Chapter Learning Objectives

CHAPTER ONE: The Psychological Nature and Functions of Religion

1. Describe the proper "object of study" or the basis for a psychology of religion.
2. Identify the elements of an "outside" perspective on religion.
3. Distinguish between "inside" and "outside" perspectives on religion.
4. Explain why both an inside and outside perspective is important in a psychology of religion.
5. Justify the statement, "religion is to be found everywhere there are people; it is thus universal."
6. Describe the problems with the multidimensional models of religion.
7. Describe the biological foundations for religious behavior.
8. Describe how sociobiology explains the existence of religion/religious behavior; what empirical evidence exists to support this explanation.
9. Identify Elkind's four basic components of intelligence and how their development is believed to lead to a religious perspective.
10. Identify and describe the issues and needs that constitute the "defensive/protective tradition" as a foundational explanation for religious behavior. What is it that religion allegedly protects one from? What needs are met according to this tradition?
11. Describe what is the most basic problem with the "growth/realization" tradition for psychologists of religion?
12. Describe the intrinsic, extrinsic and quest religious orientations.
13. List and describe three motivations and bases for attributions considered as central concerns for a psychology of religion.
14. Describe event characteristics that tend to incline one to attribute religious significance to an event.
15. Identify personal factors that tend to incline one to attribute religious significance to an event.

CHAPTER TWO: Religion in Childhood

1. Present arguments, both for and against, the biological basis of religion.
2. Identify the six stages of Kohlberg's Model of Moral Development.
3. Describe Gilligan's criticisms of Kohlberg's theory.
4. Describe Fowler's concept of "faith" and the criticisms of his work.
5. Associate/relate the labels for Fowler's seven stages of faith with their descriptions.
6. Arrange in order Oser's five stages of religious judgement.
7. Describe attachment theory and two ways it may be linked to religion.
8. Describe Baumrind's four styles of parenting.
9. Describe the more likely consequences for children whose parents tend to use the threat of God's punishment as a way to control their children.

CHAPTER THREE: Religious Socialization in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

1. List the five theoretical sources of religiousness.
2. Describe parental religious variables as predictors of adolescents and young adults maintaining the family religion.
3. Describe the level of agreement on religious matters between parents and adolescents.
4. Identify and rank order of parents (mother and father) in terms of influence on children's religious sentiment and explain why this is the case.
5. Describe the qualities of parent-child relationships that are believed to foster a child following parental religious beliefs.
6. Describe the influence of college education on religious practice and beliefs.
7. Explain the polarization hypothesis in religious development.
8. Describe the change in religious expression of U.S. adolescents over recent decades compared to other western countries.
9. Describe the relationship between religious orientation and complexity of adolescent thinking.
10. For university students, describe the relationship between religious doubts and personal adjustment variables, like stress, depression and self-esteem.
11. Describe the apparent relationship between religious fundamentalism, doubting and cognitive complexity.
12. Identify the factor most strongly associated with apostasy.
13. Describe the relationship between religiousness and age in the U.S.
14. Explain what is meant by "amazing apostates" and "amazing believers."

CHAPTER FOUR: Religion in Adult Life

1. Cite evidence to support the statement that the U.S. is one of the more religious nations on the world.
2. List evidence to support the arguments that the U.S. is becoming more liberal or more conservative in its religious affiliation.
3. Describe Roof's term "new voluntarism."
4. List the three motivations Monoghan suggest for church participation.
5. Describe the trend in "horizontal," "vertical," and "integrated" faith with age.
6. Describe the homogenity-heterogeneity issue of religious beliefs.
7. State the relationship between self satisfaction and happiness with faith and religious involvement.
8. Describe the atmosphere/culture for women who work as religious professionals.
9. Describe the relationship between religious faith and:
   1. marital sexual activity
   2. marital satisfaction
   3. family planning
10. Describe the trend in intermarriage between Protestants, Catholics and Jews.
11. State the relationship between happiness and stability and interfaith and intrafaith marriages.
12. Describe the potential risks/danges of combining religion and politics.
13. Describe the potential benifits that religion can bring to politics.

CHAPTER FIVE: Religion and Death

1. Know the percentage of Americans who believe in an afterlife, in heaven and hell.
2. Describe the relationship between in an afterlife and age in the U.S.
3. Describe the relationship between religious experiences and NDE.
4. Identify problems in research with religion and anxiety about death and dying.
5. Describe the relationship between fear of death and afterlife beliefs.
6. Describe the eight reliable scales used to assess attitudes and feelings about death.
7. Describe how religious commitment influences perspectives about euthanasia.
8. Describe ways religion helps a person cope with bereavement.
9. Describe ways religion helps reduce the tendency to suicide.
10. List the three aims clergy have in working with the dying and their survivors.

CHAPTER SIX: Religious Experience

1. State William James' definition of religion.
2. Describe the James-Boisen formula for religious experience including the role of vocabulary and interpretation.
3. Relate Suden's theory to the creation of religious experience.
4. Explain how Schacter's theory of emotion relates to religious experience.
5. Associate brain wave frequencies with levels of Zen meditation.
6. Describe Fischer's cartography of mental states.
7. Describe Jaynes' Bicameral Theory and its implications for the validity of religious experience.
8. Describe the relationship between glossolalia and measures of psychopathology and trance state.
9. Describe the sociological explanations for why some reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary are accepted as legitimate by the Catholic Church.
10. Explain Carroll's Freudian explanation for Marian apparitions.
11. Explain why both scientists and religionists would object to a study of the efficacy of prayer in objective/external world terms.
12. Identify and describe the forms of Poloma's prayer types associated with religious satisfaction and existential well-being.
13. Discuss the issue of reductionism as an explanation of religious experience.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Mysticism

1. Describe extrovertive and introvertive mysticism so as to distinguish them.
2. Describe a numinous experience and the reactions "mysterium fascinans" and "mysterium tremendum."
3. Distinguish between mystical and numinous experiences.
4. Describe Leuba's and Freud's arguments that mysticism is an erroneous attribution.
5. Describe James' position for mysticism as heightened awareness and its evidential claim of a "foundational reality."
6. Describe the findings of studies using open-ended responses to assess mystical experiences, in terms of:
   1. intrinsic vs. extrinsic religiousness
   2. institutionally committed vs. personally committed religion.
7. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of open-ended responses to assess mystical experiences.
8. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of survey research to assess mystical experiences.
9. Based on surveys using the Stark, Bourque, Greely and Hardy questions, describe the general finding of persons affirming an intense spiritual experience in terms of:
   1. percentages of the general population
   2. gender distribution
   3. age distribution
   4. other demographic variables
10. Distinguish between mysticism and paranormal experiences.
11. Describe the relationship between reports of mysticism and paranormal experiences.
12. Describe mainstream science's assessment of paranormal experiences.
13. Describe the relationship between REEM scores and:
    1. intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness
    2. subcultural values regarding religious experiences
    3. hypnotic susceptibility
14. Describe the relationship between REEM scores and the Baron's Ego Strength Scale; site criticisms regarding this research.
15. List Stace's criteria for mystical experience.
16. Describe how set, setting and stress incongruity are related to mystical experiences.
17. Cite evidence that indicates how mysical experiences are associated with "normal" and "abnormal" populations.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Conversion

1. Distinguish between classic and contemporary approaches to the social psychological study of conversion.
2. List Coe's criteria for a conversion experience.
3. Distinguish between apostasy, deconversion, intensification, switiching and cycling.
4. Describe age and gender factors associated with conversion and the limits to these findings.
5. Distinguish between the eight major characteristics of Richardson's "old conversion paradigm" (sudden conversion) and the "gadual conversion paradigm."
6. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the six conversion motifs outlined by Lofland and Skonovd.
7. Describe the percentages of denominational members who withdraw and then return to a religious orginization.

CHAPTER NINE: Social Psychology of Religious Organizations

1. Describe church and sects so as to distinguish them.
2. Describe the limits of church-sect theory.
3. Describe "ideological surround" and how it may be useful in research and intergroup communication.
4. Explain how ideological surround may explain the research interpretation that intrinsically religious persons only wish to appear socially desirable.
5. Describe so as to distinguish between restorative and transformative religious sects.
6. Describe so as to distinguish between sects and cults.
7. Describe the term "medicalization of deviance" as it relates to new religious groups.
8. Explain why the term "brainwashing" is considered a discredited concept.
9. Identify the process involved in coercive persuasion.
10. Describe the likelihood of cults to recruit and retrain members and explain why this is the case.

CHAPTER TEN: Religion and Morality

1. Describe the relationship between religiousness and cheating.
2. Describe the relationship between religiousness and alcohol use/abuse and list mechanisms for this relationship.
3. Describe the relationship between religiousness and substance abuse; list caveats to these findings.
4. Describe the relationship between religiousness (intrinsic and extrinsic) and nonmarital sex.
5. Describe the relationship between religiousness and criminal behavior and how these findings are explained.
6. Describe the relationship between religiousness (intrinsic, extrinsic, quest) and helping.
7. Explain Allport's statement, "it (religion) makes prejudice and it unmakes prejudice."
8. Describe the "overall or general" relationship between religiousness and prejudice.
9. Describe the possible curvilinear relationship between religiousness and prejudice and the questions that remain about it.
10. Describe what is ment by proscribed and nonproscribed prejudice; list likely examples of each.
11. Describe Bateson's hypothesis about intrinsic religiousness and proscribed and nonproscribed prejudice.
12. Identify elements in Altemeyer's and Hunsberger's definition of fundamentalism.
13. Describe the relationship between the quest religious orientation, fundamentalism and prejudice.
14. Explain why authoritarianism is considered a more basic contrubitor to prejudice than fundamentalism.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Religion, Coping and Adjustment

1. Describe primary and secondary appraisal.
2. Describe the deferring, collaborative, and self-directive approaches of coping.
3. Describe the primary and secondary forms of control and their relationship to faith.
4. Describe interpretive, predictive, and vicarious control and their relationship to faith/religion.
5. Describe the relationship between religious orientation (intrinsic, extrinsic), God images, self-esteem, and adjustment.
6. Describe the relationship between fundamentalism and optimism-pessimism.
7. List the type of stress (threat, loss or challenge) faith/religion is least often employed and why this may be so.
8. Identify ways in which religion may improve one's physical health.
9. Explain how religious ritual is considered a positive/beneficial practice.
10. Describe the current assessment of empirical research on the ability of intercessory prayer to influence the health of another.
11. Identify the beliefs or assumptions upon which prayer is based.

CHAPTER TWELVE: Religion and Mental Disorder

1. Describe the general relationship between mystical experiences and:
   1. measures of psychological well being
   2. concersion experiences
   3. scrupulosity
2. Explain ways in which religion can work as a positive socializing influence.
3. Explain ways religion can serve as a haven from daily stress.
4. Explain ways religion can be hazard to mental health.
5. Explain how confounding variables may influence the relationship of religion and (ab)normality.