those at another (e.g., cognitive), the results are replicated at two levels and are therefore more robust. The more this process is repeated, the stronger the findings. Multilevel means that research in the specialized areas within the psychology of religion can be related to each other and brought together around a common theory. Interdisciplinary means cross- fertilization of research in the psychology of religion with that of allied fields such as reli- gious studies, anthropology, neuroscience, biology, sociology, and so forth.
In the ideal world, the integration of knowledge from such varied fields fits within an overarching evolutionary meta- theory. This is needed because evolutionary principles constitute the only general framework that has been capable of subsuming and synthesizing knowledge from the other sciences under one idea, enabling its predictions to be tested and yielding data con- sistent with that. It is the only panhuman framework we’ve got that works.
The MIP describes what has barely begun to be done in the field’s recent past; it is a key concept to guide our future thinking and research.
picture about how humans construct meaning and make connections as they strive for something other than themselves.
Components of Meaning Systems
A short list of elements that comprise a meaning system includes beliefs and attitudes, values, goals and action tendencies, overall purpose, iden- tity and self- definition, and ultimate concern(s). These elements interact in constant mutual feedback and assessment loops in response to incoming information. This incoming information is appraised and evaluated by all components of the meaning system, especially ultimate concern(s). These processes are occurring whether conscious or not. The response can be no change at all, or total transformation of all aspects of the meaning system, or minor or major adjustments in between— at behavioral, cognitive, and/
or emotional levels. The more that changes, the greater the transformation.
Beliefs and Attitudes
Beliefs come in various configurations. Some are global or over- arching in that they cover many other more specific beliefs (Park, 2010, 2013; Park &
Folkman, 1997). For example, if you accept the global belief that there is an ultimate purpose for suffering, you may also make an attribution that fits nicely under that umbrella about why you must endure a particular disease or trauma: “The Lord has a purpose for this suffering.” Notice that the specific purpose is subsumed under the more encompassing belief within the meaning system. There are also contingent beliefs of the form
“If I pray, then God will cure my child of cancer” or “If I pray, my test grade will be an A.”6 Beliefs can be about ourselves and how we fit into the world, for example, “I am smart,” “I am a good person,” and so on. One’s beliefs may define what one sees as sacred and how it relates to humans, the world, and whatever is beyond world, or whether “God is on our side”
versus there being no god to be on any side. The process of believing has infinite variations.
Attitudes contain elements of thought, feeling, and action tendencies toward the attitude object. They are especially important as part of the social cognitive processes through which people evaluate things, ideas, and new information, and thus are intimately linked to religion and spiritual- ity. For example, if you have a positive attitude toward your church, you possess favorable information about it, like it, and your behavior reflects its teachings. The cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of an attitude are assumed to need to be congruent with each other, and an inter- nally consistent faith would seem to involve all three elements. Indeed, a
6 Recall my account of my students doing this in Chapter 1.
person can easily feel stress or guilt from doing something contrary to core beliefs. Observing such inconsistency in religious leaders is one of the main reasons why some people leave the religious organization in which they were raised (Hunsberger & Altemeyer, 2006).
Beliefs and attitudes are intimately connected. The relationship is bidi- rectional, so that accepting a belief can lead to attitudes consistent with it and vice versa (Paloutzian, 2005). For example, people who believe that the Bible, Torah, or Qur’an is the Word of God are more likely to have a positive attitude toward Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, respectively.
Exemplifying the opposite direction of the relationship, converts to new religious movements (NRMs) or a traditional religion may develop posi- tive attitudes toward the group and then accept their beliefs (Richardson, 1985, 1995). The link between beliefs and attitudes makes them important to how meaning systems evaluate new information, especially when it is discrepant from beliefs and attitudes already in place.
Values
Values are relative; some things have more, some less. They are guides for setting priorities and making choices. People use values to determine worth, importance, correctness, or moral rightness (Schwartz, 2012). Religions and spiritualities teach values of many kinds and can be potent sources of values for individuals and cultures (Baumeister, 1991). Further, some- times the values taught by one religion are in direct conflict with those of another, for example, when religion A values equal rights for women and for men while religion B values rights for women subordinate to those for men. Thus, religions often supply a framework for evaluating what is right or wrong, and good or bad, but they can stipulate opposite values while doing so.
Goals and Action Tendencies
Goals are things or states that people work toward achieving, whether near or distant in time, and can range from narrow and specific to global and abstract. Global goals can be thought of as overall purposes. A narrower category of goals can be called strivings, which are typically ongoing inter- mediate goals that one characteristically tries to reach or maintain. For example, a personal striving might be to “seek out new ways of bettering my spiritual growth, attitudes, behavior” (Emmons, 1999).
Goals are the components of meaning systems that imply action ten- dencies. When one thinks of religion, prescribed behaviors usually come to mind, such as worship behavior, ritual, singing, praying, and/or sacrificing something for others (Spilka, 2005). Such behaviors are performed not as
ends in themselves, for their own sake, but because they reflect, convey, or help foster something else. For example, observation of one’s own behavior is important in the evaluative processes of meaning systems as a check on whether one’s acts are consistent with one’s values and/or beliefs.
Overall Purpose
A meaning system also includes one’s overall purpose. This is whatever someone strives toward above all else, somewhat like a super-goal, and thus usually (but not necessarily) stated as an abstraction that implies many more specific tangible goals. It reflects a person’s ultimate values, whether they are implicit and unstated or explicit and elaborated. Overall purpose is also a function of, but also partly determines, the other components of meaning systems summarized above. Examples of statements of overall purpose are many but include such things as “love with no exceptions,”
“always do God’s will,” and “strive for what is good regardless of others’
opinions.”
Identity and Self‑Definition
Identity and self- definition are like two sides of the same coin. Together they enable you to answer the question “Who am I?” For example, if you define yourself by saying “I am a good Catholic,” then Catholicism is a part of your identity; you differentiate yourself from all other options by declar- ing that you belong to that group, believe its teachings, and participate in its rituals. Your definition of self takes this particular shape in accord with the processes underpinning uncertainty– identity theory, described in Chapter 3. Some research has explored the degree to which the self is stable versus changeable; notions of the unification of a divided self, or the self formerly lost but now found, have been popularized. Research on self- functioning, self- definition, self- control, self- esteem, and unity of the self makes up part of Chapter 7 on conversion.
Selves feel. Having a sense of meaning in life generally connotes positive feelings because one’s attention and activities are occupied with fulfilling purposes seen as “higher” or of greater value (Paloutzian, 1981; Markman, Proulx, & Lindberg, 2013). Because religion and spirituality can be deeply felt, the evaluative process whereby new information is assessed and then retained or rejected can be heavily feeling- laden. And because humans are not as rational as our pure social cognitive models would lead us to think, new information and feelings can collide. Thus, when opposing meanings impose themselves and simultaneously lay claim to the same sense of self, great feelings of discomfort can erupt to which the person must respond, whether behaviorally, verbally, or by appeal to a higher power.
Ultimate Concerns
The ultimate concern(s) is the element of a meaning system that supersedes the rest. All other elements are underneath its umbrella, so to speak. This may be God, some other Higher Power, a country, an ideology, one’s chil- dren, one’s circumstance after death, or a principle held as inviolable. It is the end of the line, so to speak, in the pecking order of how far into one’s thinking, evaluating, and feeling one can take information that has entered the system. All such information needs to be appraised by the combined elements in the meaning system, but this appraisal process has to check the possible results with the locus of ultimate concern for complete resolution to be attained. Thus ultimate concerns are the most global component of meaning systems; they have the most overarching reach (Emmons, 1999;
Park & Folkman, 1997) and are difficult to change (Chapter 7).
Example: Believing as Meaning Made
Applying knowledge of meaning systems to the five dimensions of reli- giousness explained in Chapter 1 affords a number of insights. For the sake of illustration, let us focus on a meaning systems analysis of only the belief dimension. However, the same logic of meaning systems applies to each dimension singly as well as the whole set in combination.
Seitz and Angel (2014) provide thoughtful ways to consider some of the constructs within a meaning system. For example, they distinguish between static and active use of a belief, trying to get at the intersection of emotional and cognitive components of beliefs, whether religious or secular. They do not focus on whether belief is religious, spiritual, or secu- lar, but on the processes of believing as such— processes involved in what they term creditions, a concept analogous to emotions (see Angel, Oviedo, Paloutzian, Runihov, & Seitz, 2017, for a full elaboration). Paloutzian and Park (2014) recast the notion of the process of believing within a meaning systems framework.
They explain that believing is a process by which our perceptual–
cognitive– emotive systems construct an idea out of bits and pieces of infor- mation such that the whole is sufficient to convince our self of its validity. A
“belief” is what exists in the human mind once meaning- making processes have produced something that is relatively stable, identifiable, and accept- able. Beliefs are meanings made. But they are neither fixed nor static. Like memories, they are in flux and can effect change elsewhere in the system or be changed by other processes in the system. Because of this, psychological understanding is enhanced if we focus on the processes of believing— not on “belief” as if it were fixed or firmly set— because they are in flux, like memories, due to the very processes that make them what they are. Thus,
like memories, they are made and remade in the brain (Cabeza & Nyberg, 2000; Daniels, 1986).
The process of believing contains at least three facets, each of which relates to the others as well as to the other elements within the dynamics of the meaning system. They are:
1. Constructing a belief— meaning made initially.
2. Holding and reconstructing belief— continuity, meaning main- tained (sustained via all activity in the dynamic appraisal and feed- back loops among the meaning system elements).
3. Changing a belief— meaning modified (changed or dropped via all the dynamics in the appraisal and feedback loops).
The processes involved in believing that are set in motion function to construct, sustain, or change belief. The principles that govern these pro- cesses are based on cognitive processes related to stress and coping derived from clinical psychology as well as processes involved in attitude formation and change derived from social psychology. They have a large and solid research base.7
TAKE- HOME MESSAGES h
h The psychological study of religion was part of the beginning of psychology. It went out of favor as the field established itself as a science. But the fundamental questions and issues faced at the beginning remained, and are still researched today.
h
h James’s descriptions of intense religious or spiritual experiences and his analyses of them reflect an idiographic approach that demonstrates qualitative methodology. Starbuck’s method of calculating general trends across many subjects reflects a nomothetic approach and is an instance of quantitative methodology. The two methods are complementary.
h
h The psychology of religion can be rightly understood as being at the center of the modern science– religion dialogue, as all issues eventually arrive at the question of what it all means to and about human beings.
h
h The psychology of religion is orthogonal to religion in general and to any particular religion. Logic tells us that psychological science cannot
7 Space constraints preclude elaborating on this point, but ample documentation is evi- dent upon examination of graduate or undergraduate texts in coping and social psy- chology. Portions of this section were adapted from Paloutzian and Park (2014).
prove any religion true or false, but it can enable us to understand the psychological processes that mediate religiousness and spirituality. The rationale for this is rooted in the nature of scientific research, which is characterized by clarity about the kinds of questions that it can and cannot answer.
h
h The model of RMS is a fruitful way to conceptualize phenomena and research on the psychological processes in religiousness and spirituality.
Incoming information is received, processed through the interactive meaning system components (attitudes and beliefs, values, goals, larger purposes, self and identity, and locus of ultimate concern), appraised and compared with the global aspect of the meaning system, and either retained unchanged or modified. This process, which is not necessarily conscious, continues throughout life.
h
h The process of believing is what happens as our perceptual, cognitive, and emotional systems integrate bits and pieces of information and construct them into a coherent idea or whole that takes an identifiable shape in our minds, and that carries sufficient weight for our self to claim acceptance of it as valid; beliefs are meanings made.
FURTHER RE ADING
Angel, H.-F., Oviedo, L., Paloutzian, R. F., Runihov, A. L. C., & Seitz, R. J. (Eds.).
(2017). Process of believing: The acquisition, maintenance, and change in creditions. New York: Springer.
James, W. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1902)
Park, C. L. (2013). Religion and meaning. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 357–
379). New York: Guilford Press.
Park, C. L., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2005). One step toward integration and an expan- sive future. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychol- ogy of religion and spirituality (pp. 550–562). New York: Guilford Press.
Park, C. L., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2013). Directions for the future of the psychology of religion and spirituality: Research advances in methodology and meaning systems. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed., pp. 651–665). New York: Guilford Press.
Silberman, I. (Ed.). (2005). Religion as a meaning system [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 61(4).
75
The Intellectual Backdrop
Theories of Function: What Does Religion Do Psychologically?
Theories of Cognitive Substrates Theories of the “Groupness” of Religions
Theories of Origin
Assessment and Comment: When Meanings Differ Take-Home Messages
Further Reading
N
ear the end of Chapter 1 you read through a list of seven levels of analysis at which psychologists can look for roots and causes of reli- giousness and spirituality. The levels, which range from micro (e.g., brain processes) to macro (e.g., social and cultural influences), can be thought of as locations within the psychological system through which one or more processes that mediate religiousness may be identified. Thus, one can try to explain religiousness by looking for those neural, emotional, social, cultural, developmental, experiential, and individual processes that are involved.It would help, therefore, to know what the psychological theories pitched at these levels have to say about how religiousness and spiritual- ity work. So equipped, we would be better able to examine the research on religious development, experiences deemed religious, the processes of
Psychological theories
Look at Religion
believing and rejecting, the relationships between religions and mental and physical health, religiously motivated prosocial and antisocial behav- ior, and similar topics of individual and societal importance. These topics comprise Part II (Chapters 5–11), the substantive core of this book. More- over, employing the theories equips you to gain an in-depth understanding and think more critically as you read about religion and spirituality in scholarship from other disciplines such as history or literature, or from the popular media.
There is no one psychological theory that covers all the ground. There is instead an array of theories, each of which is stated in terms of “religion”
but is actually about one of a set of interactive processes. Some theories are about the psychological functions religions or spirituality aim to meet.
Others are about the neural or cognitive substrates involved. Others put the accent on the “groupness” aspect of religions. Still others focus on the origins of religiousness millennia ago. Can (or should) these theories be integrated into a coherent whole? In order to explore and compare them, this chapter will follow these steps:
1. Briefly explain the intellectual backdrop of overarching evolution- arily rooted principles that ought to guide good theorizing— about religiousness or any other behavior. This intellectual backdrop can be considered the default notion, or baseline, upon which the sub- sequent theoretical ideas may or may not stand the tests of time and evidence.
2. Summarize five theories of the psychological functions served by religiousness. These address questions about what being religious does for or to someone.
3. Present one neurological and three cognitive process models of reli- giousness. These try to account for basic information processing substrates that enable religious inputs to be received and religiously related outputs to be shaped and manifested.
4. Describe three approaches whose accent is on the “groupness”
aspect of religions. These views highlight why it is that religions are almost always group phenomena.
5. Summarize two views of the origin of religions in the distant past.
These views recognize the powerful role that religiousness can play in modern human lives and public affairs, but the question they are aimed at answering is why this came to be, as humans were initially becoming humans.
6. Finally, let us step back and examine the set of ideas above as a whole. The focus of some of the theoretical ideas about religious- ness seems illuminating, while others have gaps in knowledge of various sizes that need more intellectual work.