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Psychology of Religion is a science that is developing rapidly in Turkey as in the world and attracts great attention by researchers. In this article, we deal with one of the first representative of Psychology of Religion in Turkey Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Peker who has made significant contributions and continuous to contribute to this field with his books, articles, papers, thesis and students he has trained in the last half-century. This research, which is a biography, is based on his works, interviews about him, the opinions of his students, the interviews with some other teachers of the field and literarture review. The research consists of two sections following the introduction. In the introduction; the method, purpose and importance of the research are included. In the first part, his life, books, articles and papers; in the second part, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Peker’s contributions to the field in the context of the evaluations of Religious Psychologists in Turkey; the third part includes the evaluations and conclusion part. As a result of the research, it has been seen that Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Peker made important contributions to development of the Psychology of Religious Department with his works, students and thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors of human being, psychology studies pro-social behavior from various perspectives. Since altruism is related to sociality and morality it is discussed mostly in social psychology and psychology of religion. But recently, altruism has attracted attention in general psychology with the development of positive psychology. This has led to be published many studies on altruism in the literature. These studies include different approaches to definition and scope of altruism. Altruism, generally, defined as helping without expectation of personal benefit, takes an important place in the literature. Altruism is used synonymous with some concepts like helping, self-sacrifice, and îsâr (which is used in Turkish literature with the meaning of helping others even the person himself in need). Yet the determination of borders and locations of concepts is necessary to build psychological theory, research, and practice on firm basis. This paper presents information about pro-social behavior and definitions of altruism. Then it mentions nuances of other pro-social concepts in order to determine the location of altruism. It presents a concept map of altruism and definition chart for pro-social behaviors as well. The term altruism in different languages has similar roots as seen in the Table 1. The usage of altruism in other languages consists of a term with the meaning of “other" (alter, gayr, özge, el) and a suffix (-ist, -ci, -sever, -kâm) with the meaning of "centered". So altruism bases on being “other centered". In Turkish literature one can find different versions of the term altruism like elsever, diğerkâm, diğergam, özgeci, altruist, and, altürist. Therefore, researchers should be careful about these terms and make a search on them On the other hand, there are some concepts like “helping" (yardım etme), “care others" (diğerlerini düşünme), and “self-giving" (özveri) used as synonymous with altruism (Güney, 2010: 139). “Self-sacrifice" (fedakârlık) is also frequently used equal to altruism (see Hablemitoğlu ve diğ. 2010). Îsâr is another term used with the meaning of altruism as well (see Sancaklı, 2006). However, there are nuances among these concepts. For instance, helping is wider than altruism and caring others may not indicate an action but altruism does. Likely, altruism is a voluntary behavior while self-sacrifice may be involuntary under the influence of some reasons like social norms (Özdoğan, 2005: 178). With the lexical meaning of “preferring someone or something to other" îsâr is defined as “using one's own means for the benefit of others even if she/he is in need" (Çağrıcı, 2000: 490). However, being in need is not a necessity for altruism (Durmuş, 2003: 19). Varieties of definitions of altruism provide us to see the common and different point o f v iews. There i s a c onsensus o f the f act that a ltruism depends on an action of a person for the benefit of others (Bedosky, 2005: 17). Namely altruism is a type of helping behavior without expecting any personal gift or benefit. Yet there is dissidence on conceptualization and scope of pro-social behavior, helping, altruism and îsâr. What this article concludes from these discussions is pro-social behavior is a broad band term. Helping is a type of pro-sociality and altruism is a type of helping. Îsâr is a specific form of altruism as shown in the diagram 1 below. After mentioning the definition and scope of altruism it is required to determine the location of altruism among other pro-social behaviors. Like altruism, there are a plenty of different definitions for other pro-social behaviors. After a detailed literature review this study detected that these definitions are made depending on the actor's intention, aim, interaction, state, target and behavior type. Here is a definition chart for pro-social behaviors. As a conclusion, this paper asserts that altruism is to help others for the benefit of her/him. It depends on being "other centered" instead of being "self-centered". Isar is a specific form of altruism that means to help others even the actor herself/himself is in need. This paper also presents a range of criteria to define pro-social behaviors. It is expected that this definition chart will contribute to eliminating the confusion of concepts in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various situations that individual encounters in his / her daily Ufe create positive emotions while others cause stress and anxiety. In the literature, such negative moods that affect an individual's emotional, cognitive, physical, behavioral and relational aspects are defined as anxiety. The state of anxiety that affects a large part of society has become widespread today. In parallel studies on anxiety have increased in recent years. There is still a need to investigate the effects of religion on anxiety, including feelings of restlessness, anxiety, fear, irritability, and sadness, because religion and religiosity is an effective factor in many areas of an individual's life, from the world of thought to the world of emotion, from attitudes to various behaviors. One of the negative situations in social Ufe is aggressive behavior. Aggressive behavior, on the other hand, includes all behaviors directed to harm another living being, although it is classified in various ways. Aggression has a very broad form of expression- In the literature, aggression is evaluated in five dimensions as physical indirect, anger, verbal and hostility. In all religions and cultures, aggressive expressions are not welcome because they harm society. Religion and religiosity bring provisions aiming to control the aggressive behaviors of the individual Abroad, religion / religiosity and although more research on the relationship between aggression investigating the relationship between these two cases in Turkey is not so prevalent in the study. The aim of this research is to examine the relationships and interactions between trait anxiety, aggression and religiosity. The purpose of this study is to examine whether religious beliefs and attitudes and continuous anxiety have an effect on the aggressive tendencies of university students. In addition, the effects of gender on religiosity, persistent anxiety and aggression tendencies were discussed in this study. Four hundred-fifteen volunteer students from different universities and faculties participated in the study in the 2017-2018 academic year. After the data set was checked, the final sample consisted of 398 participants. In addition to personal traits, STAI Form TX-2, Motivational Religiosity Scale (MMRI) and Buss-Perry Aggression Scale (BPSO) were used. After the factor analysis of the STAI FORM TX-2, 4 expressions were scattered or ambiguous and 16 expressions remained in the excluded scale. The scale was named as Continuous Anxiety Scale-16. As a result of the analysis, the KMO value of the scale was found to be 833 (p =, 000) and internal consistency was 791. Motivational Religiosity Scale (MMRI) -18: As a result of factor analysis, 18 of the 20 questions were collected under three dimensions, explaining 74% of the total variance, and the internal consistency of the KMO was 961 (p =, 000) and 964, respectively. Buss-Perry Aggression Scale (BPSO): In this study, a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 29 items was used. The analysis showed that 10 items were deactivated and the remaining 19 items were collected in 5 sub-dimensions. KMO value of the scale was found to be 857 and the variance explained was 58,346% (p =, 000). The alpha value, which expresses the internal consistency of the scale, was found to be 813. The participants received the highest score in the "religious belief and tendency to help" subscale (M = 4.38). In general, in the subscales where a mean score was obtained above the average of the scale (M = 2.5), finally, M = 3.86 average was obtained from the responsibility dimension in the second place. The participants were as follows in terms of their aggression orientations. The participants obtained the highest average from the "verbal aggression" subscale (5.83). Sub-scales of "scepticism and intellectual hostility" (4,95), "emotional-cognitive hostility" (3,72), "physical aggression" (3,65) and "emotional reactive anger" (3,55) follow. The mean scale obtained by the participants from the verbal aggression and skepticism-intellectual hostility was above the average (M = 4,5). According to the results of the t-test analysis conducted to determine the difference between gender groups in terms of religiosity attitudes, it was found that women's religiosity scale obtained a higher average than the relationship with God, the source of power and trust. The difference was statistically significant (p =, 014). Further, the gender variable leads to a difference from the "unhappy and dissatisfaction" and "fatigue and avoidance" dimensions of the trait anxiety scale. While the average of males was high in the unhappy and dissatisfaction subscale, the women scored high in the fatigue and avoidance subscale. The t-test analysis revealed that the gender variable caused a difference in the aggression scale. The averages obtained from "physical aggression", "emotional hostility" and "anger" subscales are in favor of men. In other words, men tend to have more aggressive thoughts and behaviors than women. According to the results of the regression analysis conducted to determine the relationships and interactions between the variables, it was understood that continuous anxiety was positively correlated with "emotional hostility", "emotional-reactive anger" and "skeptical and intellectual hostility" subscales. Explain anxiety accounts for about 37% of the change in the emotional cognitive hostility dimension of aggression. Define anxiety accounts for approximately 30% of the change in the emotional-reactive anger dimension of aggression and 14% of the change in the sceptical and intellectual hostility dimension. According to the results of regression analysis, the two dimensions of religiosity and aggression subscales have entered into relationship and interaction. The "relationship with God" subscale of religiosity entered into relationships and interactions with other dimensions of aggression except for the "skeptical and intellectual hostility" dimension, while the "religious belief and solidarity" subscale of religiosity only interacted and interacted with the "emotional-reactive anger" dimension of aggression. The negative (-) value of the relationship indicates that the increase in religiosity can lead to a decrease in aggressive behavior. According to the findings, the relationship between religiosity and God; It can be explain about 15% of the change in the physical aggression subscale, about 11% of the change in the emotional-cognitive hostility subscale, about 18% of the change in the emotional-reactive anger dimension, and about 15% of the change in the verbal aggression dimension. The religious belief and solidarity dimension of religiosity explains about 16% of the change in the emotional reactive anger dimension of aggression.The results of this study are limited to the sample group, the time of the study and the ability of the scales to measure. It is thought that the results of this paper can contribute to the literature and can shed light on the further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual tools of psychology aim to explain the complexity of phenomena that psychotherapists observe in their patients and within themselves, as well as to predict the outcome of therapy. Naturally, Muslim psychologists have sought satisfaction in the conceptual tools of their trade and in what has been written in Islamic psychology--notably by Badri (The dilemma of Muslim psychologists, MWH London, London, 1979), who critiqued Western psychology from an Islamic perspective, arguing the need to filter out from Western Psychology which was cross-culturally invalid or was in conflict with Islamic precept. In this paper, I advocate an extension of Badri's (1979) approach and present a working model of the self derived from traditional Islamic thought. This model, though rudimentary and incomplete, I believe, makes better sense of my perceptions as a clinician than any other psychological model within my knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing replication of studies find a correlation between religious belief and practice and mental and physical health and longevity. This paper discusses some of the implications of this research for the ways in which religion might understood psychologically. Most interpretations of this data focus on the presence of one or more mediating variables. This paper argues that the presence of these mediating factors helps us understand more precisely some of the ways in which religion actually does impact on human life and in what the psychological uniqueness of religion actually consists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]