Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Antioch New England: Marriage and Family Therapy

Religion fractures families, and therapists working with clients in search of healing have so far had little empirical guidance on how to help. This phenomenological study is the first to explore the experiences of nonreligious Americans using therapy as a way to address religion-related family estrangement. Seventeen participants, all self-identifying as nonreligious but raised in Christian families, were interviewed about their therapy experiences. Most had seen individual therapists and preferred an individual focus but appreciated systemic conceptualizations and interventions. Nondirective, evidence-based, and, when appropriate, trauma-informed approaches were found to be most helpful. Nonreligious, especially non-Christian, therapists were usually but not always preferred. Safety and curiosity were important factors in strong therapeutic relationships and effective therapy. Participants also stressed the harm religious ideology itself can cause. Implications for training and practice, as well as limitations and suggestions for further research, are discussed.

Committee: Kevin Lyness PhD (Committee Chair); Caleb Lack PhD (Committee Member); Kristi Harrison PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Families and Family Life; Psychotherapy; Religion; Therapy

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, Psychology

The present study investigated the negative perceptions and prejudice between religious and non-religious groups, and how these overlap with mental health stigma. Atheists are considered one of America's most detested groups and are perceived as untrustworthy and a threat to moral values due to having no religious beliefs. Within some religious groups, people with mental illness are perceived as being demonically influenced, lacking true faith, and being disobedient to their religious doctrine. Using an online survey platform, participants (N = 175) completed mental illness prevalence rating questionaries for four religious and non-religious groups: Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Atheist/ Non-Religious targets. Participants also completed a religiosity questionnaire, competence and warmth scale, and mental health stigma measure. Religious groups were more likely to give higher mental illness ratings to atheists and lower mental illness ratings to other religious groups, and religious groups gave atheists higher competence and lower warmth ratings. Further research can explore mental health stigma in the context of religion and prejudice toward different religious and non-religious groups.

Committee: William Davis (Advisor); Travis Proctor (Committee Member); Stephanie Little (Committee Member) Subjects: Mental Health; Psychology; Religion; Social Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2020, College of Sciences and Health Professions

The present study draws upon terror management theory (TMT) and cognitive science of religion (CSR) to investigate how religious believers and atheists motivational and cognitive processes might interact to affect the expression of religious intuitions and beliefs. TMT suggests the motivation to manage mortality-related concerns can lead to religious concepts, and CSR suggests religious concepts are highly intuitive but that individuals can sometimes engage in deliberate/analytical thinking to override them. The present research therefore proposes two theoretical ideas: 1) among religious believers, mortality awareness should increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, as well as the acceptance of those intuitions as expressed religious belief; and 2) among atheists, mortality awareness should similarly increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, but not expressed religious faith because (despite recognizing them as intuitively appealing) atheists may wield their available self-regulatory resources (e.g., analytic thinking) to over-ride those intuitions and thus abstain from expressing religious belief. Christians and atheists were recruited and randomly assigned to either a mortality salience condition or pain salience condition; then, each participant was asked to rate the extent to which they found religious concepts intuitively appealing and the extent to which they accept and express those concepts as religious belief. A 2 (between-subjects: Christian vs. atheist) x 2 (between-subjects: MS vs. pain) x 4 (within-subjects: want supernatural agents, believe in supernatural agents, want afterlife, believe in an afterlife) mixed-model ANOVA found the data patterns were consistent with hypotheses; implications are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail III (Committee Chair); Allard Eric (Committee Member); Horvath Michael (Committee Member); Naser Shereen (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Psychology/Clinical

Atheists and the non-religious have historically been excluded from cardiovascular research assessing the relation between religion and reactivity. Researchers have suggested that atheists and the non-religious ought to have increased cardiovascular reactivity and decreased recovery following a stressor. The primary theoretical justifications for this hypothesized difference are atheists/non-religious lack religious coping resources or that they are exposed to minority stress. However, few previous studies have incorporated atheists, had adequate methodology to explore this relation, or used measures designed to appropriately categorize atheist/non-religious participants. In order to explore this relation, 61 participants were recruited and using the Non-Religious Non-Spiritual Scale, were separated into three groups: atheist, non-religious, or religious. Participants were then exposed to a social stressor to elicit cardiovascular reactivity. Heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and blood pressure were recorded during the experimental procedure. Results indicated that contrary to the hypotheses derived from extant literature, atheists, non-religious, and religious participants did not significantly differ on measures of cardiovascular reactivity or recovery.

Committee: William O'Brien Ph.D. (Advisor); Danielle Kuhl Ph.D. (Other); Verner Bingman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Eric Dubow Ph.D. (Committee Member); Joshua Grubbs Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The scenario of the atheist in the proverbial foxhole has been a topic of discussion in religious circles for centuries. Building on prior research utilizing terror management theory (TMT), a dual process model of cognition, and previous work suggesting that humans are intuitively wired for teleological and religious concepts, the researchers set out to examine atheist's religiosity when confronted with the reality of one's impermanence. To explore this idea, the present experiment recruited a sample of atheists, manipulated their awareness of mortality, manipulated their ability to employ analytic thinking, and measured various intuitive cognitions (e.g., teleological reasoning) alongside religious belief. Results suggest that atheists in the speeded conditions reported higher agreement with teleological items; but the same did not happen for religious items. Additionally, atheists primed with mortality salience (vs. control) reported lower agreement with religious items in the un-speeded condition, but not in the speeded condition; a similar interaction was not observed for the teleology items. Limitations and potential directions for future research are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail (Advisor) Subjects: Experimental Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Psychology

Ample research suggests that many people have negative attitudes toward atheists and do discriminate against atheists. Atheists, in turn, are aware of anti-atheist attitudes and report experiencing many forms of discrimination. Research into the effects of discrimination in many different minority groups, including atheists, has used retrospective self-reported frequency of perceived experiences of discrimination as the variable of interest. However, this methodology confounds two important constructs: exposure to potentially discriminatory experiences and a tendency to interpret events as discriminatory. To measure the latter, which I term discrimination sensitivity, I developed a measure consisting of several hypothetical scenarios that atheists might find themselves in, and asked participants to judge whether they think each scenario is an example of discrimination. Participants were self-identified U.S. atheist adults recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 441). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a 10-item measure with two subscales (Overt and Subtle) best fit the data. This dissertation was particularly designed to test the validity and effect of sensitivity to subtle, rather than overt, discrimination. Sensitivity to subtle discrimination was associated with psychological entitlement, centrality of atheist identity, and interpersonal rejection sensitivity, providing initial support for the validity of the Subtle subscale. Finally, I found that sensitivity to subtle discrimination partially mediated the relationship between self-reported past-year anti-atheist discrimination and psychological well-being (depression and anxiety). I discuss implications for clinical work with clients reporting experiences of discrimination.

Committee: Julie Exline Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Heath Demaree Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Greene Ph.D. (Committee Member); Timothy Beal Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 0, Psychology

At some point in their lives, everyone will experience a stressful life event. Usually, someone can cope with and make meaning from the event. However, the body of research investigating the impact of severe and/or chronic exposure to stressful life events on the brain shows that harmful effects of stress exposure accumulate. Considering the extant literature regarding religious meaning making in light of these findings and the robust literature on spiritual transformation following stressful life events, I developed three hypotheses: 1) stressful life events increase risk of (non)religious ID change, 2) earlier events continued to impact later ID changes, and 3) risk of ID change was similar across change groups. This study analyzed a nationally representative longitudinal dataset of US children born between 1980 and 1984 (N = 8984). The final analyses used multiple imputation to account for missing data and did not find evidence supporting the hypotheses.

Committee: Julie Exline Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Heath Demaree Ph.D. (Committee Member); Arin Connell Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Mental Health; Psychology; Religion; Spirituality

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, History

This dissertation examines the relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe. Specifically, it explores how the Enlightenment produced the modern Western perception of the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body. While most traditional Enlightenment historiography argues that the movement was defined by radical, allegedly atheistic thinkers, like Diderot and Spinoza, who denied the existence of the traditional Christian immaterial and immortal soul, this project demonstrates that these extreme thinkers were actually a minority, confined largely to the intellectual fringes. By contrast, not only were many Enlightenment thinkers sincere Christians, but they were actually the most effective communicators of new ideas by showing how the Enlightenment supported, rather than attacked, traditional Christian beliefs. This moderate Enlightenment is responsible for developing Western ideas about how the mind and body are related, especially within the emerging fields of psychology and psychiatry in the mid-nineteenth century. This dissertation gains its focus through an examination of the work of two historiographically neglected enlightened thinkers—David Hartley in Britain, and the Abbe de Condillac in France. Both of them argued for the traditional Christian belief in an immortal soul, but used enlightened ideas to do so. The first two chapters look at how Hartley and Condillac developed this argument by making use of not only their published works, but also their private papers and correspondence. This evidence demonstrates that despite and even because of strong religious convictions, both thinkers remained open to new ideas about the relationship between the mind and the body. The later chapters examine how Hartley and Condillac's ideas about the human mind were received both geographically (in their respective home countries and throughout Europe and America) and chronologically (from their own lifetimes unt (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dale Van Kley PhD (Advisor); Matthew Goldish PhD (Advisor); Geoffrey Parker PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2014, Psychology

Previous research exploring reasons for not believing in the existence of a god or gods has largely been theoretical. What reasons do nonbelievers actually give for their nonbelief? Drawing on previous studies, this project aimed to develop and provide initial validity testing of a measure to capture these reasons: the Reasons of Atheists/Agnostics for Nonbelief in God's Existence Scale. Participants (N = 520) were adults drawn from Amazon's Mechanical Turk worker database. Responses to the measure were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Factor analysis revealed a nine-factor solution: Socialization-Past, Socialization-Current, Bad Experiences with Religion, Societal Concerns, Intellectual, God Relational, Emotional, Intuitive, and Agnostic. The obtained factors were subjected to initial validity testing across a number of variables, including attitudes toward God or religion and previous measures of nonreligious identity and doubt. Correlation and multiple regression generally supported the construct validity of the measure's subscales.

Committee: Julie Exline Ph.D. (Committee Chair); T.J. McCallum Ph.D. (Committee Member); Heath Demaree Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Counseling Psychology; Psychology; Religion; Social Psychology; Spirituality

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2008, History

This essay examines Louise Hoche Aston's 1846 political tract Meine Emanzipation, Verweisung und Rechtfertigung to demonstrate how radical and daring Aston's activities, writings, and personal beliefs were during a time when political and social dissent was met with extreme consequences; nineteenth-century Prussia. As a feminist and, even rarer, an atheist, Aston protested her forced removal from Berlin in 1846, writing both her defense and the details of her case in Meine Emanzipation. While detailing her brave stance against the Berlin police and Prussian government, Meine Emanzipation also stated Aston's concept of “freedom of the self,” which held that everyone, regardless of their sex or religion, had the inalienable right to think and express themselves freely without fear of recourse from their government. This essay defends Aston against those who would label her progressive thinking and daring resistance against the Prussian police state as little more than a calculated “performance.”

Committee: Judith P. Zinsser (Advisor); Mary E. Frederickson (Committee Member); Erik N. Jensen (Committee Member) Subjects: European History; Gender; History; Womens Studies