Nature meets nurture in religious and spiritual development

Granqvist, Pehr; Nkara, Frances

doi:10.1111/bjdp.12170

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…Our results show that cultural context has a moderating role on religious cognition. More specifically, our findings are in line with previous findings that religion is of less importance in countries that spend a greater amount of the GDP on public welfare (Gill & Lundsgaarde, 2004;Scheve & Stasavage, 2006), that religion might be associated with negative effects in some contexts (Stavrova, 2015;Diener et al, 2011), and that religious cognition greatly depends on societal macrofeatures associated with cultural context (Banerjee & Bloom, 2013;Granqvist & Nkara, 2017). As residents in countries spending more on public welfare (in this case Sweden) are likely to rely on other means of security than religion, relative to people from nonwelfare states, they have less access to religious mental schemas and hence show lower cognitive access to religious concepts (Study 1), and they are also affected differently by religious priming (Study 2).…”

Section: Cultural Context As Moderatorsupporting

confidence: 92%

Religion vs. the welfare state—the importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming.

Brulin¹,

Hill²,

Laurin³

et al. 2018

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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Prior research, using correlational and self-report methodologies, suggests that religion and public welfare function as alternate security/insurance systems. Consequently, in countries with more expansive public welfare systems people report less religiosity. The present studies expand this field by utilizing experimental methodology and by replicating and extending two previous experiments in both a secular/welfare state context (Sweden) and a religious/nonwelfare state context (the United States). In the first set of experiments, we tested if cognitive access to religious and welfare-related mental schemas differ depending on context. We also tested whether previous findings indicating that people cognitively turn to religion when exposed to threat replicate and extend to the welfare system. In the second set of experiments, we tested whether religious and welfare reminders lead to increased risk taking in these contexts. Our findings show that participants in the secular/welfare state context had lower cognitive access to religious schemas and were less willing to take risks after religious reminders. However, our findings did not replicate those from previous studies; our participants did not have increased cognitive access to religion, nor public welfare, after threat primes. Similarly, our participants were generally not more prone to risk taking after reminders of religion (or public welfare), although such an effect was obtained specifically on high-religious participants. We conclude that cultural context is important to consider when studying psychological functions of religion, and we suggest that the failed replications may be due to cultural, contextual factors. Finally, religious reminders may have contradictory influences on risk taking.

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Section: Cultural Context As Moderatorsupporting

confidence: 92%

Religion vs. the welfare state—the importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming.

Brulin¹,

Hill²,

Laurin³

et al. 2018

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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“…IWM correspondence refers to the idea that secure mental representations of self and others generalize to positive, secure perceptions of God. In line with the latter reasoning, it can be argued more generally that experiences of responsive, sensitive, affectionate caregiving will bias the individual toward generalized expectations of benevolence in the world (Granqvist & Nkara, 2017).…”

Section: Continued Importance Of Attachment For Meaning In Adulthoodmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…However, although humans may be predisposed to make meaning, the skills needed to do so are not simply entirely innate but develop as a function of certain speciestypical experiences (Steger, Hicks, Krueger, & Bouchard, 2011). Granqvist and Nkara (2017) discussed the idea that genetic predispositions ("nature") are often importantly cosculpted by environmental factors ("nurture"), including attachment experiences, and they illustrate this point in the context of religious and spiritual development. We argue that in developing meaning, a similar naturenurture interaction unfolds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meaning Through Attachment: An Integrative Framework

2018

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We propose an integrative framework, advancing attachment as a vital factor in the development and maintenance of meaning throughout life. First, early attachment experiences provide a foundation for recognizing patterns and acquiring a sense of order and coherence. Furthermore, interactions with sensitive attachment figures stimulate mentalization capacities and exploration of the inner and outer environment, enabling the formation of complex representations of self, others, and the world, ultimately also molding how individuals appraise meaning in their lives. Second, attachment security can serve as an enduring and powerful resource for handling threats to meaning. When confronted with disruptions to meaning, secure attachment provides a coherent set of representations to fall back on and maintain or regain a firm sense of order and meaning under challenging circumstances. Moreover, by promoting cognitive openness and tolerance of ambiguity, secure attachment facilitates flexible and realistic adjustment of meaning representations when encountering discrepant information.

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“…Yet from an IPNB view, this type of nature-nurture dichotomy is simply unserviceable. Instead, down to the most basic level, human development-including the development of theistic relational spirituality-inherently involves extensive nature-nurture interactions (Granqvist & Nkara, 2017;Siegel, 2012aSiegel, , 2012b. In what follows, we mostly discuss nurture influences, but it should be understood that nurture influences interact with nature ones (e.g., the biological predispositions underlying the attachment system) in the development of theistic relational spirituality, including its representational elements.…”

Section: Developmental Foundations Of Theistic Relational Spiritualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Theistic relational spirituality: Development, dynamics, health, and transformation.

Davis

Granqvist

Sharp

2021

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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Most of the world's population identify as religious or spiritual, and most religiously affiliated believers identify with one of the world's major monotheistic traditions: Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Within each of these traditions, especially Christianity, one important aspect of many believers' religion/ spirituality is how they view and relate with God. The purpose of this paper is to describe a model of theistic relational spirituality (i.e., the ways monotheistic believers view and relate with God) that integrates theory and research from the fields of psychology, attachment, social cognition, and interpersonal neurobiology. We argue that theistic relational spirituality comprises two main types of God representations: doctrinal (primarily explicit and affect-light) and experiential (primarily implicit and affect-laden) representations. From an attachment perspective, we discuss the development and dynamics (e.g., context-dependence) of these God representations. We propose that doctrinal-experiential congruence forms the basis of a healthy theistic relational spirituality, when it is contextually adaptive, consistent across time and situations, and aligned with the theistic believer's behaviors. We also delineate potentially adaptive transformation of less healthy forms of theistic relational spirituality. Lastly, we discuss ways in which this model of theistic relational spirituality might direct future research.

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Nature meets nurture in religious and spiritual development

Cited by 13 publications

References 55 publications

Religion vs. the welfare state—the importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming.

Religion vs. the welfare state—the importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming.

Meaning Through Attachment: An Integrative Framework

Theistic relational spirituality: Development, dynamics, health, and transformation.

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