Psychology and Religion: An Introduction

The book is organized into sixteen chapters. It first examines the relationship between psychology and religion, including classic conflicts between scientific and religious explanations and the specific challenges posed by behaviourism, psychoanalysis, and mainstream psychology. It then analyzes religious socialisation, conversion, childhood religion, personality, and individual differences in religiosity. The central chapters study the extent, varieties, causes, and effects of religious experience, followed by discussions of religious belief, Freud’s and Jung’s theories, worship, prayer, ritual, and charisma. The later sections evaluate whether religion contributes to happiness, adjustment, physical health, mental health, moral development, altruism, and broader patterns of social behaviour. The final chapters consider secularisation, the changing state of religion in Britain and the United States, the rise of new religious movements, and concluding implications for religion. Overall, the work presents religion as a complex psychological and social phenomenon shaped by cognition, emotion, personality, culture, group life, moral values, and spiritual experience.