worldview and derogate and even aggress toward those who do not share their beliefs (see Pyszczynski et al., 2015 for a review). Individual difference and situational factors have been shown to moderate this basic effect. Those with less formulated or accessible worldviews react most defensively to reminders of death, and the content of an individual’s belief directs how they manage awareness of mortality. Of particular relevance to the present focus, this includes the strength and salience of religious faith (e.g., Jonas & Fischer, 2006).

Terror management health model The terror management health model (TMHM; Arndt & Goldenberg, 2017; Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008) extends the theory more squarely into understanding health-related decision-making. It posits that death and health are caught in a reciprocal process. Health issues can arouse concerns about mortality, which can in turn affect health behaviors and outcomes. For example, exposure to information about cancer and AIDS has been shown to increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts (Arndt, Cook, Goldenberg, & Cox, 2007; Grover, Miller, Solomon, Webster, & Saucier, 2010). When mortality concerns are conscious, health decisions can be guided by the proximal motivational goal of reducing perceived vulnerability to a health threat, thus reducing concerns about mortality. Because the motivation here is to reduce perceptions of vulnerability to fatal implications of health concerns, as found with rationally oriented models of health behavior (e.g., Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1986), these health-promoting (proximal) responses (e.g., exercising) are more likely when people have sufficient coping resources, optimism, or beliefs in the efficacy of the behavior (and themselves) to effectively mitigate the health concern. When these resources are unavailable, people may respond to conscious thoughts of death by avoiding or denying the health threat (e.g., Cooper, Goldenberg, & Arndt, 2010). In contrast, when thoughts of mortality are active but not in people’s conscious attention, or after proximal defenses are employed and death-related thoughts continue to linger outside of conscious awareness, health-relevant decisions are guided more by distal motivational goals concerning the symbolic value of the self. Their implications for health thus depend on the strategies by which one derives self-esteem and the specific content of their worldview. That proximal and distal defenses can differentially affect health is exemplified by a series of studies on how reminders of death influence sun-protective behaviors. Routledge, Arndt, and Goldenberg (2004) found that immediately following reminders of death (when death thought was likely the center of focal attention), relative to a control topic, participants had higher intentions to use sunscreen. By intending to protect oneself from harmful UV radiation, perceived vulnerability was presumably decreased, pushing death-related thoughts out of conscious awareness. However, when unrelated tasks were placed in between the manipulation and measure of sun-protective intentions (when death thoughts were likely still active, but no longer the center of focal attention), those who wrote about their own death reported lower intentions to use sunscreen than those who wrote about a control topic, presumably as a means toward meeting cultural standards of attractiveness (i.e., tanned skin) and thus self-esteem attainment. These effects of deathrelated cognition have been found in a number of health domains, such as exercise, smoking, plastic surgery, and intoxicated driving (see Arndt & Goldenberg, 2017 for a review). The TMHM also informs potentially different routes of intervention with its focus on how health-relevant responses may differ depending on the extent to which conscious or nonconscious thoughts of death are involved. For example, in the face of conscious thoughts of death, it may be especially useful to target efficacy perceptions that bolster confidence in the capacity of the behavior to reduce health risks (e.g., Cooper, Goldenberg, & Arndt, 2014). Yet in the face of nonconscious thoughts of death, it may be more effective to target malleable bases of cultural value such as the social consequences of smoking (Wong, Nisbett, & Harvell, 2017).

Death, religion, and health Armed with an understanding of the psychological mechanisms used to defend against the awareness of mortality and their influence on health decision-making, we can more informatively examine how religion may operate in this process. We focus on implications for individual, interpersonal, and policy level decision-making. Individual. The TMHM suggests at least two health-relevant ways in which religion may impact terror management processes. Specifically, religion can both protect from, and guide reactions to, awareness of mortality in ways either beneficial or detrimental to health.

458

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

To the extent religious belief protects people from concerns about mortality, religious belief may mitigate the effects of death-related thought on health decisions otherwise observed. Consider the previous example of mortality salience increasing interest in sun tanning given its cultural relevance to attractiveness. If religious people are less vulnerable to the secular impact of mortality reminders because they are better insulated from the rippling implications of deathrelated thought (see Jonas & Fischer, 2006), they might be less likely to show such effects. Of note, the same reasoning presumably applies to behavior typically encouraged to improve health. For example, although death-related cognition may increase interest in exercise and fitness (Morris, Goldenberg, Arndt, & McCabe, 2018), if better insulated from the effects of mortality reminders, religious people may be less likely to show such effects. While religious individuals are buffered from such secular effects of mortality salience, other research indicates that awareness of mortality motivates behavior congruent with the tenets of their religious belief system (Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012). Thus reactions to thoughts of death may also be determined by the content of one’s religious worldview. This is relevant here because religions often contain prescriptive beliefs that may facilitate health-relevant behaviors. Consider the biblical proclamation that the “body is a temple” (Corinthians, 6:19, The Holy Bible: English Standard Version). Consistent with this value, Christians are less likely to smoke cigarettes than nonreligious people (e.g., Koenig et al., 2001). As these behaviors violate a cultural norm and theological belief, depending on the salience or accessibility of that belief, Christians might display lower interest in smoking after contemplating their own death. It is also worth noting that conceiving of the body as a metaphorical temple might provide a symbolic construal of the body that helps to reduce the psychological discomfort of one’s creatureliness—or animal physicality. As Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Solomon (2000) explain, the creatureliness of the body can undermine human uniqueness and highlight our corporal fate. Yet a symbolic construal of the body may help shield the individual from the resultant discomfort that interacts with concerns about mortality to undermine health behaviors that entail a more intimate confrontation with the body (e.g., mammography, Goldenberg, Routledge, & Arndt, 2009; Morris, Cooper, Goldenberg, Arndt, & Routledge, 2013). Of course, the prescriptive nature of certain religious beliefs also raises the possibility that awareness of death might ironically motivate behavior in unhealthy directions. For example, whereas some religions might regard smoking as a threat to the body’s sanctity, others might see it as a means of divine association. The Ojibwe people of North America use tobacco in religious ceremonies as it is considered a sacred gift that provides a direct connection to the Creator (Struthers & Hodge, 2004). This analysis highlights the importance of a culturally infused consideration of the specific content of a religious worldview, and how such could be an integral factor in understanding the health impact of mortality concerns. Another example of how religious beliefs can motivate behaviors seemingly incongruent with health in response to concerns about death is that of faith healing. Consider, as Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, and Goldenberg (2009) did, the unfortunate death of Reggae legend Bob Marley. Diagnosed with skin cancer, Marley refused to receive medical treatment because of his religious beliefs. The cancer soon metastasized, and Marley succumbed to the disease at the young age of 36. Such scenarios are not unheard of; at least 140 children died between 1975 and 1995 in the United States from parental decisions to refuse medical care on religious grounds (Asser & Swan, 1998). As medical refusals often stem from fundamentalist religious beliefs, we might expect that religious fundamentalists would respond to thoughts of mortality with increased interest and belief in faith healings. In a series of studies, Vess et al. (2009) provided converging support for this idea. In short, it appears that in response to the existential concern of death, religious beliefs can facilitate or undermine health depending on the specific behavioral direction such beliefs prescribe. Interpersonal and societal decision-making. The abovementioned discussion elucidates some of the ways in which religious beliefs can guide health behaviors as individuals are faced with managing mortality concerns. Yet, health does not exist in a vacuum; the behaviors and decisions of one person can affect the health of others. Thus it is also important to understand how existential motivations can impact interpersonal behaviors and broader policy decisions. Discriminatory medical care is one such example. White and Black patients receive differential medical treatment as a result of the physician’s implicit racial bias (Hagiwara, Slatcher, Eggly, & Penner, 2017), such as when White patients are prescribed stronger painkillers than racial minorities (Pletcher, Kertesz, Kohn, & Gonzales, 2008). Although the literature on physician bias largely focuses on racial distinctions, religious biases—and the underlying motivation of such biases—could be an important area of study. From a terror management perspective, such out-group maltreatment may function in part and in certain contexts as worldview defense. As medical providers are frequently exposed to reminders of death, research is vital on how such reminders could affect their medical judgments and care. In an initial effort to examine this idea, Arndt, Vess, Cox, Goldenberg, and Lagle (2009) reminded (Christian) medical students of mortality or a control topic and then asked them to assess hypothetical medical records of either a Christian or Muslim patient who was experiencing chest pain.

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

459

When reminded of death, the medical students rated the level of cardiac risk lower for Muslims than for Christians; however, this differential evaluation did not occur in the absence of death reminders. Although this study provides only a preliminary sense of how the quality of medical care could differ as a function of the provider’s existential concerns about mortality and religious beliefs, it does caution that more such research is needed. Further, it raises the possibility that existential factors could play a broader role in how people enact and support policy decisions. Attitudes toward policies regarding such topics as abortion (Minkenberg, 2002) and sex education (Collins, Alagiri, Summers, & Morin, 2002) are often shaped by one’s theological foundation, and as such, could be influenced by how people use religious belief to manage existential concerns about their mortality. This may be most likely following societal level reminders of vulnerability and in-group threat. Consider how the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York prompted various forms of maltreatment toward Muslims (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). Attitudes toward religious in-groups and out-groups may shape attitudes toward resource allocation, particularly when dealing with large-scale reminders of death, such as those that may follow mass shootings and other attacks, epidemics, or natural disasters. The terror management perspective leads us to a simple but generative pillar in the bridge between religion and health: religious people embrace their religion when reminded of death, with the specific content of their religious belief then influencing the way in which they behave. Some religious beliefs, such as the sacredness of the body, can promote health, while others, such as asceticism, can undermine it. The implications of using religion to manage the existential concern of mortality further extend to impact the health of others, quality of care that patients receive, as well as the public health policies that people do (or do not) embrace.

Using the search for meaning to bridge religion and health He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how Frankl (1946/2006, p. 104).

As noted, the connection between religion and health is well documented. The potential mediating effects of a core existential theme, such as the sense that life has meaning, have attracted burgeoning scientific interest. From a terror management perspective, the awareness of death is a critical motivation for the search for meaning (e.g., Arndt, Landau, Vail, & Vess, 2013). Yet the existential theme of meaning can also be considered more generally. Here we examine the association between religion, meaning, and health, with a specific interest in how religious responses to threats of meaninglessness affect health perceptions, decisions, and coping. When beginning to explore these ideas, it is important to understand what exactly is meant by meaning. An individual’s perception that life is meaningful, at least to the extent that they are willing and able to report on it, generally encapsulates feelings that life is coherent, significant, and purposeful (e.g., King, Heintzelman, & Ward, 2016). Yet researchers have also distinguished between global (or macro) and situational (or micro) meaning (Arndt et al., 2013; Park & Folkman, 1997). Global or macro meaning refers to a system of beliefs that render life coherent and purposeful, guiding attitudes and behaviors. Situational or micro meaning refers to the appraisal of specific situations and experiences through an application of global meaning, and presumably, are the perceptual foundation upon which a sense of global meaning is predicated. As noted in the previous chapters, religious beliefs often confer a sense that life on a global scale is meaningful. Religion answers questions about where we came from, how to live, and what happens after we die; thus, serving as a widespread system of meaning (Becker, 1971; see Vail et al., 2010) and a framework through which experiences can be interpreted (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), thus also affording microlevel meaning. So intimately connected are religion and meaning that Yalom (2008) recalls a patient who, upon learning that Yalom was not religious, questioned how he lived his life without meaning.

Meaning and health Meaning in life is predictive of overall health, health behaviors, and coping with health issues. For example, selfreports of meaning in life are associated with better immune system functioning (Bower, Kemeny, Taylor, & Fahey, 2003), recovery from surgery (Smith & Zautra, 2004), and even lower mortality rates (Krause, 2009). Those with higher meaning in life are also more likely to perform healthy behaviors such as eating nutritious foods and exercising (Brassai, Piko, & Steger, 2011), as well as avoiding cigarettes (Thege, Bachner, Martos, & Kushnir, 2009), alcohol (Marsh, Smith, Piek, & Saunders, 2003), and dangerous behaviors such as driving while impaired (Sayles, 1995).

460

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

There is also notable literature showing that meaning in life helps people cope with debilitating or terminal diseases. For example, people who perceive their lives to be meaningful are better able to cope with congestive heart failure (Park, Malone, Suresh, Bliss, & Rosen, 2008), spinal cord injuries (Davis & Novoa, 2013), and cancer (e.g., Sherman, Simonton, Latif, & Bracy, 2010). This connection between meaning and coping appears to be a causal one. Interventions intended to enhance the perceived meaning of one’s life have been shown to increase coping and overall well-being of those suffering from cancer (e.g., Lee, Cohen, Edgar, Laizner, & Gagnon, 2006) and heart failure (Sacco, Leahey, & Park, 2019). It thus makes sense to explore how the meaning providing aspects of religion affect these processes.

Religion, meaning, and health As discussed earlier, the religiously infused meaning system with which an individual identifies can prescribe certain behaviors with key implications for health. This may help to explain why both those with higher reported meaning in life, and those with a stronger sense of religious or spiritual identity, tend to perform more health-promoting behaviors. Such conceptualizations may also offer avenues for improving health, perhaps particularly with respect to disparities among racial minority groups. The identity-based motivation model argues that one reason that racial minorities have poorer health and face more health risks is because norms associated with their group identity do not prescribe healthy behaviors (Oyserman, Smith, & Elmore, 2014). This work shows, for example, that behaviors such as getting sufficient sleep and exercising are viewed as less characteristic of racial minorities. This suggests progress might be made by reorienting the meaning providing aspects of racial identity to also include the health-promoting behaviors associated with religious identification, especially given that religious belief can be a powerful resource among marginalized groups (Taylor, Chatters, Jayakody, & Levin, 1996). Coping is another domain in which religion, meaning, and health intersect. The idea that ascribing meaning to an illness or disease is centrally important for coping dates back at least to Frankl’s (1946/2006) logotherapy, based on his experiences while imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. From this perspective, suffering from an immutable hardship can only be alleviated by assigning meaning to it. Frankl recalls a patient who, after having lost his wife, suffered from depression. As it was impossible to rectify the situation, Frankl understood that reappraisal was the only option for alleviating the patient’s pain. By asking the patient what his wife would have experienced if he had died first, Frankl framed the suffering as an act of grace which spared his wife the same pain he was currently experiencing. The man was ostensibly cured of his depression by framing his suffering as meaningful. The meaning-making model (Park, 2010) provides a framework for understanding this process. The model utilizes a discrepancy-based framework not unlike that found in cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) or self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). Discrepancies between circumstance and belief can be distressful that motivate actions to minimize the discrepancy. To do so, people can either reappraise the situation or change their global beliefs. Given that the latter provides existential, epistemic, and relational needs (see, e.g., Vail et al, 2010), the former is generally preferable (in the language of dissonance theory, this would be the cognitive element less resistant to change). Park (2010) refers to these processes as meaning making and proposes they reduce distress by bringing global and situational meaning into congruence. If meaning facilitates coping with illness or hardship, and religion undergirds meaning, then religious beliefs likely play a role in coping as well. Examples of the palliative function of religion—Marx’s (1844/1970) “opium of the masses”—range throughout history. Those suffering from the plague in the 7th century Europe turned to saints for comfort (Koenig et al., 2001). Such reliance continues to this day. Analyses of search engine terms show that people— across 16 different countries—often perform internet searches for religious information after reading about lifethreatening diseases (Pelham et al., 2018). Consider an individual diagnosed with cancer. As we know from many psychological perspectives, global beliefs or worldviews commonly maintain that the world is fair (e.g., Lerner, 1980). A diagnosis of such a serious disease could be seen as at odds with these beliefs; can the world be just if serious illness can seemingly strike at random? To minimize the resultant distress, one can either abandon belief in the fairness of the world or reappraise the meaning of their situation so that it is more consistent with global beliefs. Individuals who report that their cancer diagnosis made them question their worldview are worse off psychologically than those whose beliefs remained unchallenged (Park, Edmondson, Fenster, & Blank, 2008). Conversely, reinterpreting a cancer diagnosis as a challenge or opportunity allows for a greater sense of control over the disease and its treatment (Maliski, Heilemann, & McCorkle, 2002). Such processes can be facilitated by religious interpretation. Among women with breast cancer, a spiritual intervention that encouraged the acceptance of god reduced fear of death (Mehr, Saberian, Akbari, & Asem, 2018).

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

461

If everyday health issues are interpreted through one’s global beliefs, religion is likely to affect the meaning-making process in at least two ways. First, to the extent that one’s global meaning is built on a religious foundation, situations are likely to be evaluated by religious criteria. Whether such appraisals are consistent with or contradictory to global beliefs depends on which beliefs are applied. For example, belief that God is loving and protective may engender different health appraisals than belief in the virtue of overcoming difficulties. With the former, medical issues may contradict belief in a loving God giving rise to a discrepancy between global and situational meaning and subsequent distress. With the latter, the situation may be appraised as a spiritual opportunity in which global and situational meanings are likely to be congruent. These examples illustrate how the content of religious beliefs determines the meaning assigned to specific health situations. Religion is also implicated in the meaning-making process when situations are too traumatic or extreme to be reconciled with one’s theological commitments (Janoff-Bulman, 1989). When this happens, the great discrepancy between global and situational meaning can be minimized by updating global beliefs. This can take the form of changing how one views God, embracing the belief that God’s work is mysterious or unknowable, or ceasing to believe in God altogether. Although, as noted earlier, reappraisals of situational meaning are more common than changes to global beliefs, the latter can be initiated by serious illness, as when cancer survivors note their illness brought about a loss of religious faith (Gall & Cornblat, 2002). The loss of a (religious) meaning system is not only likely to directly increase distress, but also to increase existential insecurity and death-related concerns (Edmondson, Park, Chaudoir, & Wortmann, 2008), as well as further stress and depression. Research is increasingly showing how such elevated stress, anxiety, and depression, in turn, can further compromise health through inflammatory processes, autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and problems with coronary flow reserve (Cohen, Edmondson, & Kronish, 2015; Slavich & Irwin, 2014). Considering concerns with meaning fortifies the existential bridge between religion and health. Religion can confer a sense that life is meaningful, self-reports of which predict a variety of health benefits. Religious meaning systems can also facilitate navigating through the coping process. Yet it is navigation with potential stumbling blocks, as when the religious meaning system is challenged to accommodate serious illness and disease. Future research should continue to explore these processes, particularly at group and societal levels.

Using existential isolation to bridge religion and health At times I think I’m the most alone man in existence. And . . . it has nothing to do with the presence of others in fact, I hate others who rob me of my solitude and do not truly offer me company Yalom (1992, p. 228).

The adverse health effects of loneliness are well documented. More frequent episodes of loneliness are associated with all-cause mortality years later, at least in part by increasing cardiovascular risk (e.g., heightened systolic blood pressure; see Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010). Often conceptualized as a drive-like state, loneliness is proposed to motivate efforts at social connection and support; the attainment of which is in turn associated with diverse health benefits (Thoits, 2011). Applying an existential lens to illuminate the general phenomenon of loneliness, however, reveals a potentially important nuance. Here we examine how existential concerns, and the religious resolution of those concerns, may clarify the nature of this connection. As research on this specific charge is rather sparse, the discussion later focuses on speculative possibilities that could merit further study. From Yalom’s (1980) perspective a potent force resulting from our uniquely human existence is that of existential isolation. Because phenomena are experienced subjectively (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), and because we cannot perceive another’s exact perception, there are times when we realize we are truly isolated from one another (Bruner, 1990). To feel existentially isolated is to feel like those around you are not fully able to understand, and therefore share, in your experience. Only recently has research subjected the concept of existential isolation to empirical scrutiny. Pinel, Long, Murdoch, and Helm (2017) document stable individual differences in existential isolation that, while positively correlated with loneliness, is conceptually and empirically distinct. The nature of existential isolation raises the question of whether previous health consequences attributed to the more global construct of loneliness may at times reflect the workings of this unique existential concern. As research exploring the health consequences of loneliness has typically used what is considered to be the unidimensional University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (Version 3; Russell, 1996), the possibility of this scale encompassing existential isolation has yet to be evaluated. This could have potentially important implications

462

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

for health and well-being. Although the negative health outcomes associated with loneliness can be avoided by becoming part of a community (Leppin & Schwarzer, 1990), if someone is existentially isolated, it may be counterproductive to seek out social contact where the quality of the relationship does not resonate on a meaningful level.

Religion as a solution Religion emerges as a particularly interesting vehicle for assuaging feelings of existential isolation with a number of implications for understanding physical health. Consider first Helm, Rothschild, Greenberg, and Croft’s (2018) finding that variability in existential isolation can be partly explained by endorsement of communal values. Religions provide opportunities to pursue and affirm communal values. Community gatherings (e.g., Sunday church service) are frequent features of religion that integrate people into the lives of others. Thus the organized social integration of many religious practices is an apt opportunity for, and source of, a communal orientation that might resolve existential isolation, and in turn, the health benefits conventionally ascribed to social support. We note this possibility because it is not just the social contact of religious affiliations that benefits health. To be sure, church attendance and the social support that results are key drivers of the health benefits, such as lower diastolic blood pressure, of religious participation (e.g., Fenelon & Danielsen, 2016; Hill, Rote, Ellison, & Burdette, 2014; Koenig, George, & Titus, 2004). But the downstream effects of attending church alone cannot be fully attributed to the availability of social support; also important is the quality of this support (Rote, Hill, & Ellison, 2012). We suggest that part of the reason quality matters is because it may help resolve not just physical isolation, but existential isolation. Future research could thus examine whether one catalyst of the positive health outcomes associated with religion is the opportunity to interface and connect with other like-minded people, thus thwarting loneliness due to existential isolation.

God as a bridge and ravine Of course, the aforementioned analysis should apply to any organized belief system that features ritualized practices that foster meaningful social connection. We have yet to touch on potentially unique implications of isolation and health for spiritual connection to the divine. There are a number of possibilities for future research that can emerge from this line of thinking. One way that religion may facilitate social connection and its subsequent positive health outcomes is through I-sharing. The term “I-sharing” comes from James’s (1890/1918) distinction between the Me—one’s self-concept that includes objective observations about the self—and the I—the agentic or self-as-subject part of the self. I-sharing, then, occurs when people feel as though their self-as-subject merges with that of at least one other person and they both are having the same experience in a given moment (Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006). This is conceptualized as the momentary ability to thwart existential isolation and feel meaningfully connected. Although no studies to date have explicitly applied I-sharing to participation in religious activities, one can imagine a number of potentialities. From prayers and incantations spoken in unison to the perception that one is sharing with others’ direct experience with god, religious activities are likely to afford many opportunities to experience I-sharing. It may be that this experience of I-sharing is one unexplored factor that underlies the relationship between church attendance and physical health. In addition, the possibility of being meaningfully connected to a higher power merits special comment. The perception that one is connected to a loving creator may be a particularly effective solution to the existential problem of isolation. Consider Psalms 139:1 7 (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version): “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I set down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar . . . Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” With a god that understands your deepest thoughts and feelings, this relationship with the divine could be experienced as the ultimate avenue for feeling truly connected, thus resolving the concern of being lost in one’s existential isolation. This sacred bond might translate into a healthier lifestyle for two reasons. First, it may be that knowing your thoughts and behaviors are being surveilled is enough reason to avoid dangerous, supposedly sinful behavior. Second, feeling divinely understood may lower stress as well as vulnerability to existential distress. The cardiovascular consequences of stress have been previously noted, and existential distress is emerging as an important factor in coping with cancer diagnoses (e.g., Vehling & Kissane, 2018). However, just as a deity may provide a bridge, so too may the deity represent a ravine of disconnection if one feels forsaken. Health-relevant domains could provide a natural direction to examine such possibilities. Consider the existential isolation that may be brought on by illness; the questions of “why me” as people struggle to find the reason for their plight in a divine plan. Indeed, unanswered prayers can feel as though one has been “unheard by God” (Sharp, 2013),

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

463

which could invoke feelings of abandonment, isolation, and exacerbate existential distress that might undermine coping and lead to other detrimental health effects. Such scenarios might reinforce the individuality of experience, and with that, implicit associations with personal, permanent, inevitable death. In describing HIV, one patient commented on “the feeling that I’m gonna die, or that I’m really alone” (Mayers & Svartberg, 2001). Taken together, recent theory and research highlight existential isolation as a potent existential concern. Given the copious amounts of research linking loneliness to adverse health outcomes, a productive direction for future research may be to examine the extent to which existential isolation is a contributing factor. Because a spiritual connection to a higher power, as well as the social integration that can result from religious participation, seems especially well positioned to help resolve existential isolation, the interface between isolation, religion, and health could be an important direction for future study.

Using freedom to bridge religion and health To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s Dostoevsky (1866/2007, p. 194).

In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky’s (1864/1994) titular Underground Man critiqued the belief that the application of reason could create the perfect society. For the Underground Man, utopia could not be reached because the desire for freedom would drive people to rebel, even against their own interests. Taking this idea to its absurd conclusion, the Underground Man refused to receive medical attention simply to assert his own autonomy. While perhaps an extreme example, the tension between freedom and health is at the heart of controversies surrounding policies such as those that ban tobacco use in public, limit the size of soda cups, or forbid physician-assisted suicide. There are of course also other ways in which issues of existential freedom intersect with, and impact, health and health decision-making. For example, as the theories of cognitive dissonance and self-determination have long taught us, the phenomenological experience of freedom (i.e., choice and autonomy) is critical to successfully getting people to “buy in” to productive health behavior change. However, less common are conceptual frameworks and associated research for understanding how religion fits into the intersection between concerns of existential freedom and physical health. Nonetheless, there are a few directions that seem ripe for future study. In this section, we again offer speculative discussion of some health implications of a religiously oriented resolution of concerns about existential freedom.

Freedom and the health benefits of religion As noted throughout this chapter, religious belief and participation tend to predict a variety of physical health benefits. Yet little attention has been devoted to the type of identification fueling an individual’s religiousness. This is relevant because dynamics related to existential freedom often underlie these distinctions, such as with religion as quest (Batson, 1976), the identification versus introjection of religious belief (Ryan, Rigby, & King, 1993), or intrinsic religiosity (Allport, 1959). These perspectives converge on the extent to which an individual volitionally chooses their religious identification, and the relative paucity of application of these ideas to physical health is somewhat surprising given their generative application to mental health issues (e.g., Donahue, 1985; Ryan et al., 1993). Such lines of work prompt the question of whether more autonomous forms of religious identification better foster physical health. Intrinsic forms of religious identification might benefit physical health to the extent they offer a more adaptive resolution of concerns over existential freedom. From this perspective, existential freedom might act as a stressor with adverse effects on many biological pathways such as cardiovascular functioning that degrade physical health. Critical, then, is how an individual resolves the burden of existing in a world where limitless possibilities can be envisioned. Given that intrinsic forms of religiosity have predicted such outcomes as more adaptive coping and higher quality social support (see Pargament, 2002), resolving concerns about existential freedom through intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, religiosity may help to reduce existential distress and its direct and indirect (e.g., through inflammation of the biological pathways) impact on health. Clearly such a possibility is speculative, and there are many steps in this hypothesized process that need to be carefully examined.

Freedom, religion, and health behavior change A number of psychological theories integrate the idea of freedom, or concepts closely akin, to encourage productive health behavior. The concept of choice is of course a critical feature of Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory.

464

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Inconsistent cognitions that result from freely chosen behavior are more likely to produce dissonance and subsequent efforts to restore perceptions of consonance. This idea has been productively applied to health behavior change interventions, from physical activity to smoking cessation (e.g., Chatzisarantis, Hagger, & Wang, 2008; Lando & Davison, 1975). The basic point is that if people put forth effort toward a productive health goal under conditions of high choice, they should come to endorse that health behavior more strongly. The connection between freedom and health has also been explored from a self-determination perspective. Selfdetermination theory (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000) articulates how fulfillment of fundamental needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is essential for volitional endorsement of goal pursuit and subsequent overall well-being. Associated research finds that people are more likely to follow through with health behavior change if they believe they are in control of their own actions. For example, undermining people’s autonomy makes smokers less likely to quit (Curry, Wagner, & Grothaus, 1991). Conversely, people are more likely to adhere to a medical regimen when they feel as though they are acting freely (e.g., Ryan, Plant, & O’Malley, 1995). Both theories share an underlying emphasis on the perceived locus of causality for the behavior in which the person engages. This raises an interesting issue if those subscribing to religious beliefs attribute responsibility for their health to a higher power. When healthy, this belief can largely be reassuring, as one’s health and well-being is seen as reflecting the love of the divine creator. However, when injured or suffering from a disease, attributions to God can multiply the distress. Consistent with this idea, belief that God is responsible for one’s health has been associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (Wallston et al., 1999) and HIV (Siah & Tan, 2017). Future research might benefit from exploring the conditions under which religion fosters an external locus of health causality that undermines a sense of personal freedom and impacts health.

The burden of freedom The applications so far focus on situations where freedom optimizes health. Yet for centuries, philosophers and other commentators have noted the costs of freedom. To make a choice is to close off an infinite number of possibilities. Choice can also be paralyzing, as Kierkegaard noted in his description of the dizziness of freedom. In the present context, might the burden of freedom extend to health? The information used to make health decisions is seemingly infinite, complex, and often contradictory. One year we are told that drinking red wine can improve cardiovascular health, and the next a social media message might proclaim the opposite. Diet plans seemingly come and go, producing a cacophony of recommendations. It is perhaps no wonder then that B65% of Americans agree that “it seems like everything causes cancer” (National Cancer Institute, 2018). If people feel overwhelmed by the possibilities of health-related behaviors, they may turn to authority figures to choose for them. This process is analogous to the “escape from freedom” written about by humanist philosopher Fromm (1941), in which the anxiety that often accompanies freedom motivates submission to authoritarian leaders. Of course, people’s worldviews guide which leaders they are likely to follow. For religious people, this may include priests, rabbis, or other clerics; nonreligious people may prefer to get their medical advice from doctors, friends, celebrities, or even the latest blog post. When the burdens of freedom are particularly salient, as when confronted by a multitude of health-related choices, individuals may turn to the authority figures valued by their cultural worldview. Future research should address this possibility, and perhaps from there create interventions that can harness reliance on authority to improve health behaviors. If, for example, Christians look for health advice from their pastor when unsure of what to do, then public health programs that educate religious leaders might be beneficial. Alternatively, medical providers may be incorporated into religious worldviews. If people’s bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), then perhaps emphasis can be placed on doctors as temple keepers (e.g., prescribing protection) in lieu of invaders, which might otherwise be associated with examinations. Of course, if people lack compelling (religious or medical) leaders to help define the ways in which they should exercise their health-related freedom, this may lead them down paths of medical overutilization, wherein a patient receives medical treatment in which the risks outweigh the benefits (Shaffer & Scherer, 2018). In addition to contributing to high health-care costs, overutilization can result in harm, such as unnecessary exposure to radiation (e.g., Hendee et al., 2010). If medical overutilization is an example of freedom run amok, individuals may need some constraint to keep that in check (see Schwartz, 2000). Future research might examine conditions under which religious belief provides productive or unproductive direction. In short, there are a number of ways in which looking through the lens of existential freedom might help to illuminate intersections between religion and health. This includes whether more intrinsic religious identifications help to

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

465

explain variability in how religious participation predicts health outcomes, the role of freedom and religious attributions of causality in health behavior change, as well as the influence of leaders and religion in health-relevant choice and freedom. Beyond such directions, a consideration of existential freedom may also help inform understanding of certain health policy decisions. One such example is physician-assisted suicide, a long-standing topic of debate that implicates a tension between the freedom to end one’s own life and the often religiously grounded denial of that freedom (Bulmer, Bohnke, & Lewis, 2017). As policies legislating physician-assisted suicide are enacted, research should examine how existential concerns and religious beliefs—of both the patient and practitioner—influence end-of-life decisions.

Looking forward The human ontological condition opens the door to existential concerns about death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom; each of which can fuel anxieties and behavior that affect physical health. Religion is often used to assuage these concerns, offering solutions such as immortality, purpose, connection, and guidance. Such religious resolution of existential concerns can mitigate adverse health consequences, but also, by influencing health perceptions, decisions, and coping, religious resolution can indirectly impact physical well-being in productive and unproductive ways. The key challenge is to understand when and why such effects unfold. We hope this is the invitation offered by the present chapter. With the increasing relevance of existential frameworks, research is now in a position to better illuminate the intersection between religion and health, and ultimately, harness these insights to productively advance health and wellbeing.

References Allport, G. W. (1959). Religion and prejudice. Crane Review, 2, 1 10. Arndt, J., Cook, A., Goldenberg, J. L., & Cox, C. R. (2007). Cancer and the threat of death: The cognitive dynamics of death-thought suppression and its impact on behavioral health intentions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 12. Arndt, J., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2017). Where health and death intersect: Insights from a terror management health model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(2), 126 131. Arndt, J., Landau, M. J., Vail, K. E., III, & Vess, M. (2013). An edifice for enduring personal value: A terror management perspective on the human quest for multilevel meaning. In K. D. Markman, T. Proulx, & M. J. Lindberg (Eds.), The psychology of meaning (pp. 49 69). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Arndt, J., Vess, M., Cox, C. R., Goldenberg, J. L., & Lagle, S. (2009). The psychosocial effect of thoughts of personal mortality on cardiac risk assessment. Medical Decision Making, 29(2), 175 181. Asser, S. M., & Swan, R. (1998). Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect. Pediatrics, 101(4), 625 629. Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15(1), 29 45. Becker, E. (1971). The birth and death of meaning: An interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Penguin Random House. Bower, J. E., Kemeny, M. E., Taylor, S. E., & Fahey, J. L. (2003). Finding positive meaning and its association with natural killer cell cytotoxicity among participants in a bereavement-related disclosure intervention. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 25(2), 146 155. Brammli-Greenberg, S., Glazer, J., & Shapiro, E. (2018). The inverse u-shaped religion health connection among Israeli Jews. Journal of Religion and Health, 57(2), 738 750. Brassai, L., Piko, B. F., & Steger, M. F. (2011). Meaning in life: Is it a protective factor for adolescents’ psychological health? International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 18(1), 44 51. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Bulmer, M., Bohnke, J. R., & Lewis, G. J. (2017). Predicting moral sentiment towards physician-assisted suicide: The role of religion, conservatism, authoritarianism, and Big Five personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 244 251. Chatzisarantis, N. L., Hagger, M. S., & Wang, J. C. (2008). An experimental test of cognitive dissonance theory in the domain of physical exercise. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20(1), 97 115. Cohen, B. E., Edmondson, D., & Kronish, I. M. (2015). State of the art review: Depression, stress, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Hypertension, 28(11), 1295 1302. Collins, C., Alagiri, P., Summers, T., & Morin, S. F. (2002). Abstinence only vs. comprehensive sex education: What are the arguments. In What is the evidence, pp. 1 16. Comstock, G. W., & Partridge, K. B. (1972). Church attendance and health. Journal of Chronic Diseases, 25(12), 665 672. Cooper, D. P., Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2010). Examining the terror management health model: The interactive effect of conscious death thought and health-coping variables on decisions in potentially fatal health domains. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(7), 937 946. Cooper, D. P., Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2014). Perceived efficacy, conscious fear of death and intentions to tan: Not all fear appeals are created equal. British Journal of Health Psychology, 19(1), 1 15.

466

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Curry, S. J., Wagner, E. H., & Grothaus, L. C. (1991). Evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation interventions with a self-help smoking cessation program. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(2), 318. Davis, C. G., & Novoa, D. C. (2013). Meaning-making following spinal cord injury: Individual differences and within-person change. Rehabilitation Psychology, 58(2), 166 177. Donahue, M. J. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: The empirical research. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(4), 418 423. Dostoevsky, F. (1864/1994). Notes from underground. New York: Vintage Books. Dostoevsky, F. (1866/2007). Crime and punishment. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self awareness. Oxford, England: Academic Press. Edmondson, D., Park, C. L., Chaudoir, S. R., & Wortmann, J. H. (2008). Death without God: Religious struggle, death concerns, and depression in the terminally ill. Psychological Science, 19(8), 754 758. Fenelon, A., & Danielsen, S. (2016). Leaving my religion: Understanding the relationship between religious disaffiliation, health, and well-being. Social Science Research, 57, 49 62. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Frankl, V. E. (1946/2006). Man’s search for meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Gall, T., & Cornblat, M. W. (2002). Breast cancer survivors give voice: A qualitative analysis of spiritual factors in long-term adjustment. PsychoOncology: Journal of the Psychological, Social and Behavioral Dimensions of Cancer, 11(6), 524 535. Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2008). The implications of death for health: A terror management health model for behavioral health promotion. Psychological Review, 115(4), 1032. Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2000). Fleeing the body: A terror management perspective on the problem of human corporeality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(3), 200 218. Goldenberg, J. L., Routledge, C., & Arndt, J. (2009). Mammograms and the management of existential discomfort: Threats associated with the physicality of the body and neuroticism. Psychology and Health, 24, 563 581. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. Public self and private self (pp. 189 212). New York: Springer. Grover, K. W., Miller, C. T., Solomon, S., Webster, R. J., & Saucier, D. A. (2010). Mortality salience and perceptions of people with AIDS: Understanding the role of prejudice. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 315 327. Hagiwara, N., Slatcher, R. B., Eggly, S., & Penner, L. A. (2017). Physician racial bias and word use during racially discordant medical interactions. Health Communication, 32(4), 401 408. Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness matters: A theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218 227. Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 699. Helm, P. J., Rothschild, L. G., Greenberg, J., & Croft, A. (2018). Explaining sex differences in existential isolation research. Personality and Individual Differences, 134, 283 288. Hendee, W. R., Becker, G. J., Borgstede, J. P., Bosma, J., Casarella, W. J., Erickson, B. A., . . . Wallner, P. E. (2010). Addressing overutilization in medical imaging. Radiology, 257(1), 240 245. Hill, T. D., Rote, S. M., Ellison, C. G., & Burdette, A. M. (2014). Religious attendance and biological functioning: A multiple specification approach. Journal of Aging and Health, 26(5), 766 785. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Holt. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1989). Assumptive worlds and the stress of traumatic events: Applications of the schema construct. Social Cognition, 7(2), 113 136. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 553. King, L. A., Heintzelman, S. J., & Ward, S. J. (2016). Beyond the search for meaning: A contemporary science of the experience of meaning in life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(4), 211 216. Koenig, H. G., George, L. K., & Titus, P. (2004). Religion, spirituality, and health in medically ill hospitalized older patients. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 52(4), 554 562. Koenig, H. G., McCullough, M. E., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Handbook of religion and health. New York: Oxford University Press. Krause, N. (2009). Meaning in life and mortality. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 64(4), 517 527. Lando, H. A., & Davison, G. C. (1975). Cognitive dissonance as a modifier of chronic smoking behavior: A serendipitous finding. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(5), 750. Lee, V., Cohen, S. R., Edgar, L., Laizner, A. M., & Gagnon, A. J. (2006). Meaning-making intervention during breast or colorectal cancer treatment improves self-esteem, optimism, and self-efficacy. Social Science & Medicine, 62(12), 3133 3145. Leppin, A., & Schwarzer, R. (1990). Social support and physical health: An updated meta-analysis. In Theoretical and applied aspects of health psychology, pp. 185 202. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world. The belief in a just world (pp. 9 30). Boston, MA: Springer. Levin, J. (2016). Prevalence and religious predictors of healing prayer use in the USA: Findings from the Baylor Religion Survey. Journal of Religion and Health, 55(4), 1136 1158.

Religion and health: building existential bridges Chapter | 31

467

Lyon, W. S. (1998). Encyclopedia of Native American shamanism: Sacred ceremonies of North America. ABC-CLIO. Maliski, S. L., Heilemann, M. V., & McCorkle, R. (2002). From “death sentence” to “good cancer”: Couples’ transformation of a prostate cancer diagnosis. Nursing Research, 51(6), 391 397. Marsh, A., Smith, L., Piek, J., & Saunders, B. (2003). The purpose in life scale: Psychometric properties for social drinkers and drinkers in alcohol treatment. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 63(5), 859 871. Marx, K. (1844/1970). Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mayers, A. M., & Svartberg, M. (2001). Existential loneliness: A review of the concept, its psychosocial precipitants and psychotherapeutic implications for HIV-infected women. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 74(4), 539 553. Mehr, S. S., Saberian, N., Akbari, M. E., & Asem, F. M. (2018). A study on the effectiveness of spiritual intervention on perception of God and attitude toward death in women with breast cancer. European Journal of Natural Sciences and Medicine, 1(1), 67 76. Michalak, L., Trocki, K., & Bond, J. (2007). Religion and alcohol in the U.S. National Alcohol Survey: How important is religion for abstention and drinking? Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 87(2 3), 268 280. Minkenberg, M. (2002). Religion and public policy: Institutional, cultural, and political impact on the shaping of abortion policies in Western democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 35(2), 221 247. Moore, J. T., & Leach, M. M. (2016). Dogmatism and mental health: A comparison of the religious and secular. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8(1), 54. Morris, K. L., Cooper, D. P., Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2013). Objectification as self-affirmation in the context of a death-relevant health threat. Self and Identity, 12, 610 620. Morris, K. L., Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., & McCabe, S. (2018). The enduring influence of death on health: Insights from the terror management health model. Self and Identity, 12(6), 1 27. National Cancer Institute. (2018). Would you say you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree with the following statements or do you have no opinion: It seems like everything causes cancer. Retrieved from ,https://hints.cancer.gov/view-questions-topics/question-details.aspx?PK_Cycle 5 11&qid 5 500 . . Oyserman, D., Smith, G. C., & Elmore, K. (2014). Identity-based motivation: Implications for health and health disparities. Journal of Social Issues, 70(2), 206 225. Pargament, K. I. (2002). Is religion nothing but. . .? Explaining religion versus explaining religion away. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 239 244. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257 301. Park, C. L., Edmondson, D., Fenster, J. R., & Blank, T. O. (2008). Meaning making and psychological adjustment following cancer: The mediating roles of growth, life meaning, and restored just-world beliefs. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76(5), 863 875. Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997). Meaning in the context of stress and coping. Review of General Psychology, 1, 115 144. Park, C. L., Malone, M. R., Suresh, D. P., Bliss, D., & Rosen, R. I. (2008). Coping, meaning in life, and quality of life in congestive heart failure patients. Quality of Life Research, 17(1), 21 26. Pelham, B. W., Shimizu, M., Arndt, J., Carvallo, M., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2018). Searching for god: Illness-related mortality threats and religious search volume in Google in 16 nations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(3), 290 303. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Landau, M. J., Alexander, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 243. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E., Murdoch, E. Q., & Helm, P. (2017). A prisoner of one’s own mind: Identifying and understanding existential isolation. Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 54 63. Pletcher, M. J., Kertesz, S. G., Kohn, M. A., & Gonzales, R. (2008). Trends in opioid prescribing by race/ethnicity for patients seeking care in US emergency departments. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 299(1), 70 78. Prentice-Dunn, S., & Rogers, R. W. (1986). Protection motivation theory and preventive health: Beyond the health belief model. Health Education Research, 1(3), 153 161. Prioreschi, P. (1995). A history of medicine. Omaha: Horatius. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: Rising above the terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation, . Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1 70). Academic Press. Rank, O. (1958). Beyond psychology (Vol. 485). Courier Corporation. Rote, S., Hill, T. D., & Ellison, C. G. (2012). Religious attendance and loneliness in later life. The Gerontologist, 53(1), 39 50. Routledge, C., Arndt, J., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2004). A time to tan: Proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on sun exposure intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(10), 1347 1358. Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20 40. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68 78. Ryan, R. M., Plant, R. W., & O’Malley, S. (1995). Initial motivations for alcohol treatment: Relations with patient characteristics, treatment involvement, and dropout. Addictive Behaviors, 20(3), 279 297.

468

PART | 6 Applications and controversies

Ryan, R. M., Rigby, S., & King, K. (1993). Two types of religious internalization and their relations to religious orientations and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(3), 586. Sacco, S. J., Leahey, T. M., & Park, C. L. (2019). Meaning-making and quality of life in heart failure interventions: A systematic review. Quality of Life Research, 28(3), 1 9. Sayles, M.L. (1995). Adolescents’ purpose in life and engagement in risky behaviors: Differences by gender and ethnicity (Doctoral dissertation, ProQuest Information & Learning). Schwartz, B. (2000). Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. American Psychologist, 55(1), 79 88. Segerstrom, S. C., & Miller, G. E. (2004). Psychological stress and the human immune system: A meta-analytic study of 30 years of inquiry. Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 601 630. Shaffer, V. A., & Scherer, L. D. (2018). Too much medicine: Behavioral science insights on overutilization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in health care. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5(2), 155 162. Sharp, S. (2013). When prayers go unanswered. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52(1), 1 16. Sherman, A. C., Simonton, S., Latif, U., & Bracy, L. (2010). Effects of global meaning and illness-specific meaning on health outcomes among breast cancer patients. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 33(5), 364 377. Siah, P. C., & Tan, J. H. (2017). Religious coping and God locus of health control: Their relationships to health quality of life among people living with HIV in Malaysia. Health Psychology Report, 5(1), 41 47. Simons, L. G., Burt, C. H., & Peterson, F. R. (2009). The effect of religion on risky sexual behavior among college students. Deviant Behavior, 30, 467 485. Slavich, G. M., & Irwin, M. R. (2014). From stress to inflammation and major depressive disorder: A social signal transduction theory of depression. Psychology Bulletin, 140, 774 815. Smith, B. W., & Zautra, A. J. (2004). The role of purpose in life in recovery from knee surgery. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 11(4), 197. Struthers, R., & Hodge, F. S. (2004). Sacred tobacco use in Ojibwe communities. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 22(3), 209 225. Taylor, R. J., Chatters, L. M., Jayakody, R., & Levin, J. S. (1996). Black and white differences in religious participation: A multisample comparison. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 35(4), 403 410. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2009). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thege, B., Bachner, Y. G., Martos, T., & Kushnir, T. (2009). Meaning in life: Does it play a role in smoking? Substance Use & Misuse, 44(11), 1566 1577. Thoits, P. A. (2011). Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52(2), 145 161. Tillich, P. (1952). The courage to be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vail, K. E., III, Arndt, J., & Abdollahi, A. (2012). Exploring the existential function of religion and supernatural agent beliefs among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1288 1300. Vail, K. E., III, Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 84 94. Vehling, S., & Kissane, D. W. (2018). Existential distress in cancer: Alleviating suffering from fundamental loss and change. Psycho-Oncology, 27 (11), 2525 2530. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Exploring the existential function of religion: The effect of religious fundamentalism and mortality salience on faith-based medical refusals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 334. Wallston, K. A., Malcarne, V. L., Flores, L., Hansdottir, I., Smith, C. A., Stein, M. J., . . . Clements, P. J. (1999). Does God determine your health? The God locus of health control scale. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 23(2), 131 142. Wong, N. C., Nisbett, G. S., & Harvell, L. A. (2017). Smoking is so Ew!: College smokers’ reactions to health-versus social-focused antismoking threat messages. Health Communication, 32(4), 451 460. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy (Vol. 1). New York: Basic Books. Yalom, I. D. (1992). When Nietzsche wept. New York: Basic Books. Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the sun: Overcoming the terror of death. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Index Note: Page numbers followed by “f” and “t” refer to figures and tables, respectively.

A ABDT. See Anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) Ability to do otherwise (ATDO), 104
105 Absolute, 261
262 absolute-detectors, 268 anxiety gives dissolves to, 264
268 anxiety gives rise to, 262
264, 266
268 eternal recurrence, 270 neuroscience, 268
270 quell anxiety, 270 Abstraction, 208, 315
316, 408 Absurd heroes, 266
268 ACC. See Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) Acceptance, 333 Achieved selves, 147 Achieved status, 147 Acknowledgment, 68 Activist feminists, 72 Adaptive psychological functioning, 351 Adaptive utility, 310 Adolescent egocentrism, 111 Adversarial growth process, 59 Affective well-being, 92
93 Affordable Care Act’s rule, 430 Afterlife and mind
body dualism, 328 Alienation, 154
155 Allusions of immortality, 437 Alma maters, 308
309 Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire, 123 Amish practice of shunning, 156 Amygdala, 340 Ancient cross-cultural civilizations, 60 Anesthesia, 56 Anger, 78 collective, 192 derogation, 72
73 Anglicanism, 430 Animal nature disgust, 396 Animal research, 154 Anomia, 411, 413 Anomie, 411 Anoxia, 55 Antecedents of religious internalization in family, 86
87 Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), 227, 340 activity, 424
425 Anthropomorphization, 377
378 Anti-free-will

condition, 106 prime, 107 Antiatheist prejudice, 155 Antisocial religious behavior, death-denying function of, 437
444 Anxiety, 23, 247, 261, 269
270, 312, 365, 422. See also Death anxiety anxiety-buffering, 176 dimension, 176 dissolving Absolute, 264
268 of emptiness, 92 rising to Absolute, 262
264, 266
268 Anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT), 40
41 Anxious God-attachment, 125 Apostasy, 67 Appalachian snake handlers, 191 Appraisals, 278 of threat, 178 Appraised meanings, 274 changes in, 279
280 Arousal, 262, 269 of reactance, 69 Ascribed selves, 147 Ascribed status, 147 Assimilation to personality, 213 to the social, 213
214 ATDO. See Ability to do otherwise (ATDO) Atheism, 12 Atheists, 12
13 Attachment attachment
religion link, 177 behavioral system, 175 figures, 175, 179 to God, 181 patterns, 125 Attachment theory, 175
176 individual differences, 180
183 religion and attachment, 176
179 attachment figure, 179 God as safe haven, 178
179 God as secure base, 179 points of departure, 177 seeking and maintaining proximity to God, 177
178 Auditory hallucinations, 57 Authenticity, 119, 144
145, 267 historical emergence of authenticity concerns and ties to religion, 119
133

holding religious beliefs, 124
130 interplay of religion and, 121
122 morality, 132
133 participating in religious communities, 130
132 participation in religious rituals, 131
132 religion as means of meeting belongingness needs, 130
131 religious experiences, 122
124 true self and, 120
121 Authenticity Scale, 125, 129
130 Authoritarian aggression, 194 Authoritarian submission, 194 Authority/respect moral foundation, 214 Authority/subversion, 316 Autonomous motivation, 83
85 Autonomy, 143
144 autonomy-supportive language, 75 moral and psychological importance, 141 support, 86 Aversion, loss of, 143 Aversive feelings, 243 Aversive reactions, 394 Awareness of death/mortality, 317, 340, 352 to bridge religion and health, 456
459 basic processes for managing, 456
457 death, religion, and health, 457
459 TMHM, 457 Awe, 376
377

B Baard’s research, 85
86 Batson’s Interactional Quest Scale, 392 Beck’s Incarnational Ambivalence Scale, 392 Becker, Ernest, 435
436, 442
443 Becker’s theory, 22 Behavioral Activation system, 268 Behavioral/behavior(s), 86, 316 approach mode of being, 269 change, 111 compensatory, 408 free will beliefs, effects of, 107
108 freedoms, 67 moral, 317 planful, 110
111 prosocial, 107
108, 310 prosocial religious, 436
444 religion and health behavior change, 463
464

469

470

Index

Behavioral/behavior(s) (Continued) religious, 84
85, 435 sanctification, 96
98 self-control, 109 self-sacrificial, 405 zealous, 409 Being-for-others in human ontology, 91 Being-in-itself in human ontology, 91 Beliefs, 330
331, 456
457. See also Free will belief; Religious beliefs in contagion, 93
94 cultural, 390 failure, 40
41 in free will, 68 global, 274 god, 125 growth-focused, 39 individual, 339 in meritocracy, 424 moral, 379 in science, 376
377 security-focused, 39 shared, 409 soul, 128, 380 spiritual, 105, 339, 422
423 in supernatural beings, 327
328 theistic, 124
125 true self, 128 validation, 388 Belongingness needs, religion as means of meeting, 130
131 Benevolent religious reappraisal, 279 Big Bang, 375 Bill of Rights, 146
147 Biological
behavioral system, 344
345 Birth process, 6 Black sheep effect, 156 Bodhipakkhiya¯ dhamma, ¯ 360 Body aversiveness, 390 Body
soul dualism, 126
128 Brain meaning-maintenance machine, 269 meaning-making machine, 268 Branch Davidians, 426 Breast milk, 395 Breast self-exam (BSE), 396 Breastfeeding, 395 BSE. See Breast self-exam (BSE) Buddhism, 3
4, 170, 447
448 mindfulness in, 360 Buddhism, 124, 231, 389 Buddhist, 359
360 mindfulness in practice, 360 Buffering hypothesis, 196
197

C “Calm abiding” meditation. See Shamatha meditation Caregivers, primary, 176 Caring/harm, 316 Categorization, 191 self-categorization, 187
188, 234 social categorization, 188

Catholic’s and Jehovah’s Witness’s practice of excommunication, 156 Catholicism, 119
120, 170 Causal attributions, 277 Causality, 295
296 Cause-and-effect, 54 CBT. See Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) CCT. See Compensatory control theory (CCT) Cerebral anoxia, 55 Certainty, 229
230. See also Uncertainty Chanting, 170 Cheating, 316 Choice, 120
121, 141, 143
144, 146
147, 341, 463
464 overload, 142
143 people, 142 sets, 143 Christianity, 3
4, 37, 119
120, 124, 177, 231, 253
254, 297, 352, 389, 393
394, 396, 426
427 extremism across, 160 fundamentalism, 194
195 Chronic illness, 42
43 Chronic ostracism, 154 Circumplex model, 92 Civilization, 264
265 ancient cross-cultural, 60 Closure, 229
230 Coda, 183
184 Cognitive abilities, 311 Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), 359
360 Cognitive capacities, 316
317 Cognitive consistency, 67
68 Cognitive development, 309 Cognitive dissonance theory, 67
68 Cognitive functioning, 51 Cognitive interpretations, 157 Cognitive mechanisms, 124 Cognitive processes, 8 Cognitive proclivities, 311 Cognitive reappraisal, 331
332, 334 Cognitive well-being, 92
93 Coherence, 197 Collective action, 188
195 Collective anger, 192 Collective emotions, 192 Collective self-efficacy, 192 Communism, 421 Comparative fit, 196 Compassion, 280
281 Compatibilism, 104 Compensation hypothesis, 180 Compensation pathway, 182
183 Compensatory behaviors, 408 Compensatory control, 251
252 Compensatory control theory (CCT), 249, 421
422 personal and external control, 249 religions, usefulness of, 249 Complex religious systems, 310 Complexity, 197 Compliance, 159 Comprehensiveness, 275 Conceptual metaphor, 315
316 Conceptualization, 225

Conceptualizing God, 40 Conformity, 108, 159, 409 Confucianism, 231 Consciousness, 269 of mortality, 449 stream of, 168
169 Consensual validation, 246 Conservatism, 146 Conservatives, 146 Constraints, 146
147 on freedom of choice, 142 social and cultural, 144 “Contemplative” prayer, 177 Contemporary religions, 3
4 Control, 154, 158 compensatory, 251
252 feelings of personal, 408, 422 God as source of, 422
423 perceived, 329 personal, 227, 422 threats, 408, 422
424 vicarious, 158 Conventional religious orientations, 354
355 Conventional Western therapy, 363 Conventionalism, 194 Conversion, 447
448 Coping, 460 forms with fear of death, 325
327, 327f mechanisms against existential anxiety, 340 response, 153 Correlation analyses, 391 Correlational studies, 181
182 Correspondence hypothesis, 180 pathway, 180
182 Cosmic alien, 263, 265 Cosmic Dad, 265 Cosmic delusions, 264
266 Cosmic horror, 262
264 Costs of religion, 320 Counterfinal means, 232 Creatureliness, 390
394 Credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs), 317
318 Cross-cultural investigations, 253
254 Crucifix, 94
95 Cthulhu, 262 Cult-joiners, 232 Cultural/culture, 207, 213
214, 352 beliefs, 390 “cultural conditioning” hypothesis, 56
57 cultural-existential psychology, 211, 216 generalizability, 296 Modern Western, 54 religious, 215
216 resources, 218 worldviews, 38, 308 Culturally specific American Protestant concept, 84
85 Cyberball game, 153
154, 156, 343

D Daily diary studies, 155 Dark night of soul, 178

Index

DAS. See Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) DBT. See Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) Death, 158, 207, 315
316, 339, 387
388, 390
394, 456 afraid of Coda, 28 death anxiety and proximity to death, 25
26 evidence from lists, 23
24 evidence from scales, 24
25 awareness, 311, 332, 340
342, 459 freedom, choice, and responsibility, 341 neuroscience, 340
341 and religion, 341 death-denying materialism, 446
447 death-related cognition, 406, 458 responses, 24 stimuli, 340 thought, 9 and decay, 328 reminders, 10, 340, 406 threat treatment, 31 transcendence, 5, 13 Death anxiety, 21, 215. See also Fear of death association between religiosity and, 9 correlation between death anxiety and religiosity, 28
31 curvilinear hypothesis, 29f death anxiety and afterlife belief, 30t implicit measures of, 23 mortality salience increasing religious belief, 31
32 and proximity to death, 25
26 Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), 24
25 Death thought accessibility (DTA), 21, 27
28, 309, 328, 388
389, 456
457 Deep acting, 145 Default Mode Network, 269 “Deficiency approach” to religion, 183 Degradation, 316 Dehumanization, 394
397 Delusions, 264 Demographic variables, 55 Demonic attributions, 290 Demonic struggles, 290
292 Dependence, 424 Depersonalization, 246
247 Depersonalization/derealization disorder (DDD). See Depersonalization/ dissociation disorder Depersonalization/dissociation disorder, 57 Depression, 155 Desecration, 278 Determinism, 104
105 Devotees, 123 Dharma. See Mindfulness of mind-objects Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), 359
360 Disanxiousuncertilibrium, 344 Disasters, 42 Discrepancy, 41, 278 Discriminatory medical care, 458 Disgust, 312
313, 390

Disgust Sensitivity Questionnaire, 388
389 Distraction, 332
333 Distress, 274, 278
279 Distressing NDEs, 52 Distrust, 155 Divine/divinity, 170, 378 struggles, 289
292 Dogmatism, 267 Doubt struggles, 290
291, 293
294 DTA. See Death thought accessibility (DTA) Dualist approach, 388 Dualist model, 57
58 Duke University Religion Index (DUREL), 211
212 “Dwelling in peace”. See Shamatha meditation

E Ebola outbreak (2014), 42 Economic anxiety, 424 EDAS. See Existential DAS (EDAS) Ego depletion, 112
113, 423
424 in existential psychology and mindfulness, 363
366 quieting ego, 363
364 role of meaning, 365
366 in existential psychology and mindfulness, 364
365 Eigenwelt, 209 Embodied meditation, 363 Emotion(al), 326 emotion-focused coping, 325
326 with fear of death, 329
333 features signal, 51
52 goals, 331 and meaning, 362
363 regulation, 325, 334 regulatory mechanisms, 325 Empirical verification, 54 Encapsulation model of social identity in collective action (EMSICA), 191
192 models of social identity and collective action, 191
192 Endogenous opioids, 55
56 Endorphins, 55
56 Enhanced mentation, 58 Enlightenment, 119 Entheogens, 170 Entitative groups, 246 Epiphanies, 229 Eriksonian approach to faith development, 217
218 Error-related negativity (ERN), 344 Essentialism, 378 Essentialist thinking, 378 Eternal recurrence of Absolute, 270 Eternal souls, 155 Ethical, 261
262 security of, 264, 266 Sphere, 263 EToM. See Existential theory of mind (EToM) Evangelism, 318 Evil supernatural entities, 290

471

Evolutionary psychology, 307, 409
410 Evolutionary theories of human behavior, 310 of morality origins, 316 of religion, 310, 317
318 Existential anxieties, 410 awareness, 22 bridges, 455 concerns, 325, 456 connection, 169
171 dogmatism, 455 existentially resilient religion, 45
46 fears, 45 function of religion, 351
352 identity, 218
219 motives, 407, 410 neuroscientific studies, 340
341 phenomenological anthropology, 218 philosophy, 208
209 psychology, 207, 210, 455 ego in, 363
366 mindfulness in, 360 self in, 365 terror, 13
14 therapy, 360 threats, 288, 340, 353, 355 Existential DAS (EDAS), 25 Existential isolation, 167
168, 342. See also Interpersonal isolation to bridge religion and health, 461
463 god as bridge and ravine, 462
463 religion as solution, 462 epistemic and affiliative consequences, 168 Existential Isolation Scale, 167
169 Existential Quest, 214 Existential theory of mind (EToM), 312 Existential
humanistic psychology, mindfulness and, 361
363 accepting and exploring emotions and meaning, 362
363 embodied meditation, 363 here-and-now focus, 361
362 Existentialism, 100
101, 187
188, 207
208 Expected uncertainty, 269 Experimental existential psychology (XXP), 208, 339 research on religious identity, 214
216 Experimental studies, 159
160, 178 Explanatory gap of consciousness, 375 Explanatory models for NDEs, 55
58 nonmaterialist explanations, 57
58 physiological explanations, 55
56 psychological explanations, 56
57 psychopathological explanations, 57 Exploitation, 268 Exploration, 268
269 Exposure technique, 360 Exposure to nature, 158
159 Extended self, 142 External regulation of extrinsic motivations, 83 Extra-sensory perception, 52 Extreme stress situations, 55
56 Extremism, 159
161

472

Index

Extremist political movements, 159 Extrinsic motivations, 83, 187
189 orientation, 84
85 religiosity, 213 religious orientation, 39

F Facticity, 208 Fair market ideology, 429 Fairness, 316, 410 Faith, 121, 171
172, 209, 378, 436. See also Beliefs in cultural worldview, 309 faith-based practices, 169
171 testing for existential allure of, 437 Faith Development Theory, 217 Falsification, 264 Fear, 312 Fear of death, 21
23, 38. See also Death anxiety coping forms with, 325
327, 327f religion and coping with, 333
334 religion and emotion-focused coping with, 329
333 enacting, 330
333 selection, 329
330 religion and problem-focused coping with, 327
329 afterlife and mind
body dualism, 328 belief in supernatural beings, 327
328 human uniqueness, 328 terror management analysis, 328 Feeling of absurdity, 344 of meaning, 376
377 of personal control, 408, 422 Felt security, 175 Fictive kin, 310 Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, 412 Folk psychology, 311
312, 319 Fowler’s theory, 217
218 Free will, 104
105 philosophical terminology, 104
105 social-cognition of, 105
107 Free will belief. See also Religious beliefs effects on behavior conformity, 108 gratitude, 108 prosocial behavior, 107
108 psychological construct, 105 Free-list studies, 24
25 Freedom, 68
69, 104
105, 120
121, 143
144, 146
147, 288, 341, 365, 456 behavioral, 67 to bridge religion and health, 463
465 burden of, 464
465 choice overload and paralysis, 142
143 elimination and threats to, 69 and health benefits of religion, 463 moral and psychological importance, 141 and neuroscience, 342

and religion, 342 religion and health behavior change, 463
464 restoration of, 69 sincerity and authenticity, 144
145 “Freedom from” condition, 146
147 “Freedom to” condition, 146
147 Freud’s concept of it, 4 Fundamentalism, 15, 189
190, 194, 441
443 Christian, 193
195 religious, 39, 42
43, 46, 213, 227, 254
255, 353, 391
392, 441 Fundamentalist, 14, 156, 187 beliefs, 156, 159 Christianity, 15 Christians, 72 Islamic, 396
397 orientation, 352
353 religious, 10
11 worldview, 15
16

G General Orienting System (GOS), 298 Ghosts, 290 Global beliefs, 274 Global goals, 274 Global meaning, 274
276, 459 changes in, 280 of religion, 406
407 Goal(s) attainment, 100 conflict, 98
99 frustration, 98
99 global, 274 perspective on meaning and religion, 344
345 perspective on religion and spirituality existential relevance of goals, 91
92 sanctification, 93
98 sanctifying behavior, 96
98 sanctifying locations, 95 sanctifying objects, 93
95 God, 374
375 beliefs, 125 conceptualizing, 40 God-images, 40 nature of, 37 ostracism and, 156
157 perception of, 85 as source of control and order, 422
423 “God-of-the-Gaps” effect, 375 Good self, 141 GOS. See General Orienting System (GOS) Gospel music, 170 Gratitude, 108 Grief, 178
179 Group entitativity, 235 Group identification, 234 Group norms, 213
214 “Growth approach” to religion, 183 Growth-focused beliefs, 39 “Growth-oriented” motivation, 214 Growth-promoting functions, 176

H Hallmark growth-focused religious orientation, 39 Hana, 360 ¯ Hard place, 15
16 Health, 455 using awareness of mortality to bridge religion and, 456
459 using existential isolation to bridge religion and health, 461
463 framework of existential religion
health perspective, 455
456 using freedom to bridge religion and health, 463
465 using search for meaning to bridge religion and, 459
461 Helplessness, 155 High trait reactance. See Type A personality Hinduism, 3
4, 124, 170, 389 Holdeman Mennonites, 216
217 Homosexual prejudice, 190 Human (Homo sapiens), 91
92, 312 corporeality, 387
390 existence, 261 human-made disasters, 42 motivation theory, 83 ontology, 91 primates, 408 spirits, 290 uniqueness, 328 Human suffering, 37 beliefs failure, 40
41 conceptualizing God, 40 existential and individual functions of religious beliefs, 38
40 existentially resilient religion, 45
46 facing death, 41
43 disasters, 42 terminal and chronic illness, 42
43 trauma, 43 people usually cope with existential concerns, 37
38 religion and suffering, 43
45 suffering elicits existential concerns, 41 Hypercarbia, 55 Hyperlucidity, 51 Hyperprosociality, 408 Hypoegoic functioning, 122
123 Hypoxia, 55

I “I-functioning”, 122 I-sharing, 167
169, 171
172, 462 Identity developmental models, 217 existential perspective on religion and construction, 207
219 integrative model of religion and identity, 216
219 psychological approaches to relation between religion and identity, 210
212 XXP research on religious identity, 214
216

Index

fusion, 235, 405 identified internalization, 84 identified regulation of extrinsic motivations, 83 identity-based motivation model, 460 threats, 412
413 “Identity/self-essentialism” scale, 126 Ideological migration, 412 Ideology-based social identities, 193 ILE. See Indefinite life extension (ILE) Illusions, 264 Immanent justice, 250 Immortality ideologies, 7
8 Impersonal freedom threats, 71 In-group loyalty, 410 Inanimate entities, 307 Incarcerated individuals, 154 Incarnational ambivalence, 390
394 Incompatibilism, 104 Indefinite life extension (ILE), 381 Individual beliefs, 339 differences approach, 188
189 identity, 103 Industrialization, 120 Informational uncertainty, 244, 247, 251
252 Ingroup ostracism, 156 Ingroup/loyalty moral foundation, 214 Inoculation, 76 Inside-out approaches, 210 Institutional forces, 438 Integrated regulation of extrinsic motivations, 83 Integrative model of religion and identity, 216
219 further reflections on z-axis, 218
219 integrative approaches to x-axis, 216
217 integrative approaches to z-axis, 217
218 Intellectual abilities, 339 Intellectual development, 6 Intelligent design analysis, 319
320 process, 423 theory, 308, 310
312 Interdependent self-construals, 168 Intergroup outcomes, 171
172 Intergroup tensions, 171 Internal working models (IWMs), 180 IWM-correspondence hypothesis, 181 Interpersonal decision-making, 458 Interpersonal isolation, 167. See also Existential isolation measures, 167
168 meditation on, 169
170 Interpersonal R/S struggles, 290
293 Intrapersonal identity-related mechanisms, 131 Intrinsic motivation, 83, 121, 187
189 Intrinsic orientation, 84
85 Intrinsic religiosity, 213, 354
355, 410 moderating role of, 439
441 Intrinsic religious identifications, 464
465 orientation, 130 view, 39

Introjected internalization, 84 Introjected regulation of extrinsic motivations, 83 Intuitive biases, 377
378 Irreligiosity, 29 Islam, 3
4, 37, 98, 124, 231, 352, 389, 393
394, 396 extremism across, 160 Muraqabah, 170 R/S variables, 297
298 Sharia law in, 192 Tar¯ıq concept, 210 threat against, 72 Wahhabist/Salafist approach to, 194
195 Islamic fundamentalists, 396
397 Isolation, 170, 288, 342
344, 456. See also Existential isolation; Interpersonal isolation neuroscience of, 343 and religion, 343
344 social, 167 IWMs. See Internal working models (IWMs)

J Judaism, 3
4, 124, 231, 389, 393
394, 396 “Judgment Day”, 316

K Karma, 290 Ketamine, 55
56 Kierkegaard, 262
264 “Kleptocratic” religions, 436
437

L Language, 106 autonomy-supportive, 75 controlling, 74 LCI-R. See Life Changes Inventory-Revised (LCI-R) LCQ. See Life Changes Questionnaire (LCQ) Legitimacy, 55 “Legitimate” discrimination, 190 LGB individuals, 131 Liberalism, 146 Libertarianism, 104 Liberty/oppression, 316 Life, 315
316 Life Changes Inventory-Revised (LCI-R), 58 Life Changes Questionnaire (LCQ), 58 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count tool, 26 Literal belonging, 157 Literal immortality, 5, 22, 308
309, 352, 380
381 Literal objectification, 395
396 Logos, 266 Logotherapy, 460 Loneliness, 158, 461 Long-term ostracism, 154
155 Love bombing, 159 Lovecraft, 262
263 Low trait reactance. See Type B personality Loyalty/betrayal, 316 Lutheranism, 430

473

M Macro meaning. See Global meaning Mao’s ideology of revolutionary immortality, 5 Maslow’s hierarchical model, 3 Master virtue, 109 MBCT. See Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) MBIs. See Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) “me-functioning”, 122 Me-sharing, 169, 171 Meaning, 41, 103, 153, 268, 273, 279
280, 287, 344
345 effects of religiousness, 289 emotions and, 362
363 frameworks, 270 goal perspective, 344
345 and health, 459
461 of life, 261 in life, 287, 351
353, 376
377 R/S to, 288 religion, neuroscience, and, 344 research relating R/S struggles to, 294
297 role in mindfulness, 365
366 self-centered systems, 288
289 in stressful life circumstances, 276
281 subjective, 290 transcendent, 288
289 violation, 270 Meaning-making coping, 278
279 future directions, 281
282 model, 41, 274
275, 274f, 460 Meaningful existence, 154, 158 Meaninglessness, 288, 456 Medical overutilization, 464 Meditation, 170, 361, 365. See also Mindfulness embodied, 363 on interpersonal isolation, 169
170 mindful, 158
159 Muraqabah, 170 self-isolated version of meditation retreat, 170 Shamatha, 360 “Meditational” prayer, 177 Menstruation, 394 Mentation, 58 MEs. See Mystical experiences (MEs) Message sensation value, 76 Metaphor, 315 life, 315
316 metaphoric thinking, 316 MFODS. See Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) MFT. See Moral foundations theory (MFT) Micro meaning. See Situational meaning Mighty Cthulhu, 263
264 Mind
body dualism, 313
314, 328 Mindful awareness, 362 Mindful meditation, 158
159 Mindfulness, 359
361, 449. See also Meditation of body, 360

474

Index

Mindfulness (Continued) comparison between existential
humanistic psychology and, 361
363 defining, 359
361 ego and self in, 363
366 of feelings, 360 of mind, 360 of mind-objects, 360 mindfulness-based stress reduction, 359
360 therapies, 359
360 mindfulness-informed therapies, 359
360 mindfulness-oriented therapies, 359
360 research on, 361 training, 361 variations, 359
361 Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), 359
360 Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), 360 Miracles, 229 Missionary activity, 318 Mitwelt, 209 Moderators, 77 Modern Western cultures, 54 Modernization, 218
219 Monarchies, 421 Monotheistic religions, 177 Moral behavior, 317 beliefs, 379 inclinations, 316 intuitions, 316
317 judgments, 105
106 responsibility, 106 struggles, 290
291, 293 systems, 380 taboos, 389
390 values, 409
410 world order, 265 Moral foundations theory (MFT), 214, 316, 409
410 Morality to community, 410
412 and concerns, 379
382 grave questions for future research, 412
413 religion and, 409
410 Moralized identities, 413 Mormonism, 429 Mortality, 288 awareness, 340
341 Mortality salience (MS), 8, 211
212, 309, 326, 340
341, 387
388, 391
392, 396, 406, 437 evidence strong or bolstered religious belief, 11
13 atheists, 12
13 downside of religion, 14 hard place, 15
16 implications of terror management analysis of religion, 13
16 rock, 15 tale of two worldviews, 14
16 upside of religion, 13
14 hypotheses, 456
457

in religiosity, 10
11 and religious belief, 31
32 religious tribalism as default response to, 438
439 Motivated action, religion/spirituality and, 109
112 planful behavior, 110
111 rational choice, 109
110 self-control, 109 Motivational mechanisms, 124 MS. See Mortality salience (MS) Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS), 24
25 Muraqabah, 170 Music, 170 Mutual respect, 374 Mysterium fascinans, 231 Mysterium tremendum, 231 Mystical Experience Scale, 123 Mystical experiences (MEs), 60 Myths, 230

N Naı¨ve immortality, 380 Narratives, 230
233 common characteristics of religious, 230
231 differences between, 231
232 personal, 232
233 stories in persuasive messaging, 75
76 Natural disasters, 42 Natural selection, 310, 378
379, 381 Naturalistic attributions, 277 Naturalistic theory of religion, 21 NDErs. See Near-death experiencers (NDErs) NDEs. See Near-death experiences (NDEs) NE. See Norepinephrine (NE) Near-death experiencers (NDErs), 51, 57
58 Near-death experiences (NDEs), 51
52 impact of, 58
61 defining, 52
53 disclosure of, 54
55 explanatory models for, 55
58 historical reports and estimated incidence of, 53
54 Near-death-like experiences, 53 Need for cognitive closure (NFC), 226 Need(s), 226
230 for certainty, 226 epistemic needs, 226
228 religiosity and need to understand other people, 227
228 religiosity and need to understand world, 226
227 joint working of two needs, 229
230 for personal significance, 228
229 Need to Belong Scale, 167
168 Needs, narratives, and networks theory (3N theory), 225, 233, 236 Negative and positive liberty, 146
147 Negative emotions, 97, 325 Negative motivational states, 78 Negative religious coping, 290 Negative thoughts, 8
9 Network, 233
236

religion as social phenomenon, 233
234 religious groups as source of shared reality, 234 religious identification as source of certainty and significance, 234
235 uniqueness of religious groups, 235
236 Neuroimaging, 343 Neuroscience of Absolute, 268
270 of death awareness, 340
341 freedom and, 342 of isolation, 343 religion, meaning and, 344 Neutral prime, 107, 109, 113 New religious movements (NRMs), 226, 232 NFC. See Need for cognitive closure (NFC) Nihilism, 267 9/11 disaster, 42 Noetic quality, 122 in religious experiences, 123 Non-Muslim Americans, 11 Non-Muslim participants, 98 Non-Western participants, 87 Nonmaterialist explanations, 57
58 Nonproscribed prejudices, 190 Nonspiritual strivings, 93 Nonverbal feelings, 362 Norepinephrine (NE), 269 Normative alignment model of social action and opinion
based group interventions, 192 Normative fit, 196 Normative religious motivations, 96
97 NRMs. See New religious movements (NRMs)

O OBE. See Out-of-body experience (OBE) Obedience, 159 Objectification of women, 394
397 Objectivity, 54, 379
380 Occasional paralysis, 144 Omnipotent creator gods, 374
375 Ontogeny of terror management, 6
7 Open-ended quest
oriented religiosity, 15 Open-minded religiosity, 232
233 Oppositional behavioral outcomes, 71
72 Organized religions, 352 Orthodoxy, 187, 189
191 Orthopraxy, 191 Ostracism, 153 and extremism, 159
161 and God, 156
157 religion and, 155
159 for religious correction and ejection, 156 for religious protection, 155
156 temporal need-threat model, 153
155 Out-of-body experience (OBE), 52 Outgroup member intolerance, 194 Outside-in approaches, 210

P PAP. See Principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) Paralysis, 142
143

Index

Pareto efficient, 142 Pastoral encouragement, 97 Pentecostals, 170 Peoples Temple, 426 Perceived control, 329 Perceived locus of causality technique, 121 Perceiver readiness, 196 Perception, doors of, 167 Perceptual similarity, 409 Person-centered approach, 121 Person-permanence, 313 Person’s hierarchy of attachment figures, 176 Personal antagonism, 190
191 authenticity, 119 control, 227, 422 humiliation, 229
230 narratives, 232
233 need for personal significance, 228
229 selves, 190 convergent perspectives, 196 uncertainty, 244, 252 well-being, 195
199 Personal need for structure (PNS), 448 Personal prayer, 11, 87, 113
114, 344 Personality traits, 77 Personality-based approaches, 213 Personification metaphors, 315 Petitionary prayer, 311
312 Pharmacologically induced MEs, 60 Phenomenological secularism, 218 Phylogenic history of terror management, 7
8 Physical forces, 377
378 Physician-assisted suicide, 464
465 Physiological explanations for NDEs, 55
56 Pilgrimage, 172 Planful behavior, 110
111 behavioral change, 111 taking initiative, 111
112 values, 110
111 Playing card anxiety, 269 PNS. See Personal need for structure (PNS) Positive emotions, 97 Positive psychology mixed blessing of supernaturalism, 288
290 of religions and spirituality, 287
290 Positive reappraisal coping, 278
279 Positivism, 54 Post Critical Belief Scale, 233 Post-NDE, 58 Posttraumatic growth, 43, 280 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 40
41, 277 Powerful deities, 155 Powerlessness, 424 Prayer, 10
11, 42
43, 109
110, 130, 178, 183, 332
333, 339, 352
353 belief in the effectiveness of, 10 contemplative, 177 meditational, 177 personal, 11, 87, 113
114, 344 petitionary, 311
312 private, 178 unanswered, 157 upward, 177

Precognition, 52 Prejudice, 188
195, 234 targets specificity, 190 Primitive emotional tendencies, 311 Principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), 104
105 Private prayer, 178 Pro-free-will condition, 106 prime, 107 Problem-focused coping, 325
326 with fear of death, 327
329 Profanity, 391 Progressive
regressive method, 208 Prophecies, 229 Proscribed prejudices, 190 Prosocial behavior, 107
108, 310 Prosocial religious behavior, 436 death-denying function of, 437
444 Prosocial values, 353 Protestant belief systems, 97 Protestant Reformation, 119 Protestant work ethic (PWE), 97, 429 Protestantism, 119
120 PRT. See Psychological reactance theory (PRT) Psychedelic drugs, 124 Psychic abilities, 52 Psychological reactance theory (PRT), 67
69. See also Reactance; Self-determination theory (SDT) framework, 68
69 arousal of reactance, 69 elimination and threats to freedom, 69 freedoms, 68
69 restoration of freedom, 69 future directions, 77
78 expanding catalysts of reactance, 77
78 expanding outcomes of reactance, 78 moderators, 77 historical roots, 67
69 predictions, 70, 75 and religion, 70 restrictive faith-based regulations and reactance, 73
75 threats to religious freedom and reactance, 70
73 anger and source derogation, 72
73 impersonal freedom threats, 71 oppositional behavioral outcomes, 71
72 positive evaluation, 72 Psychological/psychology approaches to relation between religion and identity, 210
214 assimilation to personality, 213 assimilation to the social, 213
214 triaxial model, 211
212 distress, 26, 294
295 essentialism, 93
94, 126 and contagion, 93
94 functions, 373
374, 377 mindfulness in, 359
360 reactance, 67 of religion, 83 science, 243, 407 security, 125

475

Psychopathological explanations, 57 PTSD. See Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Public watchdog organizations, 160 Punishment, 105
106 “Purist” Salafis, 194
195 Purity/sanctity moral foundation, 214 PWE. See Protestant work ethic (PWE)

Q Quest, 189 orientation, 410, 448
449 for significance, 228
229 Quieting ego, 363
364

R R package, 126 R/S struggles. See Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles) Rajneesh Movement, 232 Rational choice theory, 109
110 RCOPE, 279 Reactance. See also Psychological reactance theory (PRT) arousal, 77 avoiding/minimizing reactance, 75
77 avoiding reactance arousal, 75
76 inoculation, 76 message sensation value, 76 reducing reactance arousal, 76 restrictive faith-based regulations and, 73
75 threats to, 70
73 Reactive approach motivation, 251
252 theory, 247
248 anxiety-inducing, 247 religions, usefulness of, 248 zealously approaching a different goal, 247
248 Reactive spiral, 78 Reappraisal of God’s powers, 279 Reattachment process, 6 Reattributions, 279 Regression analyses, 391 Reinvention, 144, 147 Relationality, 177 Religiosity, 11
13, 83, 213, 232
234, 325, 331
334, 341, 455 association between death anxiety and, 9 correlation between death anxiety and, 28
31 of individuals, 181 mortality salience and investment, 10
11 and need to understand other people, 227
228 and need to understand world, 226
227 and prejudice literature, 188 SDT perspective compared with other conceptualizations, 84
85 SDT to understand different forms of, 84 Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles), 287, 290
298 demonic struggle, 292

476

Index

Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles) (Continued) divine struggle, 291
292 doubt struggle, 293
294 interpersonal struggle, 292
293 moral struggle, 293 potential for growth and spiritual maturity, 297
298 research relating to well-being and R/S meaning, 294
297 ultimate meaning struggle, 294 Religious Attachment Interview, 181 Religious behaviors, 84
85, 435 connection between different motivations for well-being and social outcomes and, 85
86 Religious beliefs, 21, 43, 46, 105, 124
130, 225, 227, 243
244, 278, 339, 391
392, 405, 408
409, 422
423, 459. See also Free will belief beliefs failure, 40
41 body
soul dualism, 126
128 existential and individual functions of, 38
40 and identity, 187 mortality salience increasing, 31
32 religious identity, 128
130 spreading of, 318 theistic beliefs, 124
125 Religious experiences, 122
124, 210 future research, 123
124 noetic quality in, 123 self-transcendence in, 122
123 Religious orientations, 188
189, 214, 352
355, 410 conventional religious orientations, 354
355 fundamentalist orientation, 352
353 religious quest orientation, 353
354 Religious Orienting System (ROS), 298 Religious worldviews, 444
449 changes at individual level, 447
449 changes at societal level, 444
447 Cash 6¼ king, 446
447 human experiences, 445
446 salient prosocial norms, 444
445 Religious/religion, 3
4, 40, 58, 67, 103, 106, 146
147, 155
159, 167, 187
199, 225, 244, 261, 273, 309, 351, 405, 455, 460
461 arguments, 429 and attachment, 176
183 attributions, 277 communes, 409 conviction, 99, 344 and coping with fear of death, 333
334 cultures, 215
216 disbelief, 31
32 and emotion-focused coping with fear of death, 329
333 existential function of, 351
352 existential perspective on religion and construction of identity, 207
219 integrative model of religion and identity, 216
219

psychological approaches to relation between identity and, 210
212 XXP research on religious identity, 214
216 existential phenomena, 339 faith, 14 fundamentalism, 39, 213, 227, 353, 391
392, 441 relationship between uncertainty and, 254
255 goals, 248 optimal for existential security, 99
101 groups, 85
87, 246
247 as source of shared reality, 234 identification, 128
130, 198
199, 235 as source of certainty and significance, 234
235 ideology, 189
190 influence on uncertainty, 252
253 internalization, 87 antecedents of, 86
87 through lens of goals, 92
93 moralistic behavior, 103
104 and morality, 409
410 motivated action and, 109
112 motivating, 405
409 belief in afterlife exorcizes death, 406 external agents, 407
408 global meaning and significance, 406
407 mythologies, 378 narratives, 230, 232
233 characteristics, 230
231 neuroscience, and meaning, 344 opinion
based groups, 191 path, 147 as potential response to ostracism, 157
159 as potential source of ostracism, 155
157 practices, 167 priming, 410 and problem-focused coping with, 327
329 PRT and, 70 quest, 214 quest orientation, 353
354 radicalization, 412 religion-as-attachment model, 175 religion-based prejudice, 187 religion
health connection, 455 religious orientations, 352
355 religious/spiritual beliefs, 178
179 restrictions, 389
390 self, 190
191 and self-regulation, 112
114 as social phenomenon, 233
234 as social signal, 317
318 specialization, 318
319 standards for morality, 244 in stressful life circumstances, 276
281 and suffering, 43
45 systems, 421, 424
425, 427 terror management and motivational underpinnings, 435
437 texts, 427 thinking, 378

threats to religious freedom, 70
73 tribalism as default response to mortality salience, 438
439 zeal, 98
99 Religiousness, 178
179, 183, 275
276, 296 and discrepancy/distress, 278 future directions, 281
282 and initial appraisals of stressful events, 276
278 and meaning making coping, 278
279 and meanings made, 279
280 and stress-related growth, 280
281 REM intrusion, 56 Renaissance, 119 Repetitive “chanting” in Hasidic community, 170 Resources, 330 scarcity, 412
413 Responsibility, 105
106, 341 bias, 105 Restoration of freedom, 69 Restorative justice motives, 105
106 Restrictive faith-based regulations and reactance, 73
75 PRT predictions, 73
74 supporting evidence controlling language, 74 persuasive intent, 74 Retributive justice motives, 105
106 Revelations, 229 Reverence, 376
377 Rhetorical strategy, 71
72 Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), 189, 231, 424 components of, 189
190, 193 scales, 193 Rising narcissism, 111 Rituals, 235 Rock, fundamentalist worldview characterized as, 15 Rogerian theory, 121 Romantic partners, 8 Romantic relationships in adulthood, 175 ROS. See Religious Orienting System (ROS) Rosaries in Catholicism, 170 RSS. See Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles) Rumination, 332 Rumination-delay hypothesis, 154 RWA. See Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)

S Sacred loss, 278 Sacred rituals, 155 Sacred values, 230 Salience model of self-categories, 195
196 Sama, 170 Sanctifying/sanctification, 93
98, 111, 276 behavior, 96
98 goal frustration, conflict, and religious zeal, 98
99 religious and spiritual goals optimal for existential security, 99
101

Index

locations, 95 objects, 93
95 Sanctity, 316, 410 Sati (Pali), 360 Satipat, 360 SBNR. See Spiritual but not religious (SBNR) Science and religion, 373
374 in action, 379
382 assumptions and biases, 377
379 key shared functions, 374
377 need for control, 375
376 need for existential meaning, 376
377 need for explanation, 374
375 Scientific anxiety, 269
270 Scientific thinking, 378 Scientific training, 378 SCT. See Self-categorization theory (SCT) SDT. See Self-determination theory (SDT) Secret sharers, 267 Secular systems as source of control and order, 423
425 Secularism, 215
216, 218
219 Security, 125 of Ethical, 264, 266 priming, 176 security-focused beliefs, 39 “security-oriented” motivation, 214 Self, 143
144 boundaries of, 207 in existential psychology, 365 Self-acceptance in existential psychology and mindfulness, 364
365 Self-actualization, 364 Self-aspects model, 196
197 Self-categories, salience model of, 195
196 Self-categorization, 187
188, 234 Self-categorization theory (SCT), 188, 190 Self-complexity, 196
197 Self-control, 104 behavior, 109 Self-definition, 145 Self-determination theory (SDT), 83, 121, 464. See also Psychological reactance theory (PRT) antecedents of religious internalization in family, 86
87 connection between motivations for religious behaviors and well-being and social outcomes, 85
86 core concepts of, 83
84 helps us understand different forms of religiosity, 84 idea about larger social context predicting self-determined religiosity, 87 practical implications, 88 religious motivations correspond to different ways of approaching religious contents, 85 SDT perspective compared with other conceptualizations about religiosity, 84
85 Self-esteem, 5
6, 38, 154, 157
158, 295, 309, 363, 436 in existential psychology and mindfulness, 364 maintenance, 388

Self-esteem in existential psychology and mindfulness, 364
365 Self-invention, 144 Self-isolated version of meditation retreat, 170 Self-other bias in free will perceptions, 107 Self-preservation, 340 Self-realization, 119, 218 Self-reflection engenders existential concerns, 325 Self-regulation, 104 religion and as limited resource, 112
113 religion’s influence, 113
114 Self-reported religiosity, 409 Self-sacrificial behavior, 405 Self-schema perspectives, 196 Self-structure, 195
199 Self-system, 196 Self-transcendence, 92, 170, 407 in religious experience, 122
123 Self-transcendent meaning, 92
94, 96
101 Self-transcendent unity, 172 Self-understanding, 144 Sense of personal calling, 229 Separatists, 156 Sex, 389
391 Sexual intercourse, 389 Shamatha meditation, 360 Shared beliefs, 409 Shared identity, 191
192 Shared reality, 234 Significance of religion, 406
407 Significance Quest Theory, 407 Sikhism, 389 SIMCA. See Social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) Simulation constraint problem, 313 Sincerity, 144
145 Singing, 170 SIT. See Social identity theory (SIT) Situational meaning, 274, 459 Skinhead recruitment processes, 160 Slavery and conquests, 429 Social antagonism, 190
191 anxiety, 154 aspects of religion, 317
319 belonging, 153 categories, 188 categorization, 188 cohesion, 319
320 correspondence hypothesis, 180 cure, 198 disruptions, 158 exclusion, 342
343 identity, 190
191, 234 and collective action literature, 188 formation, 188 specificity, 190 inclusion, 161 isolation, 167 living, 311 networks, 213
214 ostracism, 153

477

power, 318
319 proof, 231 reality, 155 scientific theory, 22 selves, 190 Social identity model of collective action (SIMCA), 191
192 models of social identity and collective action, 191
192 Social identity theory (SIT), 187
188, 190, 214 convergent perspectives of self from, 197
198 Social-cognition of free will moral judgments and responsibility, 105
106 punishment and retributive vs. restorative justice motives, 105
106 self-other bias in free will perceptions, 107 Social/cultural enforcement of morality, 103
104 Social sciences, 109 Social
existential motives, 410
412 Socialization process, 6 Societal decision-making, 458 Societal norms, 389
390 Socio-emotional bonds, 175 Sociopolitical system, 421, 424
427 as source of control and order, 423
425 Soul beliefs, 128, 380 Source derogation, 72
73 Soviet Union, 428 Spirits, 315 Spiritual but not religious (SBNR), 46 Spirituality, 58, 103, 106, 146
147, 387 beliefs, 105, 339, 422
423 experiences, 60 fortitude, 46 goals optimal for existential security, 99
101 growth, 280
281 through lens of goals, 92
93 maturity, 297
298 meaning, 42 motivated action and, 109
112 path, 210 practice, 359 of science, 376
377 strivings, 93 theory, 112 Stage theories in science, 376 STN. See Subthalamic nucleus (STN) Stonewalling, 157 Strategies, 330
333 acceptance, 333 cognitive reappraisal, 331
332 distraction, 332
333 rumination, 332 Streib’s model of religious development, 217
218 Stress, 274 situations, 55
56 stress-related growth, 280
281 Stressful life

478

Index

Stressful life (Continued) events, 295
296 religion and meaning in stressful life circumstances, 276
281 Stroop task, 113
114 Subjective experiences, 339 Subjective sense of meaning, 276 Subjective well-being, 92
93 Sublimation, 216 Subliminal priming, 181
182 Substitutability, 425, 427 Substitutable nature of god and government, 425
427 Subthalamic nucleus (STN), 342 Suffering elicits existential concerns, 41 Sufism, 170 Supernatural, 307 agents, 40 beings, 307 belief in, 327
328 powers, 10 Supernaturalism, mixed blessing of, 288
290 Superstition scale, 227 “Superstitious” practices, 97 Sweet spot, 146
147 Syllogism, 141
142 Symbolic alignment, 427
430 consciousness, 208 death transcendence, 3 immortality, 5, 22, 308
309, 352, 380
381 rituals, 405 System justification, 252 theory, 249
250 construing system in negative light causing dissonance, 249
250 reconstruing system in more positive light reducing dissonance, 250 religions, usefulness of, 250

T Tangible progress, 100 Taoism, 231 Tar¯ıq concept, 210 Teleological thinking, 378
379 Temporal need-threat model of ostracism, 153
155 reflective stage, 154 reflexive stage, 153
154 resignation stage, 154
155 Temporary anxiety, 92 Terminal illness, 42
43 Terror management analysis, 328 Terror management health model (TMHM), 457 Terror management theory (TMT), 4
8, 21, 37
38, 91
92, 214
215, 307, 325
327, 340, 352, 364
365, 380
381, 387
390, 406, 435, 456 experimental research supporting, 8
9 integrating terror management and evolutionary perspectives on religion, 308
310 conceptual metaphor, 315
316

costs of religion, 320 disgust, 312
313 elaborating concepts of powerful deities to transcend death, 314
315 evangelism, missionary activity, and spreading of religious beliefs, 318 fear and anxiety, 312 inability to imagine nonexistence, 313 mind
body dualism, 313
314 moral intuitions, 316
317 religion as social signal, 317
318 religious specialization and social power, 318
319 social aspects of religion, 317
319 social cohesion and summing up, 319
320 theory of mind, 311
312 ontogeny of, 6
7 perspective on religion, 308
310 phylogenic history of, 7
8 research directly focused on terror management function of religion, 9
13 association between religiosity and death anxiety, 9 evidence strong or bolstered religious belief reduces defensive responses, 11
13 mortality salience and investment in religiosity, 10
11 Terrorist attacks, 226
227 organizations, 159 Theism, 290 Theistic beliefs, 124
125 “Themes of correspondence”, 180 Theocratic societies, 421 Theodicies, 37, 275
277 Theory of coping styles, 326 of evolution (Darwin), 373, 375
376, 381 of mind, 179, 311
312 of value systems, 110 Therapeutic modality, 359 Threat
reactance relationship, 69 TMHM. See Terror management health model (TMHM) TMT. See Terror management theory (TMT) Transcend death, concepts of powerful deities to, 314
315 Transcendence, 208 “Transcendent” model, 57
58 Transcendental religious motivations, 96
97 Transference objects, 7 Transition, 218 Trauma, 43, 274 Triaxial model, 211
212 Tripartite social identity normative model, 193
195 True self, 119, 126 and authenticity, 120
121 beliefs, 128 Trust issues, 228 Truth, 231, 235 “Two-process” depiction of choice, 146 Type A personality, 69 Type B personality, 69

U UAI. See Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) UCLA Loneliness Scale, 167
168 Ultimate anxiety, 92 Ultimate justice, 250 Ultimate meaning struggles, 290
291, 294 Umwelt, 209 Unanswered prayer, 157 Uncertainty, 243
245 alleviated by religion, 251
252 compensatory control theory, 249 future directions, 252
255 identity, 252 informational, 244 personal, 244 perspectives, 251
252 reactive approach motivation theory, 247
248 religion helps people dealing with, 245 and religious fundamentalism, 254
255 system-justification theory, 249
250 theories connecting religion and, 245t threat of, 243 uncertainty-identity theory, 246
247 entitative groups, 246 identifying with social groups helps alleviating uncertainty, 246 religions, usefulness of, 246
247 Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI), 231 Undergraduates, 216
217, 248 Unexpected uncertainty, 269 Unfalsifiable theories, 269
270 Uniqueness of religious groups, 235
236 Unitarian Universalists, 216
217 Uphold social values, 121 “Upward” prayer, 177 US Neo Nazi “skinhead” movement, 160

V Values, 110
111 value-sharing, 171 value-violators, 234 Vicarious control, 158 Violence, 232 Vipashyana, 360

W Waco siege, 426 Wahhabist/Salafist approach to Islam, 194
195 Weighted Core Experience Index (WCEI), 52 WEIRD societies. See Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies (WEIRD societies) Welfare, 146 Well-being, 141, 144, 147, 198
199 connection between different motivations for religious behaviors and, 85
86 Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies (WEIRD societies), 253

Index

Western existentialism, 406
407 Western psychology, 360 WET. See Worldview Enclavement Theory (WET) “Whirling dervishes” of Sufi Islam, 191 White extremist groups, 160 White genocide, 160
161 White victimization, 160
161 Wilderness experience, 178 Word-stem completion task, 388
389 Worldview Enclavement Theory (WET), 411

Worldviews, 436. See also Religious worldviews cultural, 38, 308 defense hypothesis, 31
32 fundamentalist, 15
16 migration, 412 Worship, 14, 218, 314
315 of money, 437 rituals, 192 Worthlessness, 155

479

X XXP. See Experimental existential psychology (XXP)

Y Yalom’s theory, 288

Z Zealous behaviors, 409 Zoroastrianism, gods of, 157