Contribution of Religiousness in the Prediction and Interpretation of Mystical Experiences in a Sensory Deprivation Context: Activation of Religious Schemas

M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.     

Personality,religiousness and spirituality – interrelations and structure – in a sample of religious Jewish women

The relations between measures of personality, mystical prayer experience, religious behaviour and multidimensional spirituality were examined on a sample of 121 young religious Jewish Israeli women. Bivariate correlations indicated that while all dimensions of personality were significantly related to some aspects of religiousness and spirituality, conscientiousness and agreeableness were related to most measures. Openness to experience was related to all experiential measures and extroversion was related only to Spiritual Well-being. These results provide support for the generalisability of past research with predominantly Christian samples of varied levels of religiousness and indicate the importance of using multidimensional measures for researching complex constructs such as religiousness and spiritually. In addition, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses did not provide conclusive support for the notion that religiousness and spirituality constitute a sixth dimension of personality.     

The Existential Function of Intrinsic Religiousness: Moderation of Effects of Priming Religion on Intercultural Tolerance and Afterlife Anxiety

Managing existential concerns is theorized to be a key function of religion. We posit that priming religion should be related to greater existential security for those high in intrinsic religiosity. In Experiment 1, priming religion increased intercultural tolerance among individuals who were highly intrinsically religious but decreased it for those low in intrinsic religiousness. In Experiment 2, intrinsic religiousness again moderated the effects of the prime, suggesting that priming religion resulted in attenuated afterlife anxiety for intrinsically religious individuals but greater anxiety for individuals low in intrinsic religiousness. Religious reminders appeared to provide existential security—evidenced by tolerance and reduced death anxiety—only to those high in intrinsic religiousness and can be threatening to those low in intrinsic religiousness. Existential outcomes are a specific case in which intrinsic religiousness can moderate the effects of religious primes, suggesting that religion plays a different existential role for different people.     

Effect of Religious Day on Prosocial Behavior: A Field Study

It has previously been suggested that prosociality is correlated with the degree of religiousness. However, experimental and meta-analytical studies cast doubt on the existence of such a relationship. Due to the controversy over the link between religiousness and prosocial behavior, and the existence of only a small number of ecological experiments focusing on this relationship, we tested the effect of a religious salient day, a previously uninvestigated effect, on prosocial behavior. Specifically, across two experiments (N = 405) and in an ecological setting in Portugal, we tested whether prosocial behavior would increase on a religious salient day compared to a non-religious regular day. We found a gender-related effect: Women, on a religious day, were more inclined to agree to a prosocial behavior than on a non-religious day, whereas men did not change their behavior. We discuss such a difference in behavior, as well as the implications of our studies.     

Development and Initial Validation of an Implicit Measure of Religiousness‐Spirituality

An implicit measure of religiousness‐spirituality (RS) was constructed and used in two studies. In Study 1, undergraduates completed a Religiousness‐Spirituality Implicit Association Test (RS‐IAT) and several self‐report measures of RS and related constructs (e.g., religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism). Informants rated the participants’ RS. The RS‐IAT was internally consistent. Implicit RS correlated positively with self‐reported RS, spiritual transcendence, spiritual experiences, religious fundamentalism, and intrinsic religiousness. Informant ratings correlated positively with participants’ self‐reported religiousness but not implicit RS. In Study 2, implicit RS accounted for unique variability in self‐reported attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women when controlling for self‐reported religiousness and right‐wing authoritarianism. These findings demonstrate that an implicit measure of trait RS explains some variability in attitudes that self‐report measures do not. An implicit measure of RS could advance the scientific study of religion beyond what is known from self‐report measures.     

The varieties of religious development in adulthood: a longitudinal investigation of religion and rational choice

The authors used growth mixture models to study religious development during adulthood (ages 27-80) in a sample of individuals who were identified during childhood as intellectually gifted. The authors identified 3 discrete trajectories of religious development: (a) 40% of participants belonged to a trajectory class characterized by increases in religiousness until midlife and declines in later adulthood; (b) 41% of participants belonged to a trajectory class characterized by very low religiousness in early adulthood and age-related decline; and (c) 19% of participants belonged to a trajectory class characterized by high religiousness in early adulthood and age-related increases. Gender, strength of religious upbringing, number of children, marrying, and agreeableness predicted membership in the trajectory classes. Results were largely consistent with the rational choice theory of religious involvement.     

Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin

A large body of historical evidence describes the use of hallucinogenic compounds, such as psilocybin mushrooms, for religious purposes. But few scientific studies have attempted to measure or characterize hallucinogen‐occasioned spiritual experiences. The present study examined the factor structure of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), a self‐report measure that has been used to assess the effects of hallucinogens in laboratory studies. Participants (N = 1,602) completed the 43‐item MEQ in reference to a mystical or profound experience they had had after ingesting psilocybin. Exploratory factor analysis of the MEQ retained 30 items and revealed a four‐factor structure covering the dimensions of classic mystical experience: unity, noetic quality, sacredness (F1); positive mood (F2); transcendence of time/space (F3); and ineffability (F4). MEQ factor scores showed good internal reliability and correlated with the Hood Mysticism Scale, indicating convergent validity. Participants who endorsed having had a mystical experience on psilocybin, compared to those who did not, had significantly higher factor scores, indicating construct validity. The four‐factor structure was confirmed in a second sample (N = 440) and demonstrated superior fit compared to alternative models. The results provide initial evidence of the validity, reliability, and factor structure of a 30‐item scale for measuring single, hallucinogen‐occasioned mystical experiences, which may be a useful tool in the scientific study of mysticism.     

Dimensions of Religiousness and Cancer Screening Behaviors Among Church-Going Latinas

Churches are a promising setting through which to reach Latinas with cancer control efforts. A better understanding of the dimensions of religiousness that impact health behaviors could inform efforts to tailor cancer control programs for this setting. The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between dimensions of religiousness with adherence to cancer screening recommendations among church-going Latinas. Female Spanish-speaking members, aged 18 and older from a Baptist church in Boston, Massachusetts (N = 78), were interviewed about cancer screening behaviors and dimensions of religiousness. We examined adherence to individual cancer screening tests (mammography, Pap test, and colonoscopy), as well as adherence to all screening tests for which participants were age-eligible. Dimensions of religiousness assessed included church participation, religious support, active and passive spiritual health locus of control, and positive and negative religious coping. Results showed that roughly half (46 %) of the sample had not received all of the cancer screening tests for which they were age-eligible. In multivariate analyses, positive religious coping was significantly associated with adherence to all age-appropriate screening (OR = 5.30, p < .01). Additional research is warranted to replicate these results in larger, more representative samples and to examine the extent to which enhancement of religious coping could increase the impact of cancer control interventions for Latinas.     

Religious Experiences in Childhood and Adolescence: A Viewpoint of Religious Development Between the Ages of 7 and 20

This study clarified religious experiences of Finnish children and adolescents from two points of view: experiences of God's closeness and guidance. It was part of a larger study that covered other aspects of religiousness aside from religious experiences. Three different substudies were included: the original study, longitudinal study, and replicate study. Altogether, nearly 3,000 Finnish children and adolescents ages 7 to 20 took part in these substudies. This part of the overall study concentrated on three questions: (a) To what extent do children and adolescents of different ages have religious experiences; (b) to what external or internal contexts are their personal religious experiences related; and (c) how do these experiences relate to their other religiousness and to their gender, personality, school, and home backgrounds? The empirical bases of the study were mainly the responses of subjects to direct questions and their own reports of their experiences.     

Delay Discounting as a Function of Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religiousness,Religious Fundamentalism,and Regular Church Attendance

Delay discounting occurs when the subjective value of an outcome decreases because its delivery is delayed. Previous research has suggested that the rate at which some, but not all, outcomes are discounted varies as a function of regular church attendance. In the present study, 509 participants completed measures of intrinsic religiousness, extrinsic religiousness, religious fundamentalism, and whether they regularly attended church services. They then completed a delay-discounting task involving five outcomes. Although religiousness was not a significant predictor of discounting for all outcomes, participants scoring high in intrinsic religiousness tended to display less delay discounting than participants scoring low. Likewise, participants scoring high in religious fundamentalism tended to display more delay discounting than participants scoring low. These results partially replicate previous ones in showing that the process of discounting may vary as a function of religiousness. The results also provide some direction for those interested in altering how individuals discount.     

The crystal globe: Emotional empathy and the transformation of self

To test whether emotional empathy is linked to altered perceptions of self in relation to other and/or context, participants read one of two tragic news stories and then completed a self-report empathy measure, as well as an abridged version of Hood's (1975) Mysticism scale either before or after the article. Exposure to a needy other in the story tended to result in greater self-reported mystical experience. Men with a history of mystical experience reported more empathy, but the latter was disconnected from on-line reports of mystical experience. Women's history of mystical experience did not predict empathic responding overall, but their reported empathy was linked to on-line experiences of oneness, absorption into something larger, and space-time distortion with imputed religious significance. Directions for future research, including the possible facilitative role of oxytocin, are discussed.     

Right hemisphericity, low self-esteem, and unusual experiences: a response to Vingiano.

Vingiano's (1992) challenge concerning the relationship between right hemisphericity, low self-esteem, mystical experiences, and religiosity can be clarified by the concept of vectorial hemisphericity. Ontogenetic intrusions of right-hemispheric processes into the left hemispheric sense of self should be experienced most frequently as an apprehensive "presence" that results in lower self-esteem. Because transient above-normal left-hemispheric activity enhances positive affect and the sense of self, concurrent right-hemispheric intrusions are experienced as mystical experiences. Religiosity would be the consequence of persistent above-normal left-temporofrontal activation that encourages the delusion. Hence, extreme conditions, such as left lateralized temporal-lobe epileptic foci, encourage both mystical and religious experiences.     

ENTHEOGENS,MYSTICISM, AND NEUROSCIENCE

Entheogens or psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are associated with mystical states of experience. Drug laws currently limit research, but important new work is under way at major biomedical research facilities showing that entheogens reliably occasion mystical experiences and thereby allow research into brain states during these experiences. Are drug‐occasioned mystical experiences neurologically the same as more traditional mystical states? Are there phenomenological and theological differences? As this research goes forward and the public becomes more widely aware of its achievements, religious scholars and experts in science and religion will be called upon to interpret the philosophical and theological presuppositions that underpin this research and the significance of the findings that flow from it.     

A Rasch scaling validation of a ‘core’ near‐death experience

For those with true near‐death experiences (NDEs), Greyson's (1983, 1990) NDE Scale satisfactorily fits the Rasch rating scale model, thus yielding a unidimensional measure with interval‐level scaling properties. With increasing intensity, NDEs reflect peace, joy and harmony, followed by insight and mystical or religious experiences, while the most intense NDEs involve an awareness of things occurring in a different place or time. The semantics of this variable are invariant across True‐NDErs' gender, current age, age at time of NDE, and latency and intensity of the NDE, thus identifying NDEs as ‘core’ experiences whose meaning is unaffected by external variables, regardless of variations in NDEs' intensity. Significant qualitative and quantitative differences were observed between True‐NDErs and other respondent groups, mostly revolving around the differential emphasis on paranormal/mystical/religious experiences vs. standard reactions to threat. The findings further suggest that False‐Positive respondents reinterpret other profound psychological states as NDEs. Accordingly, the Rasch validation of the typology proposed by Greyson (1983) also provides new insights into previous research, including the possibility of embellishment over time (as indicated by the finding of positive, as well as negative, latency effects) and the potential roles of religious affiliation and religiosity (as indicated by the qualitative differences surrounding paranormal/mystical/religious issues).     

Toward an Understanding of Religious Tolerance: Quest Religiousness and Positive Attitudes Toward Religiously Dissimilar Others

We interact frequently with individuals with religious beliefs that vary from our own. Although we may naturally prefer interacting with religiously similar others, individuals vary in their attitudes toward religiously dissimilar others. In the present set of studies, we examined how variability in quest religiousness affects religious tolerance. In Study 1 (N = 159), we found that quest religiousness in Christian undergraduates was associated with positive attitudes toward both non-Christian religious groups and atheists. In Study 2, 118 Christian undergraduates evaluated vignettes regarding a devout moral or an average morality Christian (ingroup) or Muslim (outgroup). Participants preferred moral targets relative to less moral targets. However, when rating moral targets, participants high in quest religiousness preferred the Muslim target (religious outgroup member), whereas those low in quest religiousness preferred the Christian target (religious ingroup member). We discuss implications for the links between quest religiousness and religious tolerance.     

Terror management and religion: evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience

Terror management theory suggests that people cope with awareness of death by investing in some kind of literal or symbolic immortality. Given the centrality of death transcendence beliefs in most religions, the authors hypothesized that religious beliefs play a protective role in managing terror of death. The authors report three studies suggesting that affirming intrinsic religiousness reduces both death-thought accessibility following mortality salience and the use of terror management defenses with regard to a secular belief system. Study 1 showed that after a naturally occurring reminder of mortality, people who scored high on intrinsic religiousness did not react with worldview defense, whereas people low on intrinsic religiousness did. Study 2 specified that intrinsic religious belief mitigated worldview defense only if participants had the opportunity to affirm their religious beliefs. Study 3 illustrated that affirmation of religious belief decreased death-thought accessibility following mortality salience only for those participants who scored high on the intrinsic religiousness scale. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that only those people who are intrinsically vested in their religion derive terror management benefits from religious beliefs.     

Similarity in Religiousness of the Solicitor,the Potential Helper,and the Recipient as Determinants of Donating Behavior1

In a 2 × 2 × 2 field experiment, 107 religious and secular subjects were requested by a religious/secular solicitor to donate money for a religious/secular needy family. Religious subjects donated significantly more than secular ones. The pattern of the cell means suggested that whereas the behavior of the religious subjects was guided by the need for positive self-presentation, the secular subjects were influenced by their similarity in religiousness to the solicitor and the recipient.     

Religious coping,stress, and quality of life of Muslim university students in New Zealand

Most of the research on religious coping has been conducted with Christian participants from Western cultures, although in recent years increasingly more studies have been conducted with Muslim participants. For university students in Muslim countries, religiosity is positively correlated with a variety of indices of mental health and psychological well-being, but only a small number of studies investigated coping in Muslims living and studying in a non-Muslim country. The present study thus explored the relationship between perceived stress, quality of life (QOL), and religious coping in a sample of 114 Muslim university students in New Zealand. International Muslim students had higher levels of spirituality/religiousness than domestic Muslim students, and used more positive and negative religious coping methods. For international students, positive religious coping was positively related to QOL and lack of stress, while, for domestic students, negative religious coping was negatively related to the QOL and increased stress. This different pattern may relate to the ethnic background of the participants, and the results of the present study thus highlight that Muslims studying at universities overseas can certainly not be considered as a homogenous group.     

Religiousness, spiritual seeking, and personality: findings from a longitudinal study

The hypothesis that personality characteristics in adolescence can be used to predict religiousness and spiritual seeking in late adulthood was tested using a structural equation modeling framework to estimate cross-lagged and autoregressive effects in a two-wave panel design. The sample consisted of 209 men and women participants in the Berkeley Guidance and Oakland Growth studies. In late adulthood, religiousness was positively related to Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, and spiritual seeking was related to Openness to Experience. Longitudinal models indicated that Conscientiousness in adolescence significantly predicted religiousness in late adulthood above and beyond adolescent religiousness. Similarly, Openness in adolescence predicted spiritual seeking in late adulthood. The converse effect, adolescent religiousness to personality in late adulthood, was not significant in either model. Among women, adolescent Agreeableness predicted late-life religiousness and adolescent religiousness predicted late-life Agreeableness; both these effects were absent among men. Adolescent personality appears to shape late-life religiousness and spiritual seeking independent of early religious socialization.     

Location,Location, Location: Effects of Cross-Religious Primes on Prosocial Behavior

Priming with religious concepts is known to have a positive effect on prosocial behavior; however, the effects of religious primes associated with outgroups remain unknown. To explore this, we conducted a field experiment in a multicultural, multireligious setting (the island of Mauritius). Our design used naturally occurring, ecologically relevant contextual primes pertinent to everyday religious and secular life while maintaining full experimental control. We found that both ingroup and outgroup religious contexts increased generosity as measured by a donation task. In accordance with previous research, we also found an interaction between individual religiosity and the efficacy of the religious primes. We discuss these findings and their interpretation, and we suggest potential avenues for further research.