The valuable contribution of cognitive science of religion is the insight on the propensity of the human mind for dealing with supernatural agents, and their ability for access to the human mind. Science has the expertise on nature. These insights on nature serve as a platform for further understanding religious phenomena and truth-claims.
Cognitive Science of Religion has been often, according to Barrett (2007, p.12) falsely, associated with an anti-religious agenda. Dawkins (2006), for instance, uses the same findings in his effort to free the world of religious thought. There are others who scorn the possibility of applying the findings of evolutionary science to religion (Pinker, 2006).
Bering and Johnson (2005) justify the existence of the cognitive hardware described above, by pointing out to the logic of the adaptive process, in the language of evolution:
We have inherited the general template for religiosity because those early humans who abandoned the prospect of supernatural […]
Author: selvam
Lecture 1: What is Positive Psychology?
Positive psychology: Its sources and contents
In 1998, when Martin Seligman was elected as the president of the American Psychology Association (APA) he extended a clarion call to psychology to focus on wellbeing and happiness as it does on pathology and psychological disorder (Seligman, 1999). The stream of psychological accent that followed is referred to as ‘positive psychology’. This is not a new school of psychology but only a new movement. It draws its sources from the history of psychology; and its interests are similar to that of humanistic psychology, but it differs sharply from it in that positive psychology embraces an empirical approach. It is the focus on existential questions with an empirical grounding that makes positive psychology unique (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 13; see also Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2001).
For a long time, psychology was focused on understanding, treating and preventing psychological disorder. The positive psychology movement challenges this […]
Lecture 2: Understanding Affective States
WHAT IS AN EMOTION?
‘…a kind of shorthand, an abbreviated way to refer to a package of events and processes…antecedent events, the physiological and motor responses, the memories, thoughts, images, and information processing, and the mobilisation of efforts to cope with the source of emotions. All of these may be implied when someone says, “He looks angry” (Ekaman, 1989).
EMOTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
The way we process emotion is influenced by gender, genetic makeup and some personality traits.
The environmental influence on emotional processing is also strong. That is, we learn to process. That is why, the way children deal with emotions is different from that of adults.
This learning process could be largely determined by early exposure to strong emotional stimuli without accompanying support. Certain way of expressing emotions in a particular context (family) learnt as a child may be difficult in dealing with in another context (school/community) as an adult.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY & AFFECTIVE […]
Lecture 3: Flow, Positivity, Flourishing
WHAT IS FLOW?
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness (London: Random House, 2002).
The mental state experienced during ‘an autotelic activity’ during which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus marked by loss of sense of time and space.
Generally, flow occurs when there is a balance between skills and challenges in the individual’s functioning.
In relation to wellbeing, some studies have shown that the state of flow alone cannot sufficiently explain all the constructs associated with happiness and wellbeing.
Csikszentmihalyi himself accepts that people in flow may not acknowledge subjective wellbeing.
NINE CHARACTERISTICS OF FLOW (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996)
Clear goals
Balance of challenge and skill
Immediate feedback
No fear of failure
Distractions excluded from consciousness
Merging of action and awareness (concentration)
Not self-conscious of the activity
Transcendence of time & space
Autotelic – intrinsic motivation (see Deci & Ryan)
ARE WE HARDWIRED FOR NEGATIVITY?
Evidence from neuroscience suggests that human memory is better facilitated, marked by increased […]
Lecture 4: Wellbeing: Subjective, Psychological & Social
In the recent years, positive psychology has begun to explore wellbeing and happiness in the parlance of Greek philosophical terminology of hedonia and eudaimonia (Deci & Ryan, 2008). While hedonia refers to those aspects of wellbeing that arises from pleasure oriented activities, eudaimonia refers to fulfilment of our potential as human beings. Furthermore, positive psychology literature makes some distinction between psychological wellbeing, social wellbeing, and emotional wellbeing (Keyes & Lopez, 2002).
Subjective Wellbeing: Diener (1984) has been consistent in the use of the term Subjective Well-Being, to include individual happiness, presence of positive affect, and absence of negative affect. Subjective well-being is an individual experience, which excludes objective conditions like health, comfort, virtue and wealth. In some literature the terms subjective wellbeing and emotional wellbeing are used synonymously (Snyder & Lopez, 2007).
Satisfaction with Life Scale examines Subjective Wellbeing.
Psychological Wellbeing: Ryff and colleagues have been critical of identifying psychological health with subjective […]