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The early psychologists of religion were fully aware of these difficulties, typically acknowledging that the definitions they were choosing to use were to some degree arbitrary. Historians of religion have long underscored the problematic character of this term, noting that its usage over the centuries has changed in significant ways, generally in the direction of reification. The first, descriptive task naturally requires a clarification of one's terms-above all, the word religion.
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These fruits may be both positive and negative. The challenge for the psychology of religion is essentially threefold: (1) to provide a thoroughgoing description of the objects of investigation, whether they be shared religious content (e.g., a tradition's ritual observances) or individual experiences, attitudes, or conduct (2) to account in psychological terms for the rise of such phenomena, whether they be in individual lives and (3) to clarify the outcomes-the fruits, as William James put it-of these phenomena, for individuals, and the larger society. The psychology of religion first arose as a self-conscious discipline in the late 19th century, but all three of these tasks have a history going back many centuries before that. Psychologists of religion pursue three major projects: (1) systematic description, especially of religious contents, attitudes, experiences, and expressions (2) explanation of the origins of religion, both in the history of the human race and in individual lives, taking into account a diversity of influences and (3) mapping out the consequences of religious attitudes and conduct, both for the individual and for society at large.