Religious People Frustrated ?

Psychological Theories on religious beliefs generally fell into one of two classes, those that considered religious beliefs to be the result of social learning and those that considered them to be an adaptation or response to frustration, the head of the psychology department at the University of Adelaide, Prof. M. A. Jeeves, told the May conference of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions.

Social learning certainly was an important factor in the development of religious beliefs, but it was by no means a complete explanation for their existence. Social learning theories might give explanations of the perpetuation of traditions but they had not been able to explain such things as the rise of new movements, the varying levels of Interest among different age groups, and the differing ratios between men and women holding particular religious beliefs.

The second group of theories considered religious beliefs as basically a response or adaption to frustration. According to this point of view, religious beliefs were seen as a fantasy gratification of some need, the real gratification of which had been denied.

Two implications of this were that religious people were more frustrated than non-religious people and that religious beliefs should compensate for frustration. American studies of poorer people (who were most likely to be economically frustrated) and those with lower social status, had generally failed to support this view.