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

165 Pages·2014·0.96 MB·English

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

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Copyright © 2014
By Sara Elizabeth Hall
All Rights Reserved
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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).
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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.

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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
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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
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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

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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

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LIST OF FIGURES

1 Religious Traditions of Participants ..............................................................................64
2 Functions at Group Centroids .......................................................................................95

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