Previous work shows that children view group membership and psychological traits in essentialist terms, perceiving them to be both biologically determined and stable across time. To what extent might individuals view mental states such as beliefs similarly? Given that beliefs are often based on experience and can change across time, one hypothesis is that beliefs on the whole do not elicit esse...

Man is not only an animal that eats, dresses, and lives, but also with religious knowledge. Only man, unlike animals, has discovered a superhuman power to protect himself from threatening evil obtain what he desires. How the ancient people came think about religion unending debate among anthropologists realists. He mentions scholars like "Periluite" others "Thurkiyam" fear appeared in reason fo...

A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, beliefs and behaviors. The bulk of this research, however, draws from coded qualitative ethnographies rather than from standardized methods specifically designed to measure religious beliefs and behaviors. Psychological data sets that examine religious thought and behavior in controlled conditions t...

In a recent article entitled, Requests "for inappropriate" treatment based on religious beliefs, Orr and Genesen claim that futile treatment should be provided to patients who request it if their request is based on a religious belief. I claim that this implies that we should also accede to requests for harmful or cost-ineffective treatments based on religious beliefs. This special treatment of...

This study explored how religious fundamentalism related to irrational beliefs and primitive defense mechanisms. We also explored how the personality factors of openness to experience and neuroticism moderated these relations. Participants (N = 120) were recruited in an urban area from a Northeastern university, a psychotherapy center, and through Internet advertising. The results demonstrated ...