Existential anxiety and religiosity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3867830 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Frederic Peters (0000-0002-8549-2977, University of New England, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 275-291 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Research on Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2050-3032 • E-ISSN: 2050-3040 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/2050303219874382 |
| OpenAlex | W2972790781 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 60 |
Analysis of the psychological processes involved in generating the sense of supernatural agency, as well as social scientific research into the factors most directly associated with the prevalence of religious belief and practice (religiosity), both support a common finding: the direct correlation between levels of existential anxiety and the prevalence and intensity of religiosity (religious belief and practice). All functional elements of religion (beliefs, rituals, prayers) involve efforts to invoke, activate, and deploy supernatural causal agency of one sort or another. But religiosity varies throughout the world. This paper reviews psychological evidence that existential anxiety is the core factor activating the intra-psychic mechanisms that give rise to and constitute the nature of religiosity, and that variations in physical and socio-cultural pressures impinging on the individual give rise to variations in anxiety. This combination of intrinsic psychological mechanisms driven though existential anxiety by extrinsic physical, economic, and social pressures indicates that religiosity is best understood as a social-psychological process: socio-cultural factors activating anxiety which in turn drives the intra-psychic mechanisms generating the sense of supernatural agency expressed in belief and practice. By the same token, for analytical purposes, religions are most effectively viewed as social-psychological organisms: social organisms driven by intra-psychic mechanisms that constitute religious convictions and practices in the way that we find them-dedicated to and engaged with supernatural agency in its various forms
Anxiety · Existentialism · Political science · Psychiatry · Religiosity · Sociology · Clinical Psychology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology
Faces in the Clouds
Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development
Culture and Communication
The origins of religious disbelief
Goal attribution without agency cues
Values and religiosity
Self-Efficacy
The Causes and Consequences of a Need for Self-Esteem
Religious coping and psychological adjustment to stress
Stress, appraisal, and coping
The social construction of reality
The Future of Religion
A World of Atheism
Sacred and Secular
Secularization, R.I.P
Secularization
The influence of religion on death anxiety and death acceptance
Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory
Death Anxiety and Religion in an Older Male Sample
Spirituality and Religiosity
The affluent society and its religious consequences
The Definers Defined
Value Priorities and Religiosity in Four Western Religions
Religion and Pain
What Is It Like to See with Your Ears? The Representational Theory of Mind
Varieties of Secularization Theories and Their Indispensable Core
Religionswissenschaft
Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism and Religious Experience
Prolegomenon to a Theory of Religion
Pleasure and the Good Life
Country Religiosity Declines as Material Security Increases
State Welfare Spending and Religiosity
A Terror Management Analysis of the Psychological Functions of Religion
Sacred and Secular
Religion and Economy
Event structure in perception and conception
Sociology
Anthropology and Psychology
A General Attribution Theory for the Psychology of Religion
General Attribution Theory for the Psychology of Religion
God and the Just World
Acts of Faith
The Naturalness of Religious Ideas
Aging, Social Developmental, and Cultural Factors in Changing Patterns of Religious Involvement Over a 32-Year Period
Recent Developments and Current Controversies in the Sociology of Religion
From Religious to Consumption-Related Routine Activities? Analyzing Ireland's Economic Boom and the Decline in Church Attendance
Religion and Political Economy in an International Panel
Religious Attendance in Cross-National Perspective
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |