Effects of trauma and religiosity on self-esteem

Self-esteem is often lower among persons who have experienced trauma, but religiosity may ameliorate these psychological effects. The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationships among religiosity, self-esteem, and childhood exposure to trauma, utilizing data from the National Comorbidity Survey, a large (N = 8,098) nationally representative population survey in the 48 contiguous states of the USA that assessed religious practices, self-esteem, and exposure to trauma. Exposure to trauma in childhood was assessed through self-report of presence or absence of childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect. Religiosity was assessed as the sum of responses to 4 self-report items (religious service attendance, use of religion for comfort and guidance, and importance of religion). Self-esteem was assessed on 9 self-report items adapted from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Analysis of variance compared scores for persons who reported exposure to childhood abuse and differed in the value they placed on various religious practices on self-esteem. Persons who reported physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect in childhood had significantly lower mean self-esteem than those who did not report these events. There was also a main effect for religiosity in a comparison of persons who reported childhood sexual abuse with those who reported none. The High Religiosity group had higher mean self-esteem than the Medium and Low Religiosity groups. There was a significant interaction as those who reported childhood sexual abuse had lower mean self-esteem than peers who reported none in the Low and Medium Religiosity groups. Mean self-esteem for those who reported childhood sexual abuse was comparable to that of those who reported none in the High Religiosity group.     

Post-Traumatic Stress and World Assumptions: The Effects of Religious Coping

Religiosity has been shown to moderate the negative effects of traumatic event experiences. The current study was deigned to examine the relationship between post-traumatic stress (PTS) following traumatic event exposure; world assumptions defined as basic cognitive schemas regarding the world; and self and religious coping conceptualized as drawing on religious beliefs and practices for understanding and dealing with life stressors. This study examined 777 Israeli undergraduate students who completed several questionnaires which sampled individual world assumptions and religious coping in addition to measuring PTS, as manifested by the PTSD check list. Results indicate that positive religious coping was significantly associated with more positive world assumptions, while negative religious coping was significantly associated with more negative world assumptions. Additionally, negative world assumptions were significantly associated with more avoidance symptoms, while reporting higher rates of traumatic event exposure was significantly associated with more hyper-arousal. These findings suggest that religious-related cognitive schemas directly affect world assumptions by creating protective shields that may prevent the negative effects of confronting an extreme negative experience.     

Abuse History, World Assumptions, and Religious Problem Solving

At a Christian university, 167 subjects completed questionnaires measuring worldview assumptions, religious problem solving, physical and emotional abuse, and subjects' beliefs about whether they had been "abused." Results indicated that worldview assumptions were not related to actual abuse histories. Instead, such assumptions were related to the subjects' beliefs that they had been abused. Subjects who believed that they had been abused had more negative views of the impersonal world, people, and themselves; they were also more likely to see events as random. Both actual abuse history and subjects' beliefs that they had been abused were related to religious problem-solving styles. Finally, problem-solving styles were related to various worldview assumptions. Results are discussed in terms of previous research on abuse and in the psychology of religion.     

In the Shadow of Terror

Summary

This study examined the effects of terror on world assumptions in Israeli youth. The sample comprised 2,999 adolescents aged 13-16 who were exposed to different levels of terror. Relations of objective and subjective exposure to terror, life events, ideological, religious commitment, and social support with world assumptions were assessed. Results show that personal and social resources made a more substantial contribution to the explained variance of world assumptions than exposure to terror. Implications of the associations between religious and ideological commitment and social support with world assumptions are discussed.     

Assumptive World of Traumatized South African Adults

Abstract

One way of understanding the impact of traumatic events is through exploration of cognitive changes that confront a traumatized individual. The author investigated changes in individuals' basic assumptions after traumatic experiences. The participants were 65 people who had been traumatized by representatives of the South African apartheid government. From the total sample, 36 participants had witnessed the violent death of a close relative (sibling, mother, or father). The remaining 29 had been tortured and detained. The author administered the World Assumption Scale (R. Janoff-Bulman, 1989), a semistructured questionnaire on basic assumptions developed for the present study, and the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Checklist (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Traumatic events affected the participants' basic assumptions about the meaning and benevolence of the world. The tortured and detained group and the bereaved group showed differences in their assumptions of self-worth following the trauma. Cognitive approaches can yield invaluable therapeutic insights into strategies for coping with trauma.     

Some Consequences (and Enablings) of Process Metaphysics

The interactivist model has explored a number of consequences of process metaphysics. These include reversals of some fundamental metaphysical assumptions dominant since the ancient Greeks, and multiple further consequences throughout the metaphysics of the world, minds, and persons. This article surveys some of these consequences, ranging from issues regarding entities and supervenience to the emergence of normative phenomena such as representation, rationality, persons, and ethics.     

Assumptive world of traumatized South African adults

One way of understanding the impact of traumatic events is through exploration of cognitive changes that confront a traumatized individual. The author investigated changes in individuals' basic assumptions after traumatic experiences. The participants were 65 people who had been traumatized by representatives of the South African apartheid government. From the total sample, 36 participants had witnessed the violent death of a close relative (sibling, mother, or father). The remaining 29 had been tortured and detained. The author administered the World Assumption Scale (R. Janoff-Bulman, 1989), a semistructured questionnaire on basic assumptions developed for the present study, and the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Checklist (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Traumatic events affected the participants' basic assumptions about the meaning and benevolence of the world. The tortured and detained group and the bereaved group showed differences in their assumptions of self-worth following the trauma. Cognitive approaches can yield invaluable therapeutic insights into strategies for coping with trauma.     

Secular and religious: the intrinsic doubleness of analytical psychology and the hegemony of naturalism in the social sciences

In recent years a number of prominent social theorists, including Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, have voiced concern about the hegemony of naturalistic, secular assumptions in the social sciences, and in their different ways have sought to address this by establishing greater parity between secular and religious perspectives. This paper suggests that C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, which hitherto has been largely ignored by social theory, may have something to contribute on this issue as it can be understood coherently both empirically, without reference to transcendent reality, and metaphysically, with reference to transcendent reality. It is argued that, despite his denials of any metaphysical intent, Jung does in fact engage in metaphysics and that together the empirical and metaphysical vectors of his thought result in a rich and distinctive double perspective. This dual secular and religious perspective can be seen as part of Jung's own critique of the hegemony of naturalism and secularism, which for Jung has profound social as well as clinical relevance. The concern and approach that Habermas and Taylor share with Jung on this issue may provide some grounds for increased dialogue between analytical psychology and the social sciences.     

Religion and Political Decision Making

Influential political theorists suggest that religious differences in political life may be overcome through shared commitment to political processes. In this article, I subject the underlying assumptions of this proposition to empirical inquiry. When faced with substantive conflict over policy outcomes, do religious persons defer to a political process for resolution? And if so, to which political process do they defer? Through a novel interview exercise with 61 respondents from a variety of religious backgrounds, I find a general willingness to defer to a legitimate political process, even if it results in an undesirable outcome that violates religious (or other) political preferences. However, I also find that a political process need not be democratic to be seen as legitimate, and that process preferences do not map onto religious differences.     

Relations of trauma exposure with current religiousness and spirituality

Many theorists posit that religiousness/spirituality (RS) may change after trauma. However, empirical findings regarding RS following trauma are inconclusive. The present study examined the relationship between potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and current RS by considering the cumulative effect of PTEs and multiple dimensions of RS. In our sample of 245 undergraduates (60% female, 79% White), there were no differences in RS between participants who did and did not have PTEs. When analysed as a continuous variable, the number of PTEs was positively correlated with many RS dimensions (i.e., daily spiritual experiences, religious strain, religious comfort, provident and challenging God images, belief in God) but not all (i.e., organised religious involvement, belief in afterlife, benevolent God image). These results suggest that PTEs relate distinctly to different aspects of RS and that examining multiple dimensions of RS may be a more informative way of studying this association.     

Moral injury,coherence, and spiritual repair

In the PTSD literature, moral injury represents dissonance between a person’s beliefs about how they and the world should function, and the trauma event(s) they experienced. Given the association of moral injury with the assumptive world, it is not surprising the concept is closely intertwined with spiritual concerns. This paper reports on a spiritually integrated group intervention designed to help veterans with PTSD in the process of moral and spiritual repair. Qualitative findings are shared from interviews conducted with 18 participants who completed the intervention. Themes are centred around participants’ overall response to their experience in the group; where they are at regarding feelings such as guilt, shame, anger, trust, sense of betrayal, and desire for forgiveness; changes in religious/spiritual beliefs and practices and the experience of moral injury; and if they now find meaning in the trauma. The findings support the need for additional treatment options that address the moral and spiritual aspects of trauma.     

Metaphysics as modeling: the handmaiden’s tale

Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories (instead of consensus on a single theory), to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context.     

Do traumatic events influence cognitive schemata?

Within the field of crisis psychology empirical research on the subject whether cognitive schemata are influenced by victimization, and whether possible changes in cognitive schemata are related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is somewhat sparse. In the present study cognitive processing of 602 parents, who had lost an infant, were examined. Among other things results showed a significant relationship between level of cognitive processing and symptoms of PTSD. When items selected to reflect fundamental assumptions about the self and the world were assessed, there were only few differences between parents who had lost an infant, and the control group. Furthermore, there were numerous significant relations between items selected to reflect fundamental assumptions and symptoms of PTSD. The results are discussed in relation to central theories within the cognitive area of crisis psychology and recommendations for future research are offered.     

Neutrality, Rebirth and Intergenerational Justice

A basic feature of liberal political philosophy is its commitment to religious neut-rality. Contemporary philosophical discussion of intergenerational justice violates this com-mitment, as it proceeds on the basis of controversial metaphysical assumptions. The Contractualist notion of a power imbalance between generations and Derek Parfit's non-identity claims both presuppose that humans are not reborn. Yet belief in rebirth underlies Hindu and Buddhist traditions espoused by millions throughout the world. These traditions clearly constitute what John Rawls dubs "reasonable comprehensive doctrines", and therefore cannot be dismissed by political liberals. In many societies, including the USA, the UK, and India, belief in rebirth exists alongside other traditions, as well as modern Western views. A liberal theory for such societies must be impartial regarding rebirth, and the after-life in general. Two alternatives forms of liberal neutrality are sketched, based on Contractualism and Consequentialism.     

Near-death experiences precipitated by suicide attempt: Lack of influence of psychopathology,religion, and expectations

Near-death experiences (NDEs), transcendental or mystical events experienced on the threshold of death, have been speculated to arise from psychopathology or from pre-existing expectations of the dying process, although such speculations have never been tested. Sixty-one consecutive suicide attempters were interviewed in this empirical study of persons who would be expected to have a high rate of both psychopathology and coming close to death; 16 (26%) reported near-death experiences (NDEs) as a result of the attempt. The group reporting NDEs and the group not reporting NDEs did not differ from each other in any parameters measuring psychopathology, religious background, or expectations of death and dying.At the time of this study, he was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.     

Basic assumptions and symptoms of post-traumatic stress among victims of bullying at work

Results from several empirical studies suggest that many victims of bullying suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, few researchers have attempted to explain why exposure to bullying may result in severe trauma. Furthermore, no studies have related these symptoms to the victims' exposure to other distressing life events. The aims of this study were therefore to assess the prevalence and intensity of PTSD analogue symptomatology among a group of 118 victims of bullying at work. Second, we investigated whether victims of bullying who report being more affected by other distressing life events than by bullying were more likely to suffer PTSD analogue symptomatology. In accordance with Janoff-Bulman's cognitive theory of PTSD, a third aim was to investigate whether victims of bullying and non-bullied controls differ in their basic assumptions of themselves, others, and the world. Based on self-report measures, 76% of the victims portrayed symptoms indicating post-traumatic stress disorder. However, although 29% were found to meet all DSM-IV-TR criteria for PTSD, another 47% only failed to fulfil the A1 criterion, i.e., they did not report serious injuries or threats to their physical integrity while being bullied. Measurements of symptom severity scores indicated that 61.7% portrayed a moderate to severe or severe level of impairment, whereas 73.6% displayed a moderate or severe impairment in functioning. Compared with victims who failed to meet all or several diagnostic criteria for PTSD, a significantly higher percentage of the victims meeting all criteria reported feeling more negatively affected by an event other than bullying, indicating that exposure to other traumatic life events may increase victims' vulnerability. Finally, significant group differences on six out of eight basic assumptions were demonstrated between victims of bullying and non-bullied controls, indicating that exposure to bullying at work may result in increased negative views on self, others, and the world.     

Spirituality and Religiosity in the Aftermath of a Natural Catastrophe in Italy

The aim of this study is to assess the influence of spirituality and religiousness on the psychological traumatic effects of a catastrophic event in a population that had been exposed to an earthquake compared with a control population that had not been exposed. A total of 901 people have been evaluated using: (1) Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality; (2) Impact of Event Scale and (3) Trauma and Loss Spectrum-Self Report (TALS-SR). Self-perceptions of spirituality and religiousness were used to rank the samples, distinguishing between spiritual and religious, spiritual-only, religious-only and neither spiritual nor religious groups. The sample that had experienced the earthquake showed lower scores in spiritual dimension. The religious-only group of those who were exposed to the earthquake demonstrated TALS-SR re-experiencing and arousal domain scores similar to the population that was not exposed. A weakening of spiritual religiosity in people having difficulty coping with trauma is a consistent finding. We further observed that the religious dimension helped to buffer the community against psychological distress caused by the earthquake. The religiosity dimension can positively affect the ability to cope with traumatic experiences.