Cultural-Existential Psychology: The Role of Culture in Suffering and Threat
Cambridge University Press, 4/6/2016
EAN 9781107096868, ISBN10: 1107096863
Hardcover, 314 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Cultural psychology and experimental existential psychology are two of the fastest-growing movements in social psychology. In this book, Daniel Sullivan combines both perspectives to present a groundbreaking analysis of culture's role in shaping the psychology of threat experience. The first part of the book presents a new theoretical framework guided by three central principles: that humans are in a unique existential situation because we possess symbolic consciousness and culture; that culture provides psychological protection against threatening experiences, but also helps to create them; and that interdisciplinary methods are vital to understanding the link between culture and threat. In the second part of the book, Sullivan presents a novel program of research guided by these principles. Focusing on a case study of a traditionalist group of Mennonites in the midwestern United States, Sullivan examines the relationship between religion, community, guilt, anxiety, and the experience of natural disaster.
Preface
Part I. Theory
1. Theoretical roots of cultural-existential psychology
2. Fundamental principles of cultural-existential psychology
3. A model of existential threat
4. Cultural variation as patterns of social orientation and control
5. Cultural threat orientations
disorientation-avoidance and despair-avoidance
Part II. Research
6. Modernization and changes in attitudes toward suffering among Kansas Mennonites
7. Cultural threat orientations among traditionalist Mennonites, Unitarian Universalists, and college students
8. Transcendence versus redemption in the experience of a natural disaster
Part III. Implications
9. Cultural-existential psychology and contemporary society
Appendix A. Guide to key abbreviations and terms
Appendix B. Data analyses, Chapter 6
Appendix C. Methodology and questionnaire items, Chapter 7
Appendix D. Data analyses, Chapter 7.