God representations and aspects of psychological functioning: A meta-analysis

A practice‐based evidence investigation of God representations in spiritually integrated psychotherapies

“…Notwithstanding a modest strengthening of authoritarian representations of God, such changes were not indicative of worsening or improvement in either benevolent representations or psychological distress. However, in keeping with cross‐sectional findings (Stulp et al, 2019), the MGM revealed associations between trajectory intercepts of authoritarian God representations and other client outcomes; that is, clients with higher authoritarian views and experiences of God at the first session had less confidence in God's benevolence and more psychological distress.…”

“…When considering ways in which theistic believers' God representations can affect their mental health, believers' views and experiences of God can have an impact on how they feel about themselves, about their life, and about the world around them in varying ways. If they doctrinally believe in and experientially relate to a loving God who cares about them, provides benevolent meaning and purpose to their life, and helps the world make sense in times of crisis or adversity, research indicates benevolent God representations can positively impact their mental health (e.g., Davis et al, 2018; Stulp et al, 2019; Tung et al, 2018). In contrast, if they view and relate to a controlling, strict, and critical deity, authoritarian God representations can contribute to the development or exacerbation of distress in psychological (e.g., depression, anxiety, and shame) and spiritual (e.g., divine, doubt‐related, or moral struggles) domains in a manner that might warrant focused clinical attention through SIPs (Currier et al, 2019; Schaap‐Jonker et al, 2017; Van Tongeren et al, 2019).…”

Changes in implicit God representations after psychotherapy for patients diagnosed with a personality disorder. Associations with changes in explicit God representations, distress and object-relational functioning

“…In this vein, we applied a mixed-methods design and examined aspects of the reliability and construct validity of the ATGR in three former studies (Stulp, Koelen, et al, 2019a;Stulp, Koelen, Glas, & Eurelings-Bontekoe, 2019b;Stulp, Koelen, Schep-Akkerman, Glas, & Eurelings-Bontekoe, 2019). Taken together, these studies demonstrated that for patients suffering from personality disorders the ATGR showed theoretically predicted patterns of associations with self-reported and implicit measures of distress, and with implicit and explicit measures of object-relational functioning.…”

Validation of the Apperception Test God Representations: An implicit measure to assess attachment to God representations. Associations with explicit attachment to God measures and with implicit and explicit measures of distress

“…His Western model assumes that for adherents of a monotheistic religion, the relationship with God is the most important source for these associations. Stulp, Koelen, Schep-Akkerman, et al (2019) argued that not merely having a relationship with God, but the type of relationship persons have with their God, might be a central mechanism in explaining the associations. In their meta-analysis, they demonstrated this by finding medium effect sizes for the associations of positive God representation measures (positive God image and secure attachment to God measures) with well-being and for the associations of two out of the three examined negative God representation measures (negative God image and anxious and avoidant attachment to God) with distress.…”

“…Because well-validated implicit measurement instruments for God representations are hardly or not available at the moment, we developed the Apperception Test God Representations (ATGR) and already reported about its construction and about the reliability and aspects of validity of those scales that are based on object-relational functioning (Stulp, Glas, & Eurelings-Bontekoe, 2019). In their critical review of measures of God representations, Sharp et al (2019) distinguish seven performance-based measures of God representations, and see it as a drawback that these measures generally do not demonstrate much evidence of reliability and validity.…”