Call for Papers:

Artificial Intelligence and Psychology of Spirituality in an Ever-changing World: Challenges and Opportunities
Special issue of the Springer journal Pastoral Psychology
https://link.springer.com/collections/gehdiffffa

Deadline for submissions: Ongoing

We all are living in a polarized, chaotic, and ever-changing world and people value the pursuit of wealth, dominance, and power in uncertain, unpredictable, and unstable situations. Spirituality plays a vital role for living with the impermanence and adversities of life and sustains our eudaimonic well-being. In Pargament’s spirituality-centred model (1999), spirituality has a unique focus on the domain of the sacred, which can give value and meaning to existence. Furthermore, spiritual exercises can serve as a vital resource of inner peace for people facing life hardships and adversities. Hence, spirituality can be helpful to overcome life adversities and to effectively provide better adjustment and wellbeing in times of crises with uncertainty. Spirituality can also be a complex, personal, and ambivalent space that requires holding conflicting truths, values, and meanings, for instance, a space for inner peace but also a space with intense existential questioning during spiritual crises.

The exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been reshaping the ways people engage, experience, and express spirituality, which has also dramatically changed their perception of transcendent experiences, life values, beliefs, and behaviors in facing uncertainties, adversities, and crises. Indeed, AI is not only a technological tool but also a cultural, economic, and relational force that can hold conflicting truths, values, and meanings at once – power and justice, dominance and compliance, apathy and empathy. Although AI-driven technologies may offer opportunities for engagement and connection in spirituality, AI may pose threats and challenges to human spirituality by causing misrepresentation of their beliefs, raising moral and ethical concerns, encouraging over-reliance on AI in the search for inner peace, and creating an illusion of truth. Indeed, the influences of AI technologies on fundamental aspects of spirituality and human spiritual experiences have not been fully investigated.

In this context, this Special Issue is soliciting manuscripts addressing topics related to exploring the roles of AI in spirituality engagement and connection, transformation of spiritual education and practice, and personalized spiritual guidance, and on the other hand, discussing the ethical considerations of the impacts of AI on spiritual authenticity and inclusiveness, genuine spiritual experience and pastoral caring, and core transcendental values (e.g. truth, greater good, responsibility). For this Special Issue, the term AI is broadly understood, which could cover generative AI, autonomous AI, algorithms in social media, internet of things, machine learning, and more. Academics from the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology, theology and religious studies, and other related fields are welcome to make a submission. Papers focusing on various aspects of challenges and opportunities in connecting AI and psychology of spirituality, such as empirical research, philosophical discussion, in-depth review, case studies, and advanced practice, are of particular interest. Additionally, papers that illustrate culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate international contexts are of relevance to this Special Issue. This Special Issue aims to provide a series of insightful and inspiring discourses regarding the positive and negative impacts of AI on the psychology of spirituality as we navigate our ever-changing lives.

Guest Editors:

1. Professor Chi-Keung Alex CHAN, Dean of School of Arts and Humanities; Co-Director of Translational Research Center for Digital Mental Health, Tung Wah College, HKSAR.
2. Professor Andrea GAGGIOLI, Full Professor, Department of Psychology; Director, Research Center in Communication Psychology (PSICOM); Director, the International Master in User Experience Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart) in Milan, Italy.
3. Dr. Ann Gillian CHU, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural and Religion Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, HKSAR.
4. Dr. Larry AUYEUNG, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Humanities, Tung Wah College, HKSAR.
5. Dr. Rongwei Iris SUN, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Humanities, Tung Wah College, HKSAR.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Pastoral Psychology is an international forum that addresses varied aspects of religion and spirituality from physical, human science, and interfaith perspectives.

• Welcomes all theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to psychoanalytic and other dynamic psychologies, cognitive psychologies, experimental and empirical psychologies, humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, and cultural psychology. Theoretical contributions that have direct or indirect relevance for practice, broadly construed, are especially desirable.
• Welcomes insights from existential perspectives, intersectional theories, philosophical and theological theories, gender and queer studies, sociology, anthropology, public mental health, and cultural and empirical studies.
• Readership includes not only academics and scholars in religion and science, but also religious and spiritual leaders, as well as caregivers, chaplains, social workers, counselors/therapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and persons interested in matters of religion/spirituality and psychology.
• Welcomes scholarship and reflection from all religious and spiritual traditions from scholars around the world. In addition to scholarly research papers, the journal welcomes thoughtful essays on a wide range of issues and various genres of writing, including book reviews and film reviews. 

Editor-in-Chief: Kirk A. Bingaman PhD, MDiv

For more information, please visit https://link.springer.com/journal/11089