Cultural-Existential Psychology: The Role of Culture in Suffering and Threat

Description

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. Cover Half-title page Title page Copyright page Dedication Epilogue Contents Figures Tables Preface Acknowledgments 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 References Index