The 2023 Groningen conference: The Netherlands as a symbolic location for the conference of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion

Conference focus: crisis in four forms

The focus of the conference, “Psychology of Religion in an Entangled World,” very accurately reflected the four most important phenomena contributing to the context in which the psychology of religion functioned during the time between the conferences in Gdansk and Groningen. The most important of these was the COVID-19 pandemic lasting from 2020 to 2022, which led to lockdown, isolation, and long-term restrictions on the movement of residents both within individual countries and between countries. The second phenomenon on the increase was the process of radicalization of various social groups, which often used religious motivations to justify their terrorist actions. The third phenomenon was the growing climate crisis and the related existential problems of an increasing number of people. And the fourth was one of the biggest humanitarian disasters in recent years caused by a series of earthquakes on the Turkish–Syrian border in February 2023.

The conference program clearly showed the influence of these events on the topics of the presentations. Two of the four keynote lectures were also directly related to the aforementioned topics. These were presentations by Sarah Pike, “Ritual Responses to Environmental Apocalypse,” and Kees Van den Bos “Why People Radicalize: The Role of Perceived Injustice & Religion.”

Among other speeches that were included in the conference program, a group of presentations on the role of ritual in building meaning-making in crisis situations and in addiction should be mentioned, as well as studies on atheism and new religious movements, research on people’s experiences during the COVID pandemic and analysis of the phenomenon of extremism in connection with moral judgments.

The panel, “Coping with the Disaster of the Century: Researchers on the Psycho-Socio-Spiritual Effects of the Earthquake in Turkiye [Turkey],” was the one held on the last day of the conference (and with only six people in the audience). It was devoted to the psychological effects of the earthquake on the Turkish–Syrian border in February 2023. More than 50,000 people died then, and 20 million felt its effects in various forms, and the whole country’s population was impacted to a different degree. During the panel, the results of research conducted almost in real-time (7 days, 15 days, and 5 months, respectively, after the tragic events occurred) were presented. The researchers had been involved in assistance activities among the victims. This panel presented a general description of the psycho-socio-spiritual effects of the earthquake. Panelists offer 360° perspectives on people’s reactions and how religious coping rooted in Islam adapted to real situations. It brought forward invaluable information about coping that is deeply contextualized in cultural and religious tradition. The perspectives of victims, perspectives of providers of funeral services and spiritual support, as well as simultaneously present social media discourse were presented. I chose to single out this panel for commentary, not only because of its extremely high informational value in providing indigenous data, but also for personal reasons. After 40 years of attending different conferences—many of them devoted to the tragedies of refugees from war zones—this is the first time ever that the presentation of research results made me cry—not because of the pictures—but because of the words.

Open science and registered reports

Moreover, starting from the pre-conference workshop “Interdisciplinarity and Open Science in an Entangled World,” great attention was also paid to methodological issues and related methods of publishing results in scientific journals. The issue of registered reports as well as The Open Science of Religion project were discussed in presentations on the following days of the conference. A series of studies carried out with this model was also presented.

IAPR author development initiative

Also presented was the IAPR Author Development Initiative aiming at providing support for authors (mainly master’s or PhD students from non-Western countries) in developing papers they have submitted to the Archive that present interesting ideas but which require further development in order to achieve a publishable version. The help pertains to researching and establishing theoretical grounding for the submitted paper with the support of a mentor assigned by the Archive’s editorial board. Notably, the audience suggested that IAPR should put out offer and online seminar about this program once it is up and running.

Awards

Due to the break in the regular rhythm of the conference, not one, but two prizes for young researchers were awarded. The Early Career Award went to Jordan Moon, who presented the speech “Religion as a Natural Laboratory for Understanding Human Behavior,” and to Job Chen, who presented the speech “Psychology of Mysticism.” In accordance with the rhythm of awarding prizes for advanced researchers once every 4 years, the Godin Prize was granted to Joseph Bulbulia. He has presented the lecture “The Causal Effect of Religion on Cooperation: Evidence from a National Longitudinal Panel Study.”

Survey results: IAPR—a complex picture

The conference was also an opportunity to present the results of a survey conducted among IAPR members, aimed at creating a picture illustrating who the Association’s members are in terms of their education, employment, topics, and methods of conducting research. Through the quarterly Newsletter, members of the Society were invited four times in 2022 to 2023 to complete a survey available via a link published in the Newsletter. Seventy IAPR members took part in the survey (see Appendix, below). In some cases, the answers to the questions asked allowed respondents to choose from several answer options and therefore, the percentages of answers do not add up to 100%.

Questions where participants had the opportunity to provide such multiple responses are marked with an (*) accordingly. Participants in the study came mainly (68%) from the United States and Germany. The remaining 32% of survey participants came from Denmark, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Israel, Iran, Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, Indonesia, Italy, Sweden, Romania, Philippines, Australia, and Algeria. Among the disciplines under which research is conducted*, psychology, and religious studies dominate (a total of 82% of responses). The other answers point to theology, cognitive studies, psychiatry, other medical sciences, and philosophy. Research conducted by survey participants in the field of psychology mainly concerns* the psychology of religion and spirituality as well as issues in the field of social psychology (70% of responses in total). In the field of psychology of religion*, the subject of interest is most often the relationships between religion and health, atheism and doubt, and religious experience. The most frequently explored* are various Christian denominations, atheistic worldviews, and Islam. The most common theoretical approaches* are approaches that combine many different theoretical positions (40%) and cognitive psychology (33%). The most common research tools* are questionnaires. The research period* is 5–15 years for 47% of respondents.

The respondents are dominated by people with PhD degrees (73%). They most often hold the position of* full professor (27%) or associate professor (20%). The disciplines* in which these people have formal education and have earned an academic degree are psychology (86%), religious studies (31%), and theology (30%). Some respondents held degrees in more than one discipline. These people are employed mainly in institutes of psychology (61%), religious studies (12%), and theology (6%).

A separate question concerned the areas of research interest of the respondents; these should be reflected in further directions of IAPR development. The answers were remarkably diverse, but a clear group of answers pointed to interest in expanding the field of exploration to other cultures and religious traditions—cross-cultural psychology of religion, Indigenous psychology of religion, and the field of research approaches to include those such as cultural psychology and intercultural psychology.

The topics of the presentations at the conference in Groningen indicate that this direction of IAPR development is taking place. The new composition of the IAPR Board also confirms this tendency. President Marta Helena Freitas (Brazil), Board members (alphabetic order): Onver Cetrez (Spain), Job Chen (China/USA), Victor Counted (Australia/USA), Halina Grzymała-Moszczyńska (Poland), Sarah Kabogan (Secretary General and Treasurer) (Germany), and Uzeyir Ok (Turkey).