4 page essay for Religion class, due at midnight

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Life-Changing Religious and Spiritual Experiences: A Cross-Faith Comparison in the United States Ian A. Gutierrez, Amy E. Hale, and Crystal L. Park Online First Publication, April 27, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000137

CITATION Gutierrez, I. A., Hale, A. E., & Park, C. L. (2017, April 27). Life-Changing Religious and Spiritual Experiences: A Cross-Faith Comparison in the United States. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000137

Gutierrez, I. A., Hale, A. E., & Park, C. L. (2017). Life-Changing Religious and Spiritual Experiences: A Cross-Faith Comparison in the United States. Psychology Of Religion And Spirituality, doi:10.1037/rel0000137

Life-Changing Religious and Spiritual Experiences: A Cross-Faith Comparison in the United States

Ian A. Gutierrez University of Connecticut and Louis Stokes Cleveland VA

Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Amy E. Hale Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts

Crystal L. Park University of Connecticut

Life-changing religious and spiritual experiences shape people’s lives and form a central part of the autobiographical narratives of many Americans. As such, they have been key phenomena of interest among social scientists. However, the likelihood of individuals experiencing life-changing religious or spiritual experience across diverse faith traditions has yet to be studied. The current study explores the incidence of reporting life-changing religious or spiritual experiences among adherents of 6 world religious traditions as well as atheists and agnostics living in the United States (N � 970). We account for subjective religiousness, subjective spirituality, and impression management in our analysis of interfaith differences in rates of life-changing religious and spiritual experience. Findings revealed interreligious differences in the incidence of religious experience, with Protestants and Muslims more likely to report having had a life-changing religious and spiritual experience, and Jews, Catholics, and atheists/agnostics reporting comparatively fewer of these experiences. While religiousness and spiritu- ality were associated with the likelihood of having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experience across religions, impression management was only minimally associated with religious experience. Our results suggest that an individual’s religious culture is strongly related to that person’s likelihood of having a life-changing religious or spiritual experience.

Keywords: religious experience, spiritual experience, spiritual transformation, world religions, impres- sion management

Scholars and theologians have long identified the religious experience as the phenomenon that sets the study of religion apart from other social sciences (e.g., Durkheim, 1912/1995; James,

1902/2004; Otto, 1923/1958; Proudfoot, 1985; Taves, 2009). With their rich synthesis of myth, ritual, and symbolism, religions shape their adherents’ understandings and interpretations of life experi- ences in ways that impact autobiographical memory and inform a sense of meaning in life (DeGloma, 2010; Park, 2005). Because divine, numinous, and sacred experiences have the potential to radically alter an individual’s life trajectory, scholars of religion have historically given them privileged status among subjects of inquiry.

Religious and spiritual experiences have often been identified as the critical phenomena that bind the study of divergent faiths together (James, 1902/2004; Otto, 1923/1958; Smart, 1978; Stace, 1960; Taves, 2009). St. Paul’s conversion, the enlight- enment of Siddhartha Gautama, and the revelation of Joseph Smith are a few notable examples of life-changing religious experience narratives across history and culture that share com- mon themes (DeGloma, 2010; Taves, 1999, 2009, 2016; Ya- mane, 2000). However, research has also attended to the ways in which religious cultures differ in their impacts on cognition and behavior (Cohen, 2009). The contention that life-changing religious experiences are an essential component of most reli- gious cultures garners little controversy, but while the qualita- tive differences between religions have attracted much atten- tion, remarkably little research has examined quantitative differences between religions.

Editor’s Note. Elizabeth L. Hall served as the action editor for this article.—RLP

Ian A. Gutierrez, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, and Psychology Service, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio; Amy E. Hale, Department of Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; Crystal L. Park, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut.

This work was generously supported by a student research grant awarded to Amy E. Hale from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, a research seed grant awarded to Amy E. Hale from American Psychological Association Division 36 (Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality), and a doctoral fellowship Award to Amy E. Hale from the University of Connecticut. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the feedback and support for this project provided by Richard Sosis, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ian A. Gutierrez, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connect- icut, 406 Babbidge Road, Box U-1020, Storrs, CT 06269. E-mail: ian [email protected]

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Psychology of Religion and Spirituality © 2017 American Psychological Association 2017, Vol. 0, No. 999, 000 1941-1022/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000137

1

The question of whether adherents of some religions report religious experiences more frequently than others ought to follow naturally from established qualitative differences in religious ex- periences between religious cultures. However, only two published studies have explored this question to date. The National Spiritual Transformation Study (Smith, 2006) asked 1,328 Americans through in-person interviews whether or not they had had a “reli- gious or spiritual experience that changed their life,” with 35.7% reporting that they had had such an experience. Findings revealed that Protestants affiliated with fundamentalist or evangelical de- nominations were most likely to report having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experience, but even among those who did not attend religious services, 26% still reported having experienced a life-changing religious event, suggesting rates of religious experi- ences may vary by religious tradition.

The only other study assessing the frequency of life-changing religious experiences—this time in a non-Christian sample—was the Islamic Social Attitudes Survey. This study asked 426 Kuwaiti college students, 78% of whom identified as Sunni Muslims, whether they had “changed profoundly as the result of a religious experience” (González, 2011). In this sample, 52.1% reported that they had done so, a percentage much higher than that reported by the General Social Survey (GSS) described above (González, 2011; Smith, 2006). This difference suggests that further study of frequencies in religious experiences across religions may prove informative and offer an exciting window into the nature of inter- faith differences. Apart from these two studies, no published data is available regarding the frequency of life-changing spiritual or religious experiences.

The lack of data from multireligious samples constitutes a significant gap in the literature. Some scholars have criticized the study of religious or spiritual experience for its overreliance on studying Protestants and the outsized influence of Protestant the- ology on such experience, noting that to truly understand religious and spiritual experiences, we must look beyond the Protestant demographic (Carroll, 2007; Hay, 1988). Take, for instance, Co- hen and Hill’s (2007) finding that Protestants tend to report pri- marily individual life-changing religious experiences, whereas Jews and Catholics reported more collectively oriented experi- ences. Given this finding of differences in religious experiences between Protestants and Catholics, it would be foolhardy to as- sume similarities across diverse faith traditions. Instead, a thor- ough exploration of differences in groups with varying cultural and philosophical roots is in order. Migratory patterns in Europe and North America suggest that Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism will have a growing impact on the Western religious landscape in the 21st century (Kaufmann, Goujon, & Skirbekk, 2012; Skirbekk, Kaufmann, & Goujon, 2010), so our understanding of religious experiences will be of increasing cultural, sociological, and polit- ical import.

The Need for Baseline Rates of Religious and Spiritual Experiences

In light of longstanding interest in Stace’s (1960) the common core thesis (i.e., the centrality of religious experience across reli- gious traditions) and the apparent differences found in base rates of religious experience in research on American atheists/agnostics, American Christians, and Kuwaiti Muslims (González, 2011;

Smith, 2006), establishing base rates of religious and spiritual experiences across religious traditions is a promising area for future research. It is surprising that so few studies have explored the relationship between frequencies of life-changing religious experiences and religious affiliation. In the current study, we address the lack of research on the frequencies of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences and religious affiliation by ex- amining experiences among Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists/agnostics residing in the United States. By establishing base rates of religious experience across religions, we aim to significantly advance theoretical conceptual- izations of religious experience and religious cultures in a number of scholarly discourses, providing a broader understanding of how individuals experience the divine across faith traditions. Specifi- cally, establishing incidence rates of reporting religious experi- ences has theoretical implications for phenomenological, social scientific, and medical perspectives on religious and spiritual ex- perience.

Significance of the Incidence of Life-Changing Religious or Spiritual Experience

Phenomenological Relevance

According to Taves’s (2009) attributional model, religious ex- periences are “experiences deemed religious” (16), which require a religious framework that acknowledges the potential for having religious experiences and that are used by religious adherents to make sense of and appraise lived experiences. Using the attribu- tional model as a starting point, inferences can be drawn regarding the character of differing religious frameworks considering differ- ent rates of endorsement for such experiences. If adherents of one faith tradition are more likely to report having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experience compared with adherents of an- other faith tradition, the attributional model would suggest that the religious frameworks themselves differ either in their quality or in their frequency of application between religions.

More generally, establishing rates of religious experience across religions can add greater clarity and nuance to the common core thesis long advanced by scholars of religion (Hood & Chen, 2013; James, 1902/2004; Smart, 1978; Stace, 1960). The universality of religious experiences must be tempered by the fact that there is little basis for claiming that adherents of different religions are equally likely to have such experiences. In fact, research would suggest just the opposite: For instance, Cohen et al. (2005) high- light that “private and emotional religious motivations are the gold standard” for American Protestants, especially when compared to Jews and Catholics (p. 310). Likewise, the difference in rates of religious experience found between Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims by Smith (2006) and González (2011) suggest that reli- gious cultures effect different rates of religious experience among their adherents.

Anthropological and Sociological Relevance

Establishing differences in the incidence of religious and spiritual experiences across religions empowers scholars to make inferences concerning which religious cultures most strongly reinforce religious experience narratives as a pathway to demonstrating in-group social-

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2 GUTIERREZ, HALE, AND PARK

ization (Cohen et al., 2005; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). According to signaling theory and narrative theory, the retelling of a personal religious experience is a communicative act and a social signal to others (DeGloma, 2010; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Yamane, 2000). Religious and spiritual experience narratives must meet a threshold of credibility for an individual to be recognized as a member of a religious community by incorporating narrative elements that demon- strate proper socialization to the sociocultural framework shared by other group members. Adherents of religions who more frequently endorse having had such experiences may be those who wish to signal that they belong to a particular faith community that values such experiences (DeGloma, 2010). By indicating that they have had a life-changing religious experience, individuals either see how such experiences are socially desirable among their new community mem- bers or use this narrative to demonstrate socialization to group norms.

Conversion experiences are among the most personally signif- icant life-changing religious or spiritual experiences (James, 1902/ 2004; Rambo & Bauman, 2012; Rambo & Farhadian, 2014; Ull- man, 1989). The literature is rich with theoretical perspectives on the course, causes, and consequences of religious conversion (for a review see Rambo & Farhadian, 2014). Despite this breadth of perspectives, scholars generally agree that religious conversion is costly to the individual, is often ignited by a personal life crisis, requires a specific personal history and social environment in which to occur, and demands that a person either have access to or be situated within a rich and diverse religious marketplace (Barro, Hwang, & McCleary, 2010; Paloutzian, 2005; Rambo, 1999; Rambo & Bauman, 2012).

Conversion can be driven by a broad range of motivations and instigators. Qualitative research has found that, across faith tradi- tions, individuals may convert to a new faith tradition to find safety or refuge in a new community, develop a secure attachment bond with a new parental figure in the form of the divine, establish a more robust sense of self, or explore a new means of establishing meaning in life (Ullman, 1989). Religious conversion occurs at the intersection of personal motivation, psychological dynamics, reli- gious culture, and the sociopolitical environment: Conversion can occur as a result of social phenomena ranging from a growing acceptance of religious pluralism to coercion by religious funda- mentalists (Baer, 2014). A religion’s theological worldview like- wise informs the likelihood and frequency with which individuals convert to that faith tradition and a religion’s ritual practices informs the content and character of the conversion experience. For instance, Sharma (2014) notes that missionary faiths, such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam actively seek converts, whereas nonmissionary religion, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Hin- duism, do not, which alone informs significant differences in the frequency and character of conversion experiences.1

Religious conversions may not be considered life-changing re- ligious or spiritual events for some, and certainly only a subset of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences result in conver- sion. Still, establishing rates of life-changing religious or spiritual experience across religious tradition may inform and advance an understanding of religious conversion.

Medical and Psychiatric Relevance

Religious and spiritual experiences have long been purported to change lives through the alleviation of medical and psychiatric

ailments (James, 1902/2004; Krause, 2011). A better understand- ing of how frequently these events occur in different traditions may provide important data for those examining relationships between religion, spirituality, and physical or mental health. Life- changing religious and spiritual experiences maintain a cultural presence in Western societies: For instance, among religious movements in the United States, the faith-cure movement associ- ated with Pentecostalism is particularly noteworthy for its visible embrace of religious and spiritual experience as a means of healing (Belcher & Hall, 2001). Protestant conceptions of experiential faith-based healing have had their strongest direct impact on contemporary medical treatment vis-à-vis Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its 12-step paradigm (Bevacqua & Hoffman, 2010; Galanter, Dermatis, & Sampson, 2014).

Although contemporary medical practice had historically dis- tanced itself from religion (Dein, 2010), revived interest in religion and spirituality has been taken up by health researchers working in psycho-oncology (Moreno & Stanton, 2013), HIV/AIDS research (Hampton, Halkitis, Perez-Figueroa, & Kupprat, 2013), and be- reavement (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2006). By exploring how reli- gious groups differ in the frequency with which their adherents report having life-changing religious or spiritual experiences, our study might shed light on the generalizability and universality of such experiences.

Framework and Data Analysis Plan

The aim of the current study was to assess the frequency with which adherents of six major world religions and atheists/agnostics endorse having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experi- ence. Our inquiry aimed to assess neither the quality or character of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences nor the circum- stances that precipitate them. Rather, we drew our focus to the reporting of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences. We made no a priori assumptions concerning the nature of the expe- riences participants may report having.

To provide insight into relevant factors that inform our assess- ment of the incidence rate of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences across religious groups, we controlled for three fac- tors: subjective religiousness, subjective spirituality, and impres- sion management. Because religion and spirituality are related but distinct constructs that have differential effects on social and behavioral outcomes of interest, we controlled for each separately to explore the relative impact of each in accounting for the like- lihood that one would report having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experience (Oman, 2013). We also controlled for impression management, a form of socially desirable responding (Paulhus, 1984). Sedikides and Gebauer’s (2010) meta-analysis found that, across 17 samples, impression management was posi- tively correlated with intrinsic religiosity. Not only does impres- sion management have a significant impact on self-report studies (Paulhus & Reid, 1991), but there is reason to suspect that life- changing religious or spiritual experiences are socially desirable

1 A full review of interreligious differences regarding theological per- spectives on conversion and ritual practices entailed in conversion pro- cesses is beyond the scope of the current literature review. A more complete discussion of religious and cultural differences regarding the conversion process can be found in Rambo and Farhadian (2014).

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3LIFE-CHANGING RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES

within certain religious traditions (e.g., Protestant Christianity; Cohen et al., 2005; Hay, 1988). By including impression manage- ment in our final analysis, we aimed to control for the response bias inherent in assessing an outcome variable that may be influ- enced by the demand characteristics imposed by religious cultural norms (i.e., that religions may desire that their adherents report having had life-changing religious or spiritual experiences).

Method

Participants and Procedure

The current study was part of a larger multireligious study of beliefs with a sample of participants (N � 1,000) recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurk is a crowdsourcing marketplace that allows “requesters” (e.g., researchers) to post tasks to be completed by “workers” (i.e., MTurk users; see Paolacci & Chandler, 2014). To compare rates of religious expe- rience between major religious groups in the United States, we used a stratified sampling data collection strategy (Levy & Leme- show, 1999), and set the following recruitment quotas for adher- ents of religious traditions: 500 Christians (250 Catholics and 250 Protestants), and 100 each of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists/Agnostics. We elected to sample more Christians relative to other religious groups to enhance generalizability of the entire sample to the very large Christian population in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2015). This stratified data collection strategy is frequently used when researchers wish to compare groups that might not be well-represented apart from exceptionally large samples (Kalton, 2009; also see Appendix A in Pew Re- search Center, 2015). MTurk workers had to reside in the United States and self-identify as one of the targeted recruitment groups to participate.

Participants selected the survey based on the MTurk task de- scription. Recruitment efforts were specifically targeted to each of the seven religious or nonreligious groups (i.e., Protestants, Cath- olics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists/agnostics). The study description visible to all MTurk workers stated: “An- swer a 30 minute research survey about your religious beliefs and views. People who consider themselves [name of religious tradi- tion] in their beliefs are welcome to participate in this survey.” In keeping with MTurk best practices, the survey included five at- tentional check items to confirm that all participants were engaged in the survey (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, 2011). Participants were informed that only workers who answered all of these ques- tions correctly would be paid and included in the research study.

Of the 1,000 participants who participated in the study, 70 (7.0%) failed to complete all items for the Impression Management subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 1984), 30 (3.0%) provided information regarding religious affiliation that prohibited clear identification with a world religion (e.g., denominations of “Born Jewish,” “Religious Sci- ence,” and “Unsure”), and one participant did not indicate whether or not he or she had a life-changing religious or spiritual experi- ence. An analysis of the BIDR data revealed that each BIDR item contained less than 1% missing data, each participant had no more than 10% missing BIDR data, and that BIDR data were missing completely at random (Little’s �2(469) � 482.47, p � .32). Miss- ing BIDR data were imputed using predictive mean matching with

the “mice” package (van Buuren & Groothuis-Oudshoorn, 2011) for multivariate imputation in the R statistical platform. After imputing these data and removing the 30 cases that did not list religious affiliation or religious experience, our final data set for analysis had 970 participants.

Descriptive frequencies for gender, age, educational attainment, and geographic region are presented in Table 1. For the entire sample, the proportion of men to women was nearly equal, with women (n � 496, 51.4%) comprising a slight majority (see Table 1). This gender parity, however, was not observed within each religious group. Among Protestants, men (n � 87, 33.6%) were outnumbered by women (n � 172, 66.4%) by two-to-one. Among Muslims, the converse was true: Men (n � 64, 66.7%) outnum- bered women (n � 32, 33.3%) by two-to-one. The overall sample primarily consisted of young and emerging adults, with two-thirds (n � 648, 66.8%) of participants falling within an 18- to 34-year- old demographic. The remainder of the sample primarily consisted of adults in the 35- to 64-year-old range (n � 309, 31.9%). Age distributions exhibited minimal variation between religious groups. The majority of study participants, irrespective of religious affiliation, had either attended college or received a college degree. Only within the atheist/agnostic group did individuals who had not attained a college degree (n � 64, 57.7%) outnumber those who had (n � 47, 42.3%). Hindu respondents comprised the most educated of the religious groups surveyed, with college graduates comprising more than two thirds of Hindu respondents (n � 66, 69.5%). Within the entire sample, one in three had completed some college (n � 323, 33.5%) and another third held a college degree (n � 357, 37.0%). Roughly one in 10 participants (n � 112, 11.6%) had never attended college. Participants were mostly likely to be living in the American South as compared with other regions (n � 340, 35.1%). The Southwest (n � 60, 6.2%) was least represented within the sample.

Measures

Life-changing religious and spiritual experience. A single item from the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religion and Spirituality (BMMRS; Fetzer Institute, 1999) module was used to measure participants’ life-changing religious and spiritual experi- ences (see also Smith, 2006). Participants were asked, “Did you ever have a religious or spiritual experience that changed your life?” Participants either responded Yes or No. Respondents were then asked, “If yes, how old were you when this experienced occurred?” The BMMRS is among the most widely used instru- ments in the scientific study of religion and has been validated for use in a diverse set of populations (Fetzer Institute, 1999; Koenig, 2008; Neff, 2006; Stewart & Koeske, 2006).

Subjective religiousness and subjective spirituality. Sub- jective religiousness and spirituality were measured using two single-item measures drawn from the BMMRS. To measure reli- giousness, participants were asked, “To what extent do you con- sider yourself a religious person?” (1 � very religious, 2 � moderately religious, 3 � slightly religious, and 4 � not religious at all). To measure spirituality, participants were asked, “To what extent do you consider yourself a spiritual person?” (1 � very spiritual, 2 � moderately spiritual, 3 � slightly spiritual, 4 � not spiritual at all). We reverse coded participant responses so that higher values corresponded to greater religiousness or spirituality.

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4 GUTIERREZ, HALE, AND PARK

Impression management. Impression management was mea- sured using the 20-item impression management subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 1984). The BIDR uses 7-point Likert scales with choices ranging from 1 (not true) to 7 (very true). Example items include, “I never take things that don’t belong to me”; “I never read sexy books or magazines”; and, “I have some pretty awful habits” (reversed scored). Cronbach’s � for the BIDR across the entire sample was .85. For each religious group, the measure’s interitem reliability were as follows: atheism/agnosticism (� � .80), Judaism (� � .86), Islam (� � .84), Hinduism (� � .88), Buddhism (� � .82), Catholicism (� � .86), and Protestantism (� � .85). Using Feldt, Woodruff, and Salih’s (1987) �2 test of equality for alpha coeffi- cients, no significant differences were found in the BIDR’s reli- ability across groups, �2(6) � 9.01, p � .17.

Results

Experience, Religiousness, Spirituality, and Impression Management by Group

Descriptive statistics for life-changing religious or spiritual ex- periences, subjective religiousness, subjective spirituality, and im- pression management are presented in Table 2. We explored religious intergroup differences in the likelihood with which indi- viduals reported having had a life-changing religious experience with �2 tests of independence; cell-wise deviations were explored with Fisher’s exact test. Within the entire sample, about four in 10 (n � 414, 42.7%) participants reported having had a life-changing

religious experience. Religious groups differed significantly in the likelihood that their adherents reported a life-changing religious experience, �2(6) � 76.40, p � .001. Post hoc pairwise compar- isons using Fisher’s exact test revealed that atheists/agnostics were less likely to have life-changing experiences than were all of the other religious groups (ps � .01), Jews were less likely to have life-changing experiences than were Muslims or Protestants (ps � .01), and Catholics were less likely to have life-changing experi- ences than were Muslims, Hindus, and Protestants (ps � .02). No significant pairwise differences were found between Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, and Protestants (ps � .05).

We ran one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to compare subjective religiousness and spirituality by group. Religiousness varied significantly by religion, F(6, 961) � 67.91, p � .001, partial �2 � .30, with a large effect of religious affiliation on religiousness. Tukey’s honest significant difference test was used to explore significant pairwise post hoc differences. Expectedly, atheists and agnostics were significantly less religious than partic- ipants of each of the other six religions at the p � .001 level. Between religious groups, Muslims, Hindus, and Protestants were significantly more religious than Jews at ps � .02; Muslims were significantly more religious than Catholics and Buddhists at ps � .001; Hindus were significantly more religious than Buddhists at p � .04; and Protestants were significantly more religious than Buddhists at p � .01.

Spirituality also varied by religion, F(6, 960) � 37.55, p � .001, partial �2 � .19. Atheists and agnostics were less spiritual than were all other religious groups (ps � .001). Jews in the sample were less spiritual than Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, and Protes-

Table 1 Demographics Frequencies for Each World Religion (N � 970)

Atheist/ agnostic Jewish Muslim Hindu Buddhist Catholic Protestant Sample total

Variables N % N % N % N % N % N % N % N %

N 111 85 96 95 98 226 259 970 Gender

Male 53 48.2 46 54.8 64 66.7 56 59.6 56 57.1 108 48.0 87 33.6 470 48.6 Female 57 51.8 38 45.2 32 33.3 38 40.4 42 42.9 117 52.0 172 66.4 496 51.4

Age Younger than 18 0 .0 1 1.2 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 1 .4 2 .8 4 .4 18 to 24 31 27.9 23 27.1 35 36.5 37 39.4 37 37.8 66 29.2 50 19.3 279 28.8 25 to 34 44 39.6 34 40.0 47 49.0 39 41.5 36 36.7 81 35.8 88 34.0 369 38.1 35 to 44 16 14.4 14 16.5 8 8.3 13 13.8 11 11.2 32 14.2 54 20.8 148 15.3 45 to 54 13 11.7 5 5.9 6 6.2 2 2.1 10 10.2 30 13.3 38 14.7 104 10.7 55 to 64 7 6.3 6 7.1 0 .0 2 2.1 2 2.0 15 6.6 25 9.7 57 5.9 65 and older 0 .0 2 2.4 0 .0 1 1.1 2 2.0 1 .4 2 .8 8 .8

Education Less than high school 3 2.7 1 1.2 4 4.2 0 .0 2 2.1 3 1.3 4 1.5 17 1.8 High school degree 6 5.4 4 4.7 14 14.7 9 9.5 3 3.1 21 9.4 38 14.7 95 9.8 Some college 55 49.5 24 28.2 26 27.4 20 21.1 36 37.5 80 35.7 82 31.7 323 33.5 College degree 41 36.9 32 37.6 32 33.7 37 38.9 36 37.5 87 38.8 92 35.5 357 37.0 Graduate degree 6 5.4 24 28.2 19 20.0 29 30.5 19 19.8 33 14.7 43 16.6 173 17.9

Geographic region South/Bible Belt 33 28.8 21 24.7 38 39.6 27 28.4 31 31.6 74 32.7 117 45.5 340 35.1 Midwest 22 19.8 7 8.2 22 22.9 16 16.8 17 17.3 36 15.9 63 24.5 183 18.9 Northeast 21 18.9 26 30.6 18 18.8 26 27.4 18 18.4 70 31.0 31 12.1 210 21.7 West Coast 27 24.3 17 20.0 13 13.5 23 24.2 24 24.5 36 15.9 35 13.6 175 18.1 Southwest 9 8.1 14 16.5 5 5.2 3 3.2 8 8.2 10 4.4 11 4.3 60 6.2

Note. Percentages are reported column-wise.

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tants (ps � .01). Finally, Protestants were significant more spiri- tual than were Catholics (p � .001).

Mean BIDR scores by world religion are presented in Table 2. We found a significant difference in mean impression management scores between groups, though the effect size for this difference was small, F(6, 963) � 4.37, p � .001, partial �2 � .03. Tukey’s honest significant difference test of pairwise post hoc differences revealed that atheists/agnostics had lower mean impression man- agement scores than did Protestants, Catholics, and Jews (ps � .02). No significant pairwise differences for impression manage- ment scores were found between any of the six religions, suggest- ing that the significance of the omnibus ANOVA test was attrib- utable solely to the significantly lower impression management scores of the atheist/agnostic group.

Life-Changing Religious or Spiritual Experience

We ran �2 frequency analyses and point biserial correlations to identify factors associated with life-changing religious and spiri- tual experience. Bivariate relationships between variables (i.e., demographic variables, subjective religiousness, subjective spiri- tuality, and impression management) and life-changing religious or spiritual experience are presented for the entire sample and by religious group in Table 3. After assessing these relationships, we ran a binary logistic regression to explore the extent to which religious affiliation was associated with life-changing religious or

spiritual experience after controlling for religiousness, spirituality, and impression management.

Per group, demographic variables (i.e., gender, age, educational attainment, and geographic region) were, by and large, uncorre- lated with having experienced a life-changing religious experience. Across the entire sample, women were slightly more likely than were men to have had a life-changing religious experience, �2(1) � 5.46, p � .02. Likewise, within the entire sample, rates of life-changing religious experience differed significantly by level of education, �2(4) � 11.09, p � .03, which was primarily attribut- able to individuals who had completed some college education being significantly less likely to have had such an experience (z � 3.11).

Across the entire sample, religiousness, r � .37, p � .001, spirituality, r � .43, p � .001, and impression management, r � .08, p � .02 were positively correlated with life-changing religious experience. For Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, and Protes- tants, religiousness was significantly and positively associated with having had a life-changing religious experience, rs � .22, ps � .03; this association was not significant for atheists/agnostics and Buddhists. Spirituality was positively and significantly asso- ciated with life-changing religious experience within each reli- gious tradition as well as atheists and agnostics, rs � .29, ps � .01. Lastly, impression management showed, for almost all groups, no association with having had a life-changing religious experience,

Table 3 Bivariate Relationships Between Study Variables and Life-Changing Religious or Spiritual Experience

Life-changing religious experience Atheist/agnostic Jewish Muslim Hindu Buddhist Catholic Protestant Sample total

Chi-square tests of independence (�2) Gender 1.42 .29 .64 .04 .00 2.36 3.68 5.46�

Age 1.84 6.02 7.62 1.09 7.99 4.42 5.03 7.58 Education 5.06 4.18 2.25 5.08 4.83 8.05 9.33 11.09�

Geographic region 2.61 6.34 .93 6.10 3.91 1.84 1.72 5.00 Point biserial correlations (r)

Subjective religiousness .13 .41��� .45��� .22� .13 .25��� .33��� .37���

Subjective spirituality .33� .34�� .39��� .29�� .34�� .32��� .50��� .43���

Impression management .06 �.11 .01 .07 .01 �.01 .16�� .08�

� p � .05. �� p � .01. ��� p � .001.

Table 2 Life-Changing Religious or Spiritual Experience, Religiousness, Spirituality, and Impression Management by Group

Life-changing religious or spiritual experience Subjective

religiousness Subjective spirituality

Impression management

Age at event

Group N % of total M SD M SD M SD M SD

Atheist/agnostic 16 14.4 20.33 10.67 1.13 .38 1.92 1.04 71.57 17.08 Jewish 29 34.1 20.46 10.08 2.38 1.03 2.69 .95 81.18 20.69 Muslim 53 55.2 19.10 5.49 3.04 .83 3.16 .80 79.56 18.94 Hindu 48 50.5 17.74 5.77 2.78 .81 3.15 .79 79.46 22.04 Buddhist 43 43.9 21.49 11.41 2.43 .82 3.16 .78 78.99 18.44 Catholic 77 34.1 21.23 9.83 2.61 .84 2.93 .85 81.67 20.00 Protestant 148 57.1 18.64 9.23 2.79 .84 3.25 .76 82.26 19.74 Sample total 414 42.7 19.54 9.02 2.51 .97 2.95 .93 79.93 19.84

Note. Percentages are reported row-wise. For comparison, we provide the following descriptive statistics drawn from the 2014 General Social Survey (Smith et al., 2014): Subjective religiousness (n � 1952, M � 2.57, SD � 1.00) and subjective spirituality (n � 1929, M � 2.87, SD � .96).

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rs � .11, ps � .32. However, there was a positive association with having had a life-changing religious experience among Protestants, r � .16, p � .01.

Next, we ran a hierarchical binary logistic regression model regressing life-changing religious experience (0 � no life- changing religious experience, 1 � life-changing religious expe- rience) onto religious group affiliation while controlling for reli- giousness, spirituality, and impression management (see Table 4). For the first step of the model, we entered religiousness, spiritu- ality, and impression management. For the second step of the model we added religious affiliation and treated atheists/agnostics as the reference group so as not to privilege the experiences of one religious group over another. It should be noted that those who identify as atheist or agnostic often still report having religious or spiritual experiences despite their nonreligious orientation (e.g., Exline et al., 2014; Smith, 2006; Underwood, 2006).

The first step of the model accounted for a significant proportion of variance in the outcome, �2(3) � 222.02, p � .001, Nagelkerke R2 � 0.276. Religiousness (b � 0.45, SE � 0.09, p � .001) and spirituality (b � 0.92, SE � 0.11, p � .001) were independently associated with an increased likelihood of participants having had a life-changing religious experience. Impression management was not independently associated with life-changing religious experi- ence (b � .01, SE � .01, p � .38). The second step of the model, in which we added religious affiliation, likewise accounted for a significant proportion of variance in the outcome, �2(9) � 238.15, p � .001, Nagelkerke R2 � 0.293. As in the first step of the model, religiousness (b � 0.40, SE � 0.10, p � .001) and spirituality (b � 0.89, SE � 0.11, p � .001) were independently associated with an increased likelihood of participants having had a life-changing religious experience, and impression management was not associ- ated with life-changing religious experience (b � .01, SE � .01, p � .43). However, no religious affiliation was independently associated with an increased or decreased likelihood of having had a life-changing religious experience after controlling for religious- ness, spirituality, and impression management (bs � .62, SEs �

.41, ps � .08). Even so, the difference between step one and step two of the model was significant, �diff2 (6) � 16.13, p � .02, Nagelkerke Rdiff

2 � 0.017, suggesting that the addition of religious affiliation in the step two model contributed a significant propor- tion of accounted variance over and above the step one model.

Discussion

While much has been written concerning the qualitative char- acter of powerful and transformative religious or spiritual experi- ences, remarkably few studies have explored the incidence of life-changing religious or spiritual experience as a function of religious group affiliation. The current study extended previous findings by assessing the impact of religious culture on the fre- quencies of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences re- ported by atheists/agnostics and adherents of six major world religious traditions (Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hin- dus, and Buddhists). Through multivariate analysis, we assessed factors relevant to a person having had such an experience and examined the role that social desirability might play in affecting the outcomes of such analyses.

Our findings supported past findings on rates of religious expe- rience from the literature and suggest that base rates of life- changing religious or spiritual experiences have been stable among Protestants and Catholics over the past two decades. Across groups, life-changing religious or spiritual experiences were re- ported by 42.7% participants, a finding similar to that reported in the GSS in 1998 (39.6%) and 2004 (35.7%; Smith, 2006). Like- wise, the mean values for subjective religiousness and subjective spirituality in our sample were comparable to mean values for subjective religiousness and subjective spirituality in the 2014 General Social Survey data (Smith et al., 2014; see also Table 2). Because we oversampled non-Christian faiths, our entire sample is not reflective of the religious make-up of the United States. Nev- ertheless, the similarity between our findings and those of other national surveys is striking. Our findings mirrored the differences

Table 4 Hierarchical Logistic Regression Models Predicting Life-Changing Religious or Spiritual Experience

Step 1 Step 2

Variables B SE eB 95% CI B SE eB 95% CI

Subjective religiousness .45��� .09 1.57 1.31–1.88 .40��� .10 1.50 1.23–1.83 Subjective spirituality .92��� .11 2.50 2.04–3.09 .89��� .11 2.43 1.98–3.01 Impression management �.01 �.01 1.00 .99–1.00 �.01 �.01 1.00 .99–1.00 Religious affiliation

Atheism/agnosticisma — — 1.00 — Judaism .12 .41 1.12 .50–2.55 Islam .49 .41 1.64 .74–3.69 Hinduism .40 .40 1.48 .69–3.29 Buddhism .21 .38 1.24 .59–2.67 Catholicism �.14 .36 .87 .43–1.80 Protestantism .62 .35 1.86 .95–3.81

Model fit Model �2 222.02��� 238.15���

Model df 3 9 Nagelkerke R2 .276 .293

Note. CI � confidence interval. a Atheists/Agnostics are the reference group for Step Two analysis. ��� p � .001.

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in religious affiliations studied previously such that Protestants were more likely than Catholics to reporting having had such an experience (Smith, 2006). Similarly, rates for life-changing reli- gious or spiritual experiences for Muslims in this sample were almost identical to those reported by González (2011), even though the latter sample was Kuwaiti and ours was American.

These findings also provide support for the common core thesis insofar as religious or spiritual experiences unite different faiths under the shared banner of religion (Hood & Chen, 2013; Smart, 1978). Life-changing religious and spiritual experiences were re- ported among a third to a half of religious adherents of each of the six faith traditions. However, the significant differences in the rates of religious or spiritual experience between religious groups complicates this picture. Protestants were nearly twice as likely as Jews to report having had such an experience, a finding that may be attributable to the significant differences in subjective religious- ness and subjective spirituality between these groups. It is con- ceivable that these differences may be tied to the ways in which different faith traditions shape a person’s understanding of faith life. For instance, Protestants tend to see faith as an individual experience, whereas Jews tend to perceive faith life as more centered on social engagement (Cohen & Hill, 2007). Other dif- ferences between traditions were less easily explained, such as the finding that Protestants and Catholics did not have significantly different rates of religiousness, but their rates of religious or spiritual experience varied significantly.

Although religiousness and spirituality have a shared history as related concepts within religious research, they differ in their predictive power with respect to social and behavioral outcomes of interest (Oman, 2013). Although both subjective religiousness and subjective spirituality were associated with life-changing religious experience, spirituality was more strongly associated with an in- creased likelihood of religious experience in the logistic regression analysis than was religiousness. The disparate relationships be- tween religiousness and spirituality with respect to life-changing religious or spiritual experiences suggest that these experiences may continue to mark the Western cultural landscape despite significant changes in religious demography that are anticipated to take place in the coming decades in Europe and the United States (Kaufmann, Goujon, & Skirbekk, 2012; Skirbekk, Kaufmann, & Goujon, 2010). The rising “spiritual but not religious” category—a group that has also been labeled in Europe as “ietsists,” Dutch for “something-ists” (Braam, 2006)—is one that deserves greater at- tention in this regard. The rise of agnosticism and “ietsism” among White Americans and Europeans requires a shift in conceptual thinking concerning the life-changing experiences of these indi- viduals. Though this group is not religious in the traditional sense, our findings suggest that the psychological processes that underlie religious and spiritual experience may still apply to it.

Moreover, after controlling for religiousness, spirituality, and impression management, affiliation with one or another religious group was not associated with a greater or lesser likelihood of having had a life-changing religious or spiritual experience. Even though Protestants were nearly four times as likely to report having had such an experience compared with atheists and agnostics, these differences were not seen after controlling for religiousness and spirituality. This suggests that, if decreases in religiousness or spirituality do not accompany notable changes in religious identi- fication in the West (e.g., Kaufmann, Goujon, & Skirbekk, 2012;

Pew Research Center, 2015; Skirbekk, Kaufmann, & Goujon, 2010), then the incidence of religious or spiritual experiences may be relatively unaffected by shifts in identity.

The absence of a significant relationship between impression management and religious affiliation in general was contrasted by the strong association between this construct and American Prot- estant affiliation. Given the theorized role that transformative experiences play in shaping personal identity, the utility of such narrative in signaling group membership to others, and the rela- tionship between socially desirable responding and religiousness demonstrated throughout the literature, it seemed possible that the impact of socially desirable response styles might have significant implications for research on life-changing religious or spiritual experiences (DeGloma, 2010; Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003). Theory and past research notwithstanding, how- ever, impression management was found to have minimal impact on the reporting of life-changing experiences across faith traditions in our final analysis.

Taken at face value, this finding is reassuring insofar as it suggests that participants’ reporting of their experiences was not unduly influenced by the motivation to present themselves in a socially desirable light, but other considerations complicate this assessment. At the bivariate level, we found a relationship between impression management and religious or spiritual experience for Protestants only, but because of the greater proportion of Protes- tants in the entire sample, this produced a significant bivariate relationship between religious or spiritual experience and impres- sion management in the entire sample.

The effect of this single relationship within one faith tradition over the entire sample invokes the critiques posed by Hay (1988) and Carroll (2007) concerning the significant influence of Protes- tant culture on the scientific study of religion. The topic of im- pression management within this study perfectly illustrates the problem with generalization from studies that include too few individuals affiliated with religious minority group and the prob- lem with measurement of religious constructs in multireligious settings. Regarding generalization, Sedikides and Gebauer’s (2010) review of the relationship between religiousness and im- pression management found a significant effect, but the literature that they reviewed relied overwhelming on primarily Protestant samples drawn from the United States and the United Kingdom. While this reliance on Protestant samples is understandable given the religious demographics of the United States (46.6% of whom identify as Protestant; Pew Research Center, 2015), data from our study suggests that the theorized relationship between impression management and religiousness may not be generalizable beyond the Protestant population actually measured.

Conversely, these findings may reflect the way in which im- pression management is measured by the BIDR (Uziel, 2010). Sedikides and Gebauer (2010) highlight that many social desir- ability scales, including the BIDR, measure socially desirable responding by asking participants if they adhere to social mores that are Judeo-Christian in origin. It may be that our finding concerning the relationship between impression management and Protestant affiliation reflected the Judeo-Christian orientation of the scale. The fact that this relationship did not emerge among the Catholic portion of the sample (also Judeo-Christian in origin) makes this explanation less plausible, but measurement issues should be considered in this finding. Considering the relative

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paucity of research on non-Christian religious groups and the negligible impact of impression management on life-changing religious or spiritual experience in our study, it seems clear that further research with non-Protestant populations is needed in this area.

Limitations

Data for this study were collected via Amazon’s MTurk (Am- azon Mechanical Turk, 2011). Although we made a concerted effort to ensure data quality through implementation of an atten- tional check, sample characteristics specific to MTurk merit con- sideration. MTurk respondents are more likely to have high social desirability scores as compared with student or community sam- ples, and tend to be younger, better educated, and less religious than the general population (Paolacci & Chandler, 2014). How- ever, we highlight that our recruitment prompt stated that the study would ask participants about their religious beliefs and views. As a result, our sample may have pulled from those who were more interested in religious life and discouraging involvement from less religious or religiously unaffiliated persons. We note, however, that subjective religiousness and subjective spirituality in our sample closely mirrored that of the 2014 GSS sample. Neverthe- less, generalizations from our findings regarding the relationship between impression management and religious or spiritual expe- rience require qualification.

Perhaps more importantly, our stratified sampling approach limits the generalizability of the sample to the U.S. population. This was a deliberate methodological decision we made to ensure that underrepresented non-Christian religious groups were repre- sented in our study with adequate power for between-groups comparison. As survey methodologists and cultural psychologists alike have noted, population-based random sampling often fails to capture minority groups in sufficient numbers for the purpose of analysis, and stratified sampling technique offer survey researchers the ability to capture these groups at the modest expense of broader population-wide generalizability (Kalton, 2009; Miller, 2004). Therefore, by oversampling for each of the non-Christian minority faith group, we obtained adequate power for between-groups com- parisons and hopefully generalizability within those groups. As a result, however, the sample taken as a whole does not mirror the broader U.S. population.

Although this was a multireligious sample, the fact that the sample as a whole was located in the United States limits gener- alizability to non-Americans. While religious cultures influence psychological outcomes of interest, so too do national cultures (Johnson & Cohen, 2014). Therefore, we cannot say whether or to what extent our findings are influenced by religious cultures versus American national culture.

The cross-sectional nature of our study precludes our ability to make causal or directional claims about our findings. The robust association between spirituality and life-changing religious or spir- itual experience raises many questions in this regard: Does spiri- tual growth sow the seeds of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences? Do such experiences precipitate a rise in spiritual growth? Or do life-changing experiences and spiritual growth co-occur? Longitudinal or quasi-experimental studies are needed to better understand the causal relationships inherent in spiritual life and life-changing experiences.

Finally, the use of single-item measures stands as a notable limitation, preventing us from drawing more detailed conclusions about the nature of the religious experiences reported. Religious- ness and spirituality are multidimensional constructs with richness and complexity that cannot be captured in their entirety by use of single-item self-report measures (Oman, 2013). Additionally, pre- vious research has demonstrated that the nature of religious or spiritual experiences can be quite varied (Cohen, Gruber, & Kelt- ner, 2010), so the limited nature of the question asked only allows us to confirm the frequency of transformative religious or spiritual events, not the event’s characteristics. We recommend that future research build upon our findings by exploring the multidimension- ality inherent to religiousness, spirituality, and life-changing reli- gious or spiritual experience, especially among understudied reli- gious groups.

Conclusion

This study presents the first cross-religious comparison of rates of life-changing religious or spiritual experiences in the United States. Longstanding scholarly interest in this phenomenon is justified by its continued presence in the cultural landscape and its commonality across diverse religious groups. While our findings are consistent with past research on life-changing religious or spiritual experience (e.g., González, 2011; Smith, 2006), the in- clusion of previously understudied groups—Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists—provides a more complete picture of the incidence of these experiences in the general population. In light of the shifting religious demography of the United States, social scientists and health professional alike should continue to assess the impact of these experiences on religious life, physical health, and psycho- logical well-being.

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Received August 3, 2016 Revision received March 4, 2017

Accepted March 12, 2017 �

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11LIFE-CHANGING RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES