Publications

Church, A. T. (2024). Religion versus Secular Humanism: What the Psychological and Social Sciences Can Tell Us. United Kingdom: Hypatia Press.

In today’s contentious climate, we continue to see a seemingly unbridgeable divide between people who find their answers in religion and those who are indifferent or even hostile to it. For many of its critics, religion is irrational, divisive, and a major contributor to prejudice, intolerance, and violence. In this book, I examine the relative merits and viability of religion versus secular humanism as alternative life stances, drawing on evidence from the psychological and social sciences. Among the questions asked:

Are there plausible naturalistic (vs. religious) explanations of the origins, evolution, and functions of religion?
What are the beneficial and harmful effects of religion and can the benefits be adequately achieved via secular means?
Can secular humanists live moral, meaningful, and fulfilling lives, or is the fully secular life deficient in some way?
Can psychological science show us how to live meaningful and fulfilling lives, with or without religion?
As much of the world secularizes, is religion likely to persist? Should it?

Overall, available evidence suggests that secular humanism—as a moral, meaningful, and fulfilling life stance—is capable of replacing religion, but probably won’t. Rather, humanism will remain a viable—and for many people, preferable—alternative that co-exists with religion into the foreseeable future. Evidence-based proposals to reduce the religious-secular gap are also offered.

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Church, A. T. (Ed.) (2017). The Praeger Handbook of Personality across Cultures (3 volumes). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO/Praeger.

In this three-volume Handbook, prominent scholars from diverse countries review the status of research on personality across cultural contexts. Volume 1, titled Trait Psychology across Cultures, focuses on the cross-cultural study of dispositional traits. Chapters address the extent to which the structure of personality traits is universal versus culture-specific; the accuracy or meaningfulness of trait comparisons across cultures; trait consistency and validity across cultures; the situations across which traits are manifested; and methodological issues dealing with bias and equivalence in cross-cultural personality research. Volume 2, titled Culture and Characteristic Adaptations, focuses on the relationship between culture and other important aspects of personality, including the self, emotions, motives, values, beliefs, and life narratives, as well as aspects of personality and adjustment associated with bilingualism/biculturalism and intercultural competence. Volume 3, titled Evolutionary, Ecological, and Cultural Contexts of Personality, focuses on evolutionary, genetic, and neuroscience perspectives on personality across cultures and ecological and cultural influences and dimensions. The Handbook is unique in bringing together in a single resource the diverse topics and theoretical perspectives in the study of personality across cultures.

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Culture & Personality: General Reviews

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Indigenous & Ethnic Psychology

Integrating Trait & Cultural Psychology

Vocational Psychology in Special Populations

About

I am a Professor Emeritus in Counseling Psychology at Washington State University. I received a B.S. degree in Mathematics (Lafayette College), a M.S. degree in Computer Science (University of Wisconsin), and a PhD in Psychology (University of Minnesota).

In a 30-year career at Washington State University (1985-2015) I conducted research on personality, psychological measurement, cross-cultural and indigenous psychology, and vocational psychology in special populations; taught courses in cross-cultural research, psychological assessment, and career counseling; chaired 49 doctoral dissertations and 11 master's theses; and served as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education. From 1982 to 1984, I was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Counseling and Guidance at De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines.

I have an international reputation for my research on culture and personality and have published extensively in top scientific journals, including invited reviews in Current Opinion in Psychology, Advances in Culture and Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Social and Personality Compass, and Journal of Personality. I edited the three-volume Praeger Handbook of Personality across Cultures (ABC-CLIO, 2017).

I am a former associate editor for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and have served on the editorial boards for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Personality, Journal of Research in Personality, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Psychological Science, European Journal of Personality, and Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Much of my research has addressed the following questions:

the extent to which the structure of personality traits is universal or unique across cultures;
whether personality inventories measure characteristics that are relevant for people in all cultures, or if we need to construct measures tailored to particular cultures;
whether meaningful and valid cultural differences in personality can be detected using existing inventories, or whether measurement biases or inequivalences make such comparisons inaccurate or misleading;
whether there are cultural differences in self-concepts and their relation to adjustment;
whether there are cultural differences in the cross-situational consistency and predictive validity of traits.

Much of this research was conducted in collaboration with my wife Marcia S. Katigbak, PhD, and a network of international psychologists, with grant support from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health in the United States. Other research interests have included multicultural issues in counseling and assessment, and vocational psychology in special populations, interests that are reflected in most of the doctoral dissertations and master’s theses that I chaired during my career.

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