Finding Resonance Amid Trauma: Moral Injury and the Role of Religion Among Christian Post-9/11 U.S. Veterans

Recent scholarship examines the relationship between moral injury and religion but rarely analyzes social processes at work therein. This article uses data from interviews with 47 post-9/11 veterans who once or currently identified as Christian to explore how religious beliefs and practices preempt, mitigate, or exacerbate moral injury. While many veterans experienced potentially morally injurious events, the differences between those with moral injury and those without depended on whether they could find resonance with meaning-making toolkits amid trauma. Dissonance stirred by incoherence in one’s moral narrative and betrayal of significant relationships spurred manifestations of moral injury. Those who achieved resonance relied on religious moral frames they brought with them or those supplied by military culture, or they engaged in explicit moral deliberation. This study reveals a complex process of belief maintenance during moral crises that extends and challenges previous examinations of culture in action, resonance, and moral injury.

Theory of Mind Following the Violation of Strong and Weak Prior Beliefs

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed differences in impression updating across social distance and group membership. Observers tend to maintain prior impressions of close (vs. distant) and ingroup (vs. outgroup) others in light of new information, and this belief maintenance is at times accompanied by increased activity in Theory of Mind regions. It remains an open question whether differences in the strength of prior beliefs, in a context absent social motivation, contribute to neural differences during belief updating. We devised a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to isolate the impact of experimentally induced prior beliefs on mentalizing activity. Participants learned about targets who performed 2 or 4 same-valenced behaviors (leading to the formation of weak or strong priors), before performing 2 counter-valenced behaviors. We found a greater change in activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and right temporo-parietal junction following the violation of strong versus weak priors, and a greater change in activity in DMPFC and left temporo-parietal junction following the violation of positive versus negative priors. These results indicate that differences in neural responses to unexpected behaviors from close versus distant others, and ingroup versus outgroup members, may be driven in part by differences in the strength of prior beliefs.

Religiosity and Desired Emotions: Belief Maintenance or Prosocial Facilitation?

We assessed how religiosity is related to desired emotions. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that strengthen foundational religious beliefs (i.e., more awe and gratitude and less pride). Second, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that promote prosocial engagement (e.g., more love and empathy and less anger and jealousy). Two cross-cultural studies supported the first hypothesis. Religiosity was related to desire for emotions that strengthen religious beliefs, but not to desire for socially engaging or socially disengaging emotions. These findings held across countries and across several different religions. A third study investigating the mechanisms of both hypotheses using structural equation modeling supported only the first hypothesis. This research extends prior work on desired emotions to the domain of religiosity. It demonstrates that the emotions religious people desire may be those that help strengthen their religious beliefs.

On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: Folktales as a cultural transmitter

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument.

On how religions could accidentally incite lies and violence: Folktales as a cultural transmitter

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument.

Persecutory delusions: developing the understanding of belief maintenance and emotional distress

Background. The objective of the study was to develop the cognitive understanding of persecutory delusions. It was hypothesized that safety behaviours contribute to the persistence of persecutory delusions by preventing disconfirmation. It was further hypothesized that emotional distress is associated with aspects of the content of delusions. An investigation was designed to establish whether individuals with persecutory delusions use safety behaviours, and to test predicted associations between delusion content and emotional distress.Method. A cross-sectional investigation was conducted on 25 individuals with persecutory delusions. A detailed assessment was made of the presence of safety behaviours, the content of delusions and emotional distress.Results. All participants had used at least one safety behaviour in the last month, most typically avoidance. Higher levels of anxiety were associated with greater use of safety behaviours. New data were obtained on the content of persecutory delusions. Aspects of the content of the delusions were associated with levels of depression, self-esteem, anxiety and delusional distress.Conclusions. Individuals with persecutory delusions use safety behaviours. The findings may develop the understanding of delusion persistence, acting upon delusions and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. There are implications for cognitive interventions for psychosis. Support was also found for the hypothesis that emotional distress is linked to the content of delusional beliefs; it is speculated that prior emotional distress influences the content of delusions, and that delusion content in turn influences levels of emotional distress.