It may seem odd to bring up the topic of religious belief in connection with sociology in any way other than to examine examples of specific norms advocated by particular religious traditions. But that is exactly what I intend to do here. My title should be taken in the broadest possible sense. It means to raise the question of how, in general, religious beliefs impact our concepts of social no...

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...

Behavioral neurologists have long been interested in changes in religiosity following circumscribed brain lesions. Advances in neuroimaging and cognitive experimental techniques have been added to these classical lesion-correlational approaches in attempt to understand changes in religiosity due to brain damage. In this paper we assess processing dynamics of religious cognition in patients with...

Pre-existing questionnaire data, from Oregon Research Institute’s (ORI) SMOFAM project, from 274 participants for the 1996-1997-assessment year (T-10), were examined for relationships between relationship discord, depression, and religiosity. Religiosity was defined as religious belief and religious activity. For the purpose of this study, altruism and social support were also associated with r...

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....