Director
Joseph A. Bulbulia
Institution University of Auckland
Every religion is based on the premise that individuals matter. Despite the central importance that religions accord to each and every life, however, the personal consequences of religion remain fascinatingly unclear. Longitudinal studies offer unparalleled power for understanding how religion makes a difference to people throughout their lives. The current project supports the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (NZAVS), a 20-year national longitudinal study that was launched in 2009 to document patterns of stability and change in values across New Zealand.
The NZAVS already contains questions about religion, but our project will extend its religion coverage and will provide critical infrastructure that will greatly improve its ability to sustain a long-term investigation of religion and personal well-being. Specifically, our project will enlarge the NZAVS religious community sample, and will place the investigators in face-to-face contact with participants throughout New Zealand.
The project will explore the following questions: 1)What are the different types of religious and moral orientations in New Zealand, and how are they related over time in a person's "spiritual character"? 2) How does spiritual character affect personal well-being over time? 3) How is spiritual character changing in New Zealand's third-largest city (Christchurch: population 367,700), as it recovers from a terrible earthquake that destroyed one-third of the city's buildings and killed one-hundred and eighty-five people?
This project hopes to produce peer-reviewed scholarly articles, media coverage, and a monograph for a broad scholarly audience and general public. The project offers the unprecedented opportunity for understanding the personal consequences of religion over time and across an entire nation, and will improve understanding about the spiritual dimensions of disaster recovery.
Project Resources
This study investigated whether differences in subjective well-being between religious and non-religious people could be partially accounted f...
Abstract Although income and inequality (objective measures of deprivation and the distribution of income within a defined area, respectively)...
In a controversial Science article published in 1967, Lynn White blamed Judeo-Christian scriptures for the planet’s ecological crisis. White c...
David Hilbert lived from 1862–1943 and is regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of the late 19th/early 20th century. Among his pionee...
Mystical experiences, or subjectively believed encounters with a supernatural world, are widely reported across cultures and throughout human ...
We used Latent Profile and Latent Profile Transition Analysis to empirically develop and compare competing models of personality profiles (thr...
We integrate the Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice to examine the motivations associated with attitudes toward intergroup relations...
Colorblindness is a popular diversity ideology promoted as a means to intergroup harmony in ethnically diverse nations. While some research su...
Research into the relationship between self-esteem and narcissism has produced conflicting results, potentially caused by hidden subpopulation...
Indigenous peoples often have a unique and deep connection to the land. However, quantitative research exploring this issue is scarce. The cur...
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is conceived as an individual's level of support for group-based hierarchy in general that causes support f...
Objectives: Māori, the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa (New Zealand), continue to exhibit the highest rate of smoking of any ethnic group in th...
Acquiescent response style (the tendency to agree to questionnaire items regardless of content) is an issue that has plagued questionnaire des...
We introduce a method for assessing the overall level of bias and relative tracking accuracy in time series analysis of polling data on voter ...
Vivid coloration, pungent odors, strident alarms, and crippling stings have co-evolved in many lineages as mechanisms that conspicuous...
Ideologies that legitimize status hierarchies are associated with increased well-being. However, which ideologies have 'palliative effects', w...
Polls examining public opinion on the subject of climate change are now commonplace, and one-off public opinion polls provide a snapshot of ci...
Intolerance toward indigenous people is a common feature of colonial societies, and New Zealand is no exception. Despite aspirations of equali...
Abstract Although different types of prejudice tend to be highly correlated, target‐specific and more generalized components can nevertheless ...
We meta-analytically investigated the strength of synchrony on four dimensions of response: (1) prosocial behavior, (2) perceived social bondi...
Despite extensive scientific evidence on the safety of standard vaccinations, some parents express skeptical attitudes towards the safety of c...
We investigate the extent to which minority group members are surrounded by outgroup members in their immediate environment as a predictor of ...
Past research predicting political attitudes from belief systems has predominantly focused on general ideologies that neglect the specific soc...
Life history theory anticipates that organisms trade offspring quantity for offspring quality. In modern human societies this tradeoff is part...
Religious groups differ in theology, ritual, and modes of self-governance. However, the extent to which such differences capture the variation...
Rituals are performed within specific socio-ecological niches, yet the different effects of the same ritual form across different niches (comm...
Religious rituals are ubiquitous. Recent research indicates they can powerfully affect social connection, increasing collective sentiments and...
Disclaimer
Opinions expressed on this page, or any media linked to it, do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. does not control the content of external links.
