Saturday Onsite Presentation Session 2

Psychology and Society

Session Chair: Alan Weber

11:25-11:50

67036 | Distress and Growth in the Black Community

Devin Noel-Harrison, Seattle Pacific University, United States

Experiencing racial discrimination is an unfortunate reality that many people of color must regularly undergo. With the increased use of social media, videos depicting violence against black bodies (e.g., the murder of George Floyd) are widely circulated and garner millions of views. The consequences of being exposed to these race-related traumatic events online (TEO) can be damaging to the mental health of the Black community, maybe even more so if one’s black identity is important and salient to their overall well-being. This study uses the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI) to separate Black identity into three dimensions: centrality, public regard, and private regard. Though witnessing these race-related TEO often leads to posttraumatic stress (PTS), meaningful growth may also be possible. This concept is known as posttraumatic growth (PTG) where traumatic events lead to a positive change and improvements in overall functioning. The sample consisted of 116 participants (N=116) aged 18–66. Meditation analyses were conducted to see if the dimensions of centrality, public regard, and private regard mediated the relationship between witnessing race-related TEO and PTS/PTG. The analysis indicated that public regard influenced the relationship between witnessing race-related TEO and PTS. Additional analysis showed a positive correlation between PTS and PTG. This indicates that there may be a link between the process of experiencing PTS and PTG. Further research is needed to understand the psychological effects, both positive and negative, of witnessing racial discrimination against one’s own racial/ethnic group.

11:50-12:15

67503

| Take Pride: Religiosity and Life Satisfaction of Selected Non-heterosexual Orientations in the Philippines–Homosexuals and Bisexuals

Rita Aringo, National University, Philippines

Life satisfaction emphasizes the interaction between the individual and the society, and it encompasses how they integrate with groups such as religions. However, despite its apparent favorable impact of religiosity on a person's life, the idea of how it extends to the life of sexual minorities was not yet fully investigated. This idea prompted the analysis of whether life satisfaction among selected non-heterosexual orientations was correlated with religiosity. It was conducted through an online questionnaire form, which was responded to by 120 participants in their early adulthood who identified as homosexuals and bisexuals. The study's findings demonstrated that life satisfaction positively correlates with religiosity among the selected non-heterosexual samples. On the other hand, the analysis showed that the variables have an insignificant relationship among homosexual participants while posing a relationship among bisexual participants. As a result of evaluating the variables within the context of non-heterosexual orientations, this study adds to previous research. It acts as a means of raising awareness about this matter. Moreover, the results of the conducted study may have been affected by several constraints that the study faced during the pandemic. Religiosity is a factor that influences a person’s life satisfaction.

12:15-12:40

69240 | Towards an Islamic Psychology: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives

Alan Weber, Weill Cornell Medicine, Qatar

As in the early Christian and Judaic traditions, Islamic scholars speculated extensively on the nature of the soul (psyche) and such concepts as self (Arabic: nafs), identity, being, and mental aberrations. Medieval Islamic thinkers drew frequently on Neoplatonic concepts as well as commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima to create frameworks for psychological inquiry, and they adopted the Galenic-Hippocratic humoral model which proposed physiological origins of mental illness. Thus western and Islamic psychological theories possess some common roots. However, modern Islamic mental health professionals have argued that Islam provides a unique mode of being necessitating the integration of shariah law and Muslim perspectives on the nature of reality and creation, including the human mind, into psychological and psychiatric theory and praxis. This contribution provides an overview of the historical development of psychology in Muslim-majority societies from the perspectives of medicine, natural philosophy and theology spanning the early Islamic period to recent attempts to develop a modern Islamic psychology suitable for allopathic evidence-based clinical counselling and diagnosis. A critique is provided of some of the current theoretical frameworks of Utz (2011), Haque (2009), Rasool (2015) and Traditional Islamically Integrated Psychotherapy (TIIP).