The authors review experimental evidence that religious conviction can be a defensive source of compensatory control when personal or external sources of control are low. They show evidence that (a) belief in religious deities and secular institutions can serve as external forms of control that can compensate for manipulations that lower personal control and (b) religious conviction can also se...

We examine the recent proliferation of religious discourses among front line social workers in the former British Colony of Hong Kong in order to explore the nature of 're-enchantment' in modern social work practice. In-depth qualitative interviews with twenty social workers who identify as 'Christian social workers' in a variety of social work organisations (both religious and secular) reveal ...

In two studies undergraduates' understanding of extraordinary capabilities was investigated using religious and secular contexts. Six stories assessed participants’ endorsement of anthropomorphic language to describe attention, physical power, perception, and presence of three agents: God, a human, and Qwore, an agent with the same powers as God. Participants attributed human-like limitations t...

This paper surveys the origins and present applications of the Genetic Modification of plants, animals and humans. The ethical concerns raised from both secular and religious sources are considered. It is concluded that humankind has been delegated responsible stewardship for all the earth’s resources, including DNA, and that there are strong theological motivations for using Genetic Modificati...

When groups compete for members, the resulting dynamics of human social activity may be understandable with simple mathematical models. Here, we apply techniques from dynamical systems and perturbation theory to analyze a theoretical framework for the growth and decline of competing social groups. We present a new treatment of the competition for adherents between religious and irreligious segm...

Mark Silk has proposed in Unsecular Media that journalists operate with a limited series of topoi and that these are borrowed from religion. Silk thus claims when journalists write about religion, they do so in a way that ultimately supports religious values. In this study, I apply topic analysis to recent news coverage of Jesse Jackson’s marital infidelity to determine the extent to which the ...

Two studies examined the inductive potential of various social categories among 144 kindergarten, 2nd-, and 6th-grade Israeli children from 3 sectors: secular Jews, religious Jews, and Muslim Arabs. Study 1-wherein social categories were labeled-found that ethnic categories were the most inductively powerful, especially for religious Jewish children. Study 2-wherein no social category labels we...

In his first book and major study of college students, Astin looks at changes in attitudes, beliefs, self-concept, behavior, academic achievement, the career path, and college satisfaction. Questions explored about religion include how religious affiliation changes or is weakened during college, how religious attendance is impacted, what aspects of the college experience contribute to these cha...

Current literature on careers, social identity and meaning in work tends to understate the multiplicity, historical significance, and nuances of the concept of calling(s). In this article, we trace the evolution of the concept from its religious roots into secular realms and develop a typology of interpretations using occupation and religious orientation as core dimensions. We offer a definitio...

Religion is generally recognized as a major resource for dealing with stressful events, but its relationship with secular coping strategies continues to be debated. The present article provides a systematic review of the way in which analyses of the sub-scale turning to religion of the widely used Brief COPE [1] instrument are presented in peer-reviewed research articles, in order to investigat...