Special Topics in Social Psychology: Psychology and Religion

This seminar will use three major categories to organize the domain of religion: Believing (faith, avowal, the sources of religious understanding, etc.), Behaving (obedience, ritual, moral conduct; consistency, self-deception, hypocrisy, etc.) and Belonging (voluntary and involuntary membership, “fellowship,” conversion, excommunication, proselytization, etc.).  A fourth category, Benefit, describes the reward or expected outcome of religious life.   We will use this model to explore how psychology, broadly construed to include aspects of other social and biological sciences, engages with important aspects of religious life. Readings will include sources from Western and Asian religions and a variety of psychological viewpoints.  Each student will develop a substantial term paper for the course in addition to completing weekly question sets on the assigned readings.