Individualism and collectivism

Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

Psychologists interested in culture have focused primarily on East-West differences in individualism-collectivism, or independent-interdependent self-construal. As important as this dimension is, there are many other forms of culture with many dimensions of cultural variability. Selecting from among the many understudied cultures in psychology, the author considers three kinds of cultures: religion, socioeconomic status, and region within a country. These cultures vary in a number of psychologically interesting ways. By studying more types of culture, psychologists stand to enrich how they define culture, how they think about universality and cultural specificity, their views of multiculturalism, how they do research on culture, and what dimensions of culture they study. Broadening the study of culture will have far-reaching implications for clinical issues, intergroup relations, and applied domains.

Many forms of culture.

Every human action, ranging from benevolence to inhumane violence has been justified in the name of religion, which has been a pervasive feature of human life throughout history. This article describes religion as a meaning system that is unique in centering on what is perceived as sacred, and in its special ability to address the quest for meaning. The article recommends the meaning system approach for the study of religion, suggesting that this approach can illuminate the resiliency of religion, and its complicated relations with individual and societal well-being. It describes the outline of the volume, and concludes with recommendations for research, education, and policies in the arena of religion that can facilitate well-being in the new millennium.

Religion as a Meaning System: Implications for the New Millennium

We propose the theory that religious cultures vary in individualistic and collectivistic aspects of religiousness and spirituality. Study 1 showed that religion for Jews is about community and biological descent but about personal beliefs for Protestants. Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity were intercorrelated and endorsed differently by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants in a pattern that supports the theory that intrinsic religiosity relates to personal religion, whereas extrinsic religiosity stresses community and ritual (Studies 2 and 3). Important life experiences were likely to be social for Jews but focused on God for Protestants, with Catholics in between (Study 4). We conclude with three perspectives in understanding the complex relationships between religion and culture.

Religion as Culture: Religious Individualism and Collectivism Among American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants

Previous research by Cohen and Rozin showed that Jews are much less moralizing of negative mental states than Protestants. Two alternative, theologically derived interpretations of this finding are that Jews, relative to Protestants: (a) are less attentive to both negative and positive mental states, or (b) are less attentive to negative mental states, but equally attentive to positive ones. In Studies 1 and 2, we presented Jewish and Protestant participants with vignettes about a person considering virtuous actions, and both groups gave a high degree of moral credit for such thoughts. In Study 3, we presented Jewish and Christian participants with 2 vignettes, 1 about a person considering a virtuous action and another about a different person considering an immoral action. Jews and Christians differed strongly in their moral evaluations of the person considering the immoral action, but were very similar in their moral evaluations of the person considering a virtuous action. Study 4 described an actor who...

Amy Rankin

Papers

Religion and the Morality of Positive Mentality