14 - Human Nature and Personality

Summary

In this chapter, we will bring into dialogue the perspectives of psychology and religion on human nature and personality. General issues about human nature need to be considered, such as the relationship between social, biological, and personal life. Other issues include the place of religion itself in human life and whether, for good or ill, humans are essentially religious creatures.

We have already made the point that psychology is really a family of subdisciplines that are often only loosely related. In particular, psychology is both a biological and a social science. Though most psychologists would acknowledge that each has a place within the overall discipline, there is often little contact between them, and little attempt at integration. Where integration is attempted, it sometimes takes the form of greedy reductionism, in which biology tries to explain social life.

The problem arises in part from biological and social psychology being different kinds of sciences, with different methodologies. Both are sciences in the broad, continental sense of being careful, systematic forms of enquiry. However, biological psychology is a natural science in a way that social psychology is not. That relates to the fact that the entities with which biological psychology is concerned, such as DNA or the frontal lobes of the brain, have a tangible reality in a way that, for example, the social processes that lead to religious radicalization do not. There is, of course, a general sense in which all our concepts, even of DNA for example, are social constructions, but in some cases there is more tangible reality to what is being construed than in others.

The psychology of religion now includes both biological and social approaches, though the current emphasis on genetics, evolution, and the brain is a relatively recent addition. For the most part, the psychology of religion has not so far really tried to connect biological and social approaches. One topic where that is raised in an interesting way is religious experience. There is probably a genetic predisposition to some kinds of religious experience, and brain processes are certainly involved. On the other hand, it is in a social context that people learn how to facilitate certain kinds of religious experience through religious practice and learn how to interpret it in a religious framework.