Psychological Adjustment and Religiousness: The Multivariate Belief-Motivation Theory of Religiousness

The association of religiosity with overweight/obese body mass index among Asian Indian immigrants in California

“…Religiosity was a composite of three measures: "I believe that I am a religious person," "My spiritual beliefs are the foundation of my approach to life," and "I observe the traditional holidays that are important in my culture and religion," which correspond to religious self-identification, religious beliefs (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991), and religious participation (Strawbridge et al, 1997), respectively. Responses for the first two items were on a 5-point Likert scale and responses for the third item were on a four-point scale (Table 1).…”

Religious diversity, empathy, and God images: perspectives from the psychology of religion shaping a study among adolescents in the UK

“…The relationship between God images and other aspects of personal well-being and psychological adjustment have been explored by Schwab and Petersen (1990), Schaefer and Gorsuch (1991), Brokaw and Edwards (1994) Extending this earlier research from exploring the connection between God images and self-related concepts, Francis (2007) examined the relationship between empathy, as assessed by the empathy scale of the Junior Eysenck Impulsiveness Questionnaire (Eysenck, Easting and Pearson, 1984), and God images, as assessed in terms of unidimensional semantic space ranging from negative affect to positive affect (Francis, Robbins and Gibson, 2006), among a sample of 1,826 secondary school pupils in England. After controlling for sex, school year and individual differences in personality, as assessed by the short-form Revised Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Corulla, 1990), the data demonstrated a significant link between high levels of empathy and positive God images and a significant link between low levels of empathy and negative God images.…”

Medical illness, religion, health control and depression of institutionalized medically ill veterans in long-term care

“…Controlling for other domains of indicators, conditional canonical correlations showed that (1) religious motivation alone predicts religious coping, (2) religious coping alone predicts health control beliefs, and (3) both severity of illness/length of stay and health control beliefs predict depression. Result (1) is incompatible with the prediction by the multivariate belief-motivation theory of religiousness (MBMTR) (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991) that both religious belief and religious motivation determine religious coping. Results (2) and (3) are consistent with our hypothesis that control beliefs mediate the relationship between religious coping and depression.…”

“…The relationship between motivation/beliefs and behaviour is thought to be mediated by religious coping styles (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991).…”

“…Using this measure of subjects' God concepts, studies have found that belief in a loving, just and supportive God is associated with more mental health (Maton, 1989) and less anxiety (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991). A concept of God as punishing was associated with more anxiety (Schaefer and Gorsuch, 1991). Allport and Ross (1967) differentiate the motivation underlying religiousness (religious motivation) into intrinsic (I) and extrinsic (E) religiosity.…”