Social psychologists have often followed other scientists in treating religiosity primarily as a set of beliefs held by individuals. But, beliefs are only one facet of this complex and multidimensional construct. The authors argue that social psychology can best contribute to scholarship on religion by being relentlessly social. They begin with a social-functionalist approach in which beliefs, ...

Religious beliefs play an important role in the study of religious practices and behaviour. Wulff (1997) suggested that there are four basic attitudes towards religion: Literal Affirmation, Literal Disaffirmation, Reductive Interpretation and Restorative Interpretation. Building on this work, Duriez, Soenans and Hutsebaut (2005) constructed the Post-Critical Belief Scale (PCBS). In their work, ...

This study examined beliefs about the causes and determinants of health, illness, and recovery in an opportunistic sample from Malaysia. In all, 371 women and 350 men completed the Health and Illness Scale, a 124-item scale that examined beliefs about current and future health, and beliefs about the causes of illness and recovery. Each of the four subscales of the Health Illness Scale were fact...

There abound antagonisms in the health care practice and the religious beliefs of people from different societies. When health care practices cross the line of their beliefs, the people will rise to the occasion and oppose the practices. Religion and science are two opposing doctrines. What scientists believe sometimes collide with what different religious contexts uphold. An example where ther...

The present study briefly describes and critiques the kinds of variables used to measure religion in research on mental health and analyzes data from the Handbook of Religion and Health to assess what variables are most commonly used to do so. The analysis found that organizational religion and subjective religiosity were the most widely used measures in research on psychological well-being, de...