Luke W Galen
Biographic Data
| ID | 321913 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luke W Galen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luke W |
| FAMILY NAME | Galen |
| SIGNATURE | GALEN L W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Grand Valley State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
What Do We Mean by Agnosticism: Self-Identification, Belief Uncertainty, and the Unknowability of God
Testing the religion/spirituality-mental health curvilinear hypothesis using data from many-analysts religion project
Findings from the recent Many-Analysts Religion Project (MARP) have been characterized as supporting a robust positive relationship between various measures of religion and aspects of well-being. However different conceptualizations of religiosity (e.g. identity, attendance, belief, conviction) can theoretically be expected to display distinct (e.g. non-linear or curvilinear) patterns of relationships with different manifestations of well-being. …
Religiosity, shared identity, trust, and punishment of norm violations: No evidence of generalized prosociality
In Doubt and Disbelief: How Mrdjenovich 2018 Misunderstands the (Non)Religion–Health Relationship
Modeling the Effects of Religious Belief and Affiliation on Prosociality
To what extent do supernatural beliefs, group affiliation, and social interaction produce values and behaviors that benefit others, i.e., prosociality ? Addressing this question involves multiple variables interacting within complex social networks that shape and constrain the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. We examine the relationships among some of these factors utilizing data from the World Values Survey to inform the construction of an …
“God’s Not My Type”: The Pew Religious Typology from a Secular Studies Perspective
The recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is intended to “offer a new and complementary lens with which to glean new insights into religion and public life”. The technique of cluster analysis was used on measures of religious and spiritual beliefs, yielding seven groups, two consisting primarily of nonreligious or secular individuals. There are “breadth-versus-depth” tradeoffs involved in this approach. A belief-based typolog…
Focusing on the nonreligious reveals secular mechanisms underlying well-being and prosociality
Greater attention to secular and nonreligious individuals has provided much-needed balance as well as alternative interpretations of commonly-held assumptions regarding religiosity/ spirituality (R/S). Contrary to the theory that R/S provides unique benefits in areas such as prosociality and mental health, analogous secular mechanisms exist. The conflation of effects attributed to R/S together with secular effects represents a congruence fallacy.…
Which functions assumed to be religious and spiritual in nature are ultimately attributable or reducible to purely secular mechanisms
There is a commonly held assumption that religiosity/spirituality (R/S) reflects unique causal mechanisms in areas such as prosociality, mental health, and in the debate regarding the evolutionary origins of religion. However, because most studies are unequipped to rule out the possibility that R/S features are actually attributable to nonreligious, secular causal mechanisms, this assumption represents a congruence fallacy. The solution to this p…
Overlapping Mental Magisteria: Implications of Experimental Psychology for a Theory of Religious Belief as Misattribution
Subjective religious and spiritual experiences ( rs ) are believed by many to be reliable indicators of external agency. A set of related phenomena are used to support this view that typically involve intuitions or attributions of mental interaction or experiences with rs agents. The present review integrates empirical findings from the fields of the Cognitive Sciences of Religion, experimental social psychology, and neuropsychology to support th…
Beyond “Prosocial”
The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies
There are now more nonreligious people than ever before. The number of secular men and women has dramatically increased over the past several decades in Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. But what do we really know about secular men and women? This book provides as thorough and empirically grounded an answer as possible. This book offers a summation and analytical discussion of existing social scientific research on the nonreligious…
Nonreligious Group Factors Versus Religious Belief in the Prediction of Prosociality
Personality Ratings Are Influenced by Religious Stereotype and Ingroup Bias
A religious prosociality stereotype exists such that religiosity and prosociality are presumed to be positively associated, as evidenced by proxy measures such as personality traits. However, studies using self- and peer-ratings of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness have not simultaneously controlled for the religiosity of the participant and the target. One hundred and sixty students completed measures of religiosity in a prescreening survey. L…
The complex and elusive nature of religious prosociality: Reply to Myers (2012) and Saroglou (2012)
This reply explores issues raised in comments by Myers (2012) and Saroglou (2012) on Galen (2012) regarding whether religiosity has any influence on prosociality. Areas of contention include (a) the distinction between religious belief and other influences, mainly the socialization effects of group behavior; (b) whether behavior largely restricted to the ingroup is genuine prosociality; (c) methodological issues such as the validity of self-repor…
Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination
Numerous authors have suggested that religious belief has a positive association, possibly causal, with prosocial behavior. This article critiques evidence regarding this "religious prosociality" hypothesis from several areas of the literature. The extant literature on religious prosociality is reviewed including domains of charity, volunteering, morality, personality, and well-being. The experimental and quasi-experimental literature regarding c…
Personality and Social Integration Factors Distinguishing Nonreligious from Religious Groups: The Importance of Controlling for Attendance and Demographics
Previous studies linking personality and social integration with religiosity conflate the weakly religious with the completely nonreligious, and religious belief with group membership, leading to spurious associations. The present study characterizes the growing nonreligious population by comparing church and secular group members on personality characteristics and social integration. Although church members were higher in Agreeableness, Conscien…
The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History
Edited by Charles B. Strozier, David M. Terman, and James W. Jones, with Katharine A. Boyd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xxi + 274 pp. $99.00 hardcover, $19.95 paperback. The Fundamenta
Support for Animal Rights as a Function of Belief in Evolution, Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Denomination
The present study examined the relationship among religious denomination, fundamentalism, belief about human origins, gender, and support for animal rights. Eighty-two college undergraduates filled out a set of 3 questionnaires: The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), beliefs about human origins (creationism, intelligent design, or evolution), and the Animal Rights Scale (Wuensch, Jenkins, & Poteat, 2002). Because conse…
Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination
Numerous authors have suggested that religious belief has a positive association, possibly causal, with prosocial behavior. This article critiques evidence regarding this "religious prosociality" hypothesis from several areas of the literature. The extant literature on religious prosociality is reviewed including domains of charity, volunteering, morality, personality, and well-being. The experimental and quasi-experimental literature regarding c…
Support for Animal Rights as a Function of Belief in Evolution, Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Denomination
The present study examined the relationship among religious denomination, fundamentalism, belief about human origins, gender, and support for animal rights. Eighty-two college undergraduates filled out a set of 3 questionnaires: The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), beliefs about human origins (creationism, intelligent design, or evolution), and the Animal Rights Scale (Wuensch, Jenkins, & Poteat, 2002). Because conse…
Nonreligious Group Factors Versus Religious Belief in the Prediction of Prosociality
Overlapping Mental Magisteria: Implications of Experimental Psychology for a Theory of Religious Belief as Misattribution
Subjective religious and spiritual experiences ( rs ) are believed by many to be reliable indicators of external agency. A set of related phenomena are used to support this view that typically involve intuitions or attributions of mental interaction or experiences with rs agents. The present review integrates empirical findings from the fields of the Cognitive Sciences of Religion, experimental social psychology, and neuropsychology to support th…
Personality Ratings Are Influenced by Religious Stereotype and Ingroup Bias
A religious prosociality stereotype exists such that religiosity and prosociality are presumed to be positively associated, as evidenced by proxy measures such as personality traits. However, studies using self- and peer-ratings of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness have not simultaneously controlled for the religiosity of the participant and the target. One hundred and sixty students completed measures of religiosity in a prescreening survey. L…
The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History
Edited by Charles B. Strozier, David M. Terman, and James W. Jones, with Katharine A. Boyd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xxi + 274 pp. $99.00 hardcover, $19.95 paperback. The Fundamenta
Support for Animal Rights as a Function of Belief in Evolution, Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Denomination
The present study examined the relationship among religious denomination, fundamentalism, belief about human origins, gender, and support for animal rights. Eighty-two college undergraduates filled out a set of 3 questionnaires: The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), beliefs about human origins (creationism, intelligent design, or evolution), and the Animal Rights Scale (Wuensch, Jenkins, & Poteat, 2002). Because conse…
Personality and Social Integration Factors Distinguishing Nonreligious from Religious Groups: The Importance of Controlling for Attendance and Demographics
Previous studies linking personality and social integration with religiosity conflate the weakly religious with the completely nonreligious, and religious belief with group membership, leading to spurious associations. The present study characterizes the growing nonreligious population by comparing church and secular group members on personality characteristics and social integration. Although church members were higher in Agreeableness, Conscien…
The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History
Edited by Charles B. Strozier, David M. Terman, and James W. Jones, with Katharine A. Boyd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xxi + 274 pp. $99.00 hardcover, $19.95 paperback. The Fundamenta
The complex and elusive nature of religious prosociality: Reply to Myers (2012) and Saroglou (2012)
This reply explores issues raised in comments by Myers (2012) and Saroglou (2012) on Galen (2012) regarding whether religiosity has any influence on prosociality. Areas of contention include (a) the distinction between religious belief and other influences, mainly the socialization effects of group behavior; (b) whether behavior largely restricted to the ingroup is genuine prosociality; (c) methodological issues such as the validity of self-repor…
Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination
Numerous authors have suggested that religious belief has a positive association, possibly causal, with prosocial behavior. This article critiques evidence regarding this "religious prosociality" hypothesis from several areas of the literature. The extant literature on religious prosociality is reviewed including domains of charity, volunteering, morality, personality, and well-being. The experimental and quasi-experimental literature regarding c…
Personality Ratings Are Influenced by Religious Stereotype and Ingroup Bias
A religious prosociality stereotype exists such that religiosity and prosociality are presumed to be positively associated, as evidenced by proxy measures such as personality traits. However, studies using self- and peer-ratings of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness have not simultaneously controlled for the religiosity of the participant and the target. One hundred and sixty students completed measures of religiosity in a prescreening survey. L…
Nonreligious Group Factors Versus Religious Belief in the Prediction of Prosociality
Beyond “Prosocial”
The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies
There are now more nonreligious people than ever before. The number of secular men and women has dramatically increased over the past several decades in Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. But what do we really know about secular men and women? This book provides as thorough and empirically grounded an answer as possible. This book offers a summation and analytical discussion of existing social scientific research on the nonreligious…
Which functions assumed to be religious and spiritual in nature are ultimately attributable or reducible to purely secular mechanisms
There is a commonly held assumption that religiosity/spirituality (R/S) reflects unique causal mechanisms in areas such as prosociality, mental health, and in the debate regarding the evolutionary origins of religion. However, because most studies are unequipped to rule out the possibility that R/S features are actually attributable to nonreligious, secular causal mechanisms, this assumption represents a congruence fallacy. The solution to this p…
Overlapping Mental Magisteria: Implications of Experimental Psychology for a Theory of Religious Belief as Misattribution
Subjective religious and spiritual experiences ( rs ) are believed by many to be reliable indicators of external agency. A set of related phenomena are used to support this view that typically involve intuitions or attributions of mental interaction or experiences with rs agents. The present review integrates empirical findings from the fields of the Cognitive Sciences of Religion, experimental social psychology, and neuropsychology to support th…
Focusing on the nonreligious reveals secular mechanisms underlying well-being and prosociality
Greater attention to secular and nonreligious individuals has provided much-needed balance as well as alternative interpretations of commonly-held assumptions regarding religiosity/ spirituality (R/S). Contrary to the theory that R/S provides unique benefits in areas such as prosociality and mental health, analogous secular mechanisms exist. The conflation of effects attributed to R/S together with secular effects represents a congruence fallacy.…
“God’s Not My Type”: The Pew Religious Typology from a Secular Studies Perspective
The recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is intended to “offer a new and complementary lens with which to glean new insights into religion and public life”. The technique of cluster analysis was used on measures of religious and spiritual beliefs, yielding seven groups, two consisting primarily of nonreligious or secular individuals. There are “breadth-versus-depth” tradeoffs involved in this approach. A belief-based typolog…
Modeling the Effects of Religious Belief and Affiliation on Prosociality
To what extent do supernatural beliefs, group affiliation, and social interaction produce values and behaviors that benefit others, i.e., prosociality ? Addressing this question involves multiple variables interacting within complex social networks that shape and constrain the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. We examine the relationships among some of these factors utilizing data from the World Values Survey to inform the construction of an …
Religiosity, shared identity, trust, and punishment of norm violations: No evidence of generalized prosociality
In Doubt and Disbelief: How Mrdjenovich 2018 Misunderstands the (Non)Religion–Health Relationship
Testing the religion/spirituality-mental health curvilinear hypothesis using data from many-analysts religion project
Findings from the recent Many-Analysts Religion Project (MARP) have been characterized as supporting a robust positive relationship between various measures of religion and aspects of well-being. However different conceptualizations of religiosity (e.g. identity, attendance, belief, conviction) can theoretically be expected to display distinct (e.g. non-linear or curvilinear) patterns of relationships with different manifestations of well-being. …
What Do We Mean by Agnosticism: Self-Identification, Belief Uncertainty, and the Unknowability of God
Psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (12 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Prosocial behavior (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)