[Emmons & Paloutzian] The psychology of religion.pdf

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2003. 54:377–402

doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145024

First published online as a Review in Advance on August 6, 2002

T HE P SYCHOLOGY OF R ELIGION

Robert A. Emmons 1 and Raymond F. Paloutzian 2

1 Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616;

e-mail: raemmons@ucdavis.edu

2 Department of Psychology, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California 93108-1099;

e-mail: paloutz@westmont.edu

Abstract This chapter discusses progress in the psychology of religion by high-

lighting its rapid growth during the past 25 years. Recent conceptual and empirical

developments are described, with an emphasis on the cognitive and affective basis of

religious experience within personality and social psychology. Religion and spiritu-

ality as domains of study, as well as being common and important process variables

that touch a large portion of human experience, are highlighted. Movement away from

the previously dominant measurement paradigm is noted, and particularly promising

directions suggestive of an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm are described.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 377

Psychology of Religion Then and Now ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 378

The Upsurge of the Past Quarter Century ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 379

Progress in Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality ::::::::::::::::::::::: 381

Progress in Measuring Spiritual and Religious Constructs :::::::::::::::::::: 383

RELIGION AND EMOTION: THE AFFECTIVE

BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 384

The Return to Virtue ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 386

PERSONALITY AND RELIGION ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 390

New Units of Analysis from Personality Psychology :::::::::::::::::::::::: 391

Spiritual Transformation :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 393

CONCLUSIONS :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 394

INTRODUCTION

It has been 15 years since the last (and only) chapter on the psychology of religion

appeared in the Annual Review of Psychology (Gorsuch 1988). The psychology

of religion as an identiﬁable subﬁeld of psychology has grown rapidly since then.

The publication of an increasing number of books on the topic, including several

0066-4308/03/0203-0377$14.00

377

Key Words spirituality, religious cognition and emotions, personality,

measurement

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EMMONS ¥ PALOUTZIAN

published by the American Psychological Association (APA), testiﬁes to the vi-

brancy of the ﬁeld (Emmons 1999; Hill & Hood 1999; Koenig 1998; Miller 1999;

Pargament 1997; Richards & Bergin 1997, 2000; Shafranske 1996). Whereas the

more applied areas of psychology such as clinical, counseling, and health have

taken the lead in examining links between religion and psychological, physical,

and interpersonal functioning, basic subﬁelds are also recognizing that spiritual and

religious inﬂuences may be profoundly important (e.g., Emmons & McCullough

1999, Paloutzian & Kirkpatrick 1995).

Because of this rapid growth, this chapter cannot provide comprehensive cov-

erage of recent developments for all topics in the psychology of religion. Recent

research on religion and spirituality as human phenomena is almost as vast and

diverse as religious life itself. A literature search using the PsychInfo database for

the period 1988–2001 returned 1198 citations for the term religion and 777 cita-

tions for spirituality. This review, therefore, must of necessity be selective rather

than exhaustive. Because the clinical psychology of religion has received a great

deal of attention, we have chosen to highlight less-well-publicized areas of schol-

arship in the psychology of religion, particularly in the ﬁelds of personality and

social psychology, which are new and not already documented by comprehensive

summary sources elsewhere. This chapter has several purposes: to document the

various trajectories that the psychology of religion has had during the previous

century, to explain some of the reasons for the trends that have been observed, to

illustrate how all of the topics within the psychology of religion are extensions

of and feedback to the overall body of theory and the database from general psy-

chology, and to sketch the newest lines of emerging research that show promise of

contributing signiﬁcantly to psychology during the next few years.

Psychology of Religion Then and Now

In psychology’s early days, at a time when all psychological thinking was fresh

and new, and when theory, research methods, statistical tools, and subdisciplines

within this now immense and rich ﬁeld were not even dreamed of in their modern

form, those who were pioneering this ﬁeld (Hall 1904, 1917; James 1902; Starbuck

1899; see also Vande Kemp 1992) took it as a serious part of their work to study the

psychological aspects of human religiousness. The challenge for the next century

of psychologists (i.e., us) is to follow this example and do what they began to do—

come to an understanding of the psychological bases of religious belief, experience,

and behavior, with the goal of applying this knowledge for human good.

The attention to this topic by the generation of psychologists who came after

those early pioneers declined from approximately the mid 1920s until the mid

1960s. Several intradisciplinary reasons for this have been suggested (Paloutzian

1996). These include but are not limited to the establishment of scientiﬁc psychol-

ogy after the model of physics, the separation of psychology departments from

their former home in philosophy departments, and the tendency by psychologists

to stay away from “taboo” topics that might be considered too philosophical or

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

379

too theological. However, during this period there were writings by what might be

called the “grand theorists” of religion (Freud 1927, Jung 1938; see Wulff 1997

for a complete presentation of these), but these writings did little to advance the

psychology of religion in the stricter, data-based sense. That is, these were over-

arching theories of human nature that were attempts to explain everything, includ-

ing religiousness. Although they are rich ideas about what processes may underlie

religiousness, they did little to feed the quantitative research that is mushrooming

today.

The impressive ﬂowering and maturing of the discipline as we know it today is

embedded in the co-occurrence of several factors. Most notably, the re-emergence

of the ﬁeld was partly due to a generation effect. Just as the early work was

done by leaders who invested efforts in this topic (Wulff 1998), a new group of

psychologists emerged whose concerns included issues of social relevance and

whose view of psychology was expansive. The social upheavals of the 1960s

made them aware of the need to use their psychological training to study real-life

issues such as violence, aggression, prejudice, sexism—to tackle the big problems

(Hester 1998). Religion, among the most powerful of all social forces and here

as long as there have been human beings [e.g., it has been suggested that humans

be thought of as Homo religiosus because religion has been present as long as

there have been Homo sapiens (Albright & Ashbrook 2001)] and showing no sign

of going away, is among them. Following the lead of Gordon Allport, in which

religiousness was found to be related in important but nonobvious ways to racial

prejudice (Allport 1954, Allport & Ross 1967), the dramatic recent growth of the

ﬁeld began.

The Upsurge of the Past Quarter Century

The psychology of religion re-emerged as a full-force, leading-edge research area

that contributes new knowledge, data, and professional activity to the rest of psy-

chology. This is apparent upon examination of the recent trends in the publication

of textbooks and journal articles, presentations at professional meetings, teaching

courses in the psychology of religion, the establishment of new journals, books on

clinical and health issues, and the development of psychology of religion research

that interfaces the theory and topics of the mainstream discipline. These trends be-

came visible after the establishment of APA Division 36, Psychology of Religion,

in 1976.

One of the most obvious evidences of the development of an area of scholarship

can be seen by examining the numbers and frequency of books that are published

in that area. Textbooks, in particular, are a benchmark source of data because

they serve the purpose of summarizing research and they reﬂect activity in a ﬁeld.

Prior to 1982 one could look far and wide for current books on the psychology of

religion and come up empty-handed. No recently published books existed. Things

changed quickly during the 1980s, however. Psychology of religion textbooks were

published in rapid succession by Batson & Ventis (1982), Paloutzian (1983), Spilka

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EMMONS ¥ PALOUTZIAN

et al. (1985), and Brown (1987), and Wulff’s (1991) book was in press before the

decade was out. The 1990s saw this trend replicate and expand. Some of the 1980s

books came out in second editions, including Batson et al. (1993), Paloutzian

(1996), Hood et al. (1996), and Wulff (1997), and other books were added to the

list (Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle 1997, Pargament 1997, Spilka & McIntosh 1997).

This trend continues as the new century begins (Argyle 2000, Loewenthal 2000).

Also, for the ﬁrst time separate introductory chapters were included in general

psychology textbooks (Santrock & Paloutzian 1997, 2000). This ﬂourishing of

textbooks feeds the increased teaching of psychology of religion (Hester 2002)

and documents the vibrant activity that is a clear sign of the growth of the ﬁeld.

Textbooks do not make for major contributions to a ﬁeld on their own, how-

ever. They depend on the quality and visibility of the research on which they

are based. During the past 25 years psychology of religion material has appeared

with increasing frequency in high-end journals. In addition, and added to the al-

ready existing psychology of religion journals such as the Journal for the Scientiﬁc

Study of Religion and the Review of Religious Research , new journals devoted to

this topic have been established. One of them, The International Journal for the

Psychology of Religion (established in 1990) is published in the United States,

and the other, Mental Health, Religion, and Culture (established in 1998) is pub-

lished in the United Kingdom. To complement the function served by journals,

the annual series Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion (JAI Press,

Inc., established in 1990) and the topic’s ﬁrst Annual Review chapter (Gorsuch

1988) appeared, as did a chapter on religion and health (Chatters 2000). Finally,

special issues of leading journals are appearing that focus on religious inﬂuences

on personal and societal well-being (Paloutzian & Kirkpatrick 1995), religion in

the psychology of personality (Emmons & McCullough 1999), religion and the

family (Parke 2001), religion and adult development (Sinnott 2001), and religion

as a meaning system (Silberman 2003). These trends make it clear that individual

researchers are including religious dimensions in various aspects of their work and

that journals of the highest quality and inﬂuence wish to publish it.

Closely related to this is the upsurge in the publication of specialized profes-

sional and postgraduate-level books, both those that concern the religious aspects

of applied work and those that are handbooks on a specialized topic. For example,

in 1996 the APA launched its book series on religious issues in clinical practice

and shortly thereafter published a lead article on religion in the APA Monitor

(Clay 1996). This so far has produced comprehensive handbooks focusing on re-

ligion and clinical practice (Shafranske 1996), spiritual strategy for counseling

and psychotherapy (Richards & Bergin 1997), psychotherapy with religiously di-

verse people (Richards & Bergin 2000), and spirituality and treatment (Miller

1999). The same trend is occurring in psychiatry (Bhugra 1996, Boehnlein 2000)

and from the perspective of particular theoretical approaches including rational

emotive behavior therapy and psychodynamics (Malony & Spilka 1991). Finally,

comprehensive handbooks and monographs have appeared on religious experi-

ence (Hood 1995) and conversion (Malony & Southard 1992, Rambo 1993), on

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

381

religion and mental health (Koenig 1998) and physical health (Koenig et al. 2001,

Plante & Sherman 2001), cognitive science (Andresen 2001), children’s religious

cognition (Rosengren et al. 2000), emotion (Corrigan et al. 2000), and spirituality

in organizations (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz 2002). This impressive body of mate-

rial has emerged in less than a decade and documents the increasing attention to

spirituality and religion in diverse subﬁelds of psychology.

Progress in Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality

Our review of developments within substantive areas of the psychology of religion

begins with the swelling literature on various meanings that the terms religion and

spirituality have taken on. In order for progress to occur in a scientiﬁc discipline,

there must be a minimum of consensus concerning the meaning of core constructs

and their measurement. Agreement on the meaning of spirituality and religion is

in short supply, as the religious landscape in the broader culture and in psychology

is changing with a new breed of spirituality that is often distinct from traditional

conceptions of religion (Hill 1999). Adding to the mayhem, religious and spiritual

variables are increasingly being included in experimental and epidemiological

studies. Yet how religion and spirituality are conceived and measured vary from

study to study.

Over the past decade, there has been arguably more print devoted to conceptual-

izing religion and spirituality than to any other topic in the psychology of religion.

It has become fashionable, both culturally and in the scientiﬁc literature, to differ-

entiate between the spiritual and the religious. Psychologists have exerted as much

effort as anyone debating the meaning of these terms. The noun “spirit” and the ad-

jective “spiritual” are being used to refer to an ever increasing range of experiences

rather than being reserved for those occasions of use that speciﬁcally imply the ex-

istence of nonmaterial forces or persons. Conceptions of spirituality do not always

have a transcendent reference point, a fact that has led to much confusion over

its meaning in research contexts. Most contemporary meanings of spirituality do

distinguish between religious spirituality, natural spirituality, and humanistic spir-

ituality. Elkins (2001), a vocal proponent of humanistic-oriented spirituality, offers

six qualities of spirituality: Spirituality is universal; it is a human phenomenon; its

common core is phenomenological; it is our capacity to respond to the numinous;

it is characterized by a “mysterious energy” and its ultimate aim is compassion. It

is unclear how these qualities would translate into an empirical research program

on spirituality, or whether conceptions this broad are even thematically in keeping

with the origins of the term. Careful linguistic analyses and precise operational

deﬁnitions of spirituality need to be emphasized (Moberg 2002).

There has also been no shortage of attempts to deﬁne religion. One of the

best and simplest deﬁnitions to appear in recent years was offered by Dollahite

(1998), who deﬁned religion as “a covenant faith community with teachings and

narratives that enhance the search for the sacred and encourage morality” (p. 5).

Religions are rooted in authoritative spiritual traditions that transcend the person

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