Patience in Adversity
Field Building and a Multi-Year, Multi-Site, Mixed-Methods Longitudinal Study for a Foundational Virtue
Generously funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, this grant will study patience through asking 6 big questions regarding the: 1) definition, 2) sibling constructs, 3) dynamic processes and development, 4) person-situation interactions, 5) functions, and 6) cultivation of patience. Studying people facing challenges can shed light on what predicts whether a person in adversity develops patience and on mechanisms by which patience enables a person to act and live well in adversity.
Considering patience as a state, trait, and virtue, this project aims to discover the dynamic processes by which patience is enacted in daily life and across the life course, ways persons and situations interact to facilitate or inhibit patience, functions of patience, and mechanisms by which people cultivate patience as a virtue. A mixed-methods longitudinal study will collect data 4 times (1 yr. apart) from participants recruited from 3 samples who face adverse circumstances: parents of adolescents with disabilities, Muslim-American parents of adolescents, and parents of adolescents in a diverse sample in Southern California. Data collected includes quantitative self-/informant-reports, qualitative interviews, lab tasks, Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activity. Philosophers will be embedded in research sites to advise on study design, findings interpretation, and synthesis with theory. The project will run an RFP for early-career researchers in psychology, who will engage in multiple phases of training, and an RFP for early-career scholars in philosophy/religion to participate in a 1-week summer seminar. Eminent scholars in religion/theology will produce public media discussing patience as a resource for interfaith engagement, and we will award prizes for the best religion/philosophy articles on patience.
Please review our early-career Psychology Fellow Request for Proposals (RFP) - due April 1 - by clicking here.