Exploring the Existential Function of Religion and Supernatural Agent Beliefs Among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics

Vail, Kenneth E.; Arndt, Jamie; Abdollahi, Abdolhossein

doi:10.1177/0146167212449361

Cited by 108 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The first is the inadequacy of religion as am eans to managedeath for the nonreligious. This finding is supported by prior research (Bakker and Paris 2013;Vail III et al 2012). Religious answers maybring comfort to religious people, but manyn onreligious individuals draw little from these explanations.…”

Section: The Inadequacy Of At Heistic Death Discoursesupporting

confidence: 74%

Organized Secularism in the United States

Cragun¹,

Fazzino²,

Manning³

2017

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LoriB eaman'sk eynote address on church-stateb attles in Quebec, to CatherineC aldwell-Harris'st alk on low levels of religiosity among colleges tudentsi nT urkey, and from PennyE dgell'sl ook at anti-atheist sentiment in the United States, to Kevin Lenehan'sanalysis of secularizationinAustralia -various aspects of nonreligion and secularityw eree xplored, both theoreticallya nd empirically, and from am ultiplicity of disciplinary lenses.But one topic at the conference definitelys tood out: collective,o rganized nonreligion and secularism. Amidst the historicaln arratives, political analyses, sociological data, psychological models, and meta typologizing,t herew as a clear prominence of papers at the conferencet hat looked at how and whyn onreligious, anti-religious, and/or secular people -of varyings hades and huescome together collectively. The common concerns underlying these papers werealong the following lines of inquiry:what social movements and communal institutions are secular or nonreligious individuals comingt ogether to create in order to servetheir social,communal, and/or political needs and interests?And just what exactlya re those needsa nd interests?H ow are they being met?Giventhe deep interest in organized secularism that was evident at the conference -and givent he recent growth of social movementsc reated by and for nonreligious people -it was clear to meeting participantsC hristel Manning, Ryan Cragun, and LoriF azzino that ab ook bringingt ogethera nd publishing those papers presented at the conference addressingt hese issues within the studyo fs ecularity, secularism, and nonreligion would be timely.Hence, this volume.Organized Secularism in the United States bringstogether thirteen papers looking at different aspects and angles of collective secularity.Itisawelcome addition to the burgeoning field of secular/nonreligious studies, an interdisciplinary endeavorw hich seeks to understand the lives, worldviews, beliefs, opinions, values, challenges, and activities of nonreligious people. The scholarlyfocus of secular/nonreligious studies is placed upon the meanings, forms, relevance, and impact of political secularism, philosophical skepticism, and personal and cul- tural secularity -and all of these matters,i no ne manifestation or another,a nd in varyingd egrees -are delvedi nto in the chapters ahead.Since Barry Kosmin established the Institute for the Studyo fS ecularism in Society and Culture at Trinity Collegei n2 005,a nd Lois Leea nd Stephen Bullivant founded the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network in 2008 while at Cambridge Universitya nd Oxford University respectively,s cholarlya ttention to the secular/nonreligious has been blossoming. Significant developments include the following:i n2 011, the open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal Secularism and Nonreligion was launched; also in 2011, aSecular Studies department was established at PitzerCollege; in 2012,the Anthropology Department of the London School of Economics launched a "Programme for the StudyofR eligion and Non...

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Section: The Inadequacy Of At Heistic Death Discoursesupporting

confidence: 74%

Organized Secularism in the United States

Cragun¹,

Fazzino²,

Manning³

2017

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“…Second, and more importantly, our participants were largely secular (e.g., in Experiment 2, 51 out of 60 participants scored below the scale midpoint on religiosity). Mortality salience is expected to activate beliefs that are relevant to one's worldview (e.g., Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989), and should thus not activate religiosity among secular individuals (Vail et al, 2012). Future research would benefit from testing secular and religious populations to directly compare the strength, and ascertain the mediating mechanisms, of the compensatory effects of scientific and religious belief.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A large body of research has established that being reminded of one's own death (“mortality salience”) results in existential anxiety, which leads people to defend their belief systems (e.g., Greenberg et al, 1997). Although it has been argued that, in the context of ideas about death, science may not be as comforting as religion and that in such contexts non-believers may resort to religious concepts (Inzlicht et al, 2011), recent research revealed that mortality salience did not increase supernatural beliefs in an atheist sample (Vail, Arndt, & Abdollahi, 2012). Accordingly, we hypothesized that, within our secular sample, mortality salience would increase belief in science (but would not affect religiosity).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety

Farias

Newheiser

Kahane

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

186

213

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Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.

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“…This latter set of studies demonstrates that forms of religiosity can at times ameliorate the impact of awareness of mortality. While religious affiliation likely does not make one immune to awareness of mortality—and in fact being religious exacerbates some effects of mortality salience (e.g., it enhances belief in the deity of one's religion) (Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi )—we propose that it may mitigate specific responses related to worldview defense (e.g., prejudice).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Making and Unmaking Prejudice: Religious Affiliation Mitigates the Impact of Mortality Salience on Out‐Group Attitudes

Newheiser

Hewstone

Voci

et al. 2015

Scientific Study of Religion

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Research inspired by terror management theory has established that being reminded of the inevitability of death (i.e., "mortality salience") leads people to express more negative attitudes toward out-groups. We examined the hypothesis that being affiliated with a religion may buffer individuals against this negative impact of mortality salience. Two studies, conducted in two cultures that differ in their emphasis on religiosity (the United Kingdom and Italy), supported this hypothesis. Specifically, we found that mortality salience resulted in more negative out-group attitudes only among participants not affiliated with any religion. Further, this buffering effect of religious affiliation was not moderated by participants' specific religious orientations or by their levels of social dominance orientation. In addition, the buffering effect did not hold when prejudice against the target out-group was not proscribed by religious authorities. Implications for research on religion, prejudice, and terror management are discussed

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Exploring the Existential Function of Religion and Supernatural Agent Beliefs Among Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics

Cited by 108 publications

References 45 publications

Organized Secularism in the United States

Organized Secularism in the United States

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety

Making and Unmaking Prejudice: Religious Affiliation Mitigates the Impact of Mortality Salience on Out‐Group Attitudes

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