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The investigation of psychological correlates for "spirituality" is one of the special foci of the Bielefeld Cross-cultural Study on Spirituality. As indicated by the list of scales, which have been included in the questionnaire, the data allow the exploration of numerous correlational perspectives. Two of the most interesting are presented here - and visualized in scatter plots for reasons of limited space and easy readability.
The first figure visualizes the scores of individual respondents of our six focusgroups on the three dimensions of the Mysticism-Scale (Hood, 1975). And because the religious/spiritual self-identification is the decisive criterion in our focusgroups construction, the figure indicates the relation of self-identified "spirituality" to mysticism. The "neither religious nor spiritual atheists & non-theists" assemble in the "corner" where all three Mysticism subscales are very low, while the "more spiritual" respondents assemble in the upper space that is closer to the observer, where all Mysticism subscales are higher.
Another interesting correlation has emerged for the Religious Schema Scale and its three subscales, truth of texts & teachings (ttt), fairness, tolerance & rational choice (ftr), and xenosophia/inter-religious dialog (xenos). This is visualized in the next figure.
The clear majority of "neither religious nor spiritual atheists/non-theists" assemble in the space with very low ttt and low or neutral xenos, while most of the "more religious than spiritual" and the "equally religious and spiritual" respondent assemble in the space with moderate or high ttt and rather low or moderate xenos; and the clear majority of the "more spiritual than religious" respondents - whether non-theists or not - assemble in the space with high xenos and low ttt (upper left front corner). (Ftr obviously does not differentiate much between the focusgroups).
These are two interesting details about psychological correlates to "spirituality." Further results for other scales analyzed with other methods are published soon.
Keller, Barbara, Klein, Constantin, Anne, Swhajor, Christopher F., Silver, Ralph W., Hood, and Streib, Heinz. "The Semantics of 'Spirituality' and Related Self-identifications: A Comparative Study in Germany and the USA". Archive for the Psychology of Religion [Abstract; Pre-Print].
Streib, H. (2008). More Spiritual than Religious: Changes in the Religious Field Require New Approaches [pdf]
Streib, Heinz & Hood, Ralph W. (2011). “"Spirituality" as Privatized Experience-Oriented Religion: Empirical and Conceptual Perspectives”. Implicit Religion 14.4: 433 - 453. Pdf
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