“Moved by the spirit”: does spirituality moderate the interrelationships between subjective well‐being subscales?

Abstract

Despite the recent escalation of research into the spirituality and well-being link, past efforts have been plagued by methodological problems. However, the potential for measurement error within psychometric instruments remains largely unexplored. After reviewing theory and evidence suggesting spirituality might represent an affective misattribution, moderation modeling-with each subjective well-being (SWB) subscale as a dependent variable as predicted by the remaining SWB subscales-is utilized to test the assumption of scale invariance. These interrelationships were shown to vary in conjunction with spirituality; that is the analysis revealed significant spirituality x subscale interactions. Importantly, in all models the spirituality main effect was either nonsignificant or accounted for by other predictors. In combination, the findings suggest the interrelationship between the subscales rather than the level of SWB varies systematically with spirituality and casts considerable doubt on the previously reported "belief-as-benefit" effect.

Is God's call more than audible? A preliminary exploration using a two‐dimensional model of theistic/spiritual beliefs and experiences

“…and simple slopes tests indicated that the joint distribution of PA and UE is an important predictor of spirituality. That PA is unrelated to spirituality at low levels of UE is consistent with past claims that spirituality might be the misattribution of pre‐existing PA to odd stimuli (Schuurmans‐Stekhoven, ) that arise from odd‐perceptual events that happen to co‐occur with free‐floating PA. Such experiences are likely to differ from clinical delusions and obsessions in that despite lacking external correspondent value, spiritual aberrations are pleasurable.…”

“…According to Bless (), positive moods are a heuristic that indicate the environment is predictable; inducing assimilative and constructive processes that rely heavily on existing knowledge and eschew analytical thought. Combining these experimental findings, with earlier suggestions that spirituality might be little more than an affectivity misattribution (Schuurmans‐Stekhoven, ) and the identification of a schizotypal phenotype indicating spirituality is associated with UEs, it is explicitly hypothesised here that among those who exhibit UEs, pre‐existing PA will enhance the tendency to create benevolent supernatural explanations and attributions for these aberrations. Thus, individuals who display high PA and high UE can be anticipated to be disproportionately spiritual.…”

“…Moreover, the utility of using self‐report measures of well‐being to examine links with spiritually has also roused criticism. Consistent with a tendency for religious/spiritual participants to exhibit socially desirable responding (Sedikides & Gebauer, ), Schuurmans‐Stekhoven () found PA and negative affectivity become increasingly negatively related as spirituality increases and that this systematic difference in responding fully accounted for spirituality's apparent correlation with well‐being. Although social desirability or consistency needs could explain such responding, it also concurs with the neurological evidence that spiritual individuals are more prone to bipolarised affective states (Joseph, ).…”

“…The Character Strength Inventory (CSI: Issacowitz, Valliant, & Seligman, ) contains a seven‐item spirituality subscale which has previously been utilised in psychosocial research on spirituality (see Schuurmans‐Stekhoven, , , for criterion validation). The scale contains items such as ‘I believe that each person has a soul’, ‘I believe in a universal power, a god’, and ‘I believe there is a spirit that survives after the death of the body that can communicate with persons still living’ with a 5‐point Likert‐like response format.…”

“…Broadly speaking, spirituality is thought to be related‐to‐yet‐distinct‐from religiosity in that it typically encapsulates the personal, transcendental, and oceanic experience of a connection with the universal or divine (whereas religiosity is typically viewed as a predominantly socio‐cultural experience). Furthermore, recent results suggest spiritual experiences contain a substantial PA component (Burris & Petrican, ; Davies et al., ; Emmons, ; Hicks & King, ; Hill, ; Kim‐Prieto & Diener, ; Koenig, ; Myers, ; Schuurmans‐Stekhoven, ) that is not necessarily exhibited in religious experiences. Although this finding might reflect a social desirability bias in responding, some neurological evidence suggests that transcendent/spiritual experiences and PA share anatomical correlates (Newberg & Newberg, ; Trimble & Freeman, ), with the right hemispheric amygdala being implicated most consistently (Joseph, ; Newberg & d'Aquili, ).…”