Does God Matter? Religious Content and the Evaluation of Comforting Messages in the Context of Bereavement

Abstract

Many people use religious belief and practice as a resource for coping with distress. However, the influence of religious content in comforting messages has yet to be examined. The current study was designed to examine how comforting messages that vary in person centeredness and incorporate different kinds of religious content are evaluated by people who vary in intrinsic religiosity and styles of religious coping. College students ( N = 312) were asked to imagine that a grandparent had died and to evaluate the perceived quality of comforting messages representing different levels of person centeredness and types of religious content. They also completed measures of intrinsic religiosity and religious coping style. Results indicate not only a preference for messages with deferring religious content (in which God is described as responsible for helping the individual cope with the loss) but also variation in evaluation as a function of intrinsic religiosity and religious coping style.

Explaining the Durable Effects of Verbal Person-Centered Supportive Communication: Indirect Effects or Invisible Support?

“…Because of the strong correlations among the third-party observers' variables, we averaged these scores to create a composite variable for use in the analyses. Prior research combines items such as sensitivity and supportiveness to measure support quality (Jones & Burleson, 2003;Wilkum & MacGeorge, 2010); therefore, we adopt the label support quality for this variable (M = 4.18, SD = 1.50). We next evaluated whether the support receivers who completed the follow-up survey differed significantly from those who did not.…”

Predicting Comforting Quality in the Context of Miscarriage

“…Although person centeredness is a well-established means of operationalizing message quality in comforting messages (Burleson, 2003), it does not attend to all of the verbal and nonverbal characteristics that can contribute to the perceived quality of comforting interactions (e.g., nonverbal immediacy, religious content; Jones & Guerrero, 2001;Wilkum & MacGeorge, 2010).…”

Social support for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder

“…Verbal person-centered (VPC) messages represent a hierarchical typology of emotional support that vary in their recognition, elaboration, and legitimization of the feelings of others (Burleson, 1985). Messages high in VPC are consistently perceived by support recipients as the most sensitive and effective at alleviating emotional distress as compared to low VPC messages (Burleson & Samter, 1985;High & Dillard, 2012;Jones, 2004;Jones & Guerrero, 2001;Rack, Burleson, Bodie, Holmstrom, & Servaty-Seib, 2008;Wilkum & MacGeorge, 2010). Since this investigation is focused on the factors that help an individual achieve emotional relief, messages that vary in level of VPC act as one potential outlet for promoting this specific social support outcome.…”

“…Results indicated that grief messages high in VPC were perceived by participants as the most helpful. Wilkum and MacGeorge (2010) also examined VPC messages in the context of bereavement. The purpose of their study was to explore the relationship between religious content and perceptions of comforting messages.…”

“…This type of emotional support is associated with positive individual outcomes (e.g. well-being) (High & Dillard, 2012;Rack et al, 2008;Wilkum & MacGeorge, 2010). In addition to the perceived quality of messages that differ in VPC, research indicates that messages high in VPC can lead to emotional improvement for support recipients (Burleson, 2009a;2009b;Jones, 2004;Jones & Wirtz, 2006).…”