Human Interactions 9-1

Religion, Spirituality, and Positive Psychology in Adulthood: A Developmental View

James M. Day

Published online: 9 December 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract For decades, psychologists have been interested

in the question whether, and how, religious and spiritual

behavior, in terms of beliefs, attitudes, practices, and

belonging, could be scientifically studied and assessed in

terms of their relative good, or ill, for human well-being.

This article considers contributions of religious commit-

ment and spiritual practice to well-being and cognitive-

developmental theoretical models and related bodies of

empirical and clinical research regarding religious and

spiritual development across the life cycle, with particular

attention to questions related to positive adult development.

Keywords Positive psychology � Religious development � Spiritual development � Human development

Introduction

In this article, on the psychology of religious and spiritual

development and their contribution to positive psycholog-

ical development in adulthood, we begin by considering

definitions, in the psychological literature, of religiosity

and spirituality. We then turn to a brief review of contri-

butions, largely positive, but sometimes demonstrated to be

negative for adult well-being, from religious and spiritual

beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Finally, and more exten-

sively, we consider whether, and how, in psychological

science, researchers have been able to define, assess, and

chart the psychology of religious and spiritual development

as a worthy object of rigorous scientific concern, and,

where such efforts have been made, to appraise how they

have fared in speaking of development within a domain, in

comparison with other domains, in interaction with other

facets of psychological development. Since we are con-

cerned, especially, with positive development in the adult

years, we shall ask whether researchers have succeeded in

studying, and in offering a picture of, religious develop-

ment in longitudinal terms across the life cycle, whether

they have accorded particular attention to adult develop-

ment; and in what ways, existing theory and research may

be useful in terms of intervention; whether they have

offered adjuncts to human practices aimed at promoting

development in applied areas. In this article, we consider

contributions from the cognitive-developmental tradition,

in part because of its dominant place in the scientific

literature, in the psychology of religious and spiritual

development, and in domains related to religious and

spiritual development in practice; religious studies, theol-

ogy, pastoral psychology, spiritual direction, religious edu-

cation, counseling, and psychotherapy, though we devote

some attention to approaches we deem complementary, in

both theoretical and empirical terms, and in terms of what

they may help us do on behalf of positive development in

adulthood.

Religious Development and Spiritual Development:

Defining the Terms

In their careful and exhaustive review of the literature,

Zinnbauer and Pargament (2005), examining hundreds of

publications on the psychology of religion and spirituality,

J. M. Day (&) Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Human

Development Laboratory & Psychology of Religion Research

Center, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Place Cardinal

Mercier 10, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

e-mail: [email protected]

123

J Adult Dev (2010) 17:215–229

DOI 10.1007/s10804-009-9086-7

observe that there is no clear consensus as to what distin-

guishes the religious from the spiritual in the way these

terms have been treated in psychological science. That

said, they also note, as do other researchers, that there exist

contrasts, for some, between the two; notably those for

whom the term ‘‘religious’’ is associated with institution-

alized practices, beliefs, and authority structures linked

to identifiable religious traditions, and ‘‘spiritual’’ with a

personal quest for meaning, and experience of the tran-

scendent, quasi-independent of institutionalized religion,.

This is a distinction Day (1994, 1999) found particularly

salient in studying adults, and that Sinnott (1994, 2001,

2002), writing in the pages of this journal, has argued may

be especially compelling for the study of spirituality in

adulthood, both in terms of what adults say about the

relationship between religion and spirituality, and in terms

of the kinds of spiritual development we might expect to be

specific to adult cognitive operations.

Streib et al. (2009), on the basis of extensive empirical

research, observe that across cultural boundaries and

religious traditions, people may describe themselves as

‘‘equally religious and spiritual, more religious than spiri-

tual, more spiritual than religious,’’ or ‘‘neither religious

nor spiritual,’’ and that this may shift according to personal

history and socialization, critical life events, and important

developmental transitions interacting with periods in the

life cycle. The same authors observe that most respondents

described themselves as religious and spiritual, in keeping

with the findings of Zinnbauer et al. (1997), Cook et al.

(2000), Shahabi et al. (2002), and Corrigan et al. (2003).

Together, these researchers observe that despite the con-

trasting positions of religion and spirituality in a small

minority of subjects, and the use of ‘‘spiritual’’ as an

explicitly anti-religious term in an even smaller subgroup

of this minority, spiritual growth is viewed as something

that can and does occur in what most subjects perceive to

be the highly supportive framework of religion. For most

people then, spiritual development is neither distinct from

nor antithetical to religious affiliation, identification, or

involvement. Moreover, as a number of researchers have

observed, empirical evidence tells us that for most human

beings, across a wide variety of cultural settings, drawing

on large and representative samples, religiousness, and

spirituality are experienced as something distinctive that

cannot be reduced to other processes or phenomena; are

viewed as something that can change and develop over

time for individuals and groups, and that depending on how

they are lived out, can have positive or negative effects. On

the whole, religion and spirituality are viewed as counting

for good in research participants’ lives for health, well-

being, relationships with others, meaning-making, coping

with life difficulties, and contributing to a feeling that life

is orderly, and good (Emmons and Paloutzian 2003; Hill

et al. 2000; Hood 2003; Miller and Thoresen 2003; Parg-

ament 1997; Park 2005; Shafranske 2002; Shafranske and

Bier 1999; Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005).

These findings in the psychological literature are

underscored by the work of Moberg (2002), whose exten-

sive, cross-cultural, and cross-disciplinary studies, includ-

ing detailed reviews of the literature pertinent to adult

development, have for four decades shown that there exist

no neat definitions for ‘‘spirituality,’’ no clear distinctions

between ‘‘spiritual’’ and ‘‘religious,’’ and that what become

defined as ‘‘spiritual’’ norms, values, and criteria for

measuring the same, are closely linked to cultural norms

for human well-being and development, a point of view

elaborated by other scholars whose work has paid close

attention to cultural variables such as gender (Day and

Naedts 1997, 2006; Dillon and Wink 2002; Popp-Beier

1997; Ray and McFadden 2001; Roukema-Koning 2005),

ethnicity (Armstrong and Crowther 2002; Mattis et al.

2001; Wheeler et al. 2002), and comparative studies

examining how people define religious and spiritual terms

and experience within and across groups of research par-

ticipants representing different religions, and different

denominations within established religious traditions

(Belzen 2009; Day 2000, 2009b; Day and Youngman 2003;

Halverson 1996; Zinnbauer et al. 1999).

Religion and Spirituality: Some Contributions

to Well-Being in Adulthood

From the time of William James (1902), classic study of

varieties of religiousness, psychologists have shown an

interest in the relationships among religious belonging,

believing, and religious and spiritual practices, such as

prayer, meditation, and worship, to psychological well-

being. On the whole, the overwhelming evidence points to

positive contributions for these factors in religious com-

mitment and spiritual engagement to psychological health

in the adult years.

Positive emotions, such as happiness, wonder, awe, and

joy, not only are correlated with religiosity and self-

described spirituality, but when experienced in concen-

trated form, even under experimental conditions, and

across the adult years, can lead to enhanced openness to

transcendence and a spiritual conception of self, relation-

ships, and world (Saroglou et al. 2008). Religious and

spiritual involvement are, in turn, on the whole, in studies

across cultures, associated with self-esteem and well-being

(Francis and Kaldor 2002), both mental and physical

(McIntosh and Spilka 1990), especially, when religious

involvement is a matter of intrinsic motivation (Lauren-

celle et al. 2002; McIntosh and Spilka 1990; Ryan et al.

1993), and where images of God are benevolent, rather

216 J. M. Day

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than harsh and controlling (Culbertson 1996; Pargament

et al. 1990). In multifactorial assessments across thousands

of subjects and a broad array of cultural settings, religious

beliefs and commitments, and belonging to a religious

community, are also predictors, perhaps the best predictors,

of life satisfaction and sense of well-being in adulthood, as

well as with a sense of personal efficacy and control, and

successful coping with life difficulties (Baumeister 1991;

Delbridge et al. 1994; Doehring et al. 2009; Geyer and

Baumeister 2005; Jones 1993; Klaasen et al. 2009; Parga-

ment 1997; Silberman 2005; Spilka et al. 2003), particu-

larly for older adults (Chamberlain and Zika 1992; Willits

and Crider 1989).

Religion is highly correlated with a tendency to see

forgiveness as an important skill and value in life (Gorsuch

and Hao 1993); and among religiously committed people

who report exercising forgiveness in their daily lives, there

are low scores on hostility measures, decreases and lower

scores on both subjective and objective measures of stress,

and reductions in depression and anxiety (Coyle and

Enright 1997; Spilka et al. 2003; Worthington et al. 2001).

This is one reason religiosity is related to marital stability

and marital satisfaction (Evans et al. 1986; Filsinger and

Wilson 1984; Gruner 1985; Spilka et al. 2003) though

people who described themselves as religious, but without

involvement in traditional expressions of religion or

involvement in religious groups, have lower levels of sat-

isfaction and of personal and social integration (Bock and

Radelet 1988), and whether religion has positive effects for

married women who work outside the home seems to be

highly related to the attitudes in the religious group about

women’s independence and right to self-determination

(Bridges and Spilka 1992; Johnson et al. 1998; Messer and

Harter 1986).

Prayer, by far the most frequently practiced form of

religious behavior, is related to problem-solving and per-

sonal growth, including processes of personal integration

(Folkman et al. 1986; Janssen et al. 1990; Poloma and

Gallup 1991) and can be an effective problem-focused

mechanism for coping with tragedy, problems in relation-

ships, illness, and other forms of stress and trauma (Bjork

and Cohen 1993; Carver et al. 1992; Ladd et al. 1994; Ladd

and Spilka 1992; Pargament et al. 1990). Meditative

prayer, in and derived from more than one religious tra-

dition, seems to reduce anger, to lessen anxiety, and to aid

in relaxation (Carlson et al. 1988) increase empathy and

moral sensitivity (Hargot 2007), and in some cases proves a

useful adjunct to psychotherapy (Finney and Maloney

1985), again if the motivation for praying is intrinsic, and

not merely rote, or imposed through institutional control

and/or fear of exclusion from a group, or from God’s favor

(Day 1999; McCullough and Larson 1999; Pargament et al.

1990).

Religious commitment is also, on the whole, related to

pro-social conduct. Pichon et al. (2007) and Saroglou

(2004, 2006) have shown that in most cases religious

affiliation, belief, and practice are correlated with pro-

social attitudes such as empathy, a general concern for

others, volunteering, valuing benevolence, and a perceived

willingness to go to the aid of others in distress, assertions

supported by the empirical studies of Batson et al. 1993;

Batson et al. 2005; McCullough and Worthington 1999;

Saroglou 2002; Saroglou et al. 2005), in Jewish, Christian,

Muslim, and Buddhist samples. It should be pointed out

that some studies have indicated that religious elements,

especially certain forms of fundamentalism and orthodox

adherence, are linked, in some contexts, with anti-social

attitudes; egoism, unwillingness to forgive, discrimination,

and prejudice (Batson et al. 1993, 2005; Cohen et al. 2006;

Hunsberger and Jackson 2005; Jackson and Esses 1997;

McCullough and Worthington 1999) and what is consid-

ered pro-social or anti-social may vary according to reli-

gious affiliation (Cohen et al. 2006). Pichon et al. (2007),

Saroglou (2004, 2006). Saroglou et al. (2005), insist that

instead of drawing broad conclusions as to whether religion

is associated more with altruism and other pro-social atti-

tudes, or egotism and anti-social ones, psychologists need

to move beyond self-report studies concerning religious

attitudes, toward observational and experimental studies of

the contexts and conditions in which religious elements

figure in how pro-social or anti-social attitudes and

behaviors are ‘‘targeted.’’

Pichon et al. (2007) provide the most thorough, recent,

reviews of the empirical literature on religion and pro-

social, or anti-social, behavior, and Desimpelaere, Duriez,

Hutsebaut, and Fontaine have done an especially impres-

sive job of operationalizing definitions of religious

orthodoxy and fundamentalism, and exploring their

consequences for specific dimensions of prejudice (see

Duriez and Soenens 2006, for a review and complete list of

relevant citations). Drawing from Wulff’s ‘‘four-quadrant’’

model which in turn is taken from Ricoeur’s phenome-

nology of religious attitudes, Hutsebaut, Duriez, and Fon-

taine, and colleagues, have shown that a strict adhesion to

literalist conceptions of religious truth is linked to reli-

gious, and racial prejudice and may incline to a favorable

attitude toward right-wing authoritarianism. Those reli-

gious attitudes contrast with ‘‘postcritical belief’’ in which

people who have wrestled with classical objections to

religious belief (drawing, for example, from sociology,

psycho-analysis, and philosophy) but affirm transcendence

and, in a way that takes into account symbolic cognitive

operations, also find ways to affirm the meanings supplied

in religious doctrines. Empirical studies show postcritical

belief is not correlated with prejudice, and is instead

associated with tolerance, openness to experience, and

Religion, Spirituality, and Positive Psychology 217

123

benevolence (see also Desimpelaere et al. 1999; Duriez

2003; Duriez and Hutsebaut 2000; Duriez et al. 2005;

Fontaine et al. 2005; Hutsebaut 1995, 1996, 1997a, b).

Some current research suggests cognitive complexity

itself, which can be measured independently of religious

attitude, and moral judgment, but can be measured within

religious cognition, influences how people think about

moral issues, shapes the kind of advice about moral deci-

sions they are open to taking, and colors moral action (see,

e.g., Commons et al. 2007; Day et al. 2007; Ost et al.

2007).

Religious commitment and spiritual practice may also

contribute to the development of wisdom, through a com-

bination of prayer, problem-solving, perspective-taking,

and encouragement, where this occurs, to acknowledge

complexity, and underscore humility, and generosity, in

decision-making, problem-solving, and communication

with others (Day 1999; Fowler and Dell 2006; Miller

and Cook-Greuter 1994; Shedlock and Cornelius 2003;

Vandenplas-Holper 2003; Wilber 2000).

On the whole, then, religious belief and spiritual prac-

tice, and a sense of the world as imbued with sacred

qualities, are related to personal and social well-being

across a wide variety of measures, in studies of adults, with

special efficacy shown for older adults, though there are

exceptions, almost uniformly associated with involvement

in religious groups that are highly controlling, authoritar-

ian, and emphasize a severe, and punitive, God.

Relatively few studies dwell on how religiosity and

spiritual orientation develop over the course of the life

cycle, despite the preponderance of evidence for the good

religious commitment, and spiritual practice, may offer, at

almost every stage in the life cycle. In the next section of

this paper, we examine how psychologists have studied

religious and spiritual development, with special attention

devoted to adult development, and the contribution of the

extant models to our appreciation of how religious and

spiritual development may contribute to well-being in the

adult years.

Psychological Science and Religious Development:

A Longstanding Relationship

Whether there exists something that would fit the notion of

religious development, in terms psychologists can recog-

nize, can study as a phenomenon alongside other ‘‘objects’’

of psychological observation and study, chart, measure,

and compare and contrast with development in other

domains of human functioning, has been a question present

in psychological science almost since its inception as a

discipline and set of theoretical, empirical, and applied

practices.

Recent reviews of the relevant literature (Day 2007a,

2008a, 2009b; Spilka et al. 2003) show that psychological

science has evidenced an interest in religious experience,

and its relationship to other domains of human behavior

from the outset. Psychoanalytical writers as well as ex-

perimentalists argued not only about the nature of religious

experience and its relationship to other domains of human

conduct, but also about the relative merits, or impact, of

such experience on individual, group, and social welfare

(see Wulff 1997, for an excellent review). Meanwhile, in

terms of contemporary interest, the field of psychology of

religion has seen exponential growth in recent years, both

in terms of numbers of members in professional associa-

tions, and in terms of numbers of scholarly publications

and citations of the same, especially in the United States

and Europe (Paloutzian and Park 2005; Zinnbauer and

Pargament 2005).

If we are to consider religious development within the

larger scheme of work in the psychology of religion, we

would note that it has been studied in at least three ways in

psychological science: (a) as a distinct phenomenon unto

itself; (b) in conjunction with other aspects of being a

developing human; and (c) in close relation to moral

development (see also Day 2007a, 2008a, 2009b).

Early Research: Piagetian Procedures, Stage,

and Subjects’ Interpretations of Religious Images

and Concepts

Among formative thinkers in developmental psychology,

Piaget, early on in his career a teacher of religion as well as

of science, was curious to work out how religious thought

related to scientific thought, and whether parallel devel-

opments in the two domains might relate to each other, e.g.,

between advances in the capacity to conceptualize scien-

tific procedures and concepts, and ways of conceiving

religious concepts and practices.

Piaget’s work, still vital in the psychology of human

development, continues to exert a strong influence on the

psychology of religious development. Early contributors

influenced by Piaget’s conceptions of stage and structure,

as well as Piaget’s questions about religious thinking in

relationship to thinking about other issues and phenomena,

included Goldmann (1964) who examined whether con-

ceptual abilities and stage structures characteristic of rea-

soning in domains other than religious ones (mathematics,

for example, and classical Piagetian experiments having

to do with weight, volume, etc.), would apply in the

description and interpretation of religious images. Gold-

mann found distinct parallels between the logic employed

by elementary and secondary school pupils in the Piage-

tian experiments he used, and their description and

218 J. M. Day

123

interpretation of images displaying religious content to

which they were exposed. Goldmann’s findings have lar-

gely been supported, since, by researchers who have rep-

licated, with some variation, the basic, transversal methods

and conceptual models in Goldmann’s research, with lar-

ger, even cross-cultural, samples, and in a variety of edu-

cational settings with good, predictive, as well as stable

interpretative results (Degelman et al. 1984; Hyde 1990;

Peatling and Labbs 1975; Tamminen and Nurmi 1995).

Spilka et al. (2003) spell out these findings in useful detail.

If these studies do not address the specificity of religious

and spiritual development in adulthood, they show that,

from an early age, one can chart development in religious

concepts in ways similar to canonical Piagetian studies of

development in other domains, and suggest ways in which

researchers can begin to approach the study of religious

and spiritual development, starting in childhood, and

extending across the life cycle.

Researchers such as Day (2007a, b, 2008a) and Spilka

et al. (2003) have shown that there exists a trend among

some researchers to criticize Goldmann’s efforts on the

ground they did not pay sufficient attention to context, and

that he did not control carefully enough for the frequency

and depth of his subjects’ exposure to religious material,

religious concepts, and religious education, and those same

subjects’ elaboration and sophistication of interpretation of

religious images, stories, and questions as presented to and

elicited from them in the course of his research. Among

those critical of Goldmann’s methods, Hoge and Petrillo

(1978) observed in this light that subjects’ interpretations

were partially attributable to their familiarity with religious

concepts and themes, as a function of their education in

protestant and catholic schools, in contrast with pupils from

non-church-related schools. Batson et al. (1993) showed

something similar, insisting that ‘‘performance gap’’ might

explain such differences. The question of political bias has

entered this arena of research as it has other domains of

inquiry in human development, with the claim that ‘‘liberal

bias’’ contaminates the stage interpretations offered by

Goldmann, with pupils from more ‘‘liberal’’ settings per-

forming more successfully on Goldmann’s interpretative

scales. Pierce and Cox’s (1995) meta-analytic study of

research on the predictive power of Piagetian stage on

interpretation of religious content, concluded that there was

no clear relationship between the two, arguing that there

were distinctive features of experience related to religious

content that made for a considerable variety of logical

postures regarding its interpretation (Day 2007a, b, 2008a,

2009b; Spilka et al. 2003). If this body of research has

shown that some of Piaget’s early questions regarding

religion and development can be usefully operationalized

for study in psychological science, and proved a stepping

stone to research across the life span, they did not concern

themselves with psychological development in adulthood,

but point to the kinds of contextual variables researchers in

the religious and spiritual development of adults have also

insisted should be taken into account (see, e.g., Armstrong

and Crowther 2002; Belzen 2009; Day 2008a, 2009b; Day

and Naedts 1997; Day and Youngman 2003; Dillon and

Wink 2002; Mattis et al. 2001; Popp-Beier 1997; Ray and

McFadden 2001; Roukema-Koning 2005; Wheeler et al.

2002; Zinnbauer et al. 1999).

Neo-Piagetian Models: Religious Judgment

and Faith Development

The psychology of religious development has attracted

interest well beyond the confines of psychological science.

One finds ample mention of it in the literature of, religious

education, formation in the domain of spiritual direction,

theological education for pastors, rabbis, pastoral coun-

selors and care workers, as well as in journals in the fields

of hospice care, nursing, and medicine. The dominant

models in both the psychological literature and the scien-

tific and applied literatures in other domains continue to be

shaped by Piaget’s emphasis on stage and structure in the

development of individuals, most notably in the work of

James Fowler, who uses the concept of faith development,

and Fritz Oser and colleagues Paul Gmunder, and Helmut

Reich, who instead propose the concept of religious judg-

ment, and whose work has focused on efforts to describe a

developmental trajectory specific to religious development

(relevant reviews include Day 2007a, b, 2008a; Day and

Youngman 2003; Spilka et al. 2003; Streib 1997; Tam-

minen and Nurmi 1995; Vandenplas-Holper 2003; Wulff

1997). In a vein somewhat similar to Goldmann, Reich has

used the religious judgment model in an effort to under-

stand relationships across domains of religious thought,

critical thinking, and intellectual development (e.g., Reich

et al. 1999) Both faith development, and religious judg-

ment development theory and research have taken the

notion of adult development seriously, and researchers

drawing from these models have studied large numbers of

adults, as well as in some cases, though not as many as one

would have hoped, undertaking longitudinal studies (e.g.,

DiLoreto and Oser 1996).

If these researchers are worthy inheritors of Piagetian

impetuses, they are also shaped considerably by Kohl-

berg’s neo-Piagetian model of moral judgment develop-

ment, and both Fowler and Oser, from the outset of their

work up to its most recent variants, have employed ver-

sions of Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s hypothetical dilemmas in

clinical interview research. As in the early work of Piaget,

dilemmas are used to elicit subjects’ ‘‘resolutions,’’ inter-

preted in terms of supposedly universal and hierarchical,

Religion, Spirituality, and Positive Psychology 219

123

stages (Day 2007a, 2008a; Fowler 1981, 1987, 1996;

Fowler and Dell 2006; Oser and Gmunder 1991; Oser and

Reich 1996; Oser et al. 2006; Reich et al. 1999).

Fowler and critical appraisers of Fowler’s work (see

Day 2001, 2007a, 2008a; Day and Youngman 2003;

Fowler 1981, 1987, 1996; Tamminen and Nurmi 1995)

have observed that his model is a multi-factorial model,

given that its construct of ‘‘faith’’ is sufficiently broad to

include dimensions associated with Piaget’s notions of

intellectual development, Kohlberg’s model of moral

development, Erikson’s stage model of identity construc-

tion, Loevinger’s and Levinson’s concepts of ego devel-

opment, Selman’s model of role-taking, and Kegan’s

concepts of self. For Fowler, this development involves ‘‘a

dynamic pattern of personal trust in and loyalty to a center

or centers of value’’ whose orientation can be understood in

relationship to the person’s trust in and loyalty to a core set

of ‘‘images and realities of power’’ and ‘‘to a shared master

story or core story’’ (Fowler 1981, 1996). In addition to the

work in psychological science that has influenced Fowler’s

notions of stage and structure, and the mechanisms and

developmental processes in the dynamic activity of faith,

his model also reflects notions derived from liberal Prot-

estant theology (especially Niebuhr and Tillich), and the

field of religious studies (especially Wilfred Cantwell

Smith).

Oser’s et al. work formulates a more narrow, and on our

view, precise, sense of religious development as ‘‘religious

judgment development,’’ in which people’s formulations of

the relationship between the person and the Ultimate Being

are charted on a stage scheme that ranges from states of

relative simplicity, ego-centrism, and cognitive dualism,

toward more differentiated, elaborated, and complex

appreciations of self, relationship, context, perspective-

taking, and person–god interaction (Day 2008a, b; Day and

Naedts 2006; Day and Youngman 2003; Oser and Gmun-

der 1991; Oser and Reich 1996). Oser has been concerned

to view religious judgment as that phenomenon, equally

dynamic and potentially lifelong in its development to

Fowler’s notion of faith, involving how people operation-

alize their understandings of ultimate being in the working

out of problems in the concrete situations of real life.

Oser and his colleagues use Piagetian terms in arguing

there is a universal deep structure of religious cognition.

‘‘Religious judgment’’ reflects the cognitive patterns that

characterize an individual’s ways of thinking about her or

his relationship to the Ultimate, and the rules that govern

that relationship. Like Fowler, Oser et al. argue that this

deep structure is a universal feature of religious cognition

across the lifespan, regardless of culture or religious affil-

iation. Indeed, both avowed atheists and agnostics are held

by Oser et al., such as Kamminger and Rollett, who

have worked with Oser’s model, to be concerned with

fundamentally religious questions of relationship to ulti-

mate being and purposes in their lives and in the life of the

world, and to think about such questions in ways that fit the

stage scheme they lay out (Kamminger and Rollett 1996;

Oser and Reich 1996).

In Fowler’s work, an ongoing problem remains a def-

initional one; for in Fowler’s notion of ‘‘faith,’’ there are

fuzzy boundaries between religious and other domains of

reasoning, and one might argue, as Oser has done, that

these need either sharper discrimination or a basis for

removing any discrimination among them (Day 2008a). In

this sense, we might argue that Fowler’s conception

comes closer to a general description of meaning-making

and the role religious concerns, beliefs, and practices play

in shaping meaning in relationship to identity, the con-

struction of values, and a sense of purpose in life from,

and toward which, to develop. In the very breadth, and

lack of specificity for which it has been sometimes crit-

icized, Fowler’s model incorporate elements useful to the

conceptualization of spiritual development among the

increasing numbers of people in Europe and North

America who identify themselves as spiritual, but not

religious, as well as being useful to many who belong to

traditional faith communities. Oser’s conception repre-

sents a more specifically religious orientation, insisting

that in order to qualify as religious, the patterns of

judgment studied using his model need to focus on par-

ticipants’ understanding of ultimate being, and its rela-

tionship to other factors in the working out of real life,

concrete, problems in ways that can be observed and

measured (see also Day 2007a, b, 2009a, b, 2002; Day

and Youngman 2003).

Psychologists of human development and of religion

have for some years debated whether Fowler’s and Oser’s

stages constitute ‘‘hard stages’’ in the Piagetian sense,

or more flexible, malleable, and interpenetrating ‘‘soft

stages,’’ as Power (1991) aptly argued with regard to

Fowler’s model. Oser and colleagues (Kamminger and

Rollett 1996; Oser and Gmunder 1991; Oser and Reich

1996) have argued for the soundness of their stages as

meeting the criteria of ‘‘hard stages’’ (see also Vanden-

plas-Holper 2003). Fowler himself has agreed that his

stages may be conceived as more flexible descriptions

of ways of constructing and elaborating global meanings

in terms of life orientation and commitment and has

observed that Oser’s stages are more restrictive in terms

of content, and movement within the hierarchy of stages

contained in their models, and Oser et al. have agreed

(see also Day 2001, 2007a, 2008a; Day and Naedts 2006;

Day and Youngman 2003). Common, indeed central, to

both models are the notions of stage and sequence as they

are known in the work of Piaget and Kohlberg (Day

2008a).

220 J. M. Day

123

Religious Development and Moral Development:

A Theoretically Crucial, Yet Empirically Tenuous, Link

Both Fowler’s six-stage model of faith development and

Oser et al.’s five-stage model of religious judgment

development assume a close relationship between moral

and religious development, and are mightily influenced by

Kohlberg’s elaboration of Piaget’s notion of moral judg-

ment. No meaningful appraisal of these leading models in

the psychology of religious development can ignore the

teasing out of relationships between moral development

and religious development constructs, and must pay careful

attention to efforts made in empirical testing assessing the

supposed relationships between the two.

Fowler, Oser et al. argue that since religious reasoning

includes components of moral reasoning, it would seem

logical that stage transition in moral reasoning would

precede stage change in religious development since all

people must wrestle with and resolve moral dilemmas that

confront them throughout life, whether or not they do so in

relationship to religious beliefs, practices, or belonging to

communities of faith (Day 2008a; Day and Naedts 2006;

Day and Youngman 2003).

While the logic of this approach would appear reason-

able, empirical evidence does not necessarily support the

case made by Oser and Fowler as to the ‘‘direction’’ of

effects between moral and religious considerations;

observations of stage and structure and comparisons

between moral judgment and religious judgment based

on thousands of subjects has not shown a clear pattern

of moral judgment’s ‘‘precedence’’ to religious judgment,

where, in Oser’s or Fowler’s terms, a view shared by

Kohlberg himself (Kohlberg 1984) we would have expec-

ted to find that moral judgment stage would be equal to,

and/or, mostly, higher than, religious judgment. Instead

empirical evidence shows a broad scattering of relation-

ships: in some cases in conformity to Oser’s and Fowler’s

suppositions, moral judgment scores are higher than ones

on religious judgment, but in other cases the reverse, and

on the whole, one finds no difference between the two,

calling into question the relationship between religious

development and moral development, and leading some

(e.g., Day 2002; Day and Naedts 2006; Day and Youngman

2003) to observe that the distinctiveness of religious

judgment from moral judgment as a working construct in

psychological science may be imperiled in the light of the

overwhelming correspondence between the two in empir-

ical findings. Whether religious judgment is distinct from

moral judgment, or at its core a version of moral judgment

‘‘dressed up in religious garb’’ ought, they have argued, to

be a matter of further concern for the psychology of human

development, and the psychology of religion.

Despite these conceptual and empirically based critical

appraisals, ‘‘faith development’’ and ‘‘religious judgment

development’’ theories have had considerable impact on

the fields of human development and the psychology of

religion, where they have stimulated debate concerning

relationships among structure, content, context, and group

belonging and religious affiliation. They relate to notions of

human growth, what it means to be ‘‘mature’, the nature

and dynamics of religious belief. They have had a huge

influence not only on psychological science but also in the

fields of theology, religious education, training for

ordained ministry, inter-religious dialogue, and debates

regarding ecclesiology. They have broadened the scope of

neo-Piagetian stage theory to include human religiousness

and led us into new critical territory (Day 2008a, 2009b).

Recurrent Empirical Problems in Piagetian

and Neo-Piagetian Models

As we have seen, empirical research calls into question

whether Fowler’s construct of ‘‘faith’’ is sufficiently spe-

cific to distinguish it from broader conceptions of meaning-

making, and cause researchers to wonder whether the

model of faith development can be viewed as a ‘‘hard

stage’’ model. Research cited here may also lead us to

wonder whether Oser’s construct of religious judgment is

sufficiently distinct from moral judgment to warrant its

utility as a measure of religious development. It may well

be that such problems, conceptual, empirical, and in turn,

then, practical, in religious and spiritual development echo

problems common to Piaget’s earlier work, and to other

neo-Piagetian models across a host of domains (Day 2008a,

2009b) In the paragraphs that follow, we consider some of

these problems, and offer a hope for renewal of the cog-

nitive-developmental model for the psychology of religious

and spiritual development via emerging work using the

model of hierarchical complexity (MHC), showing how

the MHC addresses recurrent problems in the extant

neo-Piagetian models, and helps to overcome them.

With Commons and Pekker (2005)(see also Day 2008a,

b, 2009a, b), we would argue that the most consequential

problems across domains in Piaget’s own work, and in

models drawing on Piaget’s notions of stage and structure,

may be summarized as follows:

1. A lack of precision plagues the stage definitions within

the models, especially when it comes to half-stages,

often characterized as transitional between stages;

2. Stage logic in the models is inferred from observation,

without clearly enough defining what constitutes, or

should constitute, an increment in developmental

Religion, Spirituality, and Positive Psychology 221

123

movement, structural transformation, or hierarchical

attainment;

3. Without such clear conceptions of what qualifies as an

increment in developmental movement or attainment,

it is difficult to lay out, and measure, how to conceive

of higher order performance;

4. There is a problem of horizontal decalage, the problem

of uneven performance across tasks by some individ-

uals, again, throwing into question what qualifies as

adequate stage definition;

5. Additional to horizontal decalage, and related to it, is

the problem of age-stage decalage, where younger

subjects sometimes perform with greater competence

than they would be predicted to do in the models

concerned, and some older ones perform less well than

they ‘‘should’’ do according to the models’ logic; in

short there being a broader spread of competencies in

relationship to age, and stage, than we ‘‘should’’ expect

in the models’ conceptions of stage and their relation-

ship to development across the life cycle;

6. Piaget’s supposition that formal operations should

obtain by late adolescence has been unverifiable; some

adolescents ‘‘make it’’ to formal operations, while

many do not;

7. On a related note, Piaget’s model did not account for

the prospect of postformal operations, and where post-

Piagetian models have tried to do so, there has not

been, at least until very recently, a clear consensus

among them as to how many have been found, and

what their relationships are to one another, and to

formal operations;

8. Finally, there has been a proliferation of stage models

in a variety of domains (ego development, parental

development, esthetic development, emotional devel-

opment, role-taking development, identity develop-

ment, intellectual development, moral and religious

development) ‘‘with no clear explication of how

models are, or ought to be, related across domains.’’

The Model of Hierarchical Complexity: Modeling

Development, Remediating Piagetian Problems,

Mapping Postformal Operations

In the paragraphs that follow, we look at the MHC

(Commons and Richards 1984), and propose that it may

offer a promising way of modeling development that holds

onto, and demonstrates evidence for, the central insights of

Piaget’s theory, underscoring the hope for the description

of development across domains, while remedying the

problems identified in the preceding paragraphs associated

with Piaget’s work and neo-Piagetian models such as those

we have described in the psychology of religious

development.

According to Commons and Pekker (2005), the MHC

presents a framework for scoring reasoning stages in any

domain as well as in any cross-cultural setting. In it,

scoring is based not upon the content or the subject

material, but instead on the mathematically computed, and

charted, complexity of hierarchical organization of infor-

mation. In this sense, a subject’s performance on a given

task at a given level of complexity represents the stage of

developmental complexity the subject can meaningfully

manage, and master, in a given domain.

The MHC is rooted in what Commons and Richards

(1984) called a Theory of General Stage Development,

which described a sequence of hard stages varying only in

their degrees of hierarchical complexity, of which fourteen

stages have been validated. Piaget’s stages and substages

are among those validated in this scheme of hierarchical

schemes of complexity.

Potential criticisms regarding the risk of arbitrariness in

stage definition are addressed in the MHC by the Theory’s

and Model’s, grounding in mathematical models, benefit-

ing from the use of Rasch Scaling Analysis, which requires

a clear delineation of, and permits precise measurement of,

increments between levels of complexity, and the consti-

tution of hierarchical sets of tasks whose order of

complexity can be clearly established, measured, and

compared, both within domains, and across them. In short,

Rasch Analysis permits researchers constructing items for

scales of stage complexity, to measure the merits of their

statements at any given interval of stage they wish to

assess, with immediate feedback from the Rasch scaling as

to whether their proposed item fits the criteria for increase

in complexity over the previously constructed item.

In this sense, both the spirit of Piaget’s vision and the

concrete forms of the stage structures he proposed have

been retained and more fully articulated, as well as

empirically elaborated and validated, using the MHC.

The rigorous methods and precise modeling permitted

by the MHC offer another advantage, and remedy to the

problems outlined earlier in this article, namely, that of

clearly laying out four postformal stages (Commons 2003)

that demonstrate the validity of the notion of postformal

cognition, show how such a notion can be applied within

given domains, and providing ways of mapping, and

comparing, postformal development across domains.

In the paragraphs that follow, we describe some very

recent research showing the promise of the MHC for the

psychology of religious development, and ways in which,

in this domain, some of the problems we set out in our

empirical appraisal of extent models, are addressed by the

Models’ methods.

222 J. M. Day

123

Religious Development and Hierarchies of Complexity:

Preserving and Improving Cognitive-Developmental

Models in the Psychology of Religious and Spiritual

Development

If the MHC holds promise for preserving the insights of

Piaget, and his vision of linear, hierarchical, universal, and

stage-wise, development, validating the stages he initially

proposed, while remedying the problems that have plagued

cognitive-developmental stage theories across the domains

where they are to be found, it has also proven useful, in

preliminary testing, in the psychology of religious and

spiritual development, allowing for the charting of stages in

religious cognition, and permitting researchers to respond

to classical, as well as contemporary, questions and con-

troversies in the field. To date, there are some fifty pub-

lished studies using the MHC, of which only a few, recent,

contributions, consider religious cognition and problem-

solving where religious elements are concerned (Day

2008a, b, 2009a, b; Day et al. 2007, 2009; Ost et al. 2007).

These studies, using a valid and reliable measure called

the religious cognition questionnaire (RCQ) (Day 2007a, b)

have shown the utility of the MHC in establishing stages of

religious cognition, establishing relationships between

religious cognition stages in the MHC and religious judg-

ment stages in Oser’s model, operationalizing and dem-

onstrating the existence of postformal thought in the

domain of religious cognition, establishing ways of com-

paring religious cognition and moral cognition; and

responding to questions such as how people respond to

varying degrees of complexity in moral problem-solving

when elements of religious belief, belonging, and authority

are entered into the moral scenario; e.g., whether people of

religious conviction are prepared to abandon complexity in

favor of religious authority when solving moral problems

(Day et al. 2007; Day 2007a, b, 2008a, c, 2009a, b).

The RCQ has initially been tested with agnostics,

Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims, with equal success to, and

comparable stage distributions to those found among

Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant subjects in

Belgium, England, and the USA. Since its aim has in part

been to test how adults think about religious issues and

how religious elements interact with other elements in

moral problem-solving situations, research using the RCQ

may be particularly relevant to thinking about stage,

structure, and operations, within religious cognition, and

across domains, with religious subjects. Its attention to

issues related to postformal cognition may provide ways of

responding to Cartwright’s (2001) and Sinnott’s (1994)

concerns that studies of religious and spiritual development

have not sufficiently taken postformal cognition into

account in what becomes defined as spirituality in adult

life, and Sinnott’s insistence that research paradigms

should in future make explicit links between postformal

cognition, and postformal stages in religious and spiritual

development. We have demonstrated, for example, that it is

possible to show not only that there are postformal stages

in religious cognition, parallel to the four postformal stages

outlined by Commons and Richards (2003), but that people

reasoning at postformal levels are less likely than are others

to abandon their highest level of achieved complexity in

problem-solving in other domains, when elements of reli-

gious authority enter into problem-solving situations (Day

2008a, b, c, 2009b; Day et al. 2007, 2009).

Cognitive Complexity, Postformal Stages, and Religious

Development: Promising Perspectives and Supporting

Empirical Evidence

As we have suggested, one area warranting further effort in

the psychology of religious development concerns the

question of postformal stages, and what religious belief,

practice, and faith experience might resemble if such stages

could be mapped and described in the domain of religious

cognition.

In their review of the literature on the logic of post-

formal stage conceptions, relevant debates, and critical

appraisals of validation studies in this domain, Commons

and Richards (2003) conclude that postformal operations

have been described and measured in human perceiving,

reasoning, knowing, judging, caring, feeling, and commu-

nicating. Furthermore, based on studies using the MHC,

examining problem-solving capacities in the domains of

algebra, geometry, physics, moral decision-making, legal

judgments, informed consent, Commons and Richards

(2003), and Commons and Pekker (2005) (see also 2008a,

b, c, 2009b) have offered a convincing account of four

postformal stages, as which we briefly describe in the

paragraphs that follow:

Systemic order: at this stage, subjects are able to dis-

criminate the frameworks for relationships between vari-

ables within an integrated system of tendencies and

relationships. The objects of the relationships are formal–

operational relationships among variables. Probably, only

20% of the American population is able to function at this

level.

Metasystemic order: subjects act on systems, and sys-

tems become the objects of metasystemic actions. The

systems are made up of formal–operational relationships,

and metasystemic actions compare, contrast, transform,

and synthesize systems. Commons and Richards point out

that research professors at top universities are for the most

part able to operate in this way.

Paradigmatic order: subjects create new fields out

of multiple metasystems. It follows logically that

Religion, Spirituality, and Positive Psychology 223

123

metasystems are the objects of paradigmatic actions,

sometimes in ways that orchestrate new paradigms out of

improvements made across metasystems which are them-

selves ‘‘incomplete’’ from a paradigmatic point of view.

Commons and Richards show how Maxwell’s equations,

developed in 1817, which showed that electricity and

magnetism were united, operate in this way, and pave the

way for further paradigmatic moves, including Einstein’s

development of ‘‘curved space’’ to describe space–time

relations, in so doing replacing Euclidean geometry with a

new paradigm.

Cross-paradigmatic order: subjects operate on para-

digms as objects of thought, creating a new field of

thought, or radically transforming a previous one. Thinkers

operating at this order of complexity are extremely rare,

but ready examples from the history of science demonstrate

its existence and its mechanisms and processes. Commons

and Richards provide several persuasive examples in this

vein, and have also shown through research studies that

some subjects operate in this way when faced with prob-

lems designed for research in cognitive complexity, and

that Rasch Analysis can validate both the order of com-

plexity of items and possible responses to them, on the

orders of complexity represented in the four postformal

stages, including this one, outlined here (2008a, b, c,

2009b).

If, until recently, little work had been done using the

MHC in the psychology of religious development, this has

been true regarding the validation of the existence of

postformal stages, in this domain. We have demonstrated

(2008a, b, c, 2009b; Day et al. 2009) that logical inferences

can be made in comparing stages of faith, and of religious

judgment, development, with stages in the Kohlbergian

paradigm of moral judgment. Such inferences in turn per-

mit the observation that stages in the psychology of reli-

gious development already shown, empirically, to parallel

stages 4 and 5 in Kohlberg’s model (i.e., stages 4–6 in

Fowler’s model, and 4 and 5 in Oser’s) would qualify for

inclusion as postformal stages in faith and religious judg-

ment development; i.e., operations and structural compo-

nents requiring the management of complexity and solving

of problems at orders higher than those in Piaget’s

descriptions and proofs of formal–operational reasoning,

applied, in this case, in the domain of cognition concerning

religious concepts, beliefs, practices, and decisions where

religious elements are taken into account. In the Louvain-

Harvard Project in Cognitive Complexity and Religious

Cognition, we have shown that moral judgment stages and

faith and religious judgment parallel to moral judgment at

stage 4, would fall under the systemic stage, and those

parallel at stage 5 and 6, would fall under the metasystemic

stage. (Day et al. 2009, 2009b).

It is worth noting that Kohlberg (1984) himself argued

that ultimately morality cannot explain itself; that theories

of moral reasoning and its development cannot, in the end,

account for why one would decide to act on behalf of the

good, of the moral principle and its translation into

potential forms of action one knows, cognitively, how to

describe, justify, propose, etc. It was on these grounds that

he imagined a paradigmatic stage, positioned as a seventh

stage, in his hierarchy of stages of moral judgment. In this

paradigmatic stage, the subject would construct a paradigm

able to operate on systems of moral reasoning, including

hierarchies such as Kohlberg’s model proposed, in such a

way as to articulate, on Kohlberg’s vision of it, a cosmo-

logical, and explicitly ‘‘spiritual’’ articulation of a tran-

scendent logic providing an impetus for moral action, and a

standpoint from which action could be judged as good.

This paradigmatic stage in Kohlberg’s model forges an

explicit connection between moral reasoning and religious

concepts and systems, and in the terms Commons and

Richards, and we have outlined a move from metasystemic

to paradigmatic reasoning (Day 2009b).

Thus, it has been demonstrated (Bett et al. 2008;

Commons et al. 2007, 2008a, b, c; Day et al. 2007)

increasing precision that it is possible to identify stages of

cognitive operations involving religious questions and

problem solving where religious authority is at issue using

the MHC, and to identify subjects operating at systemic,

metasystemic, and paradigmatic, levels of reasoning, par-

allel to the uppermost stages in moral reasoning in Kohl-

berg’s model, and in religious judgment in Oser’s model

(Day 2009b; Day et al. 2009).

We hold, thus, that with the aid of the MHC and its

concomitant employment of Rasch Scaling and Analysis, it

is possible to establish clear relationships among stages of

moral judgment, and religious cognition, and that post-

formal stages in religious thinking can be described and

demonstrated, strengthening the neo-Piagetian project in

thinking about human development in terms of stage and

structure, and showing how so doing can help us appreciate

how development plays out in the solving of complex

problems, both hypothetical and occurring in ‘‘real life.’’

Contributions of Religious and Spiritual Development

to Positive Adult Development

From the outset, we have focused on the question whether,

and how, religious and spiritual involvement contribute,

and/or detract from human well-being in the adult years,

and how the scientific study of religious and spiritual

development may contribute to a broader appreciation of

what makes for positive development in adulthood.

224 J. M. Day

123

We have restricted ourselves to a careful review of the

literature, including very recent contributions, with a par-

ticular concern for relationships between religious and

spiritual beliefs and practices and indices of well-being,

and on cognitive-developmental, neo-Piagetian models,

because of their place in the scientific literature and their

impact on related spheres of practical activity. In so doing,

we have observed that there are internal debates as to the

validity of stage models of religious and spiritual devel-

opment, and have tried to show how recent efforts address

some of the concerns at issue.

In so doing, we are well aware that alternative models

for thinking about religious and spiritual development

provide much food for thought, and for practice, drawing

on a host of traditions in psychological theory and practice,

including neo-psychoanalytic traditions (Day 2009b; Jones

1993; Rizzuto 1981), the theory of attachment (Day 2007b,

2008b), narrative, socio-cultural, and social constructionist

approaches (Day 1993, 2001, 2002, 2007b, 2008a, b, c;

Day and Tappan 1996; Day and Youngman 2003; Gan-

zevoort 1998, 2006; Gergen 1994, 2002; Popp-Beier 1997;

Streib 1991, 1997; Tappan 1989, 1992). On our view, these

models, which emphasize affective variables and the richly

contextual and storied quality of human existence, and

adult development, merit equal attention to that devoted to

the cognitive-developmental models we treat here, and we

would hold that it such models should be treated as com-

plementary, rather than competing approaches to struc-

tural-developmental ones (Day 2007a, b, 2008a, b).

As we conclude, how might we reflect on the neo-

Piagetian contribution to understanding religious and

spiritual development, and how, in this light, might we best

appreciate religious and spiritual contributions to positive

psychology in the adult years?

Piaget very clearly articulated his view of the human

subject as an epistemic subject, akin to a natural philoso-

pher of knowledge, an empirical scientist, concerned to

understand how things operate, to know the basic princi-

ples of their functioning, and to appreciate relationships

between parts and ‘‘wholes’’ of natural phenomena; keen to

derive general principles from particular instances, both in

order to understand the world more adequately, and to

match, map, and master its complexity with our own

powers of understanding, in so doing to more adequately

operate in and on the world, addressing its complexity in

real-life problems with increasing elegance and skill

informed by our understanding of and respect for its

complex organization and functioning.

The neo-Piagetian models we have examined here show,

both in their conceptual frameworks, and empirical testing

of their claims, that with higher orders of complexity, which

form the structural foundations of higher stages of faith,

religious, and spiritual development, people increase in both

autonomy and their ability to take others’ views into

account, can affirm religious belief and commitment without

denigrating or excluding others who do not share the exact

same set of beliefs or religious affiliations, are less likely to

be drawn to authoritarian or controlling forms of religion,

more likely to adopt an attitude of tolerance toward indi-

vidual differences, and to value self-determination and the

contribution of individual conscience to personal and social

well-being, as well as the importance of context and com-

munity, and of self-giving and generosity of purpose and

action in their relationships with others. With increases in

stage, whether in Fowler’s model of faith development,

Oser’s model of religious judgment development, or more

recent research using the MHC to test levels of complex

operations in religiously related problem solving, come

related increases in moral sensitivity, a capacity to address

complex moral problems with a heightened sense of fair-

ness, justice, and concern for all parties to a problem or

conflict, and an ability to hold in creative tension the argu-

ments of religious tradition and the promptings of individual

conscience, and concrete working out of complex problems

where the welfare of others as well as the self are concerned.

The close relationship between religious and spiritual

development in these models and correlates in meaning-

making, moral judgment development, and complex

problem-solving skill, underscore evidence presented at the

outset of this article on the relationships among religious

commitment and spiritual practice in adult life, participa-

tion in communities who emphasize a loving and benevo-

lent God or ultimate principle of being, and well-being in

adulthood. They suggest that we ought to be concerned for

development as a whole, with renewed confidence that

development within any given domain and prompt, with

appropriate encouragement, development in neighboring

domains, to the benefit of individuals, and on behalf of the

well-being of all. In this sense, higher orders of religious

and spiritual development reinforce and enhance the con-

tribution religious and spiritual attitudes and practices

make, on the whole, to positive psychology in and for adult

development in its most holistic and noble terms.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Jan D. Sinnott for her editorial guidance, to two anonymous reviewers for their comments, and to

The National Science Foundation of the USA, the Fond National de la

Recherche Scientifique of Belgium, and The Metanexus Institute of

the John Templeton Foundation for their support of the research at

Louvain, and the Louvain-Harvard Project in Cognitive Complexity

and Religious Cognition, mentioned in this article, and travel to

scholarly meetings.

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