Introduction to Special Issue in Honor of Ralph W. Hood, Jr.

Most anyone who studies psychology of religion has encountered the name Ralph W. Hood, Jr. His perennial presence at research conferences and many contributions to the psychology of religion have now spanned more than five decades. This observation and his recent anniversary of 51 years at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) are timely reasons for dedicating a special issue to honor him in the journal he co-founded in 1992, with Laurence B. Brown and H. Newton Malony as co-editors, and himself as book review editor. Thus, we present this issue in recognition of Ralph and his considerable accomplishments in the psychology of religion. The six articles included here represent but a small sample of areas and people his research has touched.

For those who have seen Ralph at research conferences, two things readily stand out: first, his trademark jeans, tie-dyed tee-shirt, and ball-cap are elevated to formal attire by the addition of a sports coat; and second, his conference presentations are always extemporaneous, enormously stimulating, and reflective of a well-read mind not only in psychology, but also in other disciplines. He can be seen conversing with established scholars on matters of research or shared personal interest, but also with young scholars who are striving to find their way into an academy that sometimes can be less than welcoming. Succinctly put, Ralph is a regular and unmistakable presence at these meetings.

In his career, Ralph has served in many capacities, including president of APA Division 36, editor/co-editor of several journals (e.g., IJPR, the Archive, JSSR, etc.), editorial board member for numerous journals, and chair/member of multiple committees in professional organizations. He also has received a number of awards for his service and research contributions from APA Division 36 and other organizations. According to Bernie Spilka and Kevin Ladd (this issue), he “has been one of the most productive and innovative researchers in the psychology of religion.” He indeed has been prolific in authoring/coauthoring some 14 books (not to mention his textbook), over 65 book chapters and encyclopedia articles, and more than 160 journal articles. But perhaps the significance of his contribution to the psychology of religion is most emblematic in his longtime partnership with Bernie Spilka – another giant among us – as coauthor of The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, which was first published more than 35 years ago (Spilka et al., 1985). Since then, this work has dominated the field internationally as “the” textbook for students and scholars alike through five editions that critically summarize theories and empirical research (e.g., Hood et al., 2018).

Ralph has influenced untold students and scholars in the psychology of religion. The many who know him personally can offer stories from treasure troves of memorable experiences that illustrate his deep concern for the welfare and professional development of others. His kindness and patience with his undergraduate and graduate students have inspired them to emulate the same excellence they observe in him. He supports his students by shepherding them along the way, although he also challenges them to discover their own path as researchers. As former student Job Chen (Chen & Patel, this issue) remarked, “Ralph led me to see what I can achieve and let me explore my own ways.” Ralph challenges both students and professionals to excel, and helps them advance in their careers, whenever possible. He also has positively influenced seasoned scholars. For example, Peter Hill (this issue) learned from Ralph that “we need to be more intellectually humble” as psychologists, respecting the religious perspectives of our research participants. On an international level, his personal relationships and research collaborations have done much to enhance the relations between American and European, Middle Eastern, and Asian psychologists of religion.

A brief biography

Drawing from his autobiography (Hood, 2012), we know Ralph was born in 1942. He grew up with his teenage mother, older sister, and grandmother in a small three-bedroom apartment in Pacific Ocean Park, California, an area between Santa Monica and Venice, then best described as a “beachfront slum area” (Hood, 2012, p. 108). His father was absent all of his childhood, so while his mother worked, he had unsupervised time to explore the cultural mosaic of Venice Beach. Raised by strong women, he gained a keen knowledge of the complexity of the human experience that naturally fostered an interest in psychology; he also came to suspect, however, hierarchies and traditional power structures, especially in the realm of higher education. His childhood and adolescent experiences in California ultimately led Ralph to ask what Sir John Templeton called “the big questions” of human experience.

Like many first-generation college students, Ralph conceptually understood complex material, but not the cultural norms of university life. He entered the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with relative naiveté. For example, Ralph tells of eagerly registering for chemistry, which was listed in the schedule for MWF, from 10:00–10:50, and he happily decided he would rather attend on Wednesdays instead of Mondays or Fridays. Upon arrival at his Wednesday class, he was horrified to learn that attendance also was required for Monday, which he had missed, and Friday! As he had done the same for all other classes, his first week of college was disastrous. However, he soon acclimated to college life and fed his thirst for knowledge on original works from Freud, Jung, Marcuse, and others.

Upon graduation, Ralph entered UCLA’s graduate program in psychology, which allowed him to study while working full-time to support his family. There he read The Authoritarian Personality, which linked depth theory to measurement – a pairing that would remain constant as a practice in his own research career. This work struck him as problematic because it ignored the possibility of left-wing authoritarianism, which he saw as a bias among seemingly liberal psychologists. He discovered a more meaningful accounting for both left- and right-wing authoritarianism in Rokeach’s model of the open/closed mind – which focuses on the process of belief – and the concept of dogmatism. What was more compelling for Ralph was the psychosocial situation and how theory might assist in structuring and framing the empirical questions.

After UCLA, Ralph studied with noted social psychologist Paul Secord at the University of Nevada at Reno, beginning in 1966. It was Secord who introduced Ralph to European and multidisciplinary scholars like Gilbert Ryle, Peter Winch, and Wittgenstein with their philosophical critiques of psychology. Skeptical of mainstream psychology, he produced a purely conceptual work for his dissertation (Hood, 1968) based on a linguistic analysis of creativity, which “liberated me from the psychologies I had been taught before Nevada” (Hood, 2012, p. 116). He spent the 1968–69 academic year at Reno in a postdoc with clinicians studying suicide. At this time, he discovered the critical works of Thomas Szasz on mental illness that would influence his views on psychiatry and clinical psychology.

The time had come to find employment. In Ralph’s view, the current state of psychology at top-tier universities required faculty to train doctoral students uncritically in what had become the standard fare of empirical methodologies. Weary of such approaches, and keenly aware of “the darker side of academia” (Hood, 2012, p. 117), he chose to decline offers from such institutions, choosing, instead, to accept a position at South Dakota State University, a rural school, where he taught mainly first-generation college students according to his own approach to psychology. It was there he discovered William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience, whose thick descriptive method and non-reductive approach to religious experiences led to another turn in his career path. After only a year in South Dakota, he read an advertisement for a social psychologist in the newly formed psychology department at UTC, which recently had merged with the University of Tennessee system. He landed the job in August, 1970, and is still there! The move to this new school and department afforded Ralph a fresh space for exploring his newly developed interest in religion – and in the Southeastern U.S., an area rich with a religious population accessible for study. It would be from here that Ralph Hood would build a research career that would not only sustain his interests, but significantly contribute to the psychology of religion and the development of new scholars in the field.

The organization of articles

All contributors to this issue have collaborated with Ralph in research, with most being longtime coauthors. Reflecting Ralph’s emphasis on theory and empirical research, the articles that follow are balanced in terms of three conceptual and three empirical papers. The first article, by Bernie Spilka and Kevin Ladd, provides a helpful context and tone for the others. They emphasize Ralph’s innovative and creative approach to research, especially when attempting to “get inside” his participants and better understand them; furthermore, they explore phenomenology and mysticism as two themes that emerged to become central in his career. This leads to Heinz Streib and Job Chen’s empirical study on mysticism, involving further confirmation of an 8-item version of Ralph’s original 32-item mysticism scale and its relation to spirituality. This is followed with an empirical study by Job Chen and Janki Patel that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a network analysis of mysticism from a relational perspective. In the fourth article, Paul Williamson and Christopher Silver present another empirical study, but using a phenomenological approach to investigate the meaning of lived adversity among Christian fundamentalists. Peter Hill next draws from the example of Ralph’s humble relationship with research participants, showing from research on intellectual humility how psychologists themselves might be more mindful of their participants’ beliefs and perspectives in research. Finally, Crystal Park reflects on Ralph’s early innovative work on I/E orientations, summarizes the current state of I/E research, and speculates on its promise in future research. As an addendum, we present a review by Ralph, himself, of a book on mysticism that he submitted to IJPR, unknowingly, just before the publication of this issue dedicated in his honor.

In closing, we wish to express our sincere thanks to Kevin Ladd and Peter Hill for providing helpful feedback in developing this special issue. Furthermore, we hope the issue itself will not only enlighten readers regarding the career and influence of an eminent figure in the psychology of religion, but also inspire us all to be more curious and creative in our research, more mindful of the people we study, and a little more willing to offer kindness and support to colleagues in our small sphere of research. This is indeed the path that Ralph W. Hood, Jr., has followed for more than five decades, and such a path can help us, too, in becoming better scholars and better people.