Cultural Psychology of Religion

Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives

“…Their content then can be phrased verbally, rehearsed internally, and communicated as narratives to others ( Figure 2 ). It is a specific human capability that narratives underlying conceptual thinking and believing cannot only be transmitted via speech but can also be written down and transferred to other people as scripts, letters, or books (Belzen, 2010a , b ). Such documents can be read, reflected on, and re-read, allowing for new associations and novel creative thoughts.…”

“…Such narratives are spoken or written accounts of events that are connected and loaded with positive emotions. Often, such narratives can function as the basis for the intuitive generation of conceptual beliefs about a personal self, a family, a social group, and a community, as well as place, time, morals, justice, and many other aspects of social life (Belzen, 2010a , b ; Zaidel, 2019 ). From an evolutionary perspective, it is interesting that ritual activities and play behavior have a number of features in common and are widespread in non-human animals (Mori, 2020 ).…”

Religious factors in moral decision-making: Towards an integrated, socio-cultural, developmental, model

“…Socio-cultural approaches have a longstanding place in the psychology of religion, but, with the exception of some biographical studies, have, until recently, paid little attention to the question of religious development, or the place of religious elements in psychological development more globally, as recent, thorough, reviews of the literature have shown (Belzen, 2009;Day, 2010c;Scardigno & Minimi, in press;Shepherd, forthcoming).…”

“…As we have elsewhere observed, critiques of the cognitive-developmental paradigm in the psychology of religious and spiritual development, and in near domains, have been numerous, concerned with both theory and method, have in some cases questioned the pertinence of results from related empirical research, and claimed the need for alternative, or at least, complementary, quasi-independent, approaches. Criticisms aimed at Goldman and allied researchers, have largely claimed a lack of sensitivity to context, especially religious context and the relative intensity of exposure to religious content, (Batson, Schoenrade and Ventis, 1993;Hoge & Petrillo, 1978;Pierce & Cox, 1995;Spilka et al, 2003), and their concentration on the cognitive development of children and adolescents, to the exclusion of adults, as well as for the lack of longitudinal studies, by researchers who have insisted on the increasing significance of context in relationship to variables of stage and structure across developmental domains, including religious and spiritual development, across the life span, particularly in the adult years (Armstrong & Crowther, 2002;Belzen, 2009;Day, 2008a, in press, a, b;Day & Youngman, 2003;Dillon & Wink, 2002;Mattis et al, 2001;Popp-Baier, 1997;Ray & McFadden, 2001;Roukema-Koning, 2005;Wheeler, Ampadu, & Wangari, 2002;Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999).…”

“…If we acknowledge that empirical and philosophical critiques lead us in need of alternative conceptions of human functioning, where are we to turn, and what would be most characteristic of a worthy model, complementary or alternative to cognitivedevelopmental ones? Here we would return to the work of Belzen (2009), Scardigno & Mininni (in press), and Shepherd (forthcoming) whose recent reviews of the literature on socio-cultural approaches to psychology, and to the psychology of faith, religious, and spiritual development emphasize the importance of narrative psychology, both in terms of our ways of conceiving human experience, and for models of research into its meanings and consequences. Gergen (1994, p. 224) defines narratives as "forms of intelligibility that furnish accounts of events across time" and observes, "Individual actions…gain their significance from the way in which they are embedded within the narrative", asserting that a well-formed, intelligible, narrative meets the following criteria; an established, valued, endpoint; events recounted serve the endpoint and are relevant to it; events are temporally ordered; characters have a continuous and coherent identity across time; events are causally linked and serve as an explanation for the outcome; a narrative has a beginning and an end (Gergen, 1994, p. 224).…”