An Explicit Request for Minitheories in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Abstract

Minitheories aim to understand relatively specific phenomena, in contrast to larger scale or grand theories that aim to be comprehensive, inclusive theories of the psychology of religion. By focusing on more narrow phenomena or questions, minitheories allow clearer delineation of concepts, facilitate attention to questions that drive interest in the psychology of religion and enhance the applicability of the findings, support investigation of diverse topics, accelerate scientific progress, and help the psychology of religion connect with other areas of psychology. Risks of a minitheory approach include dispersion of effort, hobbling development of promising grand theories, generating a disconnected hodgepodge of findings, and deemphasizing the importance of theory. The advantages of minitheories can be strengthened and the risks decreased by explicitly tying each study to the larger intellectual and theoretical context, intentionally connecting minitheory-driven studies to each other, and valuing theoretical discussion and integration in research reports.

Notes

¹For ease of writing we sometimes use the term religion in isolation without the consistent addition of “and spirituality” as shorthand for the family of concepts related to religion and spirituality. We have attempted to apply the term(s) employed by the authors when citing their work. Throughout this article, we both use and omit the term spirituality with hesitation because of the conversation in the field about whether religion is a superordinate category that includes spirituality, spirituality is a superordinate category that includes religion, or whether they are incompletely overlapping constructs that should not be grouped into one. We believe that all three positions are viable, depending on the definitions of each concept, and, as should become evident in the rest of this article, also depending on which formulation is best for the question being asked, the study being conducted, and the minitheory that is motivating that study.