“Spirituality” and Mysticism

The Mysticism Scale as a Measure for Subjective Spirituality: New Results with Hood’s M-Scale and the Development of a Short Form

“…Taking these findings together, mystical experiences as measured with the M-scale correlate significantly with self-rated spirituality. How mysticism is related to religion certainly depends on how people relate spirituality and religion, but also on the differential analysis of interpretation and the introvertive/extrovertive dimensions of mysticism (Klein et al, 2016).…”

“…In our book on spirituality (Streib & Hood, 2016b), we already presented results of a structural equation model to estimate, on the basis of the N = 1886 cases in our sample, the effects of the three mysticism factors on self-rated religiosity and spirituality (Klein et al, 2016).…”

“…It should be noted, however, that because of the extremely high covariances between the three mysticism factors, their regression weights on self-rated spirituality should be interpreted with care, since the strongest effects can be observed for the interpretation factor which in part also mediates the effects of introvertive and extrovertive mysticism (cf. Klein et al, 2016).…”

“…Pre-print version MYSTICISM SCALE 2 spiritual well-being is often affected by intermingling religious contents and issues of mental health (Garssen, Visser, & de Jager Meezenbroek, 2016;Koenig, 2008), with respect to measures of general spirituality, it can be questioned whether these instruments really cover anything else than traditionally described religious beliefs, activities, or experiences (Pargament, 1999). Many scales of both types lack construct validity because authors do not present evidence that their scales are correlated with self-rated spirituality or vary depending on spiritual self-identifications (Klein, Silver, Streib, Hood, & Coleman, 2016). A number of studies from distinct cultural contexts have documented the diversity of associations with the term (Berghuijs, Pieper, & Bakker, 2013;Greenwald & Harder, 2003;la Cour, Ausker, & Hvidt, 2012;Schlehofer, Omoto, & Adelman, 2008;Zinnbauer, Pargament, Cole, Rye, Butter, Belavich, Hipp, Scott, & Kadar, 1997).…”

“…The M-Scale is a classic measure for mystical experiences, which has been developed on a sound theoretical basis long before spirituality became a hot topic within the psychology of religion, and it has empirically been tested in various cultural contexts. In our Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on Spirituality (Streib & Hood, 2016b) we observe that the M-scale is an excellent predictor of self-rated spirituality (Klein, Silver, Coleman, Streib, & Hood, 2016) and does relate differentially to the subjective understandings of spirituality (Streib & Hood, 2016a). This chapter is based on the findings from this Spirituality Study, but it takes results further by including new, longitudinal data.…”