Chen ZJ, Cowden RG, Streib H. More spiritual than religious: Concurrent and longitudinal relations with personality traits, mystical experiences, and other individual characteristics.
Front Psychol 2023;
13:1025938. [PMID:
36687860 PMCID:
PMC9846486 DOI:
10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1025938]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2022] [Accepted: 11/23/2022] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Abstract
People who self-identify as predominantly spiritual constitute a considerable and well-established part of the religious landscape in North America and Europe. Thus, further research is needed to document predictors, correlates, and outcomes associated with self-identifying primarily as a spiritual person. In the following set of studies, we contribute to some of these areas using data from German and United States adults. Study 1 (n = 3,491) used cross-sectional data to compare four religious/spiritual (R/S) self-identity groups-more religious than spiritual (MRTS), more spiritual than religious (MSTR), equally religious and spiritual (ERAS), and neither religious nor spiritual (NRNS)-on sociodemographic characteristics and a range of criterion variables (i.e., Big Five personality traits, psychological well-being, generativity, mystical experiences, religious schemata). In Study 2 (n = 751), we applied the analytic template for outcome-wide longitudinal designs to examine associations of the four R/S self-identifications with a range of subsequent outcomes (assessed approximately 3 years later) that were largely comparable to the criterion variables assessed in Study 1. The cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from these complementary studies provide further evidence of differences between these four categories of R/S self-identification, including strong evidence in both studies of an association between the MSTR self-identity and mysticism.
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