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Cognitive approaches to religion

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Cognitive dissonance. Religion causes as much cognitive dissonance as it ... When the church is supportive dissonance is minimized (Rodriguez & Ouellette, 2000) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Cognitive approaches to religion


1
Cognitive approaches to religion
2
Cognitive approaches
  • Belief systems are pivotal as they provide people
    with a working model of the world that helps them
    make behavioural choices.
  • Cognitive-psychological research on religion
    remains sporadic and incompletely connected.

3
Key websites
4
Information processing the modal model
  • In the modal model environmental input enters the
    sensory registers and from there is encoded into
    short-term or working memory.
  • Some of this material makes it to long-term
    memory where it is organised according to
    existing knowledge, such as categories, schemas,
    and scripts in a richly interconnected network.
  • What we experience and what we think we know is
    always framed by what we experienced before and
    believed already.

5
Applications to religion research
  • A number of theorists maintain that religious
    cognition is produced exactly the same as other
    kinds of cognition.
  • Boyer (2001) suggested that the human mind
    produces a limited set of recurring concepts
    across religious and cultural groups.
  • Theorists concur that normal cognitive processes
    are sufficient to explain religious belief and
    experience.
  • However, some theorists assert that religious
    cognition is distinctive, raising the possibility
    of a scared agency being partially responsible
    for the patterns of religious cognition observed.

6
Key Books
  • Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained London
    Random House.

7
Perception
  • Recent evidence supports the priming effect of
    religious terms (Wenger, 2004) as well as
    perceptual differences related to religious style
    (Ash et al., 1996).
  • It is possible that people with different
    perceptual styles are drawn to different
    manifestations of religious faith.

8
Memory
  • Since memory content is extensively structured by
    pre-existing patterns, both culturally given and
    personally salient, our experiences tend to
    confirm our expectations, both religious or
    otherwise.
  • McCauley and Lawson (2002) point out that memory
    is essential for ongoing transmission of
    religious practice, particularly in preliterate
    cultures.
  • For example, rituals believed to involve the
    direct intervention of a superhuman agent rely on
    high sensory and emotional stimulation rather
    that rehearsal to be memorable.

9
Knowledge structures and framing
  • Religion has been described as a cluster of
    schemas that are used to organise new information
    and to guide decision making (Ozorak, 1997)
  • Many religions and some religious philosophies
    help believers distance themselves from past
    failures and approach the future with a positive
    outlook (Barnes-Holmes et al., 2001)

10
Judgement, decision making and problem solving
  • Subjective utility theory the notion that
    people choose on the basis of what they want,
    tempered by what they expect is the dominant
    model of decision making.
  • Research on religion and decision making has
    focussed mainly on choices involving
    contraception (Iyer, 2002), and sexual abstinence
    (Paul et al., 2000), or explicitly religious
    choices (Chaves Montgomery, 1996).
  • For those with highly elaborated religious
    schemas, many choices likely reflect religious
    values.

11
Judgement, decision making and problem solving
  • Religious based problems solving research has
    focussed mainly on coping.
  • This research often has a strong cognitive
    component as it often focuses on appraisal.
  • Maltby and Day (2003) found that positive
    religious coping is associated with tendencies to
    appraise problems as challenges rather than as
    threats or losses.

12
Insight and intuition (implicit knowing)
  • Miller and CDe Baca (2001) suggest that insight
    is more than cognitive, involving the opportunity
    for self-transformation through recognition of an
    authentic truth that demands a new way of
    acting.
  • Two theories of insight (McGregor et al., 2001
    Knoblich et al., 2001) concur that self-imposed
    constraints on the definition of the problem or
    the strategies considered for solving it are
    frequently the cause of mental impasse, and that
    insight occurs when these restraints are removed
    or tempered.

13
Insight and intuition (implicit knowing)
  • Religion because of its strong affective
    component, might provoke such impasses as well as
    resolve them.
  • Research ought to examine peoples reported
    experiences of applying their faith to problem
    solving to see whether the patterns of thought
    predicted by theories of insight occur.

14
Counterintuitive ideas
  • A shared quality of religious belief systems is
    that they deal with mysterious or
    counterintuitive phenomena events or entities
    that cannot be accounted for by mundane
    explanations.
  • Boyer (2003) argues that religious belief systems
    generate mysteries, much like supernatural
    thinking.
  • Boyer and Ramble (2001) have shown that
    information with counterintuitive features is
    more easily remembered than similar information
    with no intuitive violations.

15
Counterintuitive ideas
  • Sinnot (2000) argues that the ability to
    assimilate counterintuitive religious ideas is a
    consequence of postformal cognition, a mature
    ability to hold apparently contradictory logics
    in dialogue with one another.
  • Cognitive capacities may explain what it is
    possible for us to believe but they do not tell
    us why particular beliefs emerge from the set of
    possible beliefs.

16
Social Cognition schemas and scripts
  • Social cognition is thought involving social
    interaction and ourselves as social beings.
  • Since religion provides contexts for interaction
    it plays a role in social perception, social
    memory, and relational reasoning.

17
Basic dimensions of religious schemas
  • Moehle (1983) analysed reported religious
    experiences to identify the salient dimensions
    along which they varied.
  • These dimension were level of personal control
    spiritual-temporal and social-individual.
  • Distinctions in prayer types (e.g. Ladd Spilka,
    2002) appear to relate to the social-individual
    and level of personal control dimensions of
    religious experience.

18
Attributions of causality
  • There is evidence that religious attributions are
    favoured for events with far-reaching
    consequences, especially positive ones (Lupfer et
    al., 1996).
  • Both religious orientation and religious
    conservatism affect the way in which individuals
    make attributions (Hovemyr,1998 Kunst et al.,
    2000).
  • When religious attributions are made individuals
    often perceive divine causes working indirectly
    (e.g. through other people) rather than through
    direct action.

19
Relational schemas
  • Relational schemas predict and shape interaction
    with others (Baldwin, 1992).
  • For religious believers in some traditions the
    faith tradition suggests certain kinds of
    relational schemas that should operate between
    the individual and God, and between the
    individual and the community.
  • Ozorak (2003) found that volunteer service
    activated religious relational schemas for
    college students who described themselves as
    religious.

20
Judgement and framing
  • A number of researchers have looked at the role
    of religious contexts and beliefs in framing
    judgements, with mixed results.
  • Turiel and Neff (2000) argue that culture,
    religion, gender, and social position interact in
    complex ways to produce moral judgements, and
    that individuals choices may distinguish between
    the morally best choice and the pragmatically
    best choice, given the social context.

21
Cognitive dissonance
  • Religion causes as much cognitive dissonance as
    it resolves (Exline,2002).
  • Homosexual Christians whose own beliefs were at
    odds with one another had more difficulty
    resolving the dissonance than those who
    attributed the dissonance they felt to external
    causes, such as other peoples prejudices
    (Rodriguez Ouellette, 2000).
  • When the church is supportive dissonance is
    minimized (Rodriguez Ouellette, 2000).

22
Social perception social identity
  • Level of commitment to a particular reference
    group affects how much an individual will be
    influenced by the norms of that group.
  • Those whose religion is highly salient to them
    show different patterns of values than those
    without a strong religious identity (Lau, 1989)
    and adhere more to religious group norms of
    behaviour and cognition (Wimberly, 1989).

23
Social identity
  • Many Americans describe their belief as a logical
    process (Kenworthy, 2003), perhaps because this
    fits the preferred cultural script for attitude
    formation.
  • Relationships appear to be central to the
    development of religious identity (Jacobs, 2000).
  • Popora (1996) found that religiously oriented
    people are more likely to have personal heroes
    whom they try to emulate.

24
Self-perception
  • A religious identity can have strong effects on
    self-perception.
  • For African Americans religion seems to buffer
    self-esteem (Ellison,1993).
  • The reverse can be true for gay and lesbian
    Christians (Mahaffy, 1996).
  • Intrinsic religiosity has predicted a tendency to
    see oneself as more virtuous than others.

25
Judgements of others
  • Mixed relationship between religion and prejudice
    is the result of separable factors, including
    right wing authoritarianism and Christian
    orthodoxy (Laythe et al., 2002).
  • We tend to like those who are like us and project
    additional good traits onto those weve
    identified with.
  • Hewstone et al. (2002) described several
    theoretical models of biases in social perception
    that help to explain how religion might affect
    the perception of others.

26
Group identity effects
  • Even in the so-called melting pot of the U.S.
    cultural groups like the Amish are identified
    primarily by religion.
  • Group identities interact in multifarious ways
    and must be kept in view when studying religion.
  • Gender is the group variable most widely used in
    the study of religion.

27
Key website
  • Explaining the Amish Way of Life - VOA Story
  • http//www.youtube.com/watch?vPAgSCTdnrhkfeature
    related

28
Language social responses to language
  • Ethnic and religious minorities have strong
    responses to the use of the home language, rather
    than the majority tongue.
  • Changing from traditional masculine language for
    God and humanity to more inclusive terminology
    remains a sticking point in many U.S. churches
    (Greene Rubin, 1991).

29
Discourse and narrative
  • The same story seems to have different meanings
    for Christians and Jews (Goldberg, 1991).
  • Discourse analysis, with its attention to levels
    of language illuminates such debates as the
    ordaining of women.
  • Christian arguments about literal
    interpretations of scripture considering most
    cannot read the original biblical languages are
    fundamentally about discourse.

30
Narrative as a vehicle for transformation
  • The religious individual can be changed by the
    process of assenting to a new narrative often
    occurs in Christian conversions (Stromberg,
    1993).
  • Some people choose a new narrative or a new
    interpretation of an older narrative because they
    want to change (Miller CDe Baca, 2001).

31
Suggestions for further research the truth
question
  • The truth question must remain open (Argyle,
    2002), in part because psychological inquiries
    are about the human end of the equation not
    about our perceptions
  • Psychology ought to welcome data from many levels
    of analysis without devaluing the different
    levels or religious phenomena

32
Measures and method narrative analysis
  • Many studies of religion use some form of
    narrative data but most do not make use of the
    sophisticated methods now available.
  • Narrative analysis seems particularly appropriate
    for the longitudinal studies that are needed to
    confirm direction of effects.

33
Implicit measures
  • Implicit measures of cognitive function would be
    appropriate for the study of religion and would
    fit well with a narrative research agenda.

34
Applications health
  • Linkages between religion and health have been
    explored in mainstream psychological journals
    (e.g. George et al., 2002 Powell et al., 2003).
  • Dull and Skokan (1995) have suggested a cognitive
    model of these linkages.

35
Psychology well-being
  • Much research confirms connections between
    religion and well-being (e.g. Fabricatore et al.,
    2004 Taylor, 2001).
  • Clinical literature suggests that religion can be
    used to reinvent the self in ways that improve
    subjective quality of life (Magee, 2001).
  • Such research would benefit from a cognitive
    model.

36
Politics
  • The political events of the last few years have
    lent the topic of politics and religion a new
    urgency (e.g., Brewer et al., 2003 Duriez et
    al., 2002).
  • Researchers are beginning to ask if religion can
    encourage peace as well war and violence.
  • Religion needs to be factored into broader
    cognitive theories of political participation
    (e.g., Lavine, 2002) and social cognitive
    mechanisms need to be identified more clearly in
    studies of war and peace making (e.g., Gopin,
    2002).
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