Spotlights
Luke Galen's A Social Cognition Perspective of the Psychology of Religion
An exploration of how psychological mechanisms produce intuitions,
beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that are misattributed as being
unique outcomes of religious or spiritual influences. Written from a
social psychology perspective, this book proposes that religious and
spiritual content represent one possible interpretation of the output
of processes that also produce and govern nonreligious content.
In looking at why people believe in God, and why belief in God is
often linked with a range of positive outcomes such as prosociality,
morality, health, and happiness, the author uses a critical lens that
challenges past theories of religion's functions and adds new
perspectives into a discipline that is often limited by an exclusive
focus on evolutionary theory.
This book features several cross-cutting themes-including “dual
process” theory and an exploration of how various social cognition
mechanisms and biases can channel or shape religious content-and
provides a continuous through-line linking the underlying building
blocks of thought, as studied in the cognitive sciences of religion
(CSR) to specific religious and spiritual concepts using a social
cognition lens.
Click here to access: A Social Cognition Perspective of the Psychology of Religion
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