Religion is a powerful influence on social attitudes and behavior. Paradoxically, religion is correlated with both aggressive and prosocial tendencies. We argue that different concepts of God as authoritarian (controlling, commanding, punishing) or benevolent (helping, forgiving, protecting) play distinct, yet crucial, roles in leading people to behave either aggressively or prosocially. We provide new evidence among Catholics and non-Catholic Christians linking concepts of an authoritarian God with aggression and of a benevolent God with volunteerism and the willingness to aid religious outgroups. We also experimentally manipulate concepts of God and show that for non-Catholic Christians, reminders of a benevolent God increased the willingness to forgive while reminders of an authoritarian God increased aggression and decreased forgiveness, the willingness to conserve water, intentions to volunteer, and the willingness to aid religious outgroups. We conclude with a discussion of how God-concepts affect both positive and negative social behaviors.

Many religious individuals use ordinary social cognitions when thinking about God’s characteristics. In the absence of a generally accepted measure, we developed a measure assessing God representations as authoritarian (A-God) and benevolent (B-God) using 4 community samples of Christians. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (Studies 1 and 2), we found support for a 2-factor model. The 2-week test–retest reliability estimates were .78 and .81 (Study 3). In Study 4, we validated our new measure. B-God was associated with a secure attachment style, whereas A-God was not associated with attachment style. B-God was positively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness, whereas A-God was negatively associated with agreeableness. Controlling for personality and other God representation measures, the A-God subscale predicted the value of power, and the B-God subscale predicted the value of benevolence. The usefulness of the measure for future research is discussed.

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Cancer therapy selects for cancer cells resistant to treatment, a process that is fundamentally evolutionary. To what extent, however, is the evolutionary perspective employed in research on therapeutic resistance and relapse? We analyzed 6,228 papers on therapeutic resistance and/or relapse in cancers and found that the use of evolution terms in abstracts has remained at about 1% since the 1980s. However, detailed coding of 22 recent papers revealed a higher proportion of papers using evolutionary methods or evolutionary theory, although this number is still less than 10%. Despite the fact that relapse and therapeutic resistance is essentially an evolutionary process, it appears that this framework has not permeated research. This represents an unrealized opportunity for advances in research on therapeutic resistance.

We propose a psychology of worldview as an integrative framework for the study of culture and religion. We propose six aspects of worldview, each influenced by national and religious cultures: ontology (existential beliefs), epistemology (what can be known and how one should reason), semiotics (language and symbols used to describe the world), axiology (proximate goals, values, and morals), teleology (ultimate goals and the afterlife consequences of action), and praxeology (proscriptions and prescriptions for behavior). More attention to worldview can help remedy a lack of attention to: (i) the mutual influences of these different kinds of cultures (including national and religious), (ii) trans-national religious groups, (iii) non-religious belief systems, and (iv) the psychological predictors of cultural conflict. Worldviews can predict both individual and group behaviors and, further, afford a more nuanced understanding of cultural and religious processes as well as providing a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue.Integrating the Study of Culture and Religion: Toward a Psychology of Worldview Culture, broadly defined, refers to a shared system of knowledge, language, social norms, values, and behaviors. From this perspective, both national groups and religions can be considered forms of cultures (Cohen, 2009). However, psychologists have typically focused on national cultures, leaving religions as under-explored cultures in psychology. Moreover, researchers rarely examine how national and religious cultures mutually influence or transform one another. One explanation for this dearth in the literature is that researchers have not found an integrative framework with which to discuss the interaction of national and religious beliefs, values, and traditions.In this article, we argue that a focus on worldview could provide just such a framework. Because both national and religious cultures espouse particular worldviews, we argue that an integrative psychology of worldview would advance the study of both religion and national culture, in addition to highlighting the interaction of religious and cultural influences at both the individual and group level. In this article, we first discuss the intersections of religion and culture, and the need for an integrative framework. We next discuss the history of the construct of worldview, propose six components of worldviews, and discuss how each of these components may be represented at both the individual and group levels. Finally, because cultural worldviews are associated with language, ecologies, and ideologies, we conclude that an integrative psychology of worldview affords a more nuanced understanding of cultural processes, in general, and provides a common ground for future interdisciplinary dialogues.Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5/3 (2011):

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Intellectual humility (IH) involves an accurate view of one's intellectual strengths and weaknesses as well as the ability to negotiate different ideas in an interpersonally respectful manner. The current study examined how IH and perceptions of IH affect responses to a religious conflict. Participants (N = 200) were undergraduate students who filled out online questionnaires about their experience of a religious conflict. Participants rated (a) their own IH toward the offender's religious beliefs and values, (b) their perception of the offender's IH toward the participants’ religious beliefs and values, and (c) their own general humility. Next, they reported their forgiveness of the offender following a religious conflict. Both victim IH and perceived IH of the offender were positively associated with forgiveness, even when controlling for general humility. We conclude by discussing limitations and areas for future research.

Although recorded NWS is stable in England and W. Australia, rising rates in the USA and Ontario may reflect better recognition and/or increased use of prescribed opiate analgesics and highlight the need for surveillance. The extent to which different prevalence rates by hospital trust reflect variation in occurrence, recognition or recording requires further investigation.