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Subject PSYCHOLOGY

Paper No and Title Paper No 9: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Module No and Title Module No 31: RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

Module Tag PSY_P9_M31

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes

2. Introduction
2.1. Religion and Spirituality: same or different?
2.2. Types of Coping
2.4. The Revered Path
2.3. The Various Dimensions of Religious and Spiritual Coping

3. Types of Religious and Spiritual Coping Methods

3.1 Inter-correlated Coping Styles
3.2. Positive and Negative Religious Coping

4. Outcomes of Religious and Spiritual Coping

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4.1. Pattern of Coping

4.2. Inclination towards religiosity and
spirituality
4.3. Religious groups and coping
4.4. Intensity of stress

5. Prayer and Coping

5.1. Prayer and Severity of Stress
5.2. Frequency of prayer and well-being
5.3. Prayer as Stress Buffer

6. Attachment to God

7. Summary

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1. Learning Outcomes
After studying this module, you shall be able to

 Learn the various ways in which religiosity and spirituality help in coping with negative life
events
 Identify the various coping techniques and patterns associated
 Evaluate the relationship between religion and spirituality
 Analyze how coping with stressful situations involves interplay of various factors.

2. Introduction
Claims that prayer, visit to a religious place, and divine intervention can cure illness have been popular
throughout history. Miraculous recoveries have been attributed to "faith healing". It also involves a strong
belief in a supreme being. Confessions also are assumed to lead to well–being. In Pennebaker’s writing
experiments “confessions” though increased tension and discomfort in the short-term, but enhance
physical health in the long run.

2.1. Religion and Spirituality: same or different?

Religion and spirituality are primarily a way of life. They are as entwined with our culture as are our
identities, and even though there grows trends of atheism or rejecting any kind of super-natural force,
various cultural standards still believe and are taking forward the idea of religion and spirituality. They
continue to manifest in all aspects of our daily life.

Religion and spirituality are essentially the same, but also different. Some define spirituality as a smaller
part of the larger construct of religion, or to say spirituality as an aspect of religion. Others however
would put it the other way round, saying that religion is just one aspect of spirituality. Religion is a
system of belief in a higher and unseen power along with certain rites. Spirituality is an awakening to the

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real self, and a longing to be one with it. To be spiritual means

to rise above body and sensory desires and to realize the
ultimate Truth. To be religious means to observe rituals and rites specified by one’s religion.

There may be many commonalities between religion and spirituality. For example, both involve a
personal transformation, or a search for ultimate truth. Spirituality may resist many aspects of religion.
Still, there is much overlap between the two.

The polarization of the two constructs into incompatible opposites has been criticized by researchers. Hill
et al. (2000) stated that ‘Both spirituality and religion are complex phenomena, multidimensional in
nature, and any single definition is likely to reflect a limited perspective or interest’. Either ways, if we go
ahead with religion and spirituality being two sides of the same coin of when it comes to seeking their
support so as to deal with life stressors. When one expends conscious efforts to solve personal and
interpersonal problems and seeks to master, minimize or tolerate stress or conflict, it is referred to as
coping. The effectiveness of the same however depends on the type of stress or conflict, characteristics of
the individual, i.e. his/her personal strengths and weaknesses and of course on the situational factors.

2.2. Types of Coping

Lazarus & Folkman (1984) stated that “coping consists of cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage
specific external and / or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the
person”. Coping can be divided into different coping styles, mainly problem-focused and emotional-
focused coping style:

a) Problem focused coping involves active efforts to manage the stressor itself and it is normally
chosen as a coping reaction when the individual appraises the situation as more controllable.

b) Emotional focused coping refers to coping efforts that do not seek to directly solve the problem
but to manage the negative emotions associated with the problem normally chosen as a coping
reaction when the situation is appraised as less controllable.

Additional coping styles later identified were:

c) Meaning-focused coping, in which cognitive strategies are used to focus on values, beliefs and
goals to modify the meaning of the situation when problem-focused efforts are not possible.

d) Social coping refers to interpersonal coping or seeking social support.

2.3. The Multiple Dimensions of Religious and Spiritual Coping

a) Social Support: Social support plays an important role in adjustment after any negative life event. The
social aspect of religion positively influences adjustment. In bereaved individuals, higher levels of
religious participation have been associated with less depression and loneliness (Bahr & Harvey, 1979)
and greater positive affect and optimism (Sanders, 1980).

b) Intra-psychic perspective: Religion and spirituality also influences coping process through beliefs
and attitudes held by believers.

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c) Cognitive Processing: Religious and spiritual people have a

schemata that may allow them to incorporate beliefs about
death, or for that matter any negative life event, in a more familiar and less threatening. Studies have
concluded that religious and spiritual individuals reveal low levels of anxiety, fear and concern about
death (Spilka, Hood & Gorsuch, 1985).

d) Finding Meaning: Taylor (1983) proposed that the search for meaning is a major theme in the coping
process. Finding meaning leads to better adjustment during the time of crisis. The more religious and
spiritual an individual is, the more prepared he or she may be to find meaning in a negative event.

2.4. The Revered Path

Pargament (1997) defined religion as “a search for significance in ways related to the sacred”. It refers to
multiple pathways people take to reach their goals or sacred ends. It also involves a sense of meaning and
purpose, spirituality etc. Religious and spiritual coping methods act as ways of understanding and dealing
with negative life events that are related to the sacred.

Pargament (1997) suggested that religious coping methods mediate the relationships between an
individual’s general religious orientation and the outcomes of major life events. General religious beliefs
and practices get translated into specific forms of coping which have implications for the individual’s
health in stressful times.

Mickley, Pargament, Brant, and Hipp (1998) found that benevolent religious reframing of the experience
(e.g., viewing the situation in a spiritual light, attributions to God’s will) was associated with perceptions
of greater coping efficacy, more positive spiritual outcomes, and grater purpose in life. In a study of
medical rehabilitation patients, anger toward God was predictive of declines in functional status over a 4-
month period (Fitchett et al., 1999). Researchers also have reported correlations between these negative
forms of religious reframing and higher levels of depression, distress, physical symptomatology, and
maladjustment to life stressors (Koenig, Pargament, & Nielsen, 1998; Pargament, Smith, et al., 1998).

3. Types of Religious and Spiritual Coping Methods

3.1 Inter-correlated Coping Styles

There definitely exists multidimensionality in religious coping, but it will also be noteworthy that
religious and spiritual coping methods are moderately inter-correlated which suggests that people do not
make use of religious coping methods singly. They rather use them in combinations with each other. For
instance, in a factor analytic study, Boudreaux, Catz, Ryan, Amaral-Melendez, and Brantley (1995)
distinguished between personally oriented and institutionally oriented combinations of religious coping
methods. Another possible approach to the study of religious coping could be the study of patterns of
religious coping. Rather than focusing on one method of religious coping in detail, it brings under its
folds several methods of religious coping and their patterns of interrelationship. Breadth rather than depth
is the approach to measurement and analysis here. This approach offers an economical way to measure a
range of religious coping methods, one that may help to integrate the study of religious coping within
mainstream theory and research in the social and health sciences.

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3.2. Positive and Negative Religious Coping

Positive religious coping methods may reflect a sense of spirituality, and a sense of spiritual
connectedness with others. They include several religious coping methods such as seeking spiritual
support, forgiveness, collaborative religious coping, spiritual connection, religious purification,
benevolent religious reappraisal etc.

In contrast, the negative religious coping pattern may reflect a less secure relationship with God, and a
gloomy view of the world. It involves religious coping methods such as penalizing religious reappraisals,
demonic religious reappraisals, reappraisals of God’s powers, spiritual discontent etc.

Thus, people appear to use various methods of religious coping in combination with each other; that is,
they apply different configurations of religious thought, feeling, behavior, and relationships in their
efforts to deal with major life stressors. People draw on religious approaches that appear to be reflective
of a secure relationship with God, a sense of spirituality, and a trustworthy worldview. Negative religious
coping methods are used, but much less frequently than positive methods. These methods of coping are
expressions of a different religious orientation; one involving a weak relationship with God, spiritual
struggle, and a threatening view of the world.

4. Outcomes of Religious and Spiritual Coping

It is assumed that religion and spirituality plays a positive role in providing a sense of identity, a network
of social support, and a coherent framework for responding to existential questions (Elliott and Hayward
2007). They help in coping with chronic illness, lead to a sense of shared understanding of a loss, lead to
protective effects against suicide or substance misuse etc. However, people who take religion and
spirituality quite seriously may suffer from poor mental health, stress or guilt.

4.1. Pattern of Coping

Generally, the positive religious coping pattern is related to lesser symptoms of psychological distress,
and psychological and spiritual growth. In contrast, the negative religious coping pattern is associated
with signs of emotional distress, such as depression, poorer quality of life etc.

4.2. Inclination towards religiosity and spirituality

It is seen that religious and spiritual coping is more helpful to people who are more religious and have a
more spiritual bent of mind. Pargament (2007) forwards that religious and spiritual coping can be a
“double-edge sword”- people who centre their lives on religion experience more of the costs as well as
the benefits of religious involvement.

4.3. Religious groups and coping

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There is evidence which suggests that religious coping may be

more beneficial to some religious groups than others (Alferi et
al., 1999).

4.4. Intensity of stress

Religious coping appears to be particularly beneficial to individuals experiencing more stressful situations
that push them beyond the capacity of their immediate resources (e.g., death, terminal illness).

5. Prayer and Coping

Prayer is perhaps the most essential and personal of religious experiences. It is central to religion as well
as spirituality. Prayer is thoughts, attitudes and actions designed to express or experience connection to
the sacred. It is thereby used by many people with cope with various life situations.

Prayer exists in many forms, and to categorize the same, scholars have developed typologies for the
various forms of prayer. Poloma and Pendleton (1981, 1991) forwarded four basic types of prayer.

Table No.1: Types of Prayer (Poloma & Pendleton, 1981;1991)

TYPE EXAMPLE

Meditative Prayer Worshipping and adoring God, reflecting upon religious books

Ritualistic Prayer Reading from a book of prayers

Petitionary Prayer Asking God things for oneself and others

Colloquial Prayer Thanking God, asking god for guidance

5.1. Prayer and Severity of Stress

Neighbors et al. (1983) found that as the severity of the stressors increased, the use of prayer for coping
increased proportionately. People use prayer as a coping resource more frequently when their problems
are more severe, intractable, or unresponsive to conventional interventions. Levin, Lyons & Larson
(1990) found that mothers pray more frequently to cope with more difficult pregnancies than easier ones.
Hence, people mostly pray when their needs are greatest, and usually in stressful circumstances.

5.2. Frequency of prayer and well-being

Frequency of prayer is related to health and well-being. Frequency of prayer has been found to be
positively correlated with purpose in life. Gruner (1985) found that frequency of prayer has been
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positively related to marital adjustment, general life

satisfaction, existential well-being, lower delinquency and
more positive attitudes toward schooling among children and adolescents (Francis, 1992).

5.3. Prayer as Stress Buffer

Pargament (1997) found that frequent prayer appears in some studies as stress preventive or it acts as a
stress buffer. People who pray frequently are less likely to encounter psychological or physical illness in
the aftermath of serious stressors.

6. Attachment to God
People who have received reliably sensitive care tend to form generally positive representations of
themselves and others, and they come to strike a balance between attachment behaviors and other kinds of
behavior. Following activation of their attachment system, secure individuals tend to engage in proximity
seeking and other behaviors that foster a sense of closeness to their attachment figures (who provide what
attachment theory calls a safe haven). In times of relative calmness, however, they typically shift attention
to other aspects of the environment, while using an attachment figure as what attachment theory calls a
secure base for exploration.

Kaufman (1981) said “The idea of God is the idea of an absolutely adequate attachment figure”.
Kirkpatrick (2005) argues that one reason for God being perceived as so important is that, for religious
individuals who believe in a personal God, God is an important source of attachment-related sense of
security. Believers may have heightened psychological access to their perceived relationship with God as
a safe haven when threatened or distressed, just as people do with human attachment figures. They may
also have heightened mental access to secure base-related concepts when exposed to stimuli related to
God. Furthermore, being exposed to God-related material should have certain predictable effects that
transfer to other domains, just as exposure to other security-enhancing attachment figures does. Moreover,
individual differences in interpersonal attachment orientations might moderate these effects.

Although God is presumed to be omnipresent, people are more motivated to experience closeness to God
in situations of distress which depends on the kind of attachment-system that is activated. Experiments
with adult theists have observed an increase in their wish to be close to God following priming with
subliminal separation threats targeting their relationship with their mother or with God, which does not
happen to participants in attachment-neutral control conditions (Birgegard & Granqvist, 2004).

7. Summary
 Religion and spirituality are neither completely enmeshed, nor segregated. But they are both an
extremely important factor in our ways of dealing with stressful life situations.
 Coping is primarily of four types, but religious and spiritual coping takes place in an overlapping
multidimensional way, and involves discovery of the ‘sacred’.
 The religious and spiritual coping patterns can either be positive or negative. They have various
illustrative methods.
 Outcomes of such coping however do not take place in vacuum and have therefore many factors
influencing them such as pattern of coping, intensity of stress etc.
 Prayer is one primary component of religious and spiritual coping and act as a stress buffer.
People often resort to prayers when the stress factors are more severe.
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 God can also be viewed as an attachment figure and a

secured attachment often leads to positive patterns of
coping.

PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 9: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Module No 31: RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY