The psychology of worldviews

Humaniora Vol 29, No 3, 2017

Worldviews are an important part of human life because they illustrate the ways people think and act. This article aims to review studies conducted by scholars, definitions of the term "worldview", and scientists' explorations of worldviews, and to examine how such categories may be applied to capture reality. This study concludes that worldviews have been the focus of intensive studies since the 1980s. Many scientists have defined the concept of "worldview" and attempted to explain its dynamics. Studies of worldviews can be grouped into several paradigms. Because of the extent of the study area, theoretically worldviews can be classified into several categories based on, for example, views of self and others, time, space, relationships, and causation. In reality, the worldview of a society can be seen in how members of the society live in relation to God, nature, people, and the environment. In examining the worldviews held in social reality, the specific categories mapped by scholars must be made congruent with the realities in the field, because sometimes these categories are interrelated and difficult to understand separately.

Mascolo, M. F. (2014). Worldviews. In Teo, T. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterdbid/307018.html

Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, 2017

Worldview is the outlook one has about life. It is a paradigm by which the individual or the group interprets reality and acts upon life. It is how we normally view and conceptualize the world. Worldview can be a personal-subjective endeavor or a communal-collective enterprise, depending on the social context and particular subculture – whether it is predominantly individualistic or collectivistic. Worldviews represent our pragmatic framework on existence and shapes our beliefs, attitudes, actions, and philosophies. Basically, the term worldview is used in a broad sense to entail a collection of impressions, perceptions, and phenomena and has roots in anthropology, psychology, sociology, morality, spirituality, mortality, and cosmology. The scope and nature of worldviews can be general or specific, reflecting a global perspective or local heritage. A worldview can be informed by religious thoughts, teachings, and practices, or by art-music, creativity, and humanities, or by statistical findings and empirical persuasions. In addition, the orientation can be Eastern or Western, heterogeneous or homogeneous, simple or complex, naturalistic-atheistic or theological-theistic, etc... At times, worldviews clash significantly and create further tensions and divisions... To some extent, the worldview of individuals, groups, and societies can be revised, redefined, and reconstructed over time. Some people enlarge or modify their perceptions and cultural mappings to include new paradigms and schemas different than their own. Others strict their repertoires, act with cautious aloofness, and employ narrow views and rigid measures to protect themselves and their heritage. Developing a balanced and healthy worldview is actually a challenge but a necessary skill and virtue.

This paper investigates a cultural profiling tool developed by KnowledgeWorkx, a UAEbased consulting company. The tool, which has two components, is based on theory of worldviews using a paradigm comprising three axioms: innocence/guilt, honour/shame and power/fear. It attempts to determine the worldview patterns of respondents according to these three planes. The study was undertaken at the Higher Colleges of Technology -Dubai. The tool was administered to two all-female groups, Emirati and non-Emirati. Using statistical analysis we examine the reliability and validity of the tool. We find firstly, that only the major component of the tool reliably distinguishes worldview differences between the two groups. Secondly, we analyse the results of the major component to investigate the cultural differences according to the worldview planes. Conventional interpretations of Bedouin Arab culture have tended to emphasize the prominence of the honour/shame worldview and the results of the study confirm that this plane is significantly stronger in the Emirati group than in the non-Emirati group. In addition, the Emirati group had a significantly higher power/fear score. Interestingly, the results indicate commensurate guilt/innocence worldview scores for both groups. The paper discusses factors which account for these differences and the unexpected similarities including the rapid nature of social change in the UAE, urbanization, education and globalisation. The paper concludes with limitations of the current study and recommendations for future research.

Several research efforts have been focused on explaining how humans as individuals or as a group develop mental constructions that define themselves, the other, their contexts and in general the world. In this matter, there are numerous concepts and theories that scholars from different disciplines - such as psychology cognition, anthropological linguistics, social cognition, sociology and cultural studies among others- have developed, compared and then created sub categories, resulting in a wide variety of terminology around this topic that may be overwhelming to a student or scholar outside the disciplines mentioned before. The aim of this research report is to demonstrate the accuracy in restoring the concept “worldview”, as an alternative to taking a path way that avoids the complexity of different notions that try to be very specific but have many similarities too. This text is a descriptive research, although performed analytically.

2020

Worldview is currently a topic of great interest in Religious Education (RE). This multidisciplinary literature review was commissioned by the RE Council of England and Wales (REC) working in partnership with TRS-UK. in order to provide clarity as to the historical and contemporary use of the term in a number of academic disciplines. It forms one element of a larger project that will provide a range of resources to support the use of the idea in school RE. The REC and TRS-UK are very grateful to the three academics who compiled this independent literature review. It was a challenging project in its own right, but then undertaken just as the coronavirus pandemic took the world into lockdown. This document is a tribute to their professionalism and resilience. The literature review represents the authors' findings and academic conclusions having undertaken an extensive search. It is offered as a resource to support further thinking on this important topic. The document is open access and free to download from the RE Council website (www.religiouseducationcouncil.org). We provide it in the hope that it will be of great use to academics, RE teachers and other RE professionals as we all seek to provide our pupils and students with high quality RE.

LaMiCuS (Language, Mind, Culture, and Society), 2017

open access: LaMiCuS Vol 1(1), pp. 34-53; lamicus.eu Worldview is defined in this study as the knowledge at the disposal of an individual or community and the point of view projected on the world with reference to that knowledge. An inquiry is proposed into worldviews manifested in and transmitted through the use of language. In accordance with a basic tenet of cognitive linguistics, language use is underlain by and describable with recourse to cognitive processes. However, with a focus on cultural, besides cognitive underpinning of language, worldview is understood here as cultural cognition, the latter being characterized by its distributed nature and by the cultural content that feeds cognitions. The latter of these properties is exemplified with two diverse reactions to the 2016 Nice terrorist attack: it is shown what meanings emerge when such parameters of construal as degree of specificity (granularity of viewing), mental scanning plus focus selection, viewpoint, and attention to similarity vs. difference operate not on “raw” perceptual substrate but on cultural concepts, such as political states, religions, or cultural areas. The analysis concerns worldview-as-cultural cognition as it is projected by individuals, with the communal dimension of it pending methodical treatment. Key words: worldview, linguistic worldview, cultural cognition, 2016 Nice attack

1987

We know that there are cross-cultural differences in psychological variables, such as individualism/ collectivism. But it has not been clear which of these variables show relatively the greatest differences. The Survey of World Views project operated from the premise that such issues are best addressed in a diverse sampling of countries representing a majority of the world’s population, with a very large range of item-content. Data were collected online from 8,883 individuals (almost entirely college students based on local publicizing efforts) in 33 countries that constitute more than two third of the world’s population, using items drawn from measures of nearly 50 variables. This report focuses on the broadest patterns evident in item data. The largest differences were not in those contents most frequently emphasized in cross-cultural psychology (e.g., values, social axioms, cultural tightness), but instead in contents involving religion, regularity-norm behaviors, family roles and living arrangements, and ethnonationalism. Content not often studied cross-culturally (e.g., materialism, Machiavellianism, isms dimensions, moral foundations) demonstrated moderate-magnitude differences. Further studies are needed to refine such conclusions, but indications are that cross-cultural psychology may benefit from casting a wider net in terms of the psychological variables of focus.