Religious Problem-Solving Styles within an American Religious Ideological Surround

Abstract

In a previous Iranian investigation, comparative rationality analysis procedures associated with the ideological surround model of psychology and religion examined the influence of Muslim religious rationalities on responding to religious problem-solving style scales. This study extended the analysis to 306 mostly Christian American university students. As in Iran, the collaborative problem-solving style was consistent with, and the self-directing style was inconsistent with, religious commitments and psychological adjustment. The deferring style had ambiguous implications in Iran, and the same was true in the United States, albeit in different ways. Religious rationalities mediated problem-solving style relationships with other variables in a manner documenting the complexity of American religious perspectives. Most generally, these data suggested that empirical attention to the incommensurable rationalities of religions and the social sciences can promote deeper insights into both.

Psychology and Religion within an Ideological Surround

“…CFA procedures have also examined other psychological constructs, including post-traumatic growth (Andrews et al 2017), religious problem-solving styles in both Iran (Ghorbani, Watson, Saeedi, Chen, and Silver 2012) and the United States (Watson et al 2017), and the Dark Triad measures of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism (Watson, Chen, Morris, and Ghorbani 2018). All these uses of CRA have made it clear that any dismissal of religion as wholly 'irrational' cannot be 'objective' even within the ideological surrounds of methodological and metaphysical atheism.…”