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Mystical experience as predictor of domains of religious and spiritual self identification PDF

165 Pages·2014·0.96 MB·English
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MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AS PREDICTOR OF DOMAINS OF RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL SELF IDENTIFICATION: EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS By Sara E. Hall Ralph W. Hood, Jr Bart L. Weathington Professor of Psychology UC Foundation Professor of Psychology (Director of Thesis) (Committee Member) David F. Ross UC Foundation Professor of Psychology (Committee Member) MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AS PREDICTOR OF DOMAINS OF RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL SELF IDENTIFICATION: EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS By Sara E. Hall-McKane A Thesis Submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Science: Psychology The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee December 2014 ii Copyright © 2014 By Sara Elizabeth Hall All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT The concept of spirituality has emerged as a major focal point in both the theoretical and empirical study of religion. Whether the emergence of spirituality is a dimension of religion or a separate and distinct construct has been the subject of much debate among scholars. The philosophical arguments proposed on either side have underscored the need for further research into just what spirituality is and is not. An ongoing transition from a more religious to a more spiritual self identification is evident at least in the United States (Roof & Greer, 1993, 1999; Pargament, 1999). Using the data collected from The Bielefeld International Study of Spirituality in the United States, discriminate functional analysis of the three sub-scale factors of Hood’s Mysticism scale were used as predictors of the self identifications “more spiritual than religious,” “more religious than spiritual,” “equally religious and spiritual,” and “neither spiritual nor religious.” Differences between groups based on the attributes of the introvertive, extrovertive, and interpretive sub-scale factors of the Mysticism scale (M-scale) will be examined in order to distinguish what separates the groups. Previous research has indicated that mysticism scores are particularly relevant in distinguishing the more spiritual than religious group from all others (Hood, 2003; Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999, p. 553). The potential to use Hood’s measure to discriminate between groups lends empirical support to both the validation of the M-Scale as a measure of both spiritual and religious experience as well as to the development of new and underutilized theories such as horizontal transcendence and symbolic immortality theory (Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009; Goodenough, 2001; Lifton, 1969). iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank first and foremost Ralph W. Hood Jr for your continued support, immense knowledge, and provocative humor. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ron Morris who told me to find a life jacket because otherwise I would surely drown. Ron, you were my lifejacket, statistics guru, and so much more! I appreciate every moment I have spent with you. A special note of thanks is overdue to Bart Weathington who helped me find my way no matter how many times I got lost. I am also grateful for Dylan Bloy. I am quite fond of our acquaintance. I would like to extend a thank you to Heinz Streib for the use of the Bielefeld data that made this project possible. I would also like to thank Emily Darraj for her continued belief in me. To my family, Dad, Mom, Stanley, Bill, Gloria, James, Katie, Rachel, Kathi, Traci, Jenny, Chris, and Tommy; you constantly inspire me. Thank you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...............................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ...........................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 Looking Back to Look Forward: A Psycho-Historical Perspective .........................4 Psychology as a Natural Science .......................................................................6 Spiritualism ........................................................................................................6 Psychology, Religion and Spirituality as Science..............................................8 Materialism, Individualism, and Western Mysticism ......................................12 Roof’s Spiritual “Seeking” and “Following” ...................................................13 Self and the New Spirituality: Maslow, Rogers, and Psychology in the Sixties ...........................................................................14 Empirical Investigation of Religion and Spirituality .............................................18 Levels of Research and Research Goals ..........................................................18 Mechanistic Approaches: Personality Traits and States ..................................19 Subjective Well-being ......................................................................................21 Organistic Approaches: Stages and Development ...........................................22 Personalistic Approaches: Styles and Narratives .............................................24 Semantic Theory ..............................................................................................25 Theological, Atheistic, and Agnostic Approaches ...........................................29 Agnostic Approaches .......................................................................................33 The Secularization Paradigm ...........................................................................34 Self Identification and Identity as a Formative Symbolic Process ........................36 I, Me, You, and Others.....................................................................................36 The Absolute in Relation to Self ......................................................................39 The Symbolic Universe....................................................................................41 Ultimate Concern and the Protean Man ...........................................................42 Terror Management Theory .............................................................................44 Empirical Investigations of Mysticism Using the M-scale ....................................47 Operationalizing Mysticism .............................................................................47 vi The Triggering of Mystical Experience ...........................................................50 Personality........................................................................................................53 Life Course Variables ......................................................................................54 Why Mysticism is the Lens Through which to View Self Identifications .............55 Hypotheses .............................................................................................................56 Study 1 .............................................................................................................56 Study 2 .............................................................................................................57 2. GENERAL METHOD AND PROCEDURE .......................................................60 Overview ..............................................................................................................60 Participants ...........................................................................................................60 Measures ...............................................................................................................64 Self Identification ............................................................................................64 Mysticism .........................................................................................................65 Procedure ..............................................................................................................66 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................67 3. STUDY ONE ........................................................................................................69 Method .................................................................................................................69 Participants .......................................................................................................69 Materials and Procedure ..................................................................................70 Results ..................................................................................................................72 Discussion .............................................................................................................77 4. STUDY TWO .......................................................................................................87 Method .................................................................................................................87 Participants .......................................................................................................87 Materials and Procedure ..................................................................................88 Results ..................................................................................................................89 Discussion .............................................................................................................96 5. GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................99 Spirituality Re-defined ...........................................................................................99 Horizontal and Vertical Transcendence ...............................................................100 Symbolic Immortality: A Methodologically Agnostic Approach to Understanding Identity .................................................................................102 The Biological Mode .....................................................................................104 The Creative Mode ........................................................................................106 The Nature Mode ...........................................................................................107 The Theological Mode ...................................................................................110 vii Experiential Transcendence ...........................................................................112 Experiential Transcendence and Mysticism ..................................................114 Self Identification under the New Paradigm ........................................................115 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................119 APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................144 A. MEASURES ......................................................................................................144 B. IRB APPROVAL ...............................................................................................150 C. DATA USE CONTRACT .................................................................................152 VITA ..............................................................................................................................155 viii LIST OF TABLES 1 Frequency of Self Report of Sample .............................................................................62 2 Self Identification by Region ........................................................................................62 3 Cultural and Economic Capital .....................................................................................63 4 Cronbach’s Alpha for M-Scale Facets ..........................................................................68 5 Gender and Age Compared by Self Identification ........................................................70 6 Means and Standard Deviations of M-scale Facet by Self Identification .....................74 7 Univariate Tests ............................................................................................................75 8 Pairwise Comparisons ...................................................................................................76 9 Philosophical Perspectives by Self-Identification ........................................................88 10 Functions Evaluated at Group Means .........................................................................93 11 Structural Data for Descriptive Discriminant Analysis ..............................................94 12 Unstandardized and Standardized Linear Discriminant Functions .............................94 13 Classification Results ..................................................................................................95 ix LIST OF FIGURES 1 Religious Traditions of Participants ..............................................................................64 2 Functions at Group Centroids .......................................................................................95 x

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Hood's Mysticism scale were used as predictors of the self identifications “more spiritual than religious the methods employed by the Spiritualists. Akalanka. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 33(4), 343-400. Baum, G. (1970). Man becoming: God in secular experience. New York: Seabury Press.
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