The Psych Student

WTO protests in Seattle, November 30, 1999. Photo by djbones via flickr.

I decided to go with a somewhat smug and overbearing headline for this post on purpose since I think a lot of people tend to look at activists as sort of self-righteous, arrogant pricks. I like to sprinkle a modest amount self deprecating humor here and there. After all, aside from being a dad, a hubby, a full-time wage slave, a borderline obsessive technophile, bookworm and caffeine junky, I’m also an activist, usually interested in the human rights end of things. I coordinate The Committee to Protect Bloggers, am working on a crisis map in Farsi for the Iranian reform movement and run with folks in the International Solidarity Movement among other pursuits. Why would anyone engage in all this stuff instead of just getting a good night’s rest or playing more video games?

A while back I came across news about a study by by Tim Kasser and Malte Klar, entitled “Some Benefits of Being an Activist: Measuring Activism and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being.” I bookmarked the item and several related articles as potential fodder for this blog, but I was also particularly interested in getting some insight into possibly my own motivations for “getting involved.” Read the rest of this entry »

Before discussing it, I offer you the chance to watch From Science to God by Peter Russell. (and apologies to Sarah Silverman for alluding to her film Jesus is Magic in the post title)

Peter Russell is an author and filmmaker who seems ever eager to bridge what many see as a gap between science and religion, however, it seems like he’s trying to make a bad relationship work. Not that one can be both scientific and religious, but that the two things must somehow be shackeled in ways that don’t really work for the purposes of shaping a new worldview.

This post actually started off as a response to a friend who had shared the video with me (that’ll learn ya). The basic notion here, that science can now be dismissed as a means of answering certain questions on the basis that the questions are really quite old and science hasn’t fully solved them yet, is what I’d classify as a sort of a new mutation of Neo-Luddism. I have a different piece of writing on Modern Luddites in general that seems to be taking quite a bit of time, but for now, and in this post I’d like to focus just a bit on the spiritual strain. Spiritualists take a lot of things for granted about science that often seems more like an analysis of what they are seeing in the mirror rather than an objective assessment, and this film is a perfect example. Read the rest of this entry »

The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer’s is online in pdf format. It combines more than 30 years of research into authoritarianist regimes, doctrines and thier fans. I’m bookmarking it here because I’m both a fan of online publishing and interested in the topic, so am hoping to give it a look-see soon.

Boingboing says “It’s a fascinating explanation of how the minds of this subset of the population works- or in some cases, fails to: how they are able to assiduously apply double standards, fail to notice inconsistencies in their beliefs, justify abominable behavior, etc. Somehow, knowing that these people really, truly, can’t reason in the same way the majority of us can makes them a little less irksome, if not less frightening.”

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but some of Altemeyer’s research beckens a deeper look.

“The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?” – Bob Altemeyer

But why are accountanting professors so religious?

The blog Epiphenom, which looks at the crossroads where science, atheism and humanism meet, has a post on a study published in the journal of Sociology of Religion, which shows that there aren’t that many intersections where religion crosses paths with psychologists.

As an atheist studying psychology myself, it’s interesting to see that “fifty percent of professors of psychology at US universities and colleges do not believe in any god, and another 11% are agnostic.” Out of the 1,500 professors in 20 academic fields, it turns out that accounting profs are the most religious.

“Those who are oriented primarily toward research are less likely to believe in God, less likely to have a traditionalistic view of the Bible, less likely to attend religious services, more likely to describe their overall religious orientation as “not religious,” and less likely to consider themselves spiritual persons.”

Not really shocking results, but further proof of what we know, which is what science is all about.

— Psychologists are the least religious of American Professors