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The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Implications for Education and Wellbeing – an Introduction

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The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Implications for Education and Wellbeing – an Introduction Part I The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Implications for Education and Wellbeing – An Introduction Leslie J. Francis According to its etymology, the discipline of psychology is concerned with the study of the mind, with the study of the soul, with the study of the human psyche.This broad definition, however, is far from unproblematic. What is meant by the human mind, the human soul, the human psyche? And what tools are available to study such phenomena anyway? The broad history of the development of psychology as an academic discipline in its own right is the story of how these two problems have been addressed: the problem of substance (what is being studied) and the problem of method (how is the study being conducted). Right from the early days of the developing discipline of psychology, religion and spirituality have been seen as a matter of central concern (see, for example, William James, 1902). Although this central concern with religion and spirituality seemed to disappear from the radar of psychology for a number of years, the topic is now firmly back on the agenda as evidenced by the foundation of the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion in 1980, the revitalisation of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion in the 1990s and the development of a new journal from the American Psychological Association in 2009 dedicated to the psychology of religion and spirituality. The aim of this chapter is to provide a general introduction to and overview of the per- spective on the psychology of religion and spirituality taken by and shaped within this handbook concerned with education, care and wellbeing. This perspective has been informed by three considerations. The first consideration concerns the range of people on whom the perspective is focused. Different branches of psychology are properly concerned with dif- ferent populations: the mentally ill (say, clinical psychology), the criminal and the deviant (say, forensic psychology) or the general population of people who have been diagnosed as neither “mad” nor “bad” (say, “normal” psychology). This part of the handbook is concerned with the normal population broadly conceived. The second consideration concerns the subject matter (the data) under consid- eration. Different branches of psychology are properly concerned with different approaches to their subject. Some approaches are concerned with examining the functioning of the human brain (say, neuroscience) and this concern has proved to be fruitful within the broad field of the psychology of religion and spirituality. Other approaches are concerned with ways of accessing human experience and 7 8 L.J. Francis interpreting the meaning and significance of human responses. This part of the handbook is concerned with the latter of these two approaches. The third consideration concerns the ways in which human experiences and human responses can be accessed and studied (the methodology). Broadly within the social sciences the main methodological division occurs between qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative approach (say, using interviews) has the strength of providing rich and deep description, often allowing the voices of individuals to be heard with clarity. The quantitative approach (say, using question- naire surveys) has the strength of providing access to a large number of people and of allowing more secure generalisations to be made. This part of the handbook is concerned primarily with the quantitative approach, although it is fully recognised that the two approaches are complementary and properly inform and enrich one another. Good use is made of the qualitative approach as and when appropriate. Within the quantitative tradition there are certain key assumptions that shape what is taken seriously and how the methodology proceeds. The first key assump- tion concerns the notion of measurement. It is assumed that central psychological constructs can be accessed and calibrated in ways that mimic the measurement of physical constructs. Such a notion is far from being unproblematic. It may be relatively straightforward to measure the length of an individual’s arm or the cir- cumference of an individual’s head, but it is much more problematic to measure intelligence, extraversion or spirituality. In a sense, all these psychological notions (unlike the physical notions of arms and heads) are abstractions. They are ways of talking about elusive aspects of the human psyche rather than being objective “things” in their own right. In order to measure such abstractions, it is necessary to be very clear about the way in which terms are to be used (the issue of definition) and about the way in which accepted definitions are to be translated into measures (the issue of operationalisation). Many of the notions with which the quantitative approach to psychology deals are highly contested within other spheres of debate (say other disciplines). There is, for example, no one accepted definition of constructs like intelligence, extraversion, religion or spirituality. It is for this reason that definitions adopted by psychologists as a basis for developing measuring instruments themselves remain contested. There are, for example, a number of generally accepted measures of the notion of extraver- sion, but it cannot be assumed that these instruments all measure the same “thing”. The view generally taken within this part of the handbook is that it is sensible and proper to work with the precise definitions offered by the instruments used and to take care not to generalise research findings beyond these definitions to the wider area of concern. For example, if an instrument sets out to access and operationalise one definition of spirituality, it is a fundamental mistake to assume that the findings can be generalised to embrace a wide diverse range of definitions. The operationalisation of carefully argued definitions remains problematic in its own right. Those who develop and deploy psychological measures need to demon- strate that these measures are in fact measuring what they claim to be measuring. Technically this problem involves issues of reliability and validity. A reliable instru- ment is one that can be trusted to produce consistent findings. If I measure the I The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9 circumference of an individual’s head today and measure it again tomorrow, I would expect consistent findings. If I measure an individual’s level of intelligence today and measure it again tomorrow, I would expect similar if not identical findings. A test that is not reliable cannot be valid. A valid instrument is one that can be trusted to measure the construct under review. If I measure an individual’s right arm, I cannot validly claim to have measured the outstretched span of both arms. I could extrapolate from my findings and make an informed prediction, but I still need to be honest about what has been measured and about what has not been measured. There is a variety of ways in which psychologists deal with this issue. The second key assumption within the quantitative tradition is that measure- ment enables precise hypotheses to be tested and the significance of associations between variables to be established by statistical procedures. The main findings from research and the main conclusions presented in this part of the handbook have been generally tested and established by these kinds of statistical procedures. The implications of findings established in this way can be illuminated and illustrated by data generated within the qualitative tradition. Against the background of this broad theoretical perspective, the intention of the rest of this chapter is to introduce and to contextualise the 13 focused contributions. In Chapter 1, Ralph W. Hood Jr. discusses the ways of studying the psychology of religion and spirituality. Rather than applaud and promote a single method, Hood explores the range of methods available to psychologists who study religion and spirituality. He alerts us to the proper limitations associated with different methods, but is clear in his rejection of the position argued by some recent commentators claiming the primacy of experimental approaches. Hood’s chapter is especially important because it helps to establish the value and the importance of the wider range of methods on which the authors of subsequent chapters draw. In Chapter 2, Peter C. Hill and Lauren E. Maltby go to the heart of the individual differences approach that shapes this part of the handbook in order to discuss issues concerned with measuring religiousness and spirituality. After discussing general issues related to measurement, they provide a very useful introduction to and a cri- tique of a range of existing measures in the field. This review builds on the earlier influential and authoritative volume that Peter C. Hill co-edited with Ralph W. Hood Jr. under the title, Measures of Religiosity (Hill & Hood, 1999). In Chapter 3, Chris J. Boyatzis focuses attention on what is known from research about religion and spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. He tackles key questions including the following. What does spirituality look like in a child? Does religion make a genuine difference in the lives of children and youth? How do we measure spiritual and religious development in children and adolescents? How can we characterise religious and spiritual development in its pro- cesses, sequences and stages? After a long period during which empirical research in the field was conspicuous by its neglect, Boyatzis identifies the signs of new developments and growth in this field. In Chapter 4, John W. Fisher introduces the notion of spiritual health and rehearses his well-established model of characterising good spiritual health as involving four domains of life. For Fisher the individual who experiences good 10 L.J. Francis spiritual health has developed good relationships with the self, good relationships with other people, good relationships with the environment and good relationships with the transcendent, however this is conceived. This model of spiritual health is attractive because it is well defined, coherent and open to operationalisation.
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