THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

CONTENTS
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 1

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................2

Psychology of Religion Then and Now..................................................4

The Upsurge of the Past Quarter Century ..............................................6

Progress in Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality ..........................9

Progress in Measuring Spiritual and Religious Constructs...................13

RELIGION AND EMOTION: THE AFFECTIVE…………………

BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY ………………………………………..15

The Return to Virtue ............................................................................19

PERSONALITY AND RELIGION .....................................................25

New Units of Analysis from Personality Psychology ..........................27

Spiritual Transformation ......................................................................30

CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................32

REFERENCE……………………………………………………… 34

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 CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

It has been long since the last (and only) chapter on the psychology of religion appeared in
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 2
the Annual Review of Psychology (Gorsuch 1988). The psychology of religion as an

identifiable subfield of psychology has grown rapidly since then. The publication of an

increasing number of books on the topic, including several published by the American

Psychological Association (APA), testifies to the vibrancy of the field (Emmons 1999; Hill &

Hood 1999; Koenig 1998; Miller 1999; Pargament 1997; Richards & Bergin 1997, 2000;

Shafranske 1996). Whereas the more applied areas of psychology such as clinical,

counseling, and health have taken the lead in examining links between religion and

psychological, physical, and interpersonal functioning, basic subfields are also recognizing

that spiritual and religious influences may be profoundly important (e.g., Emmons &

McCullough 1999, Paloutzian & Kirkpatrick 1995). Because of this rapid growth, this work

cannot provide comprehensive coverage of recent developments for all topics in the

psychology of religion. Recent research on religion and spirituality as human phenomena is

almost as vast and diverse as religious life itself.

A literature search using the psychinfo database for the period 1988-2001 returned 1198

citations for the term religion and 777 citations for spirituality. This review, therefore, must

of necessity be selective rather than exhaustive. Because the clinical psychology of religion

has received a great deal of attention, we have chosen to highlight less-well-publicized areas

of scholarship in the psychology of religion, particularly in the fields of personality and

social psychology, which are new and not already documented by comprehensive summary

sources elsewhere. This work has several purposes: to document the various trajectories that

the psychology of religion has had during the previous century, to explain some of the

reasons for the trends that have been observed, to illustrate how all of the topics within the

psychology of religion are extensions of and feedback to the overall body of theory and the

database from general psychology, and to sketch the newest lines of emerging research that

2
show promise of contributing significantly to psychology during the next few years.

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 3

CHAPTER TWO

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION THEN AND NOW

In psychology’s early days, at a time when all psychological thinking was fresh and new, and
3
when theory, research methods, statistical tools, and sub-disciplines within this now immense

and rich field were not even dreamed of in their modern form, those who were pioneering

this field (Hall 1904, 1917; James 1902; Starbuck 1899; see also Vande Kemp 1992) took it
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 4

as a serious part of their work to study the psychological aspects of human religiousness. The

challenge for the next century of psychologists (i.e., us) is to follow this example and do what

they began to do— come to an understanding of the psychological bases of religious belief,

experience, and behavior, with the goal of applying this knowledge for human good. The

attention to this topic by the generation of psychologists who came after those early pioneers

declined from approximately the mid 1920s until the mid 1960s. Several intradisciplinary

reasons for this have been suggested (Paloutzian 1996). These include but are not limited to

the establishment of scientific psychology after the model of physics, the separation of

psychology departments from their former home in philosophy departments and the tendency

by psychologists to stay away from “taboo” topics that might be considered too philosophical

or too theological. However, during this period there were writings by what might be called

the “grand theorists” of religion (Freud 1927, Jung 1938; see Wulff 1997 for a complete

presentation of these), but these writings did little to advance the psychology of religion in

the stricter, data-based sense. That is, these were overarching theories of human nature that

were attempts to explain everything, including religiousness. Although they are rich ideas

about what processes may underlie religiousness, they did little to feed the quantitative

research that is mushrooming today.

The impressive flowering and maturing of the discipline as we know it today is embedded in

the co-occurrence of several factors. Most notably, the re-emergence of the field was partly

due to a generation effect, just as the early work was done by leaders who invested efforts in

this topic (Wulff 1998), a new group of psychologists emerged whose concerns included

issues of social relevance and whose view of psychology was expansive. The social

upheavals of the 1960s made them aware of the need to use their psychological training to

4
study real-life issues such as violence, aggression, prejudice, sexism—to tackle the big

problems (Hester 1998). Religion, among the most powerful of all social forces and here as

long as there have been human beings [e.g., it has been suggested that humans be thought of
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 5

as Homo religiosus because religion has been present as long as there have been Homo

sapiens (Albright & Ashbrook 2001)] and showing no sign of going away, is among them.

Following the lead of Gordon Allport, in which religiousness was found to be related in

important but non-obvious ways to racial prejudice (Allport 1954, Allport & Ross 1967), the

dramatic recent growth of the field began.

CHAPTER THREE
THE UPSURGE OF THE PAST QUARTER CENTURY
The psychology of religion re-emerged as a full-force, leading-edge research area that

5
contributes new knowledge, data, and professional activity to the rest of psychology and this

is apparent upon examination of the recent trends in the publication of textbooks and journal

articles, presentations at professional meetings, teachingPSYCHOLOGY

courses inOFthe psychology of
RELIGION 6

religion, the establishment of new journals, books on clinical and health issues, and the

development of psychology of religion research that interfaces the theory and topics of the

mainstream discipline. These trends became visible after the establishment of APA Division

36, Psychology of Religion, in 1976. One of the most obvious evidences of the development

of an area of scholarship can be seen by examining the numbers and frequency of books that

are published in that area. Textbooks, in particular, are a benchmark source of data because

they serve the purpose of summarizing research and they reflect activity in a field. Prior to

1982 one could look far and wide for current books on the psychology of religion and come

up empty-handed. No recently published books existed. Things changed quickly during the

1980s, however. Psychology of religion textbooks were published in rapid successionby

Batson & Ventis (1982), Paloutzian (1983), Spilka et al. (1985), and Brown (1987), and

Wulff’s (1991) book was in press before the decade was out. The 1990s saw this trend

replicate and expand. Some of the 1980s books came out in second editions, including

Batson et al. (1993), Paloutzian (1996), Hood et al. (1996), and Wulff (1997), and other

books were added to the list (Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle 1997, Pargament 1997, Spilka &

McIntosh 1997). This trend continues as the new century begins (Argyle 2000, Loewenthal

2000). Also, for the first time separate introductory chapters were included in general

psychology textbooks (Santrock & Paloutzian 1997, 2000). This flourishing of textbooks

feeds the increased teaching of psychology of religion (Hester 2002) and documents the

vibrant activity that is a clear sign of the growth of the field.

S

Textbooks do not make for major contributions to a field on their own, however. They

depend on the quality and visibility of the research on which they are based. During the past

25 years psychology of religion material has appeared with increasing frequency in high-end

6
journals. In addition, and added to the already existing psychology of religion journals such

as the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Review of Religious Research, new

journals devoted to this topic have been established. One ofPSYCHOLOGY

them, The International
OF RELIGION 7
Journal

for the Psychology of Religion (established in 1990) is published in the United States, and the

other, Mental Health, Religion, and Culture (established in 1998) is published in the United

Kingdom. To complement the function served by journals, the annual series Research in the

Social Scientific Study of Religion (JAI Press, Inc., established in 1990) and the topic’s first

Annual Review chapter (Gorsuch 1988) appeared, as did a chapter on religion and health

(Chatters 2000). Finally, special issues of leading journals are appearing that focus on

religious influences on personal and societal well-being (Paloutzian & Kirkpatrick 1995),

religion in the psychology of personality (Emmons & McCullough 1999), religion and the

family (Parke 2001), religion and adult development (Sinnott 2001), and religion as a

meaning system (Silberman 2003). These trends make it clear that individual researchers are

including religious dimensions in various aspects of their work and those journals of the

highest quality and influence wish to publish it.

Closely related to this is the upsurge in the publication of specialized professional and

postgraduate-level books, both those that concern the religious aspects of applied work and

those that are handbooks on a specialized topic. For example, in 1996 the APA launched its

book series on religious issues in clinical practice and shortly thereafter published a lead

article on religion in the APA Monitor (Clay 1996). This so far has produced comprehensive

handbooks focusing on religion and clinical practice (Shafranske 1996), spiritual strategy for

counseling and psychotherapy (Richards & Bergin 1997), psychotherapy with religiously di-

verse people (Richards & Bergin 2000), and spirituality and treatment (Miller, 19996).

The same trend is occurring in psychiatry (Bhugra 1996, Boehnlein 2000) and from the

perspective of particular theoretical approaches including rational emotive behavior therapy

7
and psychodynamics (Malony & Spilka 1991). Finally, comprehensive handbooks and

monographs have appeared on religious experience (Hood 1995) and conversion (Malony &

Southard 1992, Rambo 1993), on religion and mental health (Koenig 1998) and physical
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 8

health (Koenig et al. 2001, Plante & Sherman 2001), cognitive science (Andresen 2001),

children’s religious cognition (Rosengren et al. 2000), emotion (Corrigan et al. 2000), and

spirituality in organizations (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz 2002). This impressive body of mate-

rial has emerged in less than a decade and documents the increasing attention to spirituality

and religion in diverse subfields of psychology.

CHAPTER FOUR
PROGRESS IN CONCEPTUALIZING RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
Our review of developments within substantive areas of the psychology of religion begins
8
with the swelling literature on various meanings that the terms religion and spirituality have

taken on. In order for progress to occur in a scientific discipline, there must be a minimum of

consensus concerning the meaning of core constructs and their measurement. Agreement on
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 9

the meaning of spirituality and religion is in short supply, as the religious landscape in the

broader culture and in psychology is changing with a new breed of spirituality that is often

distinct from traditional conceptions of religion (Hill 1999). Adding to the mayhem, religious

and spiritual variables are increasingly being included in experimental and epidemiological

studies. Yet how religion and spirituality are conceived and measured vary from study to

study.

Over the past decade, there has been arguably more printed devoted to conceptualizing

religion and spirituality than to any other topic in the psychology of religion. It has become

fashionable, both culturally and in the scientific literature, to differentiate between the

spiritual and the religious. Psychologists have exerted as much effort as anyone debating the

meaning of these terms. The noun “spirit” and the adjective “spiritual” are being used to refer

to an ever increasing range of experiences rather than being reserved for those occasions of

use that specifically imply the existence of nonmaterial forces or persons. Conceptions of

spirituality do not always have a transcendent reference point, a fact that has led to much

confusion over its meaning in research contexts. Most contemporary meanings of spirituality

do distinguish between religious spirituality, natural spirituality, and humanistic spirituality.

Elkins (2001), avocal proponent of humanistic-oriented spirituality, offers six qualities of

spirituality: Spirituality is universal; it is a human phenomenon; its common core is

phenomenological; it is our capacity to respond to the numinous; it is characterized by a

“mysterious energy” and its ultimate aim is compassion. It is unclear how these qualities

would translate into an empirical research program on spirituality, or whether conceptions

this broad are even thematically in keeping with the origins of the term. Careful linguistic

analyses and precise operational definitions of spirituality need to be emphasized (Moberg

9
2002).

There has also been no shortage of attempts to define religion. One of the best and simplest

definitions to appear in recent years was offered by Dollahite (1998: 5),OF

PSYCHOLOGY who defined
RELIGION 10 religion

as “a covenant faith community with teachings and narratives that enhance the search for the

sacred and encourage morality”. Religions are rooted in authoritative spiritual traditions that

transcend the person and point to larger realities within which the person is embedded.

Spiritualities may be contextualized within faith communities though they need not be.

Whereas some have argued that the movement toward spirituality represents a movement

away from traditional religion (Elkins 2001), others contend that the increased emphasis on

spirituality indicates an increased respect for the inner, contemplative practices of traditional

religious systems (Hill et al. 2000, Wuthnow 1998).

Zinnbauer et al. (1999) and Hill et al. (2000) systematically reviewed the evolving meanings

of the terms religion and spirituality. Achieving some degree of definitional clarity is

desirable, though not necessarily essential for scientific progress and the establishment of a

cumulative knowledge base. After all, many disciplines have failed to provide a core

consensual definition and have flourished in spite of definitional lacunae. The schism

between religion and spirituality is a recent occurrence (Hill et al. 2000) and the two

concepts are as much identified with their overlap as with what divides them. Zinnbauer et

al. (1999) posited “a search for the sacred” as the common ground between religion and

spirituality. They suggest that a dynamic view of spirituality and religion centered on a

search process offers considerable potential for understanding the influence of the spiritual

and religious realm in everyday life. The sacred core is what is central to both religious and

spiritual experience. Building upon this definition, Pargament (1999) has argued that

conceiving of spirituality in terms of an ability to imbue everyday experience, goals, roles,

and responsibilities with sacredness opens new avenues for empirical exploration. For

example, Mahoney et al. (1999) found that when marital partners viewed their relationship as

10
imbued with divine qualities, they reported greater levels of marital satisfaction, more

constructive problem solving behaviors, decreased marital conflict, and greater commitment

to the relationship, than couples who did not see their marriage in a sacred light. Similarly,
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 11

Tarakeshwar et al. (2002) found that a strong belief that nature is sacred was associated with

greater pro- environmental beliefs and a greater willingness to protect the environment. This

finding is notable in that other studies have found conventional measures of religiousness to

be negatively associated with pro-environmental attitudes (Kanagy & Willits 1993).

One of the most important papers to appear on the topic is the review by Hill and associates

(Hill et al. 2000). On the basis of both historical considerations and a growing empirical

literature, the authors caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible

and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the terms simply as individual versus

institutional or “good” versus “bad” is not fruitful for future research. Also cautioning

against the use of restrictive, narrow definitions or overly broad definitions that can rob

either construct of its distinctive characteristics, the authors propose a set of criteria that

recognizes the constructs’ conceptual similarities and dissimilarities. Both religion and

spirituality include the subjective feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that arise from a search

for the sacred. The term “search” refers to attempts to identify, articulate, maintain, or

transform. The term “sacred” refers to a divine being, divine object, ultimate reality, or

Ultimate Truth as perceived by the individual (p. 68). However, religion may or may not also

include the search for nonsacred goals such as social identity or health in the context the

search for the sacred, as well as prescribing rituals that facilitate a searchofthe sacred that are

validated and supported by a faith community. Hilletal. (2000) also reviewed a number of

recent studies that have empirically examined people’s self-descriptions as religious or

spiritual (e.g., Zinnbauer et al. 1997). The general findings of these studies is that most

people describe themselves as both religious and spiritual, a finding that supports Hill et al.’s

claim that the recent emphasis on spirituality represents an expanding conception of religion

11
rather than a postmodern replacement of it.

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 12

CHAPTER FIVE
PROGRESS IN MEASURING SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS CONSTRUCTS
Nearly some years ago the author of an influential article on the psychology of religion
12
contended that measurement is both the “boon” and “bane” of the psychology of religion

(Gorsuch 1984) and argued for a moratorium on new measures of religiousness. Textbooks

on psychometric theory state that the major problem in psychology is that of measurement.
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 13

Measurement is fundamental to scientific progress. Major advances in scientific disciplines

are typically preceded by major breakthroughs in measurement methods. The psychology of

religion, like other fields of scientific inquiry, will progress neither slower nor faster than

allowed by current measurement instruments. The 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of new

inventories in the psychology of religion. With this rapid growth, the need for an

authoritative guide to their use has become more important than ever. In recent years private

foundations and governmental agencies have commissioned panels of experts to identify the

key dimensions of religiousness/spirituality and to recommend instruments for their

measurement in basic and applied research. The objective of these efforts, and this chapter, is

to make researchers and mental health professionals aware of the existence of pertinent

measures as they design their studies and interventions. Only then will needless duplication

of scales be avoided, and more importantly, progress will accelerate as cumulative databases

are compiled and integrated with theory through programmatic research.

A published authoritative reference volume (Hill & Hood 1999) provides detailed

information on over 100 standardized measures of religiousness. These are grouped into 17

major clusters including religious beliefs and practices, religious attitudes, religious values,

religious development, religious orientation, religious commitment and involvement,

spirituality and mysticism, forgiveness, religious coping, and religious fundamentalism.

Whereas familiar measures often employed in social scientific research on religion are

included (e.g., intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity), so too are less widely accessible scales that

tap constructs of interest in and of themselves (e.g., images of God, spiritual maturity, and

attitudes toward death), and that may also have a bearing on the well-being and health

outcomes being increasingly studied by scientists and health professionals. Work is already

13
well under way on a companion volume focused primarily on measures of spirituality.

Slater et al. (2001) described recent developments in the measurement of spiritual and

religious constructs including a review of several new measures of spirituality

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIONthat
14 do not

appear in the Hill & Hood compendium. They advocate research that examines the

convergence of multiple measures of spirituality and religiousness in accordance with

theoretical frameworks. A good example of this is the article by MacDonald (2000), who

examined the latent factor structure among 11 measures of spirituality. He identified 5

dimensions that underlie measurement-based spirituality: cognitive orientation towards

spirituality, an experiential/phenomenological dimension, existential well-being, paranormal

beliefs, and general religiousness.

CHAPTER SIX

RELIGION AND EMOTION: THE AFFECTIVE BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY

The connection between religion and emotion is a long and intimate one. Religion has always

14
been a source of profound emotional experience. Jonathan Edwards described the function of

religious emotions in his theological classic A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections

(1746/1959). Edwards was so struck by the evidentiary force of emotion that he made it a
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 15

cornerstone of his theology. Love, gratitude, and thankful joy displayed toward God were

among the signs of genuine spiritual experience, according to Edwards. A review of his

contributions (Hutch 1978) suggests that he can still be read with profit.

Watts (1996), Hill (1999), and Hill & Hood (1999) trace historical developments on the

association between religious experience and feeling states. Both Watts and Hill have been

vociferous in calling for a greater awareness of the intimate and reciprocal relationships

between the psychology of religion and the psychology of emotion and identify several

fruitful areas of research that can inform and enrich both fields. An important but rarely cited

book on religious ways of knowing (Watts & Williams 1988) devotes an entire chapter to

religious approaches to emotion regulation. In a similar vein, Schimmel (1997) historically

documents Christian and Jewish teachings on the mastery of envy, anger, pride and other

potentially destructive emotions. Averill (1996) suggests that fruitful dialogue might involve

a speculation on emotions in an afterlife, an enterprise that might link with social

psychological research on affective forecasting (Gilbert et al. 1998).

Watts (1996) distinguishes between two main notions about the role of emotions in religious

life: The charismatic movement stresses the cultivation of intense positive emotions and their

importance in religious experience and collective religious rituals (see also McCauley 2001),

whereas the contemplative tradition stresses a calming of the passions and the development

of emotional quietude. In addition to these two approaches to regulating emotions, there is

the ascetic view (Allen, 1996), which links religion with greater awareness of emotion

(possible emotional intelligence, to use a contemporary term) and the creative expression of

emotion. Emotional regulation techniques that have their rationales in religious traditions can

modulate everyday emotional experience (Schimmel 1997, Watts 1996), providing spiritual

15
rationales and methods for handling problematic emotions such as anger, guilt, and

depression. Positive emotional benefits have been reported for Zen meditation (Gillani &

Smith 2001) and the cultivation of transpersonal states long associated with spiritual and
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 16

religious traditions (McCraty et al. 1998). The literature on emotion regulation in adulthood

(e.g., Gross 2002) might be mined to see what it offers the psychology of religion;

conversely, the field of emotion research might profit from a greater awareness of spiritual

and religious influences on felt emotions (Hill 1999). Silberman (2003) suggests three ways

in which religion as a meaning system affects emotions. First, religion prescribes appropriate

emotions and their level of intensity. Second, beliefs about the nature and attributes of God

may affect emotional well-being, and third, religion offers the opportunity to experience a

uniquely powerful emotional experience of closeness to the sacred.

A debatable issue continues to be the uniqueness of emotions that are labeled as religious.

Are these a separate class of emotions or simply ordinary emotions felt in religious contexts

or elicited through religious rituals such as prayer and worship? Advances in philosophy of

mind might be helpful here. Murphy (1998) recently argued that religious experience

supervenes on ordinary experience, in a top-down, causally efficacious fashion. What makes

religious emotion religious are ordinary felt emotions under circumstances that make it

apparent to the person that God or a higher power is involved. In d’Aquili & Newberg’s

(1999) neurotheological approach, experiences of the sacred are partially mediated by the

“emotional value operator” function of the mind. Neuroscience research of religious

experience has tended to focused on extraordinary spiritual experiences rather than more

routine religious experiences (Brown & Mathew 2001), so relatively little is known about the

brain’s role in everyday religious emotions. Advances in the affective sciences will likely

provide new ways of thinking about religious emotions and might eventually impact

psychology of religion research.

Unfortunately, empirical work on emotion within a religious or spiritual context has lagged

16
behind theoretical writings of a largely speculative nature. There are only a handful of

studies examining emotion and religion/spirituality, and none speak to the thorny issue of

distinguishing religious from nonreligious emotions. Samuels & Lester (1985) found that, in
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 17

a small sample of Catholic nuns and priests, out of 50 emotions, love and gratitude were the

most frequently experienced toward God. Another study employed a very different

methodology in studying the relationship between emotion and religion. Mayer (1994)

classified emotion terms in the books of the Hebrew Bible and examined changes in the

frequency of occurrence over the eight-century period during which the books were written.

The primary finding was that over time, references to happiness increased; no other emotions

were shown to systematically increase or decrease. Although he considers a number of

alternative hypotheses, Mayer suggests that this finding can be taken as evidence of the

positive psychological benefits of religious culture.

McCullough et al. (2002) found that people who reported high levels of spirituality reported

more gratitude in their daily moods, as did people higher in religious interest, general

religiousness, and intrinsic religious orientation. Interestingly, however, extrinsic, utilitarian

religious orientation and quest-seeking religious orientation were not significantly correlated

with the amount of gratitude in daily mood. These findings suggest that people high in

conventional forms of religiousness, especially people for whom religion is a fundamental

organizing principle (i.e., people high in intrinsic religiousness) and people who report high

levels of spiritual transcendence, experience more gratitude in their daily moods than do their

less religious/spiritual counterparts. The authors suggest that the presence of gratitude may

be a positive affective hallmark of religiously and spiritually engaged people, just as an

absence of depressive symptoms is a negative affective hallmark of spiritually and

religiously engaged people. This study is one of few attempts to examine the daily emotional

lives of spiritual and religious individuals.

The beneficial effects of religiousness on health are well documented. We define

17
religiousness here as a person characteristic, as a belief and meaning system that is stable

over time and manifested across diverse situations. Research is just beginning to unravel the

complex causal mechanisms responsible for these relationships between religiousness and
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 18

health endpoints. One particularly promising explanation might involve the experience of

religiously engendered emotions such as hope, love, forgiveness, and gratitude (Ellison &

Levin 1998). Given that expressions of praise and thanksgiving are key components of

religious worship, the physiological effects of gratitude hold promise for understanding

religion’s impact on health, perhaps even as a mediator of the robust association between

religiousness and physical health. George et al. (2000) state that a high priority for future

research on spirituality and health is the pursuit of an “epidemiology of spiritual experience”

(p. 113) and contend that spiritual experience is the most- ignored dimension of spirituality.

Presumably this would include an analysis of the frequency and intensity of religious

emotions in daily life. In this vein another promising research program has begun to explore

the emotion of “awe” in both its religious and nonreligious contexts (Keltner & Haidt 2002).

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE RETURN TO VIRTUE
The study of virtue is making a comeback in psychology and is at the nexus of the

psychology of religion, personality psychology, moral philosophy, and the psychology of

18
emotion (Hill 1999, Snyder & McCullough 2000). The positive psychology movement

(Seligman& Csikszentmihalyi 2000) has sought to systematically classify these strengths and

human virtues into a comprehensive taxonomy (Peterson &PSYCHOLOGY

Seligman 2002). Concepts such
OF RELIGION 19

as forgiveness, love, hope, humility, gratitude, self-control, and wisdom appear as highly

prized human dispositions in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu thought and

are affirmed universal principles in world philosophies and ethical systems. Basic research as

well as interventions to cultivate these virtues are well under way and have been yielding

fruit. Forgiveness has been an especially vigorous research area, and recent research is

reviewed below. A special issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

(McCullough & Snyder 2000) was devoted to a contemporary appraisal of several virtues

(hope, humility, gratitude, self-control, spirituality, forgiveness, wisdom, and love),

highlighting their links to physical and psychological well-being. The capstone article by

Schimmel (2000) explains how those virtues (and their corresponding vices) were

conceptualized historically in classical and religious understandings of human nature.

Sandage & Hill (2001) recently articulated an outline of the construct of virtue by drawing

on moral philosophy and recent social science research related to virtue. They suggest six

dimensions for the definition of virtue. These include the understanding that virtues: (a)

integrate ethics and health; (b) are embodied traits of character; (c) are sources of human

strength and resilience; (d) are embedded within a cultural context and community; (e)

contribute to a sense of meaningful life purpose; and (f) are grounded in the cognitive

capacity for wisdom. Perhaps the most significant point of tension is whether virtues are

construed as universal or culturally embedded. These categories are not necessarily mutually

exclusive. It seems possible that a particular virtue (e.g., forgiveness) might be universally

valued but still locally embedded in specific cultural institutions and rituals. This would

mean that forgiveness might be expressed or even defined differently in various cultural

contexts and communities.

19
Individualistic models of forgiveness would tend to construe forgiveness as a personal

decision or choice, whereas individuals in collectivistic cultures would tend to operate

according to strongly proscribed social norms. The overwhelming emphasis in contemporary

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 20

Western psychological literature is on forgiving others, and there is a relative paucity of

literature on repentance (Exline & Baumeister 2000) and seeking forgiveness from others

(Sandage et al. 2000). Research programs have been rapidly developing around several

specific virtues. We focus on three that have roots in each the major religions of the world:

gratitude, forgiveness, and humility.

GRATITUDE Gratitude has been defined as “the willingness to recognize the unearned

increments of value in one’s experience” (Bertocci & Millard 1963, p. 389) and “an estimate

of gain coupled with the judgment that someone else is responsible for that gain” (Solomon

1977, p. 316). At its core, gratitude is an emotional response to a gift. It is the appreciation

felt after one has been the beneficiary of an altruistic act. Some of the most profound

reported experiences of gratitude can be religiously based or associated with reverent wonder

toward an acknowledgment of the universe (Goodenough 1998) including the perception that

life itself is a gift. In the great monotheistic religions of the world the concept of gratitude

permeates texts, prayers, and teachings. Worship with gratitude to God for the many gifts

and mercies are common themes, and believers are urged to develop this quality. A religious

framework thus provides the backdrop for experiences and expressions of gratitude.

McCullough and colleagues (McCullough et al. 2001) reviewed the classical moral writings

on gratitude and synthesized them with contemporary empirical findings. They suggest that

the positive emotion of gratitude has three moral functions: It serves as (a) a moral barometer

(an affective readout that is sensitive to a particular type of change in one’s social

relationships, the provision of a benefit by another moral agent that enhances one’s well-

being), (b) a moral motivator (prompting grateful people to behave prosocially), and (c) a

moral reinforcer (which increases the likelihood of future benevolent actions). McCullough
20
et al. (2002) found that measures of gratitude as a disposition were positively correlated with

nearly all of the measures of spirituality and religiousness, including spiritual transcendence,

self-transcendence, and the single-item religious variables. PSYCHOLOGY

The gratefulOFdisposition
RELIGION 21
was also

related to measures of spiritual and religious tendencies. Although these correlations were

not large (i.e., few of them exceeded r = 0.30), they suggest that spiritually or religiously

inclined people have a stronger disposition to experience gratitude than do their less

spiritual/religious counterparts. Thus, spiritual and religious inclinations may facilitate

gratitude, but it is also conceivable that gratitude facilitates the development of religious and

spiritual interests (Allport et al. 1948) or that the association of gratitude and spiritual-

ity/religiousness is caused by extraneous variables yet to be identified. The fact that the

correlations of gratitude with these affective, prosocial, and spiritual variables were obtained

using both self-reports and peer reports of the grateful disposition suggests that these

associations are substantive and not simply the product of one- method biases in

measurement. This study may be also be useful for explaining why religiously involved

people are at a lower risk for depressive symptoms and other mental health difficulties.

FORGIVENESS The concept of forgiveness has been a topic of philosophical and

theological inquiry for thousands of years. Indeed, most religious accounts of optimal human

functioning include the capacity to seek forgiveness and grant forgiveness as key elements of

the well-functioning human personality. Forgiveness as a contemporary psychological or

social science construct has also generated popular and clinical interest and for the most part

has been considered apart from the psychology of religion by mainstream psychology (for

reviews, see Enright & Fitzgibbons 2000, Fincham 2000, McCullough et al. 2000, Witvliet et

al. 2001). The scientific literature on forgiveness is growing rapidly across a number of areas

of psychology. Research on forgiveness has focused primarily on four themes: (a)

developing measures of dispositional forgiveness (Berry et al. 2001, Brown et al. 2001), (b)

investigating the psychophysiological correlates and health consequences of forgiveness

21
 (Berry & Worthington 2001, Farrow etal. 2001, Seybold et al. 2001, Toussaint et al. 2001,

Witvliet et al. 2001), (c) exploring the dispositional and situational correlates of forgiveness

(Maltby et al. 2001, McCullough et al. 1997, Mullet et al. 2002, Sandage et al. 2000), and (d)
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 22

examining the mental health and interpersonal benefits of forgiveness (e.g., Coyle & Enright

1997, Huang & Enright 2000). Few studies have examined links between religion and

forgiveness (for exceptions see Edwards et al. 2002, McCullough & Worthington 1999,

Wuthnow 2000). An authoritative volume (McCullough et al. 2000) covers theological

perspectives, basic psychological processes, and applications in clinical and counseling

contexts. The chapter by Rye and associates in the McCullough et al. 2000 volume is a

fascinating and enlightening roundtable discussion of forgiveness in Jewish, Christian,

Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions.

There has been limited empirical research on forgiveness published to date that has

investigated: (a) forgiveness in non-Western contexts (for valuable exceptions, see Huang &

Enright 2000, Park & Enright 1997) or (b) ethnic or cultural variables related to forgiveness.

McCullough et al. (2000) noted the significance of this problem, stating:

The field [of forgiveness research] still lacks a thorough

understanding of the influences of religion, culture, and
life situation on people’s understandings and
experiences of forgiveness. Without addressing
religious, cultural, and situational variations, scientific
notions of forgiveness are likely to be disconnected
from lived experience. (p. 10)

.
McCullough (2001) makes several recommendations for future research and theory on

forgiveness. These include the need for a greater focus on psychological mechanisms that

allow dispositionally inclined people to forgive transgressions against them, the need to

examine contextualized goals and strivings (Emmons, 2000), and appraisals of these goals,

and the need for more sophisticated theorizing on the place of forgiveness within broader

models of the person. Important clues might be gleaned from the self-regulation literature,

particularly with regard to how religious ideologies that emphasize forgiveness can become

22
translated into effective thought-action sequences and then protected from competing

intentions (Emmons etal. 1993). With regard to the place of forgiveness in personality,

Ashton & Lee (2001) recently posited that forgiveness/nonPSYCHOLOGY

retaliation OF
is RELIGION
one of three
23
major

traits that underlie prosocial tendencies and can account for individual differences in the

major dimensions of agreeableness and emotional stability.

HUMILITY. Since medieval times, pride has been one of the deadly sins, and some have

argued that pride is the parent of all the vices (Schimmel 1997). Humility, as the antidote to

pride, is the realistic appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses— neither overestimating

nor underestimating them. Overall, humility is characterized by an accurate assessment of

one’s strengths and weaknesses, thinking oneself no better or no worse than others, and being

open to new ideas and new information (Tangney 2000).

There is little direct research on humility. Researchers who have advocated for the benefits of

humble self-appraisals have done so by pointing to the destructive consequences of pride,

narcissism, and defensively high self-esteem. In an extensive review of the self-esteem

literature Baumeister (1998, Baumeister et al. 1996) found that when people focus directly on

enhancing how they see themselves, an artificially heightened and “dark side” of self-esteem

emerges. Bushman & Baumeister (1998) found that people who had the highest opinion of

themselves were also the most aggressive after being criticized for the poor quality of a

written essay. Those with high self-esteem are also more likely to be antagonistic if their

view of themselves is threatened, such as being told that one has failed an aptitude test

(Heatherton & Vohs 2000). In response to such findings, Baumeister (1998) and Baumeister

et al. (1996) concluded that, the claims that enhancing self-esteem was the cure to many

societal ills was unsupported.

There is an urgent need for tools to measure humility and for studies that examine its real-

world consequences. Too much of what is assumed about humility is inferred from research

23
on related constructs. Tangney (2000) described the challenges in developing self-report

measures of humility. In a cleverly designed experiment Exline et al. (2000) found that

writing about a time in which they felt humble enabled participants to delay defecting in a
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 24

Prisoner’s Dilemma game, relative to both a pride and a control condition. Rowatt et al.

(2002) operationalized humility as the difference between individual’s evaluations of

themselves on positive attributes and their evaluations of others on those same attributes.

Evidence was found for a “holier than thou effect”: Participants rated themselves to be more

adherent to biblical commandments than others, a tendency that was positively correlated

with intrinsic religiousness. This general evaluation bias also held for nonreligious attributes,

leading the authors to conclude that religious individuals may not necessarily adhere to the

dictums of their faith to be humble in comparison to others.

CHAPTER EIGHT

PERSONALITY AND RELIGION

Personality psychology has had a longstanding relationship with the psychology of religion.

Kirkpatrick (1999) noted that personality psychology provides a natural home for the study

of religion and spirituality in that a concernwith the transcendent is an inherent part of what it

means to be human. Emmons (1999) argued that personality theory and theology ought to be

natural allies; both are concerned, ultimately, with what it means to be a human being. Much

24
progress has been made at the interface of personality psychology and the psychology of

religion, as personality researchers from diverse theoretical positions have begun to view

religion as a fruitful topic for empirical study. A recent special issue of the Journal
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 25

ofPersonality (Emmons & McCullough 1999) highlighted diverse ways in which religious

and spiritual issues impact personality traits and processes and vice-versa.

Evidence is accruing that spirituality may represent a heretofore unacknowledged sixth major

dimension of personality (MacDonald 2000, Piedmont 1999a). Other recent research has

similarly noted that spirituality and religiousness are omitted from structural models of

personality that are developed around the five factor model (FFM) (Saucier & Goldberg

1998). Piedmont (1999b) demonstrated the value of the FFM for advancing the scientific

study of religion. He suggests that the FFM can provide an empirical reference point for

evaluating the development of new measures of religiousness and for evaluating the meaning

of existing measures. Ozer & Reise (1994) advise that personality researchers routinely

correlate their particular measure with the FFM. Given the proliferation of measurement

instruments in the psychology of religion, researchers would do well to heed this advice.

Religion and the ffm The FFM offers a starting point for exploring the relationship between

religiousness and personality functioning. The FFM is an empirically validated and

comprehensive taxonomy of individual differences that has been validated cross-culturally

(see Digman 1990, McCrae & Costa 1999). There is a growing literature on the Big Five

traits and religiousness. MacDonald (2000) found somewhat different patterns of correlations

across the Big Five depending upon the domain of spirituality examined. A factor labeled

“cognitive orientation toward spirituality” was associated with extraversion, agreeableness,

openness, and conscientiousness, whereas an experiential form of spirituality was related to

extraversion and openness only. A recent meta-analytic review (Saroglou 2002) reported that

religiousness is consistently associated with high agreeableness and conscientiousness and

low psychoticism (in Eysenck’s model), whereas it is unrelated to the other Big Five traits.

25
One other generalization that appears warranted is that openness tends to be negatively

correlated with more fundamentalist measures of religiousness. McCrae & Costa’s (1999)

model of personality may prove useful for understanding how basic trait tendencies are
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 26

channeled into characteristic adaptations that include culturally conditioned religious and

spiritual goals and attitudes.

CHAPER NINE

NEW UNITS OF ANALYSIS FROM PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

Personality psychology can introduce new units of analysis for empirically examining

religiousness and spirituality in people’s lives and here we describe two recent examples.

SPIRITUAL TRANSCENDENCE. Spiritual transcendence is “the capacity of individuals

to stand outside of their immediate sense of time and place and to view life from a larger,

more objective perspective. This transcendent perspective is one in which a person sees a

fundamental unity underlying the diverse strivings of nature” (Piedmont 1999a, p. 988). In

developing the spiritual transcendence scale (STS) a consortium of theological experts from

26
 diverse faith traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Quakerism, Lutheranism,

Catholicism, and Judaism was assembled. This focus group identified aspects of spirituality

that were common to all of these faiths. The resulting itemsPSYCHOLOGY

were analyzed within the context
OF RELIGION 27

of the FFM and were shown to constitute an independent individual-differences dimension.

The STS manifested a single overall factor comprised of three “facet” scales: prayer

fulfillment, a feeling of joy and contentment that results from personal encounters with a

transcendent reality (e.g., “I find inner strength and/or peace from my prayers or

meditations”); universality, abelief in the unitive nature of life (e.g., “I feel that on a higher

level all of us share a common bond”); and connectedness, a belief that one is part of a larger

human reality that cuts across generations and across groups (e.g., “I am concerned about

those who will come after me in life”). The STS evidenced incremental validity by

significantly predicting a number of relevant psychological outcomes (e.g., stress experience,

social support, interpersonal style) even after the predictive effects of personality were

removed (Piedmont 1999a). For the STS to be shown to capture a universal aspect of

spirituality, it would be necessary to evidence that the instrument remains reliable and valid

in culturally diverse, religiously heterogeneous samples.

Piedmont & Leach (2002) have already documented the utility of the STS in a sample of

Indian Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Support was found for two of the facet scales and

the overall domain (connectedness was not found to be reliable). The STS was presented in
. English, a second language for these participants. This may have created difficulties in

understanding the terminology or the exemplars used, as items lacked relevance in this

culture. Nonetheless, these data highlight the value of cross-cultural research on spirituality

and show the STS to reflect spiritual qualities relevant across very different religious

traditions. However, Moberg (2002) doubts that valid, universal measures of spirituality can

be constructed because of differing conceptions of spirituality in different religious

traditions. The particularism versus universalism distinction that he identifies is likely to

27
occupy psychologists of religion for some time to come.

ULTIMATE CONCERNS.. Yet another way to conceptualize spirituality is in terms of

PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 28
goals or strivings, or what Emmons and colleagues have called “ultimate concerns”

(Emmons et al. 1998, Emmons 1999). Emmons (1999), following Tillich (1957) among

others, argued that both religion and spirituality deal with people’s ultimate concerns and

developed a research program to identify ultimate concerns and their role in human

personality and subjective well-being. A religious perspective can illuminate the origins of

some of the most profound human strivings. Religions, as authoritative faith traditions, are

systems of information that provide individuals with knowledge and resources for living a

life of purpose and direction. Religion and goals are intertwined in human experience. One of

the functions of a religious belief system and a religious world view is to provide “an

ultimate vision of what people should be striving for in their lives” (Pargament & Park 1995,

p. 15) and the strategies to reach those ends. Religions recommend the ultimate goal of

binding with the sacred and prescribe rituals for its realization. Emmons et al. (1998) found

that not only is it possible to reliably assess the search for the sacred in personal goals, but

that individual differences in sacred goals predicted well-being more strongly than any other

category of striving that has been studied, exceeding those for intimacy, power, or

generativity goals. Emmons (1999) argues for a more inclusive role of religion and

spirituality within personality and motivational psychology.

As our review suggests, researchers have made substantial progress in uncovering some

basic facts about the personality contours of religiousness. Missing from much of the

empirical exploration of personality correlates of religiousness is an exploration of the

underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed associations. We do not yet know

whether personality influences the development of religiousness (e.g., the tendency to strive

for the sacred, to ask existential questions about one’s place in the cosmos), whether

religiousness influences personality (as research on personal goals suggests), or whether

28
personality and religiousness share common genetic or environmental causes. Longitudinal

data on the relationship between personality and religiousness are sorely needed (McFadden

1999), as are research methodologies for studying the direction of causation between religion
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 29

and personality. We eventually need to get beyond correlating lists of personality traits with

measures of spirituality/religiousness. Waller et al. (1994: 190) sought to identify personality

traits that predicted entry into and duration of involvement in an evangelical “disciple-

making training course.” Disciple makers scored significantly higher on the higher-order

factor of constraint (reflecting high harm avoidance, high traditionalism, and high self-

control); this factor correlates highly with Big Five conscientiousness. Furthermore, after 24

months, participants with low harm avoidance and low aggression scores were likely to

remain in the program, leading the authors to conclude that “personality is a powerful

determinant of involvement duration as a disciple-make’. It is especially fascinating that

although participants high in harm avoidance initially were attracted to the program, those

low in the trait were more likely to remain over time. This dynamic trend would not have

been observed by simply examining the correlation between personality and religious

activity at a single point in time.

CHAPTER TEN

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

Another vigorous area of research is that of religious conversion or spiritual transformation.

The effects of religious conversion on personality change, was one of the first topics studied

with empirical research methods when psychology emerged as a science over one hundred

years ago (James 1902, Starbuck 1899). The term spiritual transformation is used here to

denote what is understood widely in the psychology of religion literature as a “conversion

experience.” Some researchers have begun to use the term “quantum change” to highlight the

profound nature of this religious experience (Miller & C’de Baca 2001). However, it must be

29
noted that one’s spiritual transformation can be profound whether it occurs gradually or via a

sudden experience. Much of the contemporary scientific psychological research examines the

relationship between the self or personality and spiritual transformation. For example,
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 30

Zinnbauer & Pargament (1998) gave a group of spiritual converts, a group who experienced

gradual religious change, and a group of religious adherents who reported no religious

change (all subjects were Christian undergraduate students), measures of stress, life events,

motivation for change, and sense of self. The authors posited that spiritual conversion should

lead to radical personal change. However, they found that self definition changed markedly

for both spiritual and gradual converts. In addition, the spiritual converts reported more pre-

conversion stress and perception of personal inadequacy, more improvement in their personal

competence, and more spiritual experiences after conversion.

Kirkpatrick (1997, 1998) has published two longitudinal studies of religious conversion. In

his 1997 study, 146 women readers of the Denver Post were surveyed approximately 4 years

apart about a variety of religious commitments. Of concern was whether different adult

attachment styles predicted religious commitment. He found that when religion at time T1

was statistically controlled, those with an insecure-anxious or an insecure-avoidant adult

attachment style were more likely than those with a secure attachment style to report finding

a new relationship with God by time T2. Insecure-anxious subjects were more likely than

those who had secure or ambivalent attachments to report having had a religious experience

or a religious conversion during this time period. These results were interpreted as supporting

the compensation hypothesis in attachment theory: God serves as a substitute attachment

figure for those having difficulty forming human bonds. These findings were replicated and

extended in a follow-up study (Kirkpatrick 1998) in which college students were assessed for

their attachment styles and religiousness approximately 4 months apart.

Based upon their systematic review of the literature, Paloutzian et al. (1999) argue that

spiritual transformation experiences appear to have minimal effect on the “elemental”

30
functions of personality (the Big Five). However, they suggest that spiritually transforming

experiences can result in profound life changes at the mid-level functions of personality such

as goals, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. Indeed, these researchers posit that “self-
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 31

defining” personality functions (such as identity, life meaning) do change dramatically after a

spiritual transformation. Few studies published to date are immune from methodological

shortcomings such as reliance on cross-sectional, retrospective designs and near total reliance

on measures of self-perceived change.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONCLUSIONS
Although it is clear that the psychology of religion is alive, well, and growing, two questions

linger: First, is the rest of psychology embracing its knowledge and data and drawing the

relevant connections to its own material as this review would suggest? Second, what is the

psychology of religion’s current paradigm and what paradigm would have to describe it if its

contribution is to unfold to the fullest degree? The response to the first question depends

upon the receptiveness of psychologists in other areas. Emmons (1999) examined this

question and put the answer this way:

.. .two recent, comprehensive handbooks of personality

(Hogan et al. 1997, Pervin 1990) fail to include religion
as a topic of inquiry. A lone reference that appears in

31
 one (Megargee 1997) bemoans this very neglect of the
topic. Nor does the Handbook of Social Psychology
(Gilbert et al. 1997:12) devote any space whatsoever to
religion and social behavior. Out of a total of over 3,000
pages in these three presumably comprehensive
handbooks, less than 1 page discussesPSYCHOLOGY religious OF RELIGION 32
influences on personal and social behavior.
It appears that although there is research in the psychology of religion that is tied to almost

every area of research in general psychology, only a portion of the field especially that

concerned with clinical applications and health psychology, has begun to incorporate the

knowledge from the psychology of religion into its own information base and practices. As to

the paradigm issue, Gorsuch (1988) seemingly reluctantly concluded that even as late as the

mid 1980s, when other areas of psychology had gone beyond trying to find the purest

measure for a concept, the psychology of religion was still in a measurement paradigm.

Although a definitive compendium of psychology of religion measures has now been

published (Hill & Hood 1999) and new measures of important variables continue to appear

from time to time [e.g., religious maturity (Leak & Fish 1999), faith development (Leak et al.

1999), spiritual strivings (Emmons 1999)], the evidence indicates that the field has now gone

beyond focusing on measurement as its primary concern. The psychology of religion has

undergone a paradigm shift. It has emerged as a strong research enterprise whose topics

interface almost all areas of psychology, whose scholars produce an impressive body of

research, whose research will further develop internationally and cross-culturally, and whose

importance is only going to increase. There is also much to be gained from an increasing

dialogue and collaboration between psychologists who specialize in religion and our

colleagues in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive

science, so that developments in the psychology of religion take into account and build upon

advances in these related scientific disciplines. This will need to be accomplished non-

reductively, echoing our concerns raised above. A single disciplinary approach is incapable

of yielding comprehensive knowledge of phenomena as complex and multifaceted as

spirituality. We note with considerable enthusiasm exciting new developments in the

32
 cognitive science of religion (Andresen 2001, Barrett 1998, Woolley 2000), the neurobiology

of religious experience (Brown et al. 1998, McNamara 2001, Newberg et al. 2001), the

evolutionary psychology of religion (Boyer 2001, Kirkpatrick 1999), and behavior genetics
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 33

(D’Onofrio et al. 1999). With a few exceptions, however, these approaches currently provide

promissory notes, and considerably more research is needed before their full con-

tributioncanbe evaluated. We are sanguine that these developments will ultimately anchor the

psychology of religion as strongly in the biological sciences as in the social and clinical

sciences and will yield new and scientific ways to talk about the human spirit.

We think, therefore, that the field has changed to such a degree since Gorsuch’s (1988)

chapter that a new concept is needed to guide it. We call it the multilevel interdisciplinary paradigm.

This paradigm recognizes the value of data at multiple levels of analysis while making non-

reductive assumptions concerning the value of spiritual and religious phenomena. It is the

implementation of this paradigm that will carry the day, and this hinges on the interaction

between those who study the psychology of religion and their counterparts in the rest of

psychology and allied sciences. The field has made great strides in its efforts to say

something important to the rest of psychology, and we think what has come before is only a

platform and that the field is now poised, ready to begin.

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