Religion And Religion Essay

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around the world religion is a topic which affects every individual, whether they participate or not, psychology has been interested in how religion affects an individual’s attitudes, behaviours and beliefs. Some of the earlier suggestions within psychology suggesting why people are religious include Sigmund Freud (as cited in Walborn, 2014) who suggested religion is an illusion, and that individual’s hold onto religious beliefs to fulfil what our ancestors taught us, and has links to the unconscious mind and the Oedipus complex. Similar to Carl Jung (as cited in Walborn, 2014) who suggested images passing from the unconscious mind into the conscious are explained as being a religious experience as these thoughts were unexplainable by any other means. Alfred Adler (1870–1937) suggested that individuals have a desire to identify with god, as those who identify in religious stories are holy and perfect. This would then in theory counterbalance any feelings of regret, impurity or imperfection. The belief of God motivated individuals to be positive in life and become socially related to other individuals who have similar beliefs, this then promotes positive feelings and emotions within an individual, and a sense of pure wellbeing. Eric Erikson (cited in Walborn, 2014) also proposed religion is used for achieving psychological development of identity and personality, which is backed up by research throughout the religious psychology topic, for example Youniss, McLellan & Yates (1999) suggested that individuals who have religious involvement developed an identity which preceded them to have a healthy lifestyle, including positive engagement within school and sense of community which deterred them from anti-social behaviour. William Jam...

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...g the same Francis Scale of Christianity used in Francis (2004) research and the same General Health Questionnaire. The General Health Questionnaire will cover participants’ somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression. Francis & O’Connor’s papers used a small undergraduate sample consisting primarily of Psychology students; therefore within this research student subject discipline will be taken in to account to measure whether this has an effect as well as participant level of study. A measure of religious change will be taken into account, using a religious measure as students will be assessed on their beliefs from before and since they began university to determine whether attitudes can change in regards to their previous beliefs, subject discipline and life events, and overall whether this has any impact on their well-being.

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