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Religion is often understood to play a positive role in shaping moral attitudes among believers. We assessed the relationship between church members’ levels of felt connectedness to their respective congregations and perceived similarity in personal and congregational moral values, and whether there was a relationship between these and the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing during worship. The similarity between personal and perceived congregational moral importance (the importance assigned to different moral items) was correlated with feelings of closeness to one’s congregation but not by the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing. Differences in moral foundations scores and in moral importance of specific issues were found between different theological traditions. These findings demonstrate that, for churchgoers, there is a relationship between the use of music or synchronous movement in a church service and feelings of social bonding and there is also a relationship between the degree to which churchgoers identify with their church community and the degree to which they believe their priorities match those of their church. Furthermore, differences in theological tradition appear to be reflected in differences in moral values.

The religiosity of academics has been studied for over a decade. With few exceptions, this research has been conducted on American “elite” scientists, and data from non-Western countries is lacking. Drawing from psychological and sociological literature, the present exploratory study investigates the religiosity of Turkish academics (N = 361) and their perceptions on the relationship between religion and science, and associated variables such as interpretation of the Quran, and belief in evolution and creationism. Moreover, we address criticism directed at previous research by probing for different God concepts among believing academics. Although cultural differences can be identified, the results generally support the idea that academics are less religious with 54% identifying as “less religious” or “not religious,” compared to 24.2% self-identifying as “religious” or “extremely religious.”

Objective: To examine if the functions of the nontheistic sacred in a secular context are consistent with previous studies of the sacred in religious contexts. Methods: Two experiments examined the psychological functions of the nontheistic sacred within a secular context – metal music culture. The first experiment examined music as a form of nontheistic sacred through a comparison of death metal fans (n=89) listening to death metal or hard rock. The second experiment examined how some metal cultural artefacts were perceived as sacred by metal fans (n=52), and how their loss or defilement was experienced when compared to non-sacred artefacts.Results: The first experiment found that the death metal music was perceived as more sacred than hard rock music to the metal community, it promoted higher levels of positive affect, and it was associated with significantly higher levels of prosocial behavioural intentions, social relatedness, mood maintenance, and self-awareness, with no differences in empathy and negative affect. The second experiment found that acts of desecration of sacred items, when compared to non-sacred items, led to a higher state of anger and the loss of the items led to significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety. Conclusions: The two experiments present evidence that the nontheistic sacred is experienced within the secular context of metal music in terms of functions and effects consistent with previous literature exploring the sacred in religious contexts.

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported beta = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported beta = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates. Funding: Australian Research Council [DP180102384]; Cogito Foundation [R10917]; French Agence Nationale de la Recherche [17-EURE-0017, 10-IDEX-0001-02]; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [GR100544, DGE-2139841]; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [406-17-568, 016.Vici.170.083, 016.Vidi.188.001]; John Templeton Foundation [60663]; Templeton Religion Trust [TRT 0154]; German Research Foundation [GRK 2277]

The use of mindfulness meditation as a well-being and clinical tool is being deeply challenged on various fronts. The recent failure of showing its salutary effects on schoolchildren, in a large-scale study, which stands as the most expensive study in the history of meditation science (£6.4 million), is accompanied by growing evidence of potential adverse effects associated with mindfulness practice. It is suggested that the heightened enthusiasm surrounding the benefits of mindfulness led academics to use facile metaphors to promote it (such as comparing the mind to a muscle) and distorted its presentation - both in disseminating overhyped findings and in neglecting the report of adverse effects.

Objective Meditation techniques are widely used as therapy and wellbeing practices, but there are growing concerns about its potential for harm. The aim of the present study is to systematically review meditation adverse events (MAEs), investigating its major clinical categories and its prevalence. Method We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Embase and AMED up to October 2019. Eligible studies included original reports of meditation practices (excluding related physical practices such as Yoga postures) with adult samples across experimental, observational and case studies. We identified a total of 6742 citations, 83 of which met the inclusion criteria for MAEs with a total of 6703 participants who undertook meditation practice. Results Of the 83 studies analysed, 55 (65%) included reports of at least one type of MAE. The total prevalence of adverse events was 8.3% (95% CI 0.05-0.12), though this varied considerably across types of studies - 3.7% (95% CI 0.02-0.05) for experimental and 33.2% (95% CI 0.25-0.41) for observational studies. The most common AEs were anxiety (33%, 18), depression (27%, 15) and cognitive anomalies (25%, 14); gastrointestinal problems and suicidal behaviours (both 11%, 6) were the least frequent. Conclusion We found that the occurrence of AEs during or after meditation practices is not uncommon, and may occur in individuals with no previous history of mental health problems. These results are relevant both for practitioners and clinicians, and contribute to a balanced perspective of meditation as a practice that may lead to both positive and negative outcomes.

Objective: To further our understanding of religious possession experiences by focusing on personality, cognitive, and quality of life outcomes. Methods: Data collection was undertaken at Umbanda sessions in Brazilian cities. Participants were mediums who regularly experienced possession (n=334) or those who attended the same rituals but had never been possessed (n=54). Results: We found that mediums were not significantly different across variables from the control group, except for anxiety, which was lower among mediums. Correlational and regression analysis showed that the level of meaningfulness attributed to possession and fusion with the spiritual entity were strongly positively correlated with most quality-of-life dimensions, and negatively with anxiety; in addition, level of meaningfulness predicted lower anxiety, and psychological quality of life was predicted by level of fusion and meaningfulness. Contrary to expectations, there were no detrimental effects of a lower level of bodily control over the possession experience. Conclusion: Together, these results suggest that individuals regularly experiencing possession within a religious context are psychologically similar to those who attend the same rituals without experiencing possession, and that the way they appraise their experiences as meaningful, as well as the level of spiritual fusion, are predictors of well-being.

Conflicting findings have emerged from research on the relationship between thinking styles and supernatural beliefs. In two studies, we examined this relationship through meta-cognitive trust and developed a new (1) experimental manipulation, a short scientific article describing the benefits of thinking styles, (2) trust in thinking styles measure, the Ambiguous Decisions task, and (3) supernatural belief measure, the Belief in Psychic Ability scale. In Study 1 (N=415) we found differences in metacognitive trust in thinking styles between the analytical and intuitive condition, and overall higher analytical scores. We also found stronger correlations between thinking style measures and psychic ability and paranormal beliefs than with religious beliefs, but a mixed-effect linear regression showed little to no variation in how measures of thinking style related to types of supernatural beliefs. In Study 2, we replicated Study 1 with participants from the United States, Canada, and Brazil (N=802), and found similar results, though Brazilian participants showed a reduced emphasis on analytical thinking. We conclude that our new design, task, and scale may be particularly useful for dual-processing research on supernatural belief.

The global increase in non-religious individuals begs for a better understanding of what non-religious beliefs and worldviews actually entail. Rather than assuming an absence of belief or imposing a predetermined set of beliefs, this research uses an open-ended approach to investigate which secular beliefs and worldviews non-religious non-theistic individuals in 10 countries around the world might endorse. Approximately one thousand participants were recruited (N = 996; approximately one hundred participants per country) and completed the online survey. A data-driven coding scheme of the open-ended question about the participants’ beliefs and worldviews was created and includes 51 categories in 11 supercategories (agency & control, collaboration & peace, equality & kindness, morality, natural laws & the here and now, non-religiosity, reflection & acceptance, science & critical thinking, spirituality, truth, and other). The 10 most frequently mentioned categories were science, humanism, critical scepticism, natural laws, equality, kindness & caring, care for the earth, left-wing political causes, atheism, and individualism & freedom. Patterns of beliefs were explored, demonstrating three worldview belief sets: scientific worldviews, humanist worldviews, and caring nature-focused worldviews. This project is a timely data-driven exploration of the content and range of global secular worldviews around the world, and matches previous theoretical work. Future research may utilise these data and findings to construct more comprehensive surveys to be completed in additional countries.

Based on the well-established link between religiosity and positive mental health outcomes, it has been argued that non-religiosity is a health liability. However, most of this research suffers from methodological problems that limit their generalizability to non-religious populations, such as atheists and agnostics. In this chapter, we draw attention to these methodological issues, and argue in favour of a richer conceptualization of non-religion than has been theorized in previous literature. We further review recent work from various countries around the world, which challenges the notion that non-religiosity presents a health risk, finding instead that the non-religious experience similar levels of health and well-being benefits as the religious. We end by briefly discussing the limitations and recent backlash at this literature, while suggesting that the study of the non-religious may transform how we understand the interaction between beliefs, rituals, and health.

There is a growing interest in the study of the cognitive processes underpinning New Age and Paranormal beliefs (NAPBs). However, there is a scarcity of research on this topic using non-WEIRD (West...

While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool—the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)—which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test–retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity.

Religious rituals are associated with health benefits, potentially produced via social bonding. It is unknown whether secular rituals similarly increase social bonding. We conducted a field study with individuals who celebrate secular rituals at Sunday Assemblies and compared them with participants attending Christian rituals. We assessed levels of social bonding and affect before and after the rituals. Results showed the increase in social bonding taking place in secular rituals is comparable to religious rituals. We also found that both sets of rituals increased positive affect and decreased negative affect, and that the change in positive affect predicted the change in social bonding observed. Together these results suggest that secular rituals might play a similar role to religious ones in fostering feelings of social connection and boosting positive affect.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it explores the different meanings of meditation and its varieties across Eastern and Western traditions, including the more recent therapeutic developments. Using a Meditation Tree image, specifically created for this volume, the chapter gives examples of practices from these traditions that rely on multiple techniques, such as concentration, recitation, breathing, singing, and visualization of physical or mental objects, among others. It highlights the richness of practices but equally of experiences and expected goals, which have led to debates and tensions among meditation experts and movements for over two thousand years. Second, the chapter summarizes the structure of this volume and the major achievements in the study of meditation, as well as current limitations and controversies.

Religious rituals are universal human practices, generally practiced in groups. Social scientists have highlighted for over 100 years its role in bonding individuals, but the mechanisms underlying this function have yet to be explored. Here we tested the role of mu-opioids in fostering social bonding in rituals across two double-blind studies. For both studies a mu-opioid blocker (Naltrexone) was taken before the ritual and we assessed strength of social bonding before and after the ritual. Participants were randomly allocated into a placebo or Naltrexone condition. For study 1 (N = 9), we conducted a pilot, yoga-based ritual session in our lab. In study 2 (N = 24), we conducted a naturalistic field study with participants who regularly attended an Afro-Brazilian religious ritual. We found the same effect across both studies, where Naltrexone lead to significantly lower social bonding compared to placebo. These studies show that mu-opioids play a significant role in experiences of social bonding within ritual contexts.

Based on the well-established link between religiosity and positive mental health outcomes, it has been argued that nonreligiosity is a health liability. However, most of this research suffers from methodological problems that limit their generalizability to nonreligious populations, such as atheists and agnostics. In the current chapter, we draw attention to these methodological issues, and argue in favor of a richer conceptualization of nonreligion than has been theorized in previous literature. We further review recent work from various countries around the world, which challenges the notion that nonreligiosity presents a health risk, finding instead that the nonreligious experience similar levels of health and wellbeing benefits as the religious. We end by briefly discussing the limitations and recent backlash at this literature, while suggesting that the study of the nonreligious may transform how we understand the interaction between beliefs, rituals, and health.

This study aimed to investigate the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, particularly the effects of perceived threat and lockdown measures, and to elucidate individual and social factors exacerbating or mitigating its negative effects, particularly sense of control. An online survey was completed by participants (N=8,229) recruited from 79 countries. In line with pre-registered hypotheses, participants showed elevated levels of anxiety and depression worldwide. This poor mental health was predicted by perceived threat. The effect of threat on depression was further moderated by social isolation, but there was no effect of sense of control. Sense of control was low overall, and was predicted negatively by maladaptive coping, but positively by adaptive coping and the perception that the government is dealing with the outbreak. Social isolation increased with quarantine duration, but was mitigated by frequent communication with close ones. Engaging in individual actions to avoid contracting the virus was associated with higher anxiety, except when done professionally. We suggest that the psychological detrimental effects of the pandemic can be alleviated by individual actions such as maintaining frequent social contact and adaptive coping, and by governmental actions which demonstrate support in a public health crisis. Citizens and governments can work together to adapt better to restrictive but necessary measures during the current and future pandemics.

This study addressed the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and examined factors exacerbating or mitigating the negative effects of lockdown. Results from a large multi-country online survey (N=8,229) showed average elevated levels of anxiety and depression (especially in the USA, UK, and Brazil), associated with feelings of low control and social isolation. Although social isolation increased with the duration of quarantine, it was mitigated by frequent communication with close others. Other mitigating factors include adaptive but not maladaptive coping, and the perception and trust that one’s government is dealing with the outbreak. Taking individual actions to avoid contracting the virus were associated with higher anxiety, except when done professionally by essential workers. We suggest that the psychological detrimental effects of lockdown can be alleviated by maintaining frequent social contact, adaptive coping, and governmental actions which show capability, benevolence, and integrity in managing a public health crisis.

A key function of religious rituals is their ability to connect or bond individuals. Recent advances on the neurobiological underpinnings of bonding, highlighting how opioids are activated in the brain by social activities, can now be applied to the study of rituals. Here we present the results of a large-scale field study conducted across the UK and Brazil where we examined the psychobiological functions of rituals, following the brain-opioid theory of social attachment (BOTSA). Testing was conducted across 24 sessions at Christian and Afro-Brazilian religious rituals (N=358), with measures taken before and after each ritual. Regression analysis and multilevel linear modelling showed that taking part in religious rituals increased both pain threshold (a proxy for opioid activation) and positive affect, and that these enhanced the sense of bonding to one’s religious group. The results suggest that one of the key functions of religious ritual is to increase community bonding.

This is the most comprehensive volume to date on the science and history of meditation. Written in an accessible language by world-leading experts, it describes the various meditation practices employed to modify the self, such as concentration, recitation, breathing, and visualisation, and its effects on the mind and body. It includes debates and controversies on its varied results and aims – including liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth, union with the divine, salvation of the soul, wellbeing, and the achievement of supernatural powers. The volume starts out by summarising the current understanding of meditation and half a century of scientific findings (Part I). It then describes the development of meditation practices across Eastern and Western religious traditions, and the varieties of techniques, experiences, and aims (Parts II-III). Part IV of the volume consists of state-of-the-art accounts from various disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and anthropology. The therapeutic and social implications of meditation are then reviewed (Part V), and the concluding section (Part VI) discusses meditation’s potential for challenging and adverse effects. This book is the ideal guide for all interested in meditation, including teachers, clinicians, therapists, and researchers.

Se pretende esbozar algunas características de un Sistema de Información para obtener información para la toma de decisiones y control en la administración públicas que consideramos fundamentales si pretendemos lograr un Estado cuyo accionar responda al “Prima de la Excelencia de las 5E: Eficiencia, Eficacia, Economicidad, Ejecutividad y Efectividad.” En general el análisis y desarrollo de la propuesta, aunque basados en características generales, se restringirá al ámbito de Municipal, en particular de la ciudad de Santa Rosa, el cual en la actualidad no cuenta con ningún sistema centralizado para la toma de decisiones, y los sistemas informáticos en uso son desarrollos de vieja data (generalmente con interfaz de caracteres) y la interrelación entre ellos es mínima (exportando archivos a modo texto) y las decisiones a partir de tablas dinámicas gestionadas con planillas de cálculo.

Contains fulltext : 201117.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) 1 p.

In the past 30 years, the camino to Santiago de Compostela has been recreated as an eclectic pilgrimage, open to both religious and atheist travelers. Following previous work on motivational orientations and religion, we conducted a study examining atheist versus religious pilgrims' motivations to walk the Santiago way. We assessed pilgrims (N = 360) at various parts of the northern Spanish camino using a questionnaire that measured motivations to go on pilgrimage. In addition, we measured levels of positive and negative affect, physical exertion, and emotional problems. Atheists scored significantly lower on community and religious types of motivations. However, in several measures no differences were found between groups. We suggest that both atheist and religious pilgrims are exploring forms of horizontal and vertical transcendence characterized by a desire to connect to nature and one's deeper self