PSYC's Ed Lemay Wins Research Award to Study Primal Worldviews

Ed Lemay, a professor in the University of Maryland's Department of Psychology, was recently presented with a Primals Research Award by Templeton Religion Trust—a global charitable trust chartered by Sir John Templeton in 1984 with headquarters in Nassau, The Bahamas—to study an often overlooked research area: Primal world beliefs, or "primals." 

More specifically, Lemay's two-year study will explore how, for example, someone seeing the world as dangerous and declining versus safe and progressing versus dull and barren impacts their interpersonal relationships, psychological well-being, goal pursuit, and performance at work. From the study's start on July 1 to its end on June 30, 2024, Lemay will use dyadic, longitudinal, behavioral observation, and experience sampling methods to gain such insights, and also collect data from study participants’ social network members, from friends and family to coworkers.

"I hope this research will shed light on the role of people's worldviews in their close relationships, well-being, and experiences at work," said Lemay. 

He also hopes to better understand how interpersonal relationships either strengthen or weaken these beliefs over time, if these believes can spread across relationship partners, and whether interventions can make a difference.

"I will pilot test an intervention to improve couple members' understanding and compassion regarding each others' worldviews, to hopefully reduce the impact of discrepancies in worldviews on relationship conflict," he went on.

If successful in doing so, Lemay plans to apply for additional funding to test an online version of the intervention on a larger scale.   

For more information on primal world beliefs, see here. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the award was presented by the John Templeton Foundation.

Published on Tue, Apr 12, 2022 - 12:56PM