University of Connecticut Professor Will Lecture at Baylor on Findings of SoulPulse Study and How it Relates to Spirituality

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Media contact: Terry Goodrich, (254) 710-3321
WACO, Texas (Feb. 22, 2016) – Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion will host Bradley Wright, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, for a lecture about spirituality at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, in the Paul L. Foster Campus of Business and Innovation Rooms 143 and 144.
“Brad Wright is a first-rate sociologist whose important research is taken seriously both by academics and everyday people in the pews,” said Byron Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. “Baylor Students and faculty are in for a rare treat.”
In his lecture, “Studying Spirituality as Both a Trait and a State: Findings from the SoulPulse Study,” Wright will talk about SoulPulse, a two-week long survey that is conducted twice a day at random intervals, utilizing the increasing popularity of social media to study the daily spirituality of people based on a variety of factors like amount of sleep or time of day. Participants in the study go through a 10-minute online screening process and then are asked to fill out two surveys per day that take a few minutes to complete.
Wright plans to raise the question, “Should spirituality be studied as a stable trait of the person, a temporary state that they enter or both?” He will explore the interplay between spiritual traits and states using data from SoulPulse.
Wright’s research focuses on American Christianity and spirituality. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, where he specialized in criminology and social psychology. He is the author of “Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You’ve Been Told,” winner of the 2011 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award for Christianity and Culture. He also wrote “Upside: Surprising Good News about the State of Our World” in 2011.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Click here to register. The Foster Campus is located at 1621 S. Third St.
by Bethany Harper, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805
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