It’s not only what you hold, it’s how you hold it: Dimensions of religiosity and meaning in life

Abstract

Previous research has linked meaning in life and religiosity, usually relying on simplistic unidimensional models. The present study revisited these relations, viewing both religiosity and meaning as multidimensional constructs. Dimensions of religiosity (Inclusion of Transcendence and Symbolic Interpretation) were assessed in two adult Hungarian samples (Ns 330, 437) and associations were assessed with presence of meaning (Studies 1 and 2) and search for meaning (Study 2), controlling for personality traits (Study 2). Inclusion of Transcendence was positively related to presence of meaning, and Symbolic Interpretation was positively related to search for meaning. Differing patterns of relations across explicit and implicit measures of presence of meaning suggested potentially important distinctions between whether people believe and how they believe. Together, results show that life appears more meaningful when religiosity is complex and open.

Introduction

Meaning in life has been a focal point of psychological thinking about positive human functioning and mental health since the pioneering thoughts of Frankl and the existential psychotherapists (Frankl, 1963, Yalom, 1980). Meaning in life, that is, the subjective experience of meaningfulness in one’s life, is typically seen as a distinct dimension of well-being, more related to what was called psychological or eudaimonic well-being than to hedonic or subjective well-being (McGregor and Little, 1998, Ryan and Deci, 2001). Supporting theories that meaning in life is a vital ingredient of human flourishing (Ryff & Singer, 1998), research has found associations between meaning in life and a variety of health indices, like lower mortality rate (Boyle et al., 2009, Skrabski et al., 2005) and better self-rated health (Steger, Mann, Michels, & Cooper, 2009).

Religiosity has been considered an important part of how some people construct meaning (Batson and Stocks, 2004, Park, 2005, Silberman, 2005, Yalom, 1980). Support for this notion can be found in positive associations between meaning in life and various measures and indices of religiosity (Chamberlain and Zika, 1988, Dezutter et al., 2006, French and Joseph, 1999, Pöhlmann et al., 2006). More direct evidence can be found in the fact that individuals often consider religious and spiritual beliefs and experiences as important sources for their life meaning (Fletcher, 2004, Schnell and Becker, 2006). People also appear to reflect upon their religiosity when asked to estimate the meaningfulness of their lives (Hicks & King, 2008). Finally, meaning in life appears to be an important factor that links religiosity to mental health and well-being (George et al., 2002, Steger and Frazier, 2005).

While both religiousness and meaning in life are often studied as one-dimensional phenomena, more detailed conceptualizations of religiosity and meaning in life suggest that both constructs may have multiple dimensions. Moreover, these distinctions may affect the pattern of the associations both theoretically and empirically (cf. Hackney & Sanders, 2003). However, the empirical investigation of multidimensional associations between these constructs is largely missing.

A recent social-cognitive model of religious attitudes suggests that a person’s approach towards religion may be characterized by two underlying and independent bipolar dimensions (Duriez, Dezutter, Neyrinck, & Hutsebaut, 2007). Inclusion (vs. exclusion) of Transcendence (IT) refers to the content of beliefs, specifically whether people accept or reject the possibility of a transcendent reality. Symbolic (vs. literal) Interpretation (SI) refers to the cognitive processing of these religious contents, whether they are approached on an open and complex way or in a rigid way. Within this model, one can distinguish between believers with an open, complex belief system and believers with a closed, rigid belief system. Nonbelievers can also be typified as open or rigid. These two dimensions of religiosity – the whether and the how – were found to be uniquely associated with several individual differences. People high on the IT dimension preferred structure and predictability (Duriez, 2003), and were less sensitive to external stimulation (Fontaine, Duriez, Luyten, Corveleyn, & Hutsebaut, 2005). People high on the SI dimension were also higher on openness, agreeableness (Duriez, Soenens, & Beyers, 2004), empathy (Duriez, 2004), open-minded thinking, and tolerance for ambiguity (Duriez, 2003).

In much the same way that religiosity research has been dominated by unidimensional approaches, meaning in life research has also focused almost exclusively on the degree to which people judge their lives to be meaningful or not. This “whether” dimension of meaningfulness has been termed the presence of meaning dimension (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006). This dimension is obviously important, as numerous reviews attest (e.g., Steger, 2009), yet recent scholarship has drawn attention to another, much less studied dimension of meaning. The search for meaning was important to early scholars (e.g., Crumbaugh, 1977, Frankl, 1963), but lags in terms of recent empirical inquiry. Search for meaning, which refers to people’s desire to enhance the meaningfulness of their lives, was found fairly independent from the experience of the presence of meaning (Steger et al., 2006). In the few instances when studied, search for meaning was found to be unrelated to intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (Steger et al., 2006).

The aim of the present study is to extend our existing knowledge about the relations between religiousness and meaning in life by examining both phenomena multidimensionally. Individual religiosity is conceptualized as an intersection of two underlying dimensions, acceptance (vs. rejection) of religious beliefs (IT) and the symbolic (vs. literal) way how religious questions are approached (SI). People’s subjective experience of life’s meaningfulness of one’s life also will be approached multidimensionally, including several conceptualizations and measures of presence of meaning and a measure of search for meaning.

The following hypotheses were tested in the present study:

• We expect positive relationship between IT and multiple indices of presence of meaning. Any variations in the magnitude of relations across measures of presence of meaning will be identified, as well.

• Previous research suggests that SI is connected to more healthy psychological functioning and more open cognitive style (Dezutter et al., 2006). Therefore, we expect a positive relation between measures of presence of meaning and SI.

• Although there have been several investigations into the role of religiosity in experiencing meaning in life, similar research on the search for meaning dimension has lagged behind. Search for meaning may represent an uncertainty that is less congruent with deeply held religious beliefs (i.e., higher IT). It also may represent an accepting and flexible attitude that is more consonant with a symbolic interpretation of religiosity. Therefore we assume that IT and search for meaning will be negatively related. In contrast, we assume that a more symbolic approach to religious contents would positively associate with the search for meaning dimension, since both of them are related to openness and flexibility (Duriez et al., 2004, Steger et al., 2008).

Two cross-sectional studies were conducted on convenience samples of Hungarian adults to test these assumptions. Study 1 tested the link between dimensions of religiosity and multiple measures of the presence of meaning. Study 2 extended this focus with the dimension of search for meaning. Moreover, since personality traits were found to be correlates for both religiosity (Henningsgaard & Arnau, 2008) and meaning constructs (Halama, 2005, Schnell and Becker, 2006, Steger et al., 2008), the five factor model of personality was assessed in Study 2 to control for possible confounding effects.

Both studies were conducted with respect to the ethical standards of the Hungarian Psychological Association. SPSS 13.0 statistical program pack was used throughout the analyses.