PSYCHOLOGY Concepts and Theories: Religious coping

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Reactive Approach Motivation RAM a psychological science concept

Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM ; McGregor, 2006) refers to the way people deal with anxiety producing threats by becoming extremely zealous, which reduces the anxiety caused by the threat.

The zealous pursuit focuses on an ideal that offers hope and strength, bolsters values and convictions. People are motivated to become closed minded. They may increase religious fervor or political extremism depending on their value system.

RAM is based on the neuropsychology of anxiety. Anxiety rises in situations of uncertainty. RAM proposes that people deal with anxious uncertainty by ardently pursuing meaningful goals. When anxious, people become more vigilant and prepare for fight or flight responses.

Example

People with travel plans during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic anxiously searched online for information about the virus, government announcements, and travel news. Many zealously warned of the growing extent of the flu. Others tried to encourage people with religious messages. Some sought financial safety by selling their shares in businesses. Others focused on repeating messages about washing hands and avoiding social contact. Even the hand washing was couched in religious language as "Holy Hygiene."

Related concepts / posts

Terror Management Theory

Meaning Maintenance Model

Reference

McGregor, I. (2006). Offensive defensiveness: Toward an integrative neuroscience of compensatory zeal after mortality salience, personal uncertainty, and other poignant self-threats. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 299–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400701366977

Connections

My Page www.suttong.com

My Books AMAZON GOOGLE PLAY STORE

FACEBOOK Geoff W. Sutton

TWITTER @Geoff.W.Sutton

PINTEREST www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

Academia Geoff W Sutton (PhD)

ResearchGate Geoffrey W Sutton (PhD)

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Religious Spiritual Coping- Positive and Negative

Spiritual Coping 2023 by
Geoffrey W. Sutton & Designer

Coping is the act of dealing with stressful experiences. Religious or Spiritual (RS) coping refers to the act of employing religious or spiritual resources to cope with a stressful experience.

KennethPargament is the psychology of religion scientist who identified two major groups of coping strategies as positive and negative RS coping. His seminal work was summarized in the 1997 book, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, and Practice. Many studies since then have illustrated how positive and negative coping strategies work with different stressful conditions.

Pargament, Koenig, and Perez (2000) developed the RCOPE as a measure of positive and negative religious coping. The researchers identified five basic functions of religious coping with impactful events. A shorter form has been used widely in research (Brief RCOPE).

1. Meaning- positive and negative religious or spiritual reappraisal

2. Control- active and passive strategies to deal with the events

3. Comfort-drawing on RS connections or support, or becoming discontented with RS

4. Intimacy- seeking RS support from others or discontent in interpersonal RS relationships

5. Life transformation- RS direction, conversion or disengaging, deconversion

Gall, T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M. (2013) have summarized some of the findings from coping research. In general, positive religious coping has helped people deal with distress- including general health and mental health conditions. However, negative coping is linked to worsened conditions in some studies. Seeing a condition as punishment by God seems to be a particularly common negative coping response among people whose conditions worsen.

Examples of drawing on RS (Religion or Spirituality) to positively cope with difficulties include the following:

RS purification and forgiveness

RS direction, guidance, and conversion

RS consultation with members of the clergy

RS connection

Examples of negative religious coping include

RS discontent

RS views of God or gods as punishing

RS reappraisal of God’s power

RS persistent pleading for divine assistance

When RS appears helpful in dealing with stressful experiences, people report increases in

one or more of the following:

Acceptance

Happiness

Optimism

purpose in life

When RS does appears unhelpful in dealing with stressful experiences, people present with the following:

Anxiety

Feeling burdened

General negative mood

Callousness

Cite this page

Sutton, G. W. (2020, January 9). Religious spiritual coping-positive and negative. Psychology Concepts and Theories. Retrieved from https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2020/01/religious-spiritual-coping-positive-and.html

References—These references offer a more in-depth look at RS coping.

Gall, T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M. (2013). Religious and spiritual coping: Current theory and research. In APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. (pp. 349–364). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-019

Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. New York: Guilford Press.

Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D. (2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping. Religions, 2, 51–76. doi:10.3390/rel2010051

Ad. I write about psychology and religion-

See on AMAZON and GOOGLE at many sites worldwide.

Resource

Assessing Spirituality and Religiosity

Buy on AMAZON