ABSTRACT
It is a widely known issue in the field of psychology that most research focuses on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) populations. This is also the case for most of the research looking at how people conceptualize the relationship between science and religion, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Legare et al., 2012; Falade & Guenther, 2020). To address this issue, we conducted a series of cross-cultural studies, which investigated the psychological underpinnings of how people perceive the relationship between science and religion across five countries with very different demographics, histories, and scientific infrastructures (the UK, Germany, Spain, Argentina, and Sri Lanka). Based on previous research that stressed the importance of social identity in understanding how people perceive the relationship between science and religion (Sharp & Leicht, 2020), we similarly used a social identity ‘lens’ to address these issues in these five countries. In this chapter, we will discuss the methodological process through which we approached this research, how our research plan translated into reality, how we balanced the competing priorities of comparability and relevance across country contexts, and the methodological hurdles we cleared along the way.
