Page 21 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

Christian Psychology as a Challenge

animate and inspire maximal integration. This validates the Christian emphasis on gratitude,
is because the textbook narratives that current- reveals some connections that we may not have
ly exist actually undermine our goals by incul- known before, and suggests some obvious and
cating and reinforcing the dualistic values of simple real-world applications. Still, it is quite
modernity which powerfully but unconsciously possible that people might misinterpret quan-
impel us to compartmentalize rather than inte- titative analysis to mean that we are “reducing
grate faith. people to numbers,” or something like that. So
I think your question is a good reminder that
Werner May: I greatly appreciate the impor- Christian psychology needs to be clear about
tance you attach to psychology as an empirical the limits of a scientific approach in psychology.
science, which you also apply to a Christian
psychology. As an empirical science, psycholo- And that actually is the flipside of the issue, be-
gy makes use above all of quantitative methods cause the discipline of psychology has not al-
such as experiments or questionnaires. But ways done a good job of this. In emphasizing
can measuring in numbers be appropriate to a quantitative approaches to the exclusion of
Christian concept of man at all? Would a qua- other valid approaches, the discipline has - at
litative approach, such with e.g. the Grounded times - put the methodological cart before the
Theory approach (A. Strauss, B. Glaser), be psychological horse, implying that if it cannot
more suitable for a Christian psychology? be measured it isn’t psychological. That implica-
tion is unfortunate, and not a little silly. It’s silly
Russ Kosits: That’s a great question and raises because we intuitively understand this can’t be
several important issues. Let me start by saying true. It’s unfortunate because, as G.K. Beale has
that I certainly think measuring in numbers is reminded us, we are shaped profoundly by what
consistent with Christian psychology, as long we worship. If we insist that empirical methods
as we know what the numbers mean. For ex- are the only pathway to psychological truth - in
ample, one study that comes to mind showed other words, if we commit a sort of “methodo-
an association between people’s scores on a lotry,” we will inevitably end up with a very flat
gratitude measure and their scores on a varie- view of human nature. You know the saying - if
ty of sleep measures. So what does this tell us? the only tool you have is a hammer the whole
Well, it’s important to keep in mind that the world looks like a nail. Well, if the only tool you
statistical measure of association was looking have is experimentation or regression analysis,
at about 400 people all at once and described human beings begin to look like nothing but a
a general pattern of relationship that characte- complex assemblage of “variables.”
rized the sample as a whole. It doesn’t attempt
to tell us about any individual person (in other But there are all kinds of encouraging move-
words, you will very likely find people who are ments within psychology that mitigate against
relatively grateful yet don’t sleep well, and vice this danger. First, the discipline has for deca-
versa). Instead it gives us a rule of thumb: ge- des (at least) attempted to be clear about the
nerally speaking, more gratitude is associated limits of and proper interpretation of quanti-
with better sleep. Furthermore, in that study tative analysis and is currently in the midst of
only about 10% of the variability of scores on significant methodological self-reflection and
one of the measures of sleep could be statisti- self-improvement. Even more than that, quali-
cally explained by gratitude, which means that tative work - which has always played a role in
sleep quality is complex, and that gratitude is mainstream psychology (e.g., Anselm Strauss,
likely only one of many factors associated with whom you mention, was apparently an impor-
it (indeed, the authors provided evidence that tant mentor of Lawrence Kohlberg) - has made
gratitude’s influence on sleep is mediated by significant advances as well, with the recent
another variable - pre-sleep thoughts). But cer- launch of a brand-new APA journal Qualitative
tainly information like this is useful for Chri- Psychology and the expansion of APA Division
stian Psychology, don’t you think? The science 5 (Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics) to

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