The Psychology Of Religion

Bernard Spilka, Daniel Mcintosh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429975547
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Theory in the psychology of religion is in a state of rapid development, and the present volume demonstrates how various positions in this field may be translated into original foundational work that will in turn encourage exploration in many directions. A number of new contributions are collected with previously published pieces to illustrate the

PART 1

Where We Are and
Where We Should Go

1

An Agenda Item for
Psychology of Religion:
Getting Respect

C. DANIEL BATSON

There are at least three distinct disciplines that lie on the interface between psychology and religion, and each is at times called psychology of religion. First, there is the practice of therapeutic psychology by religious professionals—often labeled pastoral theology or pastoral psychology. One might call this discipline psychology by religion. Second, there is the work of psychological theorists, especially those adopting a psychoanalytic perspective, who make statements about what is or ought to be the essence of human nature. This discipline might be called religion (or theology) by psychology. Third, there is the scientific study of individuals’ religious beliefs and behavior, including the relationship of individual religion to other aspects of psycho-social makeup. This is the discipline I have in mind when I use the term psychology of religion.

When I reflect on the current state of the scientific psychology of religion, I have mixed feelings. I am pleased with the vitality of the discipline; lots of people are doing research in psychology of religion. But I am also troubled by what I see. At the risk of appearing overly negative, I shall restrict my comments here to what troubles me.

I think I can best explain my concerns by referring to conversations I have recently had with other psychologists interested in the scientific study of religion. These bring the rather odd image to mind of a personification of the discipline of psychology of religion looking out of a television screen with sad and sloping eyebrows, saying in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect.”

For over a decade, we have heard this refrain from psychologists of religion. Essays have appeared on the lack of attention given to religion in psychological texts and in major psychological journals. Informally, one hears rueful comments about lack of collegial and institutional encouragement for psychologists interested in doing research on religion. I have no reason to doubt these essays and comments. There is probably truth in psychology of religion’s complaint that it gets no—or little—respect.

But there is more. The Dangerfieldian character is tragically amusing because not only does he not get respect, he does not deserve any. I fear the same is true for the psychology of religion; our discipline does not get respect, at least in part, because it does not deserve it.

Having suggested this less than flattering possibility, let me hasten to add that I identify myself as a psychologist of religion. And many of the shortcomings that limit the respect the discipline receives are as true of my work as that of others. Moreover, let me make a sharp distinction between the subject matter of the psychology of religion and the discipline itself. I think that the subject matter—the role of religion in individuals’ lives—clearly deserves respect. It is not the subject matter but the way we are pursuing its scientific study that is questionable. If our discipline is to get the respect we desire, then I think we need to make significant improvements in at least three general areas—theoretical analysis, research methods, and scientific values.

We Need Better Theories

Since 1969, when James Dittes published his chapter on psychology of religion in The Handbook of Social Psychology, and perhaps even before, there has been frequent talk about the lack of solid theory in psychology of religion. At the time Dittes wrote, and for most of the 1970s, the concern was that we were amassing large mounds of empirical observations without theoretical frameworks to render them useful. It seemed as if we had set out to build a great mansion, but rather than consulting an architect and developing a plan, we had simply called the lumberyard and stone quarry and had truckloads of materials delivered to the site. As the piles of lumber and stone became higher and higher, it became obvious that the mansion was not getting built. A plan was needed to show how the empirical pieces fit together. We heard more and more talk about the need for theory.

In the last five years, several explicit attempts have been made to apply one or another contemporary psychological theory to religion. These attempts are all to the good, but I do not believe our troubles are over. Instead, these attempts underscore the fact that it is not enough to talk about theory; it is not even enough to have theories. We need good theories.

I do not presume to know what makes a theory good. But there are some very general attributes common to good scientific theories: (1) The theory should provide a conceptual structure that renders the phenomenon in question more understandable than before. Simply to describe the phenomenon is not enough; a good theory helps explain it; (2) The theory should be testable—capable of being shown wrong if it is wrong. If a theory is to be scientifically useful, it should be stated with sufficient precision that one can specify empirical observations that would contradict it; (3) The theory should help answer one or more important questions about the phenomenon. It should get us close to the heart of the matter, not just explain superficial aspects. To return to the construction metaphor, a good theory is “load bearing,” not just a plan for some aspect of the facade.

When one applies even these very basic attributes of good scientific theories to recent attempts to introduce theory into psychology of religion, most of our attempts fall woefully short of the mark. Too often, our attempts do not appear to be guided by a desire to develop empirically testable explanatory theories to answer important questions about religion. Instead, our attempts seem to be guided by the conviction that we should have theory. Desperate for a plan, we grab the top one on the architect’s desk—some currently popular theory from some other area of psychology—and begin to order our boards and stone as it specifies. This way, we can indeed begin to make something of our empirical observations. But such a structure is unlikely to have the third attribute mentioned above: It is not likely to address really important questions about individual religion.

My intent is not to criticize the practice of borrowing theories from other areas of psychology per se. It seems both natural and appropriate that we psychologists of religion would look to existing theories when attempting to introduce more sophistication into our discipline. But we must be sure that whatever theoretical analysis we employ illumines some important aspect of religious thought and behavior. There is no virtue in theory for theory’s sake.

Moreover, I hope that we will not only borrow theories from other areas of psychology but that we will also make serious attempts to develop indigenous theories. In some cases it may be possible to find an already existing plan suited to our particular building site and needs, but in other cases it may be useful—even necessary—to develop a new plan. Whatever the source, I hope our theories will become more powerful, testable, and useful. If our discipline is to deserve respect, then we need to have more to say that is worth listening to.

We Need Better Research Methods

Closely linked to the development of better theories is the development of better empirical methods for testing these theories. In research methods, psychology of religion is about thirty years behind other areas of psychology. This is not to say that there isn’t considerable empirical sophistication in psychology of religion; nor is it to say that there have not been important advances. But the sophistication and advances have been primarily in the area of measurement. Our research designs are often simplistic to the point of being simple-minded. By far the most popular research design in the psychology of religion is still the single-session correlational design. We measure religion—or some aspects of religion—and we measure some other psychological or social variables; then we correlate the measures. I have commented elsewhere (Batson 1977; Batson & Ventis 1982) on the weakness of correlational designs of this kind when trying to test explanatory theories. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs, which are usually far superior to correlational designs in explanatory power, remain all too rare in psychology of religion.

There is, however, a specific problem with the way correlational designs are used in psychology of religion that requires further comment. The most frequently used technique for measurement in correlational studies in psychology of religion is the self-report questionnaire. Using a Likert-type scale, or some similar format, research participants are asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement with a series of statements. These may be statements about beliefs, values, or attitudes, or about behavior.

The problem with this type of instrument is that it fails to make a distinction between (1) what the respondent says he or she believes, values, and does; (2) what the respondent honestly believes that he or she believes, values, and does; and (3) what the respondent actually believes, values, and does. In some cases, the difference between these three levels of response is minor. For example, in the absence of any strong situational pressure to the contrary, we may assume that questionnaire responses about interest in religion or belief in an afterlife are reasonably accurate reflections of what the respondents actually feel or believe at the time.

But in other cases, there may be a tremendous difference. If, for example, one is interested in trying to assess the antisocial and prosocial behavior associated with various ways of being religious, then it is not enough to ask people to indicate their agreement or disagreement with questionnaire items such as “I find racial prejudice and discrimination abhorrent” or “It is extremely important to me to help others less fortunate than myself.” There may be wide discrepancies between what people say is true of themselves on such items, what they actually believe is true, and how they behave. All major religions make rather clear prescriptions about the right answers to such questions. Thus, there is reason to expect a positive correlation between devotion to religious teachings and more positive responses to these questions. But what does this relation mean? Possibly nothing more than that people know what their religion teaches about these activities and can respond accordingly, regardless of whether these teachings have had any effect on their private attitudes or, more important, on their behavior.

For this reason I strongly believe the psychology of religion needs to reexamine its use of self-report questionnaires when measuring value-laden psychological and social correlates of religion. We need to use methods that allow us clearly to distinguish between the way people present themselves, the way they honestly believe themselves to be, and the way they actually are. Specifically, if we want to know how individuals who are more or less religious in some way really behave in value-laden areas, then I think we must use behavioral measures. We must look and see how these individuals do behave.

It is, I suspect, far from accidental that the research to date using behavioral measures to assess antisocial and prosocial behavior presents a picture of the relation between these activities and various ways of being religious that is dramatically different from the picture obtained using self-report questionnaires. I do not wish to suggest that self-report questionnaires are of no value, but they certainly cannot be taken at face value.

Nor do I believe it is enough to try to deal with this problem by introducing another questionnaire in order to measure respondents’ tendency to present themselves in a socially desirable light. An increasingly popular practice is to administer the Marlowe-Crowne or some similar social desirability scale (Crowne & Marlowe 1964). If this scale does not correlate significantly with our other measures, we conclude that self-presentation concerns are not operating. Although such a technique may have some value, I believe that it has been greatly overused and overvalued. There are too many different facets of self-presentation and social desirability to assume that a single scale measures them all.

Admittedly, a shift from our almost exclusive reliance on self-report questionnaire measures to a more balanced use of behavioral measures presents practical problems. It is usually much harder to take behavioral measures. Little is needed to administer a battery of questionnaires— copies of the questionnaires, a pencil, and a quiet place. But to take behavioral measures one must either find a situation in which the behavior in question occurs naturally with sufficient frequency, or one must create such a situation. Creating situations, whether in the field or in the laboratory, often requires experience and ingenuity. If in the laboratory, it also requires lab space and access to research participants. Although such resources are available in many psychology departments, much research in psychology of religion is not done in these places. Where it is done, such resources are often not available.

Because of the difficulty of doing so, behavioral measures are rarely taken in psychology of religion. The result has been a tendency to ignore the beam of measurement validity to deal instead with the mote of measurement purity. We devote much attention to improving our questionnaire measures—making them more reliable and internally consistent. This can be perfectly worthwhile, but not if we fail to confront the more fundamental problem of whether we are measuring what we want to measure. If the psychology of religion hopes to get respect, then I think it must address the fundamental problem of measurement validity—and soon.

We Need Better Scientific Values

This third need is, I believe, actually the most pressing. It is also the most difficult to discuss. A look at some recent developments in the scientific psychology of religion leads me to wonder whether the label “science” is really appropriate. The methods used are scientific in that they are empirical, and the writing in the discipline is cast in a scientific mode. But I get the uncomfortable feeling that the goal for a substantial number of contributors to the discipline is to demonstrate the positive value of religion in human life rather than to make an honest inquiry in an attempt to understand the way religion operates in human life.

Religion may well have positive value; if it does, then an open inquiry should reveal that value. But such an inquiry will occur only if we seriously entertain the possibility that religion does not have the positive value we might think it does. As Karl Popper (1959) pointed out long ago, the key to testing a scientific hypothesis is making empirical observations in situations in which the hypothesis can show itself to be wrong. William McGuire (1973) summarized Popper’s principle of falsification nicely:

The scientific psychologist can offer something beside and beyond the armchair thinkers in that we not only generate delusional systems, but we go further and test our delusional systems against objective data as well as for their subjective plausibility…. Even when our theory seems plausible and so ingenious that it deserves to be true, we are conditioned to follow the Cromwellian dictum (better than did the Lord Protector himself) to consider in the bowels of Christ that we may be wrong, (pp. 452–453)

We, like Brother Juniper in Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), need to entertain the possibility that “the discrepancy between faith and the facts is greater than is generally assumed” (p. 164).

In too much current work in psychology of religion the researchers do not seem interested in finding out if their understanding of the role of religion in human life is wrong. Instead, they seem interested in proving their understanding right. Empirical observations are made only in situations that provide clear promise of producing evidence that supports their hypothesis.

Rather than psychology of religion, such work would seem to be more appropriately labeled psychology for religion. It involves a psychological apology for one or another particular view of religion. This work shoul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 Where We Are and Where We Should Go
• Part 2 Why Religion? Functions of Religious Beliefs and Behavior
• Part 3 Social Concerns
• Part 4 Development of Individual Religion
• Part 5 Believing Is Seeing: How Religion Shapes Our Worlds
• Part 6 The Experience of Religion
• References
• About the Book
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index