Personality, religious and spiritual struggles, and well-being.

Abstract

The current research examined whether personality traits and religiousness predict features of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles and whether features of r/s struggles predict well-being when accounting for personality traits and religiousness. Participants comprised American adults from an online study (N = 418) and undergraduates (N = 965) who reported an ongoing r/s struggle. Overall, people with lower neuroticism and higher religiousness reported more favorable attributions of God’s intent in the struggle, more meaning found in the struggle, as well as greater spiritual growth and less spiritual decline as a potential result of the struggle. In turn, these more positive perceptions of the r/s struggle predicted a modest amount of unique variance in well-being (higher satisfaction with life and self-esteem, less depression and anxiety) even when controlling for personality and religiousness. Thus, adjustment to specific r/s struggles may have a distinct role in predicting psychological health.

Spiritual Struggles and Health: Assessing the Influence of Socioeconomic Status

“…One such correlate is personality traits. For example, as we noted earlier, Wilt et al (2016) report that higher levels of neuroticism are associated with more difficulties with spiritual struggles.…”

“…Several potential causal factors have been identified in the literature, including an insecure attachment to God (Ano and Pargament ), personality traits (e.g., neuroticism) (Wilt et al. ), the inability to forgive (Anderson‐Mooney et al. ), and the lack of humility (Grubbs and Exline ).…”

“…More specifically, researchers need to learn more about the factors that cause spiritual struggles to arise in the first place. Several potential causal factors have been identified in the literature, including an insecure attachment to God (Ano and Pargament 2013), personality traits (e.g., neuroticism) (Wilt et al 2016), the inability to forgive (Anderson-Mooney et al 2015), and the lack of humility . However, these potential explanatory variables are largely psychological in nature and, as a result, the potential influence of broad social factors has been largely overlooked.…”

Spiritual Jihad among U.S. Muslims: Preliminary Measurement and Associations with Well-Being and Growth

“…A shortened version of the STS (eight items), using the highest-loading items from each subscale, was administered for the current study, with permission from the scale author. Similar shortened forms have been used in other published studies of religious/spiritual struggles Wilt et al 2016). Participants were asked to rate their degree of agreement regarding spiritual growth Religions 2018, 9, 158 9 of 22 and decline on a seven-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very true).…”

The Role of Psychological Well-Being in Boosting Immune Response: An Optimal Effort for Tackling Infection

“…According to Wilt et al, (2016), religiosity and spirituality were the unique variance in well-being (higher satisfaction of life and better self-esteem, less depression and anxiety), while PIB was the contrary.…”