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Research highlights
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Adolescents’ religiosity is indicative of several positive outcomes but not necessarily of optimal development. Adolescence has been argued to be a “sensitive” period for spirituality; but it is also (or rather) a “sensitive” period for religious doubt and atheism, what may be adaptive.
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Are fundamentalists antisocial or prosocial? It depends on the authoritative religious text they are exposed to. Prosocial texts make fundamentalists to want to help negligent people and even atheists; violent texts make them to be unwilling to help unknown people and atheists.
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What are the meta-stereotypes of believers and non-believers, i.e. how does each group think the other group perceives it? Do these groups accurately estimate the outgroup’s stereotypes?
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What if moral integrity conflicts with interpersonal care? What is the role of religion? In a recent experiment, religious priming made authoritarians to choose attachment to abstract, impersonal deontology at the detriment of the well-being of relatives and acquaintances.
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A recent study shows that religious ex-immigrants tend to be attached only to the origin and not the new, adoption culture; and in the context of perceived misperception by the majority, religiosity predicts low self-esteem and more depression among ex-immigrants.
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Past research has focused on fundamentalists’ prejudice because of the underlying authoritarianism. In two new experiments we found that, because of the underlying religiosity, fundamentalism implies prosociality too, although limited to familiar and non-threatening targets.
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According to many theoretical perspectives, religion is positively associated with submission and conformity. However, no study to date provided experimental evidence for this hypothesis. We did so in three experiments that relied on priming procedures.
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Personality predispositions of religiousness seem to be universal: they are the same across religions, religious dimensions, countries, genders, ages, and cohorts. This was found in a recent meta-analysis of 71 studies from 19 countries
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To investigate majority members’ attitudes towards the veil, two studies carried out in Belgium integrated three lines of research focusing on (a) the role of subtle racism on the host society’s attitudes towards immigrants, (b) the role of values on acculturation, and (c) the role of religious attitudes on prejudice.
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A great variety of negative events and emotions can increase religion and spirituality. We argued though that positive events and emotions (that imply some self-transcendence; e.g. awe) can also increase religion and spirituality. Two experiments provided evidence in favor of this idea.
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1/05/2012
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