The Implicit Image of God: God as Reality and Psychological Well‐Being

Testoni, Ines; Visintin, Emilio Paolo; Capozza, Dora; Carlucci, Melissa; Shams, Malihe

doi:10.1111/jssr.12252

Cited by 38 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Distal defences often involve existential reflection on the meaning of finitude and the construction of cultural apparatuses that allow individuals to give meaning to their lives and actions. Religions, for example, are very important in this area because they make it possible to envisage individual existence beyond earthly life and beyond death [ 3 , 4 ]. However, these systems are fragile because they are constantly being questioned by common and rational thought [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hospice as a Learning Environment: A Follow-Up Study with a Palliative Care Team

Testoni

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Palazzo

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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In Western society, the topic of death has been removed from everyday life and replaced with medical language. Such censorship does not reduce individuals’ fear of death, but rather limits their ability to elaborate their experiences of death, thus generating negative effects. The objective of this follow-up qualitative study was to detect how and if death education can help to improve individuals’ relationship with death and enhance care environments like hospices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with palliative care professionals and teachers who had taken part in a death education initiative three years earlier. The results confirmed the initiative’s positive effect on both palliative care professionals and teachers. The participants reported that the education initiative helped them to positively modify their perspective on death, end-of-life care, and their own relationship to life, as well as their perception of community attitudes towards the hospice, which seemed to become less discriminatory. This study confirmed that school education initiatives can usefully create continuity between hospices and local communities. This project provided an educational space wherein it was possible for participants to elaborate their experiences in relation to death and to re-evaluate and appreciate hospices.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hospice as a Learning Environment: A Follow-Up Study with a Palliative Care Team

Testoni

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Palazzo

et al. 2020

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“…This instrument quantifies the strength of associations between concepts by comparing response latencies when people categorize stimuli (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). The IAT is also the implicit measure that has been used most frequently to study religious cognition (Jong et al, 2017), and at least eight studies have adapted the IAT to measure supernatural belief (Dentale et al, 2018;Farias et al, 2017;Irwin, 2014;Jong et al, 2012;Lindeman, Svedholm-Hakkinen, & Riekki, 2016;Shariff, Cohen, & Norenzayan, 2008;Testoni, Visintin, Capozza, Carucci, & Shams, 2016;Turpin, Andersen, & Lanman, 2018). 1 For example, using a "single target" variant of the IAT (Bluemke & Friese, 2007;Wigboldus, Holland, & van Knippenberg, 2006), Shariff et al (2008) found that the strength of the association between supernatural entities (e.g., god, devil, heaven) and terms associated with "truth" (e.g., actual, genuine, real) was positively associated with self-reported religiosity measures, especially the item "I believe in God".…”

Section: The Implicit Association Test (Iat)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring supernatural belief implicitly using the Affect Misattribution Procedure

Ross

Brown-Iannuzzi

Gervais

et al. 2019

Religion, Brain & Behavior

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Asking about religious beliefs, or lack thereof, is a sensitive and complex issue. Due to cultural norms, people may be motivated to respond in a socially desirable way. In addition, deliberating about beliefs may yield different responses than intuition-based responses. To develop a better understanding of the relationship between intuition and self-reported belief, we developed a new implicit measure of supernatural belief. Specifically, we adapted the Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to measure supernatural belief. In a preregistered online study of 404 American participants, we found that the strength of associations between supernatural entities (e.g., god, devil, heaven) and the concept "real" (as opposed to the concept "imaginary") predicted self-reported supernatural belief and self-reported religious behavior, and these associations were of comparable magnitude to those found in studies where supernatural belief was measured implicitly using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These results provide provisional evidence that the AMP can be used as an implicit measure of supernatural belief.

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“…As affirmed by Terror Management theory, awareness of death is inevitable, and such awareness may occur at any moment for uncontrollable reasons and generate a feeling of latent and constant terror [2]. Anguish linked to death can be managed through supportive cultural systems, which may include symbolic practices, allowing us to envisage salvation after death [3,4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hospice as a learning environment: A follow-up study of a death education intervention that involved high-school students and the community

Testoni

Sblano

Palazzo

et al. 2020

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Background The theme of death in Western society has been removed from everyday life and replaced with specialized medical language. Such censorship does not reduce the fear of death, especially among young people, and it limits the possibility to elaborate on experiences linked to death, generating negative effects, especially in cases of traumatic grief. The objective of this follow-up study was to detect how and if experiences of death education changed the relationship between the community and a local hospice. Furthermore, it was stressed the theme of representation of death, in order to see whether participants were able to remind any possible attitude change following the project. Finally, it was analysed how they considered how they remembered the effect of the elaboration of the trauma caused by the suicide of a student. Methods This was a qualitative research study based on semi-structured interviews with palliative care professionals and teachers of students who had taken part in a death education intervention 3 years earlier. The interviews were examined through thematic analysis. Results The results confirmed the efficacy of the death education intervention initiated 3 years earlier. The education initiative contributed to modifying the students’ and teachers’ perspectives of end-of-life professionals and their understanding of the structures within which palliative care is implemented. It also modified the participants’ perspectives on the representation of death and promoted a new outlook on life. The hospice staff also perceived a change in the attitudes of the community, and this change had a positive impact on their everyday work. Conclusions This study confirmed the usefulness of creating continuity between a hospice and the community through a school education initiative. The death education project provided an educational space in which it was possible to elaborate on experiences linked to death and to re-evaluate and appreciate the structures of end-of-life care and the professionals who work in the area. Keywords: Hospice, Palliative care, Death education, Adolescents, Suicide.

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The Implicit Image of God: God as Reality and Psychological Well‐Being

Abstract: Research has widely demonstrated that religiosity is related to psychological well

Cited by 38 publications

References 43 publications

The Hospice as a Learning Environment: A Follow-Up Study with a Palliative Care Team

The Hospice as a Learning Environment: A Follow-Up Study with a Palliative Care Team

Measuring supernatural belief implicitly using the Affect Misattribution Procedure

The hospice as a learning environment: A follow-up study of a death education intervention that involved high-school students and the community

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