A Social Cognition Perspective of the Psychology of Religion: “Why God Thinks Like You"
Ebook
An exploration of how psychological mechanisms produce intuitions, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that are misattributed as being unique outcomes of religious or spiritual influences. Written from a social psychology perspective, this book proposes that religious and spiritual content represent one possible interpretation of the output of processes that also produce and govern nonreligious content.
In looking at why people believe in God, and why belief in God is often linked with a range of positive outcomes such as prosociality, morality, health, and happiness, the author uses a critical lens that challenges past theories of religion's functions and adds new perspectives into a discipline that is often limited by an exclusive focus on evolutionary theory.
This book features several cross-cutting themes-including “dual process” theory and an exploration of how various social cognition mechanisms and biases can channel or shape religious content-and provides a continuous through-line linking the underlying building blocks of thought, as studied in the cognitive sciences of religion (CSR) to specific religious and spiritual concepts using a social cognition lens.
An account of how psychological mechanisms produce phenomena such as intuitions, beliefs, and experiences that are misattributed as being unique outcomes of religious or spiritual influences, written from the perspective of social psychology and social cognition.
Draws a through-line from the cognitive sciences of religion to specific religious and spiritual phenomena using the lens of social cognition
Explains how many features that have previously been attributed as unique outcomes of religion and spirituality actually constitute misattributions of nonreligious, secular phenomena
Covers both the processes that lead people to hold religious beliefs (religious belief as a dependent variable), and the processes that lead religious people to behave in particular ways (religious belief as an independent variable).
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Psychology of Religious Belief from a Social Cognition Perspective.
Part I: Mechanisms of Social Cognition and Religious Manifestations
1. Cognition, Dual Process Models, and Introspective Opacity.
2. Social Cognition and Attribution theory
3. Functional and Compensatory Mechanisms of Religion
4. Influence of the Social and Group Context.
Part II: Misattribution of the Effects of Religion
5. Exceptional Religious and Spiritual Experiences
6. Mental Health
7. Morality and Prosociality
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This is essential reading for any person who wishes to claim that religious or spiritual phenomena are other than misattributions of purely psychological mechanisms uncovered by psychological science. For persons of faith, religious and spiritual phenomena remain embedded in world views that Luke Galen has persuasively argued are mirrors of deception. This remarkable book cannot be ignored. For those who study people of faith or who are themselves people of faith, the gauntlet has been clearly thrown.
- Title: A Social Cognition Perspective of the Psychology of Religion: “Why God Thinks Like You"
- Author: Luke Galen
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350293922, 9781350293908, 1350293903, 135029392X
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350293922
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T08:20:06Z
Luke Galen is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Grand Valley State University, USA.