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.
Table of Contents
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; Appendices: 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.
