Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Cognitive Processes in Religion, Spirituality and Secularism

尽管社会科学研究了范畴的日常使用，但宗教范畴通常被视为预先定义的自变量，而不是研究对象本身。这种倾向导致了我们对宗教对不同群体的实际意义的理解上的差距。这种情况的问题是，只有当我们理解人们称之为宗教时发生的事情的轮廓，以及宗教的对象如何在包括社会学研究在内的社会背景下系统性地、而不是随机地变化时，我们才能真正理解围绕宗教的公开辩论。解决这个问题的一种方法是通过与认知社会学相关的研究方法。认知社会学试图建立在认知科学的实践和理论的基础上，以更好地理解认知和文化过程的社会方面。因此，该项目致力于解决与宗教范畴研究有关的三个长期存在的经验主义方法论问题。1)它解决了一个悬而未决的问题，即人们在日常互动中如何区分宗教与世俗和精神。该项目通过对两个截然不同的人群--自我认同的无神论者和信奉基督教的人--的研究来研究这个问题。通过考察人们用来区分宗教、世俗和精神的文化和认知过程，我们可以了解宗教作为一个现实世界的范畴的形状。这些群体在圣经地带和中西部都有研究。2)由于该项目部分地从非信徒的角度来看待宗教类别，它也以一种到目前为止一直缺乏的方式探索了美国无神论者的经历。鉴于不断增长的世俗人口和关于宗教在政治和公共生活中的正确位置的持续辩论，这种探索的重要性是显而易见的。3)该项目利用认知社会学的见解创建了一种独特的研究设计，将传统的定性技术与新的解释策略和额外的量化措施结合在一起。从字面上看，我们在不同的认知情况下思考不同，这一事实可以用来在社会学研究中发挥我们的优势。通过使用参与者观察、深度访谈和增加各种认知练习，可以创造出比任何一种方法都更准确的文化现象图景。更广泛的影响除了对社会科学的贡献外，这个项目还进一步推动了关于宗教在美国扮演适当角色的更广泛的公众讨论。对宗教作为一个类别的模棱两可，特别是我们对宗教缺乏了解，使得分析宗教及其在当前许多争议中的地位变得困难，包括围绕医疗保健资金(例如，支付避孕费用)、选举政治(例如，主要政党总统候选人的感知和实际宗教立场)和国际关系(例如，美国和中东政治)的争议。考虑到近年来宗教的重新兴起、关于宗教在现代民主中的地位的持续辩论以及全世界涉及宗教的众多争议，理解宗教是如何被普通人创造和理解为一个类别的过程变得至关重要。同样，增加我们对非宗教人士及其与宗教的关系的了解也是至关重要的。据估计，约有1.6%的美国人口自认为是无神论者；这与美国犹太人口的规模大致相同，是美国佛教、穆斯林或印度教人口的两倍多。然而，人们对无神论者的了解相对较少，这种知识的缺乏给正在进行的关于美国宗教地位的对话带来了困难。

SES-1333672John Levi MartinEric MooreUnivesity of Chicago Although the social sciences have studied the everyday use of categories, the category of religion is often treated as a pre-defined independent variable rather than an object of study itself. This tendency has resulted in a gap within our understanding of what religion actually is to various groups of people. The problem with this situation is that we can only truly understand public debates surrounding religion if we understand the contours of what happens when people call something religion and how religion's referents may change systematically, not randomly, across social contexts, including those associated with sociological research. One way to address this issue is through research methods associated with cognitive sociology. Cognitive sociology attempts to build off of practices and theories from the cognitive sciences to better understand the social aspects of cognitive and cultural processes. This project therefore works towards solving three persisting empirical methodological problems related to the study of the category of religion. 1) It addresses the unanswered question of how people distinguish the religious from the secular and spiritual in everyday interactions. The project investigates this question through a study of two very different groups of people, self-identified atheists and practicing Christians. By examining the cultural and cognitive processes people use in making distinctions between religion, the secular and the spiritual we can learn about the shape of religion as a real-world category. These groups are studied both in the Bible Belt and the Midwest. 2) Because the project looks at the category of religion partially from the perspectives of non-believers, it also explores the American atheist experience in a way that has been lacking up until now. The importance of this exploration is clear in light of the growing secular population and ongoing debates over the correct place for religion in politics and public life. 3) The project makes use of insights from cognitive sociology to create a unique research design that incorporates both traditional qualitative techniques along with new interpretive strategies and additional quantitative measures. We literally think differently in different cognitive situations and this fact can be used to our advantage in sociological research. By using participant observation, in-depth interviews and adding a variety of cognitive exercises a more accurate picture of cultural phenomena can be created than would be possible with any one method alone. Broader ImpactsBeyond its contributions to social science, this project furthers the larger public conversation over the appropriate role of religion in the United States. Ambiguity over religion as a category, and specifically our lack of understanding of it, makes it difficult to analyze religion and its place in many current controversies, including those surrounding healthcare funding (e.g. paying for contraception), electoral politics (e.g. perceived and actual religious positions of major party presidential candidates), and international relations (e.g. the United States and the politics of the Middle East). Taking into account the re-emergence of religion in recent years, on-going debates over the place of religion in a modern democracy and the numerous controversies involving religion worldwide, understanding the processes of how religion is created and understood as a category by ordinary persons becomes crucial. Likewise, it is also vital to increase our understanding of the non-religious and their relationships to religion. About 1.6% of the U.S. population is estimated to self-identify as atheist; this is approximately the same size as the U.S. Jewish population and more than twice the American Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu populations. However, relatively little is known about atheists, and this lack of knowledge creates difficulties in the ongoing conversation over the place of religion in United States.