عنوان

A Sense of 'Special Connection', Self-transcendent Values and a Common Factor for Religious and Non-religious Spirituality

Number

LA108952

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

A Sense of 'Special Connection', Self-transcendent Values and a Common Factor for Religious and Non-religious Spirituality

General Material Designation

[Article]

First Statement of Responsibility

Michael E. Hyland, Kevin S. Masters, Philippa Wheeler, et al.

Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.

Leiden

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Brill

Text of Note

We examined the hypothesis that a tendency to experience the world in terms of a sense of 'special' connection is responsible for the self-transcendent value dimension identified by multi-dimensional scaling and constitutes a common factor for different religious and non-religious interpretations of spirituality. Eight different groups were studied including: (a) six different types of faith leaders in India and the UK, (b) people who self-rated as spiritual but not religious, and (c) those self-rating as neither spiritual nor religious. They completed a questionnaire that assessed (a) the strength of their spirituality irrespective of type (self-perceived spirituality) and (b) the experience of special connection to the following categories: people, nature, places and the universe, with and without using the term spiritual. For all eight samples the different types of connection were highly inter-correlated, and self-perceived spirituality correlated with the sum of connection items irrespective of whether items included the term spiritual or not. Variation between groups in the size of the latter correlation was consistent with different interpretations of spirituality in those groups. Although the meaning of spirituality is socially constructed, variability within faith leader groups suggests that its interpretation is also affected by personality. We examined the hypothesis that a tendency to experience the world in terms of a sense of 'special' connection is responsible for the self-transcendent value dimension identified by multi-dimensional scaling and constitutes a common factor for different religious and non-religious interpretations of spirituality. Eight different groups were studied including: (a) six different types of faith leaders in India and the UK, (b) people who self-rated as spiritual but not religious, and (c) those self-rating as neither spiritual nor religious. They completed a questionnaire that assessed (a) the strength of their spirituality irrespective of type (self-perceived spirituality) and (b) the experience of special connection to the following categories: people, nature, places and the universe, with and without using the term spiritual. For all eight samples the different types of connection were highly inter-correlated, and self-perceived spirituality correlated with the sum of connection items irrespective of whether items included the term spiritual or not. Variation between groups in the size of the latter correlation was consistent with different interpretations of spirituality in those groups. Although the meaning of spirituality is socially constructed, variability within faith leader groups suggests that its interpretation is also affected by personality.

Date of Publication

2010

Physical description

293-326

Title

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

Volume Number

32/3

International Standard Serial Number

1573-6121

Subject Term

cross-cultural

Subject Term

health

Subject Term

motivation

Subject Term

personality

Subject Term

religion

Subject Term

spirituality

Kevin S. Masters

Michael E. Hyland

Philippa Wheeler

Shanmukh Kamble

Call Number

10.1163/157361210X533265

Electronic name

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y