Social psychological researchers have found that most conceptual structures can be primed, i.e. activated unobtrusively and exert an influence on subsequent behavior without the participant’s awareness of this influence. I investigated whether exposing people to words related to a punishing God or a forgiving Christian could influence subsequent moral judgment. Participants completed a ’scrambl...

Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about ‘animal’ or ‘artifact’ or ‘person’) rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis th...

Results from several national studies in the United States suggests that: (1) religious beliefs and practices are highly prevalent; (2) spirituality and religion are statistically and clinically relevant to mental health and symptoms; and (3) many patients have a preference for spiritually integrated care. However, existing protocols that assess for salient religious themes in psychiatric setti...

The neuropsychology of religious activity in normal and selected clinical populations is reviewed. Religious activity includes beliefs, experiences, and practice. Neuropsychological and functional imaging findings, many of which have derived from studies of experienced meditators, point to a ventral cortical axis for religious behavior, involving primarily the ventromedial temporal and frontal ...

Although considerable evidence has linked religious beliefs to mental health among Protestant Christians, previous theory and research has emphasized that practices play a more important role than beliefs for Jews. Beliefs about God’s benevolence may be salient for Orthodox Jews, however, as such beliefs are central to traditional Jewish doctrine. Two studies were conducted to compare the exten...

INTRODUCTION A growing research literature associates various religious factors with positive mental and physical health, and even suggests that aspects of religious involvement may reduce mortality risk (for reviews, see Ellison, 1994; Koenig, 1994; Levin, 1994). Although there is wealth of evidence that religious institutions continue to play important social and political roles in the Africa...

The present research proposes that individuals who are socially excluded can turn to religion to cope with the experience. Empirical studies conducted to test this hypothesis consistently found that socially excluded persons reported (a) significantly higher levels of religious affiliation (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and (b) stronger intentions to engage in religious behaviors (Study 2) than comparab...

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...

Do non-religious adults - despite their explicit disavowal of religious beliefs - have a tacit tendency to view nature as purposefully created by some being? This question was explored in three online studies using a speeded judgment procedure, which assessed disbelievers in two different Western cultures (United States and Finland). Despite strong performance on control trials, across all thre...

Religious and spiritual factors are increasingly being examined in psychiatric research. Religious beliefs and practices have long been linked to hysteria, neurosis, and psychotic delusions. However, recent studies have identified another side of religion that may serve as a psychological and social resource for coping with stress. After defining the terms religion and spirituality, this paper ...