Negative Spiritual Experiences and Psychological Flourishing

Participants

Participants were a cross-sectional sample of 177 religiously committed adult volunteers recruited by counselling graduate students at two private U.S. east coast universities who were taking an introductory research course (91.8% Christian; 68% Female; Mean Age = 41, SD = 15; 52% Caucasian, 32% African-American, 1% Asian, 2% Hispanic and 4% Other, and 9% did not endorse an ethnicity/race category). Students received course credit for participating in data collection.

Spirituality Indicators

Assessment of Spiritual and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES): Piedmont [9] designed the ASPIRES to capture spiritual transcendence (ST), religious involvement (RI), religious crisis (RC), and demographic data such as age, gender, and religious affiliation. Spiritual transcendence is defined as the individual’s tendency to create a broad sense of personal meaning in light of the awareness of one’s finitude. Religious involvement (RI) is defined as frequencies of prayer, reading primary and secondary religious literature, and attending religious services. Religious crisis (RC) is defined as a perception of alienation from God marked by a sense of abandonment, being punished, and isolation from one’s faith community.

In this study, the ASPIRES provided two of the 3 indicators of positive spirituality and all 3 indicators of negative spirituality (spiritual struggles). Positive spirituality indicators were: the 23-item Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS) total scores (STSTOT) and the 4-item RI scores (TRELIG). The STS is thought to capture three facets of ST, namely, prayer fulfilment, universality, and connectedness. Prayer fulfillment is defined as a feeling of joy and contentment that results from personal encounters with a transcendent reality; universality is defined as a belief in the unitive nature of life; and, connectedness is defined as a belief that one is part of a larger human reality that cuts across generations and across groups. Negative spirituality indicators were z- scores of single items capturing the sense of abandonment (ZABANDON) and punishment (ZPUNISH) by God, and a single item capturing the sense of isolation from one’s faith community (ZISOLATE). Alpha reliabilities of scores for the STS, RI and the RC scales were .86, .83, and .72, respectively. Faith Maturity Scale (FMS) 11-item short form: Developed by Benson, Donahue, and Erikson [10], the FMS captures an individual’s sense of closeness to God (vertical faith) and the degree to which this perceived relationship leads to acts of altruism and social justice (horizontal faith). The FMS provides scores for vertical, horizontal, and total faith maturity. The total FMS score (FMSTOT) was used in this study as the third indicator of positive spirituality. The total score is obtained by summing responses to all items of the 11-item short form normed by Piedmont and Nelson [11]. Reliability of FMS scores in this sample was .90.

Psychological Flourishing Indicators

Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): Developed by Watson, Clark and Tellegen [12], the PANAS is a 20-item measure that returns separate scores for positive affect (POSAFF) and negative affect (NEGAFF). Alpha reliability of scores in this sample were .86 and .80, respectively. These were used as two of the 3 indicators for psychological flourishing. Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS): Developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin [13], this 5-item scale was designed to measure global cognitive judgments of satisfaction with one's life. This was used as the third indicator of psychological flourishing and the reliability of scores in this sample was .88.

Personality Measure

International Personality Item Pool 50-item version (IPIP-NEO-50; http://ipip.ori.org) [14]: The domains of the five factor model of personality were measured for the incremental validity check using the 50-item version of the IPIP-NEO [15]. The IPIP-NEO domain scores in this study had the following internal consistency reliability estimates of .83, .86, .76, .78, and 79 for neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, respectively. The order of measures was randomized per participant in order to minimize any order effects.

Model Specification and Data Analytic Technique

Incremental validity check: Incremental validity analyses were performed using hierarchical multiple regression and _F-_tests prior to the analyses of the SEMs [16]. Each outcome indicator (satisfaction with life, negative affect, and positive affect) was regressed on the five domains of personality entered as a block on the first step of the regression model, and the scores of positive spirituality (spiritual transcendence, faith maturity, and religious involvement) and negative spirituality (abandoned by God, punished by God, and isolated from faith community) indicators were entered as a block on the second step of the regression model. These validity checks were performed in order to ascertain that the spiritual variables were able to explain the outcomes above and beyond what is already explained by the domains of the five-factor model of personality (Piedmont, 2006 [17], for the overall value of such analyses). If the spirituality variables demonstrate incremental validity, then the authors will proceed with the SEM analyses. If, however, there is no incremental validity, then this would mean that the SEM analyses of spirituality are not necessary to understand psychological flourishing because any individual differences in flourishing would be explained by personality traits alone. Structural equation models: Two models were evaluated. In both models, constructs were indicated as follows. Positive spirituality (poSpirit) was indicated by the STS, FMS, and RI total scale scores. Negative spirituality (neSpirit) was indicated by single item z- scores of feeling punished by God (ZPUNISH), abandoned by God (ZABANDON), and isolated from one’s faith community (ZISOLATE). Z-scores of negative spirituality items were used to standardize their metrics. Psychological flourishing was indicated by the traditional subjective well-being measures of satisfaction with life (SWLS), positive affect (POSAFF) and negative affect (NEGAFF). Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted with LISREL 8.72 [18]. Covariance and asymptotic covariance matrices were prepared in PRELIS, and the models were estimated using the Robust ML extraction method for small sample multivariate non- normal continuous data. The raw data file is available from the first author and an intercorrelation matrix with means and standard deviations are provided in Table 1. Model 1 (Figure 1) specified positive and negative spirituality as predictors of psychological flourishing. Model 2 (Figure 2) specified psychological flourishing as the predictor of positive and negative spirituality.

Note: List wise N = 174. a Single item z-score. b Taken from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. * p < .05, p < .01, * p < .001. Table 1: Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Spirituality and Well-Being Scale Scores.

Incremental Validity Check

Table 2 displays the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses and partial _F-_tests. These results suggest that indicators of positive and negative spirituality explain unique variance in each outcome above and beyond what is already explained by knowledge of the levels of a person’s FFM personality traits.

Note: * p < .05, p < .01, * p < .001. List wise N for all models = 158. Table 2: Incremental Validity of the Spirituality Indicators over FFM Personality Domains.

Results indicated that Model 1 (Figure 1) fit the data exactly [χ2S-B (24) = 33.46, p = .095] while Model 2 did not explanation of the potential causal relations among the constructs. Also in Model 1 (Figure 1), the standardized loadings of all indicators on their constructs were large and statistically significant (p < .05), indicating that these were plausible reflections of the underlying construct. Finally, all of the standardized structural path coefficients in Model 1 were statistically significant (p < .05) except for the path from positive spirituality (poSpirit) to psychological flourishing (Flourish). These results supported the hypothesis that negative spirituality (β = - .63, p < .05) would have greater influence on psychological flourishing than positive spirituality.