Is “me-search” necessarily less rigorous research? Social and personality psychologists’ stereotypes of the psychology of religion

ABSTRACT

Although I study many forms of social identity, my research on religious identity has perhaps sparked the most interesting reactions. I first describe these reactions, as well as how I became interested in religious identity. I then report the results of an experiment that my Ph.D. student and I conducted to better understand social and personality psychologists’ perceptions of the psychology of religion/spirituality, relative to other subfields. Psychology of religion/spirituality was rated as less rigorous and “mainstream” than psychology of gender, political psychology, attitudes and persuasion, and judgment and decision making. Furthermore, psychology of religion/spirituality researchers were most often assumed to be religious and least often associated with intelligence. Implications for how to mitigate biases against identity-related research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Stereotyping
• religious identity
• psychology of religion
• identity research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.