More spiritual than religious: Concurrent and longitudinal relations with personality traits, mystical experiences, and other individual characteristics.
Zhuo Job Chen, Richard G Cowden, Heinz Streib
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2022 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1025938 via PubMed
Summary
Individuals who identify as more spiritual than religious show significant associations with mysticism compared to other religious/spiritual identity groups. In a study of 3,491 participants, four identity groups were compared on various characteristics. A follow-up study with 751 participants assessed outcomes related to these identities three years later. Both studies found notable differences among the groups, particularly highlighting the connection between the more spiritual than religious identity and mystical experiences.
Study at a glance
| Design | longitudinal |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 4,242 |
| Population | adults from Germany and the United States |
| Key finding | There is strong evidence of an association between identifying as more spiritual than religious and mystical experiences. |
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.