Symbols represent information we have previously learned or experienced, but they can also serve to encourage thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with this knowledge/experience in order to maintain social cohesion (Guthrie, 1996). Pictures (e.g., American Red Cross image) representing moral rules (e.g., ‘save lives’) have been shown to influence moral decisions (Broeders, van den Box, Mu...

Patient-centered care is widely supported by physicians, but this wide-spread support potentially obscures the social patterning of clinical interactions. We know that patients often want religious/spiritual conversations in the context of medical care but the provision is infrequent. As there is regional variance in religiosity, a gap in the literature exists regarding whether patient populati...

In four large, nationally representative surveys (N = 11.2 million), American adolescents and emerging adults in the 2010s (Millennials) were significantly less religious than previous generations (Boomers, Generation X) at the same age. The data are from the Monitoring the Future studies of 12th graders (1976-2013), 8th and 10th graders (1991-2013), and the American Freshman survey of entering...

Legislatures and courts are debating whether businesses can deny services to same-sex couples for religious reasons. Yet, little is known about public views on this issue. In a national survey experiment, Americans (n = 2035) responded to an experimental vignette describing a gay or interracial couple refused service. Vignettes varied the reason for refusal (religion/nonreligious) and by busine...

Background – last sentence; I recommend replacing the words “role of.....in acceptance or refusal of vaccination” by “...views/attitudes and practices...of...related to vaccination...” In line with the change of the title the sentence was changed into ” role in promoting acceptance...” Since the attitudes of congregation members that appointed the religious leaders included in the study, I sugg...

Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it....

In prior research with primarily heterosexual religious and spiritual individuals, positive and negative forms of religious coping have been posited to moderate the links between minority stressors and psychological outcomes (Kim, Kendall, & Webb, 2015; Szymanski & Obiri, 2011). With a sample of 143 sexual minority people, the present study extended these hypotheses by examining the moderating ...

Background and Objectives: The religious needs of hospitalized patients are reportedly not appropriately met. The purpose of this study was to explain the experiences of nurses about the barriers to providing religious care for hospitalized patients. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted on 21 nurses working in a hospital affiliated with Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran, i...

A large body of empirical studies shows that religion often serves as a factor promoting positive, healthy outcomes in the lives of American adolescents. This research note reports findings of one test of a “network closure” explanation of these religious effects. It uses the national Survey of Parents and Youth (1998–1999) data to examine the relationship between religious participation and fi...

BACKGROUND Although religions is important to many people with cancer, few studies have explored the relationship between religious coping and well-being in a prospective manner, using validated measures, while controlling for important covariates. METHODS One hundred ninety-eight women with stage I or II and 86 women with stage IV stage breast cancer were recruited. Standardized assessment i...