SACRED EMOTIONS SCALE

Donna Christine Burdzy

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

May 2014

Committee:

Kenneth I. Pargament, Advisor

Howard Casey Cromwell

Harold Rosenberg © 2014

Donna Burdzy

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Kenneth I. Pargament, Advisor

The content of holy texts, the writings of religious figures, and documented accounts of ordinary people’s varied experiences suggest that encounters with the sacred are characterized by distinctive emotional responses. Research on the internal aspects of religion and spirituality is limited in part by the difficulty in defining, measuring and validating constructs that represent such a highly subjective and individualized experience. There exists, accordingly, little empirically derived evidence that might contribute to an understanding of the nature of emotional responses to sacred moments.

The need for greater attention regarding the nature of people’s psychological experience associated with sacred moments becomes particularly apparent when we consider that many individuals believe their inner relationship with the sacred lies at the heart of their spiritual and religious lives. This study describes the development and the initial testing of a sacred emotions scale (SES) which is intended to measure the emotional impact of an individual’s experience of the sacred. The study’s findings provide encouraging evidence for the use of the SES along with its two sub-scales as a measure of the emotions associated with religious and spiritual experiences. The preliminary evidence suggests the presence of a common set of emotional responses to the experience of the sacred separate and distinct from people’s cognitive understanding of their religious beliefs. These results provide support for a more phenomenological definition of people's religious and spiritual lives which deemphasizes distinctions due to religious beliefs and affiliations. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

The Sacred ...... 1

Emotional Responses ...... 3

Present Study ...... 5

Rudolf Otto ...... 6

Research on Religion and Emotion...... 11

Sacred Emotions Scale (SES) ...... 15

Content and Structure of SES ...... 15

Correlating Factors...... 17

Rational and Non-Rational Thinking ...... 18

Religious Orientation ...... 19

Personality Factors ...... 20

Religious Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction ...... 21

METHODOLOGY ...... 23

Participants ...... 23

Method ...... 24

Sample Characteristics...... 25

Measures ...... 26

Sacred Emotions Scale...... 26

Rational-Experiential Inventory – 40...... 27

Measure of Personality ...... 28 v

Religious Orientation Scale (ROS)...... 29

The Spiritual Well-Being Scale ...... 29

The Satisfaction with Life Scale...... 30

Statistical Analyses ...... 30

Data Analysis ...... 30

Factor Analysis ...... 30

Regression Analysis...... 31

RESULTS ...... 32

Data Review ...... 32

Exploratory Factor Analysis ...... 33

Internal Consistency and Descriptive Statistics...... 36

T-TESTs and ANOVAs...... 38

Correlational and Regression Analyses ...... 39

Responses to Open-Ended Questions about the Sacred Experience...... 43

Sacred encounters involving a deity ...... 44

Sacred encounters not involving a deity...... 44

Sacred encounters that occurred during religious practices...... 44

Sacred encounters that did not occur during religious practices...... 44

DISCUSSION ...... 46

Limitations and Future Directions ...... 56

Conclusion ...... 58

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 60

APPENDIX A. MECHANICAL TURK SCREENING PAGE ...... 84 vi

APPENDIX B. SACRED EMOTIONS SCALE...... 85

APPENDIX C. INSTRUCTRIONS FOR RECALLING A SACRED ENCOUNTER...... 87

APPENDIX D. ENCOUNTER DETAIL QUESTIONS, AFTER

LEVINE ET AL. (2009) ...... 88

APPENDIX E. RATIONAL-EXPERIENTIAL INVENTORY...... 90

APPENDIX F. BIG FIVE INVENTORY (JOHN ET AL., 1991) ...... 92

APPENDIX G. THE SATISFACTION WITH LIFE SCALE

(SWLS; DIENER ET AL., 1985) ...... 93

APPENDIX H. EXTRINSIC/INTRINSIC RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION SCALE

(GORSUCH & MCPHERSON, 1989) ...... 94

APPENDIX I. QUEST ORIENTATION SCALE (BATSON & SCHOENRADE, 1991) .. 95

APPENDIX J. HSRB APPROVAL LETTER...... 96 vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 Summary of sample characteristics...... 72

2 Summary of religious characteristics of sample...... 73

3 Factor loadings and communalities ...... 74

4 Final factor items ...... 76

5 Descriptive statistics ...... 78

6 Scale correlations...... 80

7 Regression analyses ...... 81 1

INTRODUCTION

The Sacred

The concept of the sacred lies at the heart of the human experience of the divine. People often view their inner relationship with what they perceive as sacred as the essence of their spiritual and religious lives. This thesis will examine whether there are specific emotions that typify the affective component of individuals’ psychological experience of the sacred. This attempt to understand the nature of people’s affective experiences of the sacred will focus on people’s perception of the sacred. It is in no way an effort to determine the nature of the divine and makes no ontological assumptions about the sacred. This thesis will propose and test an empirically derived construct and self-report measure representing a specific combination of emotions that arise from individuals’ encounters with the sacred.

Scholars and researchers have often become mired in debates over a definition of the sacred that could satisfy the multiple and diverse theoretical and theological perspectives regarding the nature of the divine and people’s spiritual lives. Many individuals view the sacred as one and the same as the divine, while other individuals may think of the sacred in a broader way that includes special objects, places and actions which are imbued with the quality of the divine. Both concepts of the sacred are valid since they each characterize a special understanding and relationship between an individual and the divine.

Considerable attention has been devoted to the role of the sacred in people’s lives.

Psychological research has made significant inroads toward understanding how people use 2 religion and spirituality to establish goals and find meaning in their lives (Emmons, 2005). For example, the meaning people find through their familial relationships may be tied to their experience of the sacred (DeMaris, Mahoney, & Pargament, 2010; Pargament, & Mahoney,

2005; Mahoney, Pargament, Murray-Swank, Murray-Swank, 2003). Since some individuals view marriage as a relationship imbued with a sacred element, the impact of divorce may involve not only a loss of human love, it may also represent a spiritual loss for them (Krumei, Mahoney,

& Pargament, 2009). The role of the sacred in an individual’s life can also influence his or her mental and physical health. For example, individuals who cultivate and reflect on sacred moments are better able to manage the effects of stress (Goldstein, 2007) and, conversely, desecration of the sacred in a person’s life has been associated with poorer health outcomes

(Pargament, Magyar, Benore, & Mahoney, 2005). The influence of the sacred also extends beyond the individual by representing a defining aspect of a community (Pargament, 2008).

Very few studies, however, have examined people’s psychological or inward experience of the sacred. Such experiences of the sacred, while they may occur in the presence of external or observable sacred or non-sacred stimuli, are an inherently internal phenomenon. They represent the emotions, perceptions, and cognitions that make up people’s inner, psychological experience of spirituality and religion. The need for greater attention regarding the nature of people’s inner encounters with the sacred becomes particularly apparent when we consider that many individuals believe their inner relationship with the sacred lies at the heart of their spiritual and religious lives. 3

Many individuals at some point in their life have experienced an intense encounter with the sacred. Numerous accounts of individuals’ sacred experiences have been documented. The

Religious Experience Research Centre, founded in 1969 by marine biologist Alister Hardy, alone has amassed an archive of over 6,000 personal descriptions of spiritual encounters (Rankin,

2008). Anecdotal accounts of sacred experiences abound in sacred texts as well as in biographical and hagiographical treatments of the lives of holy men and women.

The scientific study of the nature of people’s relationship with the sacred is challenging.

Research on the internal aspects of religion and spirituality is limited in part by the difficulty in defining, measuring and validating constructs that represent such a highly subjective and individualized experience. Part of this challenge may stem from the fact that the meaning of “the sacred” can vary dramatically between people. If researchers were to ask people to define their relationship with the sacred, they may very well receive as many diverging descriptions as there are individuals. Differences in ideologies, practices, and social and cultural values complicate the task of defining the common elements of the internal experience of the sacred. Psychological research, however, has demonstrated that it is not necessary to fully understand the object of a person’s attention to assess how that person is affected by it emotionally, cognitively, or physically.

Emotional Responses

The goal of this research is to develop a measure that assesses individuals’ emotional experience of the sacred. Psychological research has shown that many emotions are experienced similarly by people from around the world (Ekman, 1993; Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2002). 4

Research in the psychology of religion has shown that individuals’ encounters with the sacred are often characterized by a strong emotional response. A psychological measure that captures a distinctive human response to encounters with the sacred, defined in emotional terms, would facilitate empirical research of these experiences.

What emotions then are central to a person’s experience of the sacred? Pargament’s

(2007) three core sacred qualities consisting of transcendence, boundlessness, and ultimacy encapsulate many of the main cognitive and perceptual appraisals people associate with their experience of the divine. Pargament goes on to describe how the experience of the sacred is also associated with distinctive emotions. He notes that, if we were to stand at the edge of a cliff and behold the sight of the Grand Canyon, it would not be hard to imagine experiencing feelings of awe, wonder, and amazement, or perhaps be filled with emotions of joy and gratitude. The fact that people associate these types of positive feelings with their encounters of the sacred is well documented in the literature. What has received less attention in research is how the same sacred experience can also be characterized by negative emotions. It is often difficult for people to identify or understand situations that are characterized by conflicting emotions. However, if we again picture ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking a spectacular canyon it is not hard to imagine that along with awe and wonder there might also be fears of falling, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness or a feeling of angst as we realize our physical smallness.

The emotional incongruity that characterizes people’s experiences of the sacred has been observed by Cohen, Gruber, and Keltner (2010). They conducted a study where they compared the emotional ratings of individuals who had experienced profound beauty to those of individuals 5 who had experienced a transformative spiritual experience. The two experiences were similarly rated in terms of positive emotions (e.g. happiness, gratitude, calm) and cognitive appraisals

(connection to others, understanding). However, transformative spiritual experiences were differentiated by higher ratings of more negative feelings such as sadness, confusion, and relief.

Cohen et al.’s findings support the view that spiritual and religious experiences may often be associated with difficult emotions and negative life experiences (Pargament, 2007).

Defining encounters with the sacred as a unique psychological experience should not be confused as an attempt to reduce all of religion and spirituality to a handful of psychological variables. To do so would amount to losing sight of the forest for the trees. In addition to being infinite, boundless, and transcendent, religious experiences are quite specific to the individual.

Nevertheless, there are psychological factors that may distinguish religious experiences from other human experiences.

Present Study

In the present study, I developed a scale that is intended to measure the emotional experience of the sacred building upon the work of Rudolf Otto. Otto’s seminal work Das

Heilige (The Nature of the Holy, 2003) has particularly influenced the study of the psychology of religion. He was the first scholar to present a theoretical framework for the affective experience that characterizes individuals’ encounters with the sacred.

The following introduction will (1) summarize Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous;

(2) review other significant works on religion and emotions; (3) present an overview of a 6 proposed scale measuring people’s affective experience of the sacred; and (4) present hypotheses on the correlates of the scale and its sub-factors.

Rudolf Otto

The sacred emotions scale that was developed in this study builds on the work of the early 20th century philosopher and Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto. Otto presented his theory of religion in an influential book entitled Das Heilige (1917) which was translated into English as

The Idea of the Holy (1923). His seminal work introduced a novel and original perspective on the study of religion and spirituality. Otto sought to break with the tradition of scholarly work on the nature of the sacred that examined how people related externally to God and to religion. He focused instead on understanding the ways in which people experienced the sacred psychologically since he conceptualized religion as an autonomous human activity that exists in response to a transcendental power.

Prior to Otto’s work, the holy had traditionally been viewed as denoting something

“completely good” or something representing an ideal moral goodness. Otto used the term

“numinous” (from numen, the Latin word for god) to redefine the concept of the holy as a representation of the divine and incomprehensible power that lies at the core of the sacred. He characterized the essence of the religious experience as the emotions evoked by the presence of the sacred. Otto believed that the numinous was primarily experienced by people not as a philosophical abstraction, but as something real and objective. 7

Otto characterized an encounter with the sacred as first and foremost an emotional state with a distinctively unique and specific nature. Quoting William James who described this feeling as a “sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call

‘something there’” (cited in Otto, 1923, p.11), Otto made the observation that people experienced the numinous as simultaneously real and yet ineffable. Otto also recognized that the numinous essentially defied rational thought. Since an encounter with the sacred or the numinous transcends the reality of human experience, its nature “can only be suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of feeling” (Otto, p.12). Otto described the aspect of the sacred that lies beyond human understanding as the mysterium. He explained the human response to the sacred as a two-factor schema comprised of aspects of the mysterium.

The mysterium evokes the human awareness that the divine is something radically different and wholly other (ganz andere) than ourselves. The mysterium is “that which is hidden and esoteric, that which is beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar”

(Otto, p.13). The element of the sacred “which is beyond conception” presents a considerable challenge for researchers attempting to operationalize it as a psychological construct. Comparing aspects of the sacred with the profane becomes difficult since the emotions evoked by encounters with the sacred cannot be readily compared with the emotions that people experience in everyday life. The love a person feels for another person is different from the love that arises from an experience of the sacred. The qualities of boundlessness, timelessness and transcendence associated with the sacred transform feelings of love into something else. As Otto noted, “mere love, mere trust, for all the glory and happiness they bring, do not explain to us that moment of 8 rapture that breathes in our tenderest and most heart-felt hymns of salvation” (Otto, 1923, p.34).

The inherently ineffable nature of the sacred so completely exposes the limitations of mundane human language and thoughts that people tend to use analogies and images to evoke their emotional experience of the sacred. Allegory and imagery that convey the complex emotional experience of the sacred abound in religious texts. Since the nature of the sacred is inherently ineffable, Otto chose to describe people’s encounters with the sacred in terms of human emotions.

Otto theorized that encounters with the sacred evoke a deeply ambivalent emotional experience. He believed that this experience consisted of a mixture of strongly positive and negative perceptions. Otto defined this dialectical nature of the human response to the sacred as the mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinums. The mysterium tremendum emphasizes the awe-inspiring and overwhelming presence of a divine power. The feeling of awe that characterizes Otto’s concept of the tremendum is more emotionally complex than the intense feeling of wonder that arises from a spectacular display of nature’s beauty and power or from a singular human achievement. The feeling of profound awe associated with the experience of the sacred is intertwined with a uniquely religious sense of dread. This feeling of religious dread not only reflects the terror of the unknown but also the horror of facing something that defies our understanding of reality.

The truly ‘mysterious’ object is beyond our apprehension and

comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain 9

irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something

inherently ‘wholly other’, whose kind and character are

incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore

recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb. (Otto, 1923, p.28)

Otto’s religious dread also includes human existential fear. Awareness of the absolute overpowering nature of the numinous inspires a realization of one’s relative powerlessness. Otto believed that the cognitive self-abasement which accompanied this sensation evoked both feelings of religious humility and fears of annihilation of the self. The mysterium fascinans, the compelling attraction to a spiritual power that underlies humanity’s enduring fascination with the divine, comprises the counterpart to the mysterium tremendum. People may be drawn toward wondrous phenomena of the mundane world that they find attractive and appealing. The potent allure of the sacred is more complex since it encompasses both a compelling desire to move closer toward the divine despite the overwhelming feelings of fear and dread that inspire the urge to run away. Otto ascribes the divine’s magnetic power of attraction for a person to the fact that:

The ‘mystery’ is for him not merely something to be wondered at

but something that entrances him; and beside that in it which

bewilders and confounds, he feels a something that captivates and

transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often enough to

the pitch of dizzy intoxication; it is the Dionysiac element in the

numen. (Otto, 1923, p.30). 10

This “Dionysiac element” represents the intensely positive emotions that characterize religious joy and rapture, the feelings of divine love, and the transcendent feelings of spiritual enlightenment, salvation, and revelation.

Otto’s conceptualization of the holy (which in German holds the dual meaning of the

“sacred”) attempted to encompass a universal perspective of spirituality. Using the holy as an inclusive noun referring to the object of human religiosity enabled him to encompass all religious communities and traditions. Otto’s work created a foundation for a psychological interpretation of the emotional factors that underlie the experience of the sacred. His dialectical conceptualization of the religious encounter in terms of the mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinums effectively characterizes it as a unique and distinctive psychological experience. “One does not kneel before a cyclone or the blind forces of nature, nor even before Omnipotence merely as such. But one does kneel before the wholly uncomprehended Mystery, revealed yet unrevealed, and one’s soul is stilled by feeling the way of its working, and therein its justification” (Otto, 1923, p.84). Identifying patterns of feelings that correspond to the distinct emotional responses evoked by the mysterium aspect of the divine may help researchers to distinguish sacred encounters from other types of psychological experiences.

Religion has always been associated with profound and intense emotions. Theologians such as Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) believed that emotion constituted the foundation of religious experience. William James, who placed emotion at the center of his conceptualization of religion, insisted “on rehabilitating the element of feeling 11 in religion” (James, 1902). The academic discipline of psychology of religion, however, has produced strikingly little research on the emotional dimension of religion (Emmons, 2005).

Research on Religion and Emotion

Scholars have advocated two primary methods for studying the relationship between religion and emotion. Some have favored a more phenomenological approach to analyzing the influence of religious experiences on emotions (Arnold, 1960; Hood, 1995;Watts 1996). Hill and

Hood (1999) postulated that the experience of the sacred is “largely affective”. Other scholars emphasized examining the ways in which emotions and cognitions interact to form the basis for the religious experience (O’Connor, 1996; Pyysiainen, 2001; Azari & Birnbacher, 2004). Very few scholars, however, have actually put their theoretical prescriptions into practice (Emmons,

2005A).

Researchers have investigated specific aspects of the relationship between emotion and religion. Anxious attachment to God has been found to predict negative affect and to inversely predict positive affect (Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002). Religious behaviors appear to moderate the ability to self-regulate moods and emotions (Thayer et al., 1994, McCullough & Willoughby,

2009). Adopting spiritual strivings – goals that are oriented toward a pursuit of the sacred – appear to be associated with higher positive affect than other types of life goals (Emmons

2005B). Religiosity also moderates the relationship between positive affect and meaning in life

(Hicks & King, 2008). Saroglou et al. (2008) found that positive emotions can lead to an increase in religiousness and spirituality.

Hood et al. (2009) pointedly noted that much of the research investigating the relationship between religious or spiritual experiences and emotion has focused on positive 12 emotions. They ascribed this phenomenon primarily to the use of biased methodologies adopted by “persons committed to a positive assessment of religious and spiritual experience” (Hood et al., 2009). Spilka and McIntosh (1995) suggested that religious believers generally attribute to the divine only experiences that produce positive outcomes. The existence of an extensive literature investigating the relationship between religion and health and well-being may also partially account for this phenomenon. Fredrickson (2002) indicated that positive emotions may constitute one of the “active ingredients” that account for the benefits that religious practices confer on mental and physical health. Exline (2002) provided an important counterargument by suggesting that the scientific study of religion devote greater attention to negative emotions.

A small number of studies have examined how religion is associated with specific emotions. McCullough et al. (2002) found that measures of gratitude as a disposition correlated positively with measures of religiousness and spirituality. Watkins et al. (2003) reported that feelings of gratitude correlated positively with intrinsic religiousness and negatively with extrinsic religiousness. Snyder at al. (2002) suggested that the emotion of hope, as it arises from an involvement with religion, helps explain the link between religion and health.

Psychologists have paid very little attention to understanding why certain religious experiences “are intensely affectual” (Hill, 1999). Despite the extensive theological and philosophical writings on this topic, little research has examined how religious experiences – in particular sacred experiences – give rise to specific emotions such as awe and fascination.

Wettstein (1997) explored the idea that awe lies at the core of the Judaic religious life by reviewing religious texts and practices. Keltner and Haidt (2003) developed a novel conceptual approach to awe – a construct that had been essentially ignored in the field of emotion research - in part because “awe is central to the experience of religion”. Sundurarajan (2003) concluded her 13 critical review of Keltner and Haidt’s conceptual approach by suggesting that their model’s overly secular character rendered it inapplicable to conducting empirical research on religious awe. Keltner and Haidt’s model of awe has, to-date, only been applied in a study examining the influence of the emotion of awe on cognitions (Shiota et al., 2007).

Three studies have provided limited insights into the relationship between religious experiences and prototypical religious emotions, such as awe. Van Cappelen and Saroglou

(2012) in a study of 133 Belgian college students of Christian faith found that the emotion of awe activated feelings that depend on the specific dimension of faith and spirituality. The induction of awe activated feelings of oneness with friends for participants who scored high on connectedness while individuals who scored high on universality experienced increased feelings of oneness with people in general. Cohen et al. (2010) conducted a study comparing the emotions expressed in narratives about spiritual transformation with those found in narratives about experiences of great beauty supplied by 147 American college students. Their findings, suggested that negatively valenced emotions such as anxiety, sadness, pain, and awe “are central to religious and spiritual experiences.” In particular, they noted that their participants commonly mentioned awe. Kohls et al. (2008) tested whether an “Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire” could reliably distinguish between spiritual and psychopathological experiences. Their study, which was based on data collected from 711 German and Swiss participants recruited from various spiritual and religious groups, was primarily concerned with designing research tools for investigating exceptional experiences. While documenting their conclusion that their instrument could successfully separate spiritual from psychopathological experiences, Kohls et al. mentioned that its psychometric properties indicated spiritual experiences are generally 14 characterized by a mixture of positive spiritual experiences and negative emotions connected with ego loss.

Kohls et al.’s (2008) reported pattern of positive spiritual experiences and ego loss accorded with the findings reported by Hood (1975) in his seminal work on mysticism. Hood developed an innovative measurement tool to discern the extent to which an individual’s experience may be considered to be “mystical”. His 32 item scale consisted of two major factors: a “general mysticism” factor; and a “religious quality” factor. Hood suggested that the general mysticism factor may be best conceptualized as a measure of an individual’s capacity for

“intense experiences”. Since Hood believed that mysticism constituted only one type of intense experience, his religious quality factor referred to the “sacredness” of the individual’s intense experience.

Scholars have traditionally closely associated mysticism with religion. Some theorists have argued that mysticism merely constitutes one of several types of religious experiences

(Yandell 1993, 2010), while others have characterized mystical experiences as a perception of the divine or communion with the sacred (Wainwright, 1981; Alston, 1992; Kripal, 2006). Hood

(2001) defined mysticism as a psychological state resulting from an individual’s union with a transcendental force. He suggested that this transformative experience was characterized by a feeling of “ego loss” and could occur due to a union with God as well as with non-theistic or non-religious forces (Hood, 1989).

The Sacred Emotions Scale (SES), that was developed in this study, differs from Hood’s mysticism scale in several important ways. The mysticism scale was intended to measure the intense sensations and cognitions that characterize an individual’s experience of altered 15 consciousness. The SES is intended to measure the emotional impact of an individual’s experience of the sacred. Although Hood (2001) acknowledges that mystical experiences may not necessarily be positive, his scale does not contain any items measuring negative affect.

Moreover, the mysticism scale is primarily composed of cognitive and perceptual items, and contains a limited number of emotional items. While the SES is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of all the emotions a person could experience when encountering the sacred, it does attempt to measure the emotions theorized to be particularly characteristic of an experience of the sacred.

The Sacred Emotions Scale (SES)

This proposed study focuses on the emotions associated with sacred encounters. The content of sacred texts, the writings of religious figures, and documented accounts of ordinary people’s varied experiences suggest that encounters with the sacred are characterized by distinctive emotional responses. There exists, however, little empirically derived evidence that might contribute to an understanding of the nature of this emotional experience. My thesis proposes that people’s affective experiences of the sacred can be understood using the dimensions of awe and fascination. More specifically, this study describes the development of a sacred emotions scale (SES) that draws upon the work of Rudolf Otto and other theorists.

Content and Structure of SES. Rudolf Otto’s conceptualization of the mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinans provides an excellent foundation for investigating the distinctive mixture of positive and negative emotions that characterizes people’s perceptions of their sacred experiences. Using this foundation, I have developed a two dimensional self-report measure of emotions elicited by encounters with the sacred. The Sacred Awe dimension 16 represents the feelings of awe, anxiety (dread), humility, unworthiness, reverence, fear of the unknown, and existential fear associated with encounters with the sacred. The Sacred

Fascination dimension represents intense feelings of fascination, attraction, curiosity, and intense positive affect (which may be experienced as a profound feeling of love, spiritual bliss or enthrallment), and awareness. My thesis research will attempt to test the validity of this measure.

People have a basic set of emotions that make up their emotional vocabulary. The SES is designed to measure the distinctive and complex combination of emotions that characterize encounters with the sacred. The scale is made up of a combination of items that measure emotions directly as well as the desire to perform actions that are associated with those emotions.

The scale accordingly includes a number of items that are descriptions of actions that may be associated with certain religious feelings. For example, the item “I felt I should fall to my knees” describes a behavior that may reflect the feelings of awe, reverence, inferiority and fear. In the case of the sacred, actions may very well speak louder than words. Including items in the scale that measure the desire to perform such behaviors may offer the advantage of representing a complex mixture of emotions that would be difficult to capture using a traditional inventory of emotions. Religious texts and rituals as well as accounts of religious experiences provide evidence that people commonly have a number of specific behavioral reactions when they encounter the sacred. The work of numerous scholars across various academic disciplines also supports the existence of a collection of universally performed behavioral responses to the sacred which has endured the passage of time. Mircea Eliade (1959), in his seminal work “The Sacred and Profane”, theorized that the development of particular religious behaviors represented people’s innate awareness that the divine differs fundamentally from the profane nature of humanity and of the earthly realm. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, Moses removed his shoes 17 when he saw the burning bush and became aware that he was of standing on holy ground. The removal of shoes (a profane object), the act of looking away or shielding one’s eyes, the covering of the body, face, and hair, kneeling and bowing are all actions that may be performed in reaction to the sacred. These actions appear to be motivated and accompanied by the emotional response of religious awe. Similarly, “Reaching out with my hands open upwards”, “Looking up at the sky”, “Giving thanks” or “Singing out loud” are behaviors that may accompany an experience of spiritual entrancement, joy, happiness, and enlightenment that comprise aspects of the fascination dimension. These acts of reverence are often reserved for the sacred. Earthly objects, acts of nature, animals and people are not usually afforded the same type of behavioral or emotional response unless people happen to regard them as a manifestation of the sacred or as a conduit for the divine. For instance, the custom of kneeling or prostrating one’s self before a leader or a monarch stems from the belief that kings and rulers were divinely appointed and/or were embodiments or instruments of the sacred’s power.

Correlating Factors. Otto, theologian that he was, did not attempt to construct a psychological explanation regarding whether and how the emotional experience elicited by an encounter with the numinous might vary between individuals or what such variations might imply. He did not indicate whether experiences of the sacred were characterized by a particular mixture, intensity, or duration of fascinans and tremendum emotions, nor did he specify whether the emotional experience was qualitatively similar for all individuals in all situations. While

Otto speculated in passing that an individual whose affective experience of the sacred consisted primarily of feelings of awe and dread would have a religious life that was centered around the

“expiation”, “propitiation”, and “appeasement” of a fearsome god, he did not present a theory 18 regarding how a person’s emotional experience of the numinous might relate to other factors that characterized their life or personality.

The links between individual differences in peoples’ personalities, thinking styles, their attitude toward their spiritual lives, and the types of emotional responses elicited by the sacred have not been investigated. My thesis research will examine whether overall scores on the SES and its sub-dimensions of awe and fascination that characterize an encounter with the sacred differ between individuals in a systematic way. Specifically, this study will investigate whether correlations exist between scores on the SES and individual differences in the need for rational thinking, religious orientation, personality, as well as general life satisfaction and psychological well-being.

Rational and Non-Rational Thinking. The design of the sacred emotions scale is predicated on a number of theoretical assumptions regarding how people perceive the sacred.

The notion that the sacred transcends the limits of human comprehension and is therefore inherently non-rational constitutes the most important of these assumptions. Otto emphatically and repeatedly points out throughout Das Heilige that the numinous defies conceptualization and that people’s reactions to it are not inherently rational. He did not intend, however, to suggest that the sacred is irrational – something which is foolish and conceptually without merit. Otto was specifically cautioning that the scientific world’s “bias to rationalization” can lead to a mindset which fails to grasp the “heart of the religious experience” (Otto, 1923, p.3) because it over-intellectualizes religion. Otto believed that the ability to accept the existence of the non- rational is integral to people’s ability to comprehend the nature of the numinous. 19 An ability to cognitively accept the existence of the non-rational may influence how people experience the sacred. According to Seymour Epstein’s (1994) cognitive-experiential self-theory of perception, individuals appear to have two fundamentally different modes of processing information: an analytical-rational thinking style and an intuitive-experiential thinking style. Epstein et al. (1996) developed and validated a Rational-Experiential Inventory

(REI) that used a Need for Cognition scale and a Faith in Intuition scale to measure these two processing modes. Pacini and Epstein (1999) updated the REI in order to more effectively relate rational and experiential thinking styles to various aspects of an individual’s personality.

Individual differences in cognitive processing styles may shape affective experiences of the sacred. If the nature of the sacred defies rational comprehension, it is possible that individuals with a high preference for processing information in a rational way will experience the sacred differently from individuals who prefer to rely on their intuition and feelings to inform them about their experiences. Specifically, it is hypothesized that individuals with a highly rational processing style will score lower on the sacred emotions scale since they may tend to interpret their experience of the sacred in more factual and rational terms than in terms of their emotions. People with a more experiential information processing style are expected to have a higher overall score on the sacred emotions scale since they may tend to understand their experience of the sacred in terms of their emotions.

Religious Orientation. Religious orientation – the motivating reasons behind people’s religious behaviors – may also influence how people experience the sacred emotionally.

Allport’s (1950) theory of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations (which was later elaborated upon by Allport and Ross (1967), Gorsuch and Venable (1983), and by Gorsuch and

McPherson (1989)) along with Batson and Ventis’ (1982) quest orientation have dominated the 20 conceptualization of religious motivation in the psychology of religion field. A person with an extrinsic religious orientation views religious life as a means to achieving goals that are not related to spiritual fulfillment. People with an extrinsic orientation may, for example, value their religious and spiritual life as a means of developing friends or enhancing their social status. An intrinsic religious orientation reflects an integration of an individual’s religious or spiritual beliefs and values with his or her identity. An individual with an intrinsic orientation will be motivated to achieve his or her spiritual goals because his or her spiritual life is inherently rewarding. The quest orientation measures the extent to which a person’s spiritual and religious goals are tied to a pursuit for answers to existential questions. Batson and Ventis (1982) identified three aspects of this orientation: 1. A desire and a willingness to address complex existential questions; 2. Openness to change in one’s life; 3. A belief that religious doubt can be positive.

The emotional experience of the sacred fundamentally constitutes an intensely internal experience that takes place within an individual’s inner psychic realm. This suggests that individuals who score higher on the overall sacred emotions scale are more likely to have a higher intrinsic orientation and a lower extrinsic orientation. The sacred awe factor contains a number of items that reflect existential fears and conflict. Since individuals who score higher on quest orientation are motivated to explore and to answer existential questions, it seems likely that they will have higher sacred awe scores.

Personality Factors. Personality factors that relate to an individual’s ability to process the non-rational may correlate with scores on the sacred emotions scale. Since the scale measures emotional experience, it may also correlate with personality factors that reflect an individual’s emotional nature. Research in the psychology of religion field has shown little correlation 21 between the five factor model of personality traits and overall religious orientation (Robbins et al., 2010). Aspects of the big five personality factors, however, may correspond to the specific types of emotional reactions people experience in sacred encounters.

Openness to experience represents the extent to which creativity, intellectual curiosity and a desire to seek out novel experiences constitutes a part of an individual’s personality.

Openness to experience has been found to significantly positively correlate with an intuitive thinking style (Witteman et al., 2009). Since an individual’s cognitive processing style may significantly affect his emotional response to sacred encounters, it is expected that individuals who score high on the SES will also be high on openness to experience. Individuals that score high on the neuroticism factor are more likely to experience a high degree of emotional lability, worry, guilt, and anxiety. Insofar as encounters with the sacred are characterized by strong and often conflicting emotions, individuals who are high on neuroticism may have a higher score on both the sacred awe and the sacred fascination subscales.

Religious Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction. Studies of individuals from a wide range of populations have also demonstrated that religious and spiritual satisfaction correlate with life satisfaction (Ayela, Mulligan, Gheorghiu, & Reyes-Ortiz, 1999; Bienenfeld, Koenig, Larson, &

Sherrill, 1997; Kinney & Coyle, 1992; Levin, Chatters, & Taylor, 1995) and with psychological well-being (Bosworth, Park, McQuoid, Hays, & Steffens, 2003; Mela, Marcoux, Baetz, Griffin,

Angelski, & Deqiang, 2008). If one of the main ways a person psychologically experiences religion is through his or her emotions, then it is possible that the intensity and nature of a person’s emotional experience of the sacred may closely reflect his or her levels of religious or spiritual satisfaction. Specifically, it is hypothesized that the sacred awe factor will negatively correlate with religious satisfaction, life satisfaction and measures of psychological adjustment 22 while the sacred fascination factor will positively correlate with religious satisfaction, life satisfaction, and measures of psychological adjustment. 23 METHODOLOGY

Participants

The proposed study recruited 230 adult participants (18 years or older) who identified themselves as having had a personal encounter with the sacred. Participants were screened to ensure that they were residents of the United States, indicated that English is their native language, and chose an encounter with the sacred from among a list of past personal experiences.

Because the SES is faith neutral and makes no assumptions about the nature of the sacred, the study was open to individuals of all religious and spiritual beliefs as well as cultural backgrounds. Participants received $0.75 for taking part in the study.

Participants were recruited from Mechanical Turk, an online crowd-sourcing work forum.

Mechanical Turk, which was created by and is managed by Amazon.com, is an internet-based forum where individuals or companies can post job assignments that can be performed remotely or online. Job assignments tend to be very short tasks that can be completed within a span of a few minutes to 24hours. The difficulty of the tasks range from simple categorization tasks that require no formal education or skills training to more specialized tasks such as writing, editing, translation work, writing short computer programs. This forum is also extensively used by academic and corporate researchers to recruit participants to complete online surveys or computer-based experiments. At any given time, the forum will list several thousand job tasks or research study postings which can be accessed by an estimated 500,000 online workers.

The Mechanical Turk workforce is made up of individuals from a diverse range of racial, cultural, social-economic, and educational backgrounds. Members of the Mechanical Turk workforce are not obligated to complete job assignments, can refuse to participate or cease to 24 participate in a job task or research study without penalty. A recent analysis assessing the validity of experiments performed using Mechanical Turk found that “respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples” (Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012). The identities and personal information of

Mechanical Turk workers are protected by Amazon.com and are not available to researchers or employers. Amazon.com collects a fee from the employer or researcher which is equivalent to

1% of the total dollar amount of compensation that a worker-participant receives for completing a job task. Worker-participant compensation is deposited directly into the worker-participant’s personal Amazon.com Payments Account via Amazon.com’s secure internet payments system.

Mechanical Turk workers-participants are not obligated to compensate Amazon.com in any way to access assignments from the Mechanical Turk website or to participate in any job or research assignment.

Method

Participants from the Mechanical Turk website were screened for eligibility to ensure that only individuals who have actually experienced an encounter with the sacred took part in the study. The initial Mechanical Turk web-posting invited individuals who were interested in participating in a “study examining people’s emotions about important life events” to indicate from a list of 10 different items which specific life events they have experienced (See Appendix

A). Two of the 10 items that were written by me specifically for this study reflect an encounter with the sacred. Individuals who selected one of these two items (“Experienced the presence of

God or other divine force.” and “Had a profound spiritual or sacred experience.”) were transferred to the main study website with a detailed description of the study. Participants were not asked to respond to a broader question – such as “Had a profound experience” – to attempt to 25 ensure that they described a religious or spiritual experience rather than an aesthetic or a social experience. Participants initially read and agreed to the terms presented on the informed consent page. They were then asked to recall a moment from their past when they personally experienced an encounter with the sacred. Using an adaptation of Levine et al.’s (2002) Autobiographical

Memory Protocol (See Appendix C), participants were asked to provide a written description of their sacred experience. They were prompted to describe specific details of their experience

(Appendix D), including the time and place of the event and any physical sensations, emotions or cognitions that they experienced. Participants were also asked to provide a subjective rating of how clearly they remembered their sacred encounter, how much their emotional state changed during the encounter, the importance of the event to their life then and now, and how often they think or talk about the event. After recalling their sacred experienced, participants were then asked to complete the Sacred Emotions Scale (Appendix B), the Rational-Experiential Inventory

(Appendix E) , the Religious Orientation Scale, the Big Five Inventory (Appendix F), as well as a number of demographic questions and questions about their spiritual beliefs.

Sample Characteristics

A total of 230 participants, all of whom were over 18 years of age, completed the study on the Mechanical Turk platform. The sample was primarily Caucasian (83.0%), female

(66.4%), and Christian (70.4%). Because individuals were given the option of endorsing more than one ethnic category, the breakdown of ethnic backgrounds sums to more than 100%: 8.5% of the participants identified themselves as Latino or Hispanic, 7.8% as African-American or

Black, 5.1% as Asian or Pacific Islander while the remaining ethnic categories aggregated to

5.2% of the sample. A review of the religious affiliation data revealed the following denominational affiliations for the Christian participants: Protestant, Roman Catholic, as well as 26 the following breakdown for the non-Christian participants: Buddhist (2.2%), Jewish (1.3%),

Muslim (0.4%), Hindu (0.4%), Other (7.4%), Spiritual (7.8%), Atheist/Agnostic (5.2%), and none (4.8%). The participants who identified themselves as atheists, agnostics or as having no religious beliefs were grouped into a category (10.0%) of non-believers for subsequent analyses.

Participants were generally highly-educated: 64.8% of the participants described themselves as having either partially or fully completed a college level degree while another

11.9% indicated they had completed a graduate level course or degree. 15.3% of the participants had obtained a high school diploma, 5.2% had received a technical college or trade school education while only 1.5% had partially completed high school. A breakdown of income levels revealed a wide range of annual earnings: 30.9% of the participants reported earning less than

$25,000 per annum, 30.3% made between $25,000 to $49,999, 21.4% earned between $50,000 to

$74,999, 11.0% indicated that they earned between $75,000 to $100,000, and 6.4% reported an annual income of greater than $100,000. The majority of participants reported being married

(39.8%) or living with a romantic partner (16.0%). A significant groups of participants indicated being single (33.0%) with the remaining participants 10.2% identifying themselves as being divorced (10.2%), widowed (1.2%), or endorsing other relationship status (1.7%). (See Tables 1

& 2 for a summary of sample characteristics.)

Measures

Sacred Emotions Scale. The proposed Sacred Emotions Scale (SES) is a 48 item self- report scale intended to measure an individual’s emotional response to a personal encounter with the sacred. The SES consists of 2 subscales, Sacred Awe (SA) and Sacred Fascination (SF), representing two collections of emotions that are hypothesized to be distinctive to people’s 27 psychological experience of the sacred. The SA and SF subscales each consist of 24 items for a total of 48 items. The initial SES items were inspired by Rudolf Otto’s concepts of the mysterium tremendum, and the mysterium fascinum. The items that make up the SA subscale reflect the mixture of fear, respect, and dread that Otto called the mysterium tremendum. The SF subscale encompasses the feelings of overwhelming curiosity and emotional ecstasy reflected in the concept of the mysterium fascinum. The SA subscale consists of 16 statements describing emotions consistent with an experience of religious awe (e.g. “I felt like I could cease to exist.”;

“I felt humble.”) and 8 items describing a behavior that may be performed by a person who is experiencing the emotion of sacred awe (e.g. “Falling to my knees”, “Asking for forgiveness”).

Similarly, the SF subscale consists of 16 statements describing an emotion consistent with an experience of religious fascination (“I wanted to draw closer to my experience”; “I felt that my heart would burst with joy”) and 8 items describing a behavior that may be performed by a person who is experiencing the emotion of sacred fascination (“Singing out loud”, “Reaching out with my hands opened upwards”. Each item on the SES is rated on a 6-point scale (1 = “Not at all”, 6 = “A great deal”). (See Appendix B for a complete list of all the items.) The items were generated by the author of the study using inspiration from two types of sources: the descriptions of emotions associated with religious experiences contained in the works of theorists such as

William James, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade, and the depictions of emotional episodes and associated behaviors in religious texts such as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita.

Rational-Experiential Inventory – 40. The 40 item version of the Rational-Experiential

Inventory (REI-40) was derived from Epstein et al.’s (1996) original 51 item measure of individual differences in the way people process information. Based on Epstein’s Cognitive 28 Experiential Self Theory (CEST; Epstein, 1973), the REI is made up of two subscales – intuitive- experiential and analytical-rational – that are governed by different cognitive decision making rules. The intuitive-experiential subscale represents the degree to which an individual prefers to utilize his or her intuition. The intuitive-experiential subscale also represents the degree to which people prefer to utilize feedback regarding their emotional state to inform their understanding and opinion of their environment. The analytical-rational subscale represents the degree to which individuals assess their environment and events utilizing a more deliberate, systematic, rational and analytical thinking style. The REI-40 consists of 20 items evaluating rationality

(e.g. “I have a logical mind.”; “I enjoy intellectual challenges.”) and 20 items evaluating experientiality (e.g. “I believe in trusting my hunches.”; “I like to rely on my intuitive impressions.”) that are rated on a 5-point scale (where 1 “definitely not true of myself” and 5 =

“definitely true of myself”). (Appendix E)

Measure of Personality. The Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991;

John & Srivastava, 1999; reprinted in Benet-Martínez & John, 1998) is a self-report inventory designed to measure the Big Five dimensions of personality (i.e. openness to experience; conscientiousness; extroversion; neuroticism; agreeableness). The inventory consists of 44 short- phrase items, rated on a five point-scale (1 = “disagree strongly” to 5 “agree strongly”). The final items were determined using an empirical item analysis to represent the main traits of each of the

Big Five domains (John, 1989, 1990). The BFI is widely used for research purposes. Its domain scales have high reliability, significant self-peer agreement, and have shown strong convergence with other longer Big Five measures (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998; John et al., 2008; Soto,

John, Gosling, & Potter, 2008). 29 Religious Orientation Scale (ROS). The revised religious orientation scale (Gorsuch and

McPherson 1989) is a 14 item measure of religious orientation UDWHGRQD¿YH-point Likert scale

(1-‘‘not at all’’ to 5-‘‘very much’’). The ROS measures intrinsic religious orientation and two types of extrinsic religious orientations: personal and social. People who score higher on intrinsic orientation tend to view religion as an end in and of itself while people who score higher on social extrinsic orientation (ESO) tend to view religion as a vehicle to serve social goals. An individual with an extrinsic personal orientation regards religion as a means of fulfilling personal needs such as comfort and relief. Batson and Schoenrade (1991) added a dimension to the concept of religious orientation. The Quest orientation indicates how willing an individual is to question complex ideas. The scale consists of 12 short-phrase items, rated on a seven point-scale

(1 = “disagree strongly” to 7 “agree strongly”). Individuals who score high on quest orientation are open to the exploration of existential questions and leave room for new information as well as ongoing doubts (McFarland & Warren, 1992). Individuals who are quest-oriented seek answers to religious questions without an inclination to fixate on a single “correct” answer

(Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). Psychometric analysis of the quest orientation scale has shown it to be composed of 3 sub-dimensions consisting of 1. Readiness to face existential questions without reducing their complexity; 2. Self-criticism and perception of religious doubt as positive; and, 3. Openness to change (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). (Appendix H)

The Spiritual Well-Being Scale. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS; Paloutzian &

Ellison, 1991) is a general measure of spiritual well-being consisting of 20 items scored on a six- point Likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Half of the SWBS items were designed to measure spiritual well-being from a religious perspective (Religious Well-Being; 30 RWB) and half of the items were created to measure spiritual well-being from an existential perspective (Existential Well-Being, EWB).

The Satisfaction with Life Scale. The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al.,1985) is a measure of global life satisfaction The scale consists of 5 short-phrase items, rated on a seven point-scale (1 = “disagree strongly” to 7 “agree strongly”). Previous research has shown the SWLS to have high internal consistency, high test-retest reliability and moderate to high correlation with other measures of subjective well-being. (See Appendix G)

Statistical Analyses

Data Analysis. The data were examined for completeness and for accuracy of data entry.

There were no missing values since the anonymous Mechanical Turk data entry system ensured that participants needed to fully complete scales, measures, and demographic information while proceeding through the survey. The data were also assessed to determine how well they satisfy the assumptions of multivariate statistical analysis. Statistical tests for non-normalcy were performed and data histograms were examined for visual evidence indicating non-normal distributions. Variables which displayed excessive skewness or kurtosis were transformed to minimize, to the extent possible, any violations of normalcy.

Factor Analysis. A test of sphericity was performed to confirm that the matrix of correlations between the 48 SES scale items is factorable. An exploratory factor analysis was then conducted to determine whether the SES factors into the two hypothesized dimensions.

Factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 produced by a principal components analysis were considered for inclusion in the final model. An inspection of the scree plot and an examination of the extent of cross loading determined the number of factors which seemed to best account for 31 the data variance. While a principal axis factor analysis using an orthogonal VARIMAX rotation makes it easier to interpret the results, a PROMAX algorithm was used because the awe and fascination factors were correlated. The PROMAX algorithm performs an oblique rotation of the factor structure to maximize high loadings and minimize low loadings. Subscales were formed by summing the items on the respective subscale once empirical support for factors was obtained. Coefficient alpha correlation statistics were calculated to determine the internal consistency of each subscale. Scale items with an alpha correlation that exceeded 0.75 were discarded or consolidated.

Regression Analysis. Correlational analyses between demographic factors, the faith variables, and the SES were conducted to determine potential control variables for subsequent regression analyses. Pearson correlations were also conducted to examine the zero-order relationships between the SES and the other variables that have been linked theoretically to the subscales. Separate regression analyses were then performed using the SES and its subscales as the criterion variables. The total SES can serve as a criterion variable since the awe and fascination factors are theorized to be correlated. Demographic and faith control variables were entered into the equations as appropriate. Predictor variables were then entered individually into the multivariate regressions to test the hypothesized relationships between the SES, its subscales, and other variables for which data has been collected. Non-theoretical multivariate models were also constructed to test the predictive power of variables which showed statistically significant correlations with the SES and its subscales. 32 RESULTS

The organization of the results section reflects the order in which the analyses were conducted. The first section addresses the integrity and the completeness of the data variables by reviewing whether the Mechanical Turk website properly captured, stored and transmitted all participant responses. It also analyzes the compliance of the data with the assumptions underlying the techniques of inferential analysis. The second section describes the results of a set of exploratory factor analyses conducted in order to determine whether the proposed scale items represent the theorized factors of Spiritual Awe and Spiritual Fascination. The third section presents descriptive information on the scales created based on the factor analyses. The fourth section presents the results of a series of t-tests and ANOVAs examining whether demographic variables and/or religious denominational affiliation affected participants’ mean responses on the SES scale. The results of correlational and regression analyses examining the relationship between the SES, its sub-scales and the additional measures for which data were collected comprises the fifth section. The final section includes quotes from the open-ended responses to illustrate general themes relating to participants’ sacred experiences.

Data Review

The variables of interest were examined for accuracy, missing values, and compliance with the assumptions of multivariate analysis prior to conducting any statistical analyses. This review confirmed, as expected due to the nature of the data collection process, that none of the measures were missing values. Statistical tests for non-normalcy indicated the presence of statistically significant skewedness and/or kurtosis for the Spiritual Awe and Spiritual

Fascination subscale scores. Inspection of the frequency histograms for these data sets revealed 33 that Spiritual Fascination was moderately negatively skewed and that Spiritual Awe was moderately positively skewed. The data for both these subscales was transformed using the procedures recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007) and Howell (2007). Regressions were performed subsequent to transforming the subscales scores by taking their square root. Since the regressions performed with the transformed variables did not differ substantively from those performed with the untransformed versions of the Spiritual Awe and Spiritual Fascination variables, the reported results reflect the analyses of the untransformed data.

Exploratory Factor Analysis

An exploratory factor analysis was conducted prior to testing the relationship between the

Sacred Experiences Scale, its subscales and other psychological measures of interest. Bartlett’s test of sphericity confirmed that the SES matrix of correlations was factorable. A principal components analysis was used to identify the number of factors. Five factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00 were extracted. Since this criterion often overestimates the number of factors, an analysis of the eigenvalues was conducted. The eigenvalues for the first two factors were

11.16 and 7.18, while the remaining three factors were 2.31, 1.91 and 1.02. Inspection of the

Scree plot also suggested a discontinuity between the second and third factors as well as the fourth and fifth factors. Factor 5 was excluded immediately because its negligible item loadings contributed virtually no additional explanatory power. Factors three and four had relatively few significant item loadings while many of the items were cross-loaded. On the basis of this information, it appeared that a two-factor solution would best account for the shared variance between the items. 34 A principal axis factor analyses was conducted using the oblique Promax rotation because the underpinning theory for this research suggested that the factors would be correlated.

A two-factor solution was requested in the first analysis. This solution accounted for approximately 66.2% of the shared variance. The first factor accounted for approximately 40.3% of the shared variance while the second factor accounted for approximately 25.9% of the shared variance (see Table 3 for the factor loadings and communalities). Items had to have a loading of at least 0.32 on a factor in order to be included in the interpretation of that factor. All but 2 items met this criterion for at least one factor while 43 items had factor loadings greater than 0.50. The cross-loading criterion was specified by comparing each item’s primary and secondary factor loadings. Only items with a discrepancy between primary and secondary loadings of at least

0.20 were considered for retention (Matsunaga, 2010). Five items failed to meet this cross- loading criterion. Most statistical reference sources fail to consider the question of negative cross-loadings on the secondary factor (Knafl & Grey, 2007). Walker and Maddan (2012) indicate that secondary negative factor loadings may arise due to the use of an oblique rotation.

They suggest considering the retention of such items in order to better model the complex relationships that underlie human behavior. Items with negative secondary cross-loadings were accordingly included in the subscales and in subsequent analyses.

Three-factor and four-factor models were also analyzed in order to rule out the possibility of a solution consisting of more than two factors. These models accounted for approximately

74.5% and 81.5%, respectively, of the shared variance. The prevalence of cross-loaded items suggested a weak theoretical basis for these additional factors (seven of the eight items comprising the fourth factor and fifteen of the twenty-two items comprising the third factor also cross-loaded significantly (0.20 or greater) with either the first or second factors). An inspection 35 of the specific third factor items indicated that these items constituted a subsection of the items contained in the first factor. Specifically, these items all were analogous behavioral items.

The two-factor solution was preferable to both the three- and four-factor solutions. The pattern of item loadings in the two-factor solution was much clearer and more readily interpretable. The two-factor solution revealed a theoretically justifiable solution which was more consistent with the patterns of emotions proposed at the outset of this paper than the item loadings in either the three- or four-factor solutions. The distribution of items across the factors in this solution, however, required that the subscales be renamed Spiritual Exuberance and

Spiritual Dread. The Awe item for which the second subscale had been named had unexpectedly shifted to the first subscale. The first subscale was renamed Sacred Exuberance because the highest loading item – I felt that my heart would burst with joy – describes that emotion extremely well.

An analysis of the two factor solution led to an elimination of seven of the original 48 scale items. Two of the 48 items, item 34 (“Being perfectly still and quiet”) and item 35

(“Closing my eyes”), loaded on neither factor one nor factor two. It is possible that these two items did not load because they were both passive behavioral responses that were not easily associated with a specific emotion. An additional five items were excluded due to excessive cross loading. The remaining 41 items comprised the final version of the SES. These items were assigned to two subscales according to the individuals items’ respective factor loadings (See

Table 4). All subsequent analyses were conducted using this final 41 item version of the SES. 36 Internal Consistency and Descriptive Statistics

The correlation of -.21 between the two sub-scales justified the use of an oblique Promax rotation. Nevertheless, the two sub-scales appeared to constitute distinct factors which differentiated clearly between positive and negative items. Both sub-scales had an estimated

Cronbach’s alpha coefficient in excess of .90 indicating high levels of internal consistency.

Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for Sacred Exuberance and Sacred Dread were .93 and .91 respectively.

The total SES score constitutes a measure of the presence of an inventory of emotions theorized to characterize people’s experience of the sacred and the intensity of those emotions.

One of the underlying theoretical hypotheses of this study was that people’s emotional experience of the sacred is characterized by a mixture of both positive and negative emotions.

Positive and negative emotions may constitute separate dichotomous psychological constructs.

They are the two simultaneously occurring components of people’s overall emotional response to sacred experiences as measured by the SES total score. Reverse coding is required when the scale contains negatively worded items that measure the same type of response as positively worded items. All the items were capturing emotions that were measured in the same direction

(i.e. low to high). None of them were worded in such a way that a high score on one item would indicate a low level of emotion. Since there were no negatively phrased items measuring the same type of emotional response and since none of the Dread items “cancelled out” any of the

Exuberance items, there was no need to reverse code any items. Since the correlation of -.15 between Sacred Exuberance and Sacred Dread corresponds to the two subscales sharing approximately 2.25% of their variance, it is also possible that reverse scoring the Sacred Dread scores to create a total SES score would leave the results of the inferential analyses unchanged. 37 Theorists have suggested that positive and negative states constitute distinct and independent dimensions of experience (Bonnano, Goorin, & Coifman, 2008). There exists a substantial body of research supporting the argument that positive and negative emotional responses constitute independent affective factors which can nevertheless occur simultaneously

(Merz & Roesch, 2011). Short-term positive and negative affect seems more likely to occur simultaneously than long-term positive and negative affect. Researchers have found more evidence for momentary independence of affect than for independence of structural affect (Lucas

& Diener, 2008; Schimmack, 2008).

Watson and Tellegen proposed a two-factor model for the structure of affect in 1985.

Their theory built on evidence reported by Diener and Emmons (1984) indicating that positive and negative affect constitute independent psychological constructs. The dual-structure theory of affect was operationalized through the development of the Positive and Negative Affect

Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The PANAS has become the instrument researchers most frequently use to measure emotional responses (Terracciano, McRae, Costa,

2003). Watson and his colleagues maintained that positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) constituted independent factors despite statistically significant negative correlations between the

PA and NA scales ranging from -.12 to -.23. They argued that the factors are “largely independent” since the negative intercorrelations, which correspond to the two scales sharing approximately between 1% and 5% of their variance, were too weak to suggest non- independence. Subsequent analyses have reported results ranging from a zero correlation (Pettit,

Kline, Gencoz, Gencoz, & Joiner, 2001) to a weak negative correlation (Crawford & Henry,

2004) between PA and NA. 38 There exists an ongoing dispute regarding the extent and the nature of the association between the positive and negative affective factors. Researchers who have used confirmatory factors analyses to attempt to resolve this dispute have suggested that positive and negative affect are distinct and separate constructs which can moderately co-occur (Terracciano, McRae, Costa,

2003; Crawford & Henry, 2004; Merz & Roesch, 2011). This body of theoretical work and empirical evidence suggests that positive and negative emotional responses – in particular measures of transitory state affect - could be treated as data which can be analyzed separately.

After the scales were found to be internally consistent, average item and total scale scores for each of the two factors were calculated by summing and averaging the participants’ responses on the items that loaded adequately and primarily on the respective factors (see Table 5 for the

PHDQVVWDQGDUGGHYLDWLRQVDQGĮFRHIILFLHQWV 7KHVHUHVXOWs indicated higher average item means for the Exuberance sub-scale and greater variance for the Dread sub-scale.

T-TESTs and ANOVAs

A statistical analysis was conducted to assess whether demographic variables and/or religious beliefs affected participant responses on the SES scale. Participants were grouped by gender, level of education, marital status, ethnic background, income levels, and religious affiliation. A series of t-tests and ANOVAs were conducted to determine whether the means for the SES scale differed between relevant participant groups. The SES scores of male participants

(M=149.69, SD=30.50) did not differ significantly from those of female participants (M=150.21,

SD=28.53), (p=.899). SES scores were not significantly different for participants grouped according to marital status and education levels: living together, engaged, and married

(M=148.22, SD=27.48) vs. single, separated, divorced, and widowed (M=152.53, SD=28.88) 39 (p=.266) and less than college education (M=154.53, SD=32.23) vs. college education and graduate school (M=149.70, SD=27.97) (p=.301). Ethnic background and income levels also did not seem to significantly affect participant SES scores. One-way ANOVAs showed that the effect of ethnic background F(2,193) = .661, p = .517 and income levels F(2,227) = .763, p =

.467 were not statistically significant.

The most important results of the t-test and ANOVA analyses, in the context of the study’s objectives, indicated that neither religious beliefs nor religious affiliation seemed to significantly affect participant SES scores. No significant differences in SES scores were found between participants grouped as non-believers (agnostics/atheists) (M=149.09, SD=28.36) and believers (M=150.91, SD=29.04) (p=.775), Christians (M=152.40, SD=28.43) and spiritually- oriented believers (M=159.78, SD=24.73) (p=.292), and Catholics (M=145.26, SD=23.67) vs.

Protestants (M=150.16, SD=28.51) (p=.436).

Correlational and Regression Analyses

Participants completed a variety of measures of subjective well-being, personality, and religious orientation. A correlational analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the SES total scale, the SES sub-scales and the additional measures for which data were collected (see Table 6 for the full results of this analysis). The statistically significant correlations were highlighted for further analysis. The SES scale was positively correlated with the Experiential Engagement subscale of the Rational Experiential Inventory (r = .14),

Extraversion (r = .23), Openness (r = .20), Satisfaction With Life (r = .22), Intrinsic religious orientation (r = .25), Extrinsic religious orientation (r = .26), Extrinsic Personal (r = .28),

Extrinsic Social (r = .14), Quest (r = .14), and Existential Quest (r = 17). The SES scale was 40 negatively correlated with the Religious Well Being subscale of the Spiritual Well Being scale (r

= .22).

The Sacred Exuberance subscale was associated with the Experiential Ability subscale of the Rational Experiential Inventory (r = 16), the Experiential Engagement subscale of the

Rational Experiential Inventory (r = .20), Extraversion (r =.20), Openness (r = .22), Satisfaction

With Life (r = .24), Intrinsic religious orientation (r = .28), Extrinsic religious orientation (r

=.20), Extrinsic Personal (r = .23), and Existential Quest (r = .15). The Sacred Exuberance sub- scale was negatively correlated with the Religious Well Being subscale of the Spiritual Well

Being scale (r = .28). The Sacred Dread sub-scale was related only to the Extrinsic religious orientation subscale with a positive correlation of(r = .14).

Hierarchal multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the relationship between the SES, its sub-scales, and the measures that had been theorized to affect participant responses

(see Table 7 for a summary of the regression results). Hierarchical regressions in which responses from the SES constituted the dependent variable were conducted. No control variables were used since the T-test and ANOVA analyses indicated that demographic variables did not affect participant responses on the SES. Participant scores on the three religious orientation subscales were entered as independent variables in the first regression in the following order:

Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Quest. The regression model had statistical significance (p <.0001) and explained .13 of the variance. Intrinsic (B = .79), Extrinsic (B = .69) and Quest (B = .33) all significantly predicted SES scores. Participant scores on the two Extrinsic orientation subscales were entered as independent variables in the second regression in the following order: Extrinsic

Personal, Extrinsic Social. The regression model had statistical significance (p <.0001) and explained .07 of the variance. Only the Extrinsic Personal variable was statistically significant 41 (B = 1.59). A third regression was conducted using scores on the two Spiritual Well-Being subscales as independent variables entered in the following order: Spiritual Well-Being

Existential (“SWBE”), Spiritual Well-Being Religious (“SWBR”). The regression model had statistical significance (P = .0002) and explained .08 of the variance. While the SWBR variable was statistically significant (B = -2.43), the SWBE variable was not statistically significant. All the regression betas were consistent with the direction of the Pearson correlations.

Since the same measures had been theorized to affect participant responses on the SES sub-scales, similar hierarchical regressions were conducted in which scores from the Sacred

Exuberance subscale constituted the dependent variable. The regression model using Intrinsic,

Extrinsic, and Quest as independent variables had statistical significance (P <.0001) and explained .12 of the variance. The Intrinsic (B = .28) and Quest (B = .18) variables were statistically significant at the .01 level or better while the Extrinsic variable failed to achieve statistical significance. The regression model using scores on the two Extrinsic orientation subscales as independent variables had statistical significance (P = .037) and explained .03 of the variance. Only the Extrinsic Personal (B = .40) variables statistically significantly predicted the

Sacred Exuberance subscale scores. The third regression, using scores on the two Spiritual Well-

Being subscales as independent variables reached statistical significance (P < .001) and explained .08 of the variance. The SWBR variable was statistically significant (B = -.88) while the SWBE variable failed to achieve statistical significance. All of the regression effects were consistent with the direction of the Pearson correlations. None of the regression models using the

Dread sub-scale of the SES as a dependent variable achieved statistical significance.

The correlation analysis revealed statistically significant relationships between the SES and its sub-scales and the measures of personality, subjective well-being, and religious 42 orientation which had not been hypothesized. A series of non-theoretical hierarchical multiple regression models was accordingly constructed to test the explanatory power of these measures.

Multiple regression analyses were performed using the SES scores as the criterion variable. The predictor variables Extraversion, Satisfaction With Life, and Experiential Ability were entered in the first of these models. The resulting model was statistically significant (P = .0002) and accounted for .06 of the variance in the SES scale. Extraversion (B = 1.56) and Satisfaction With

Life (B = .89) were statistically significant predictor variables while Experiential Ability was not statistically significant. A second model was constructed by adding Experiential Engagement,

Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Existential, Doubt, Change, and SWBR to Extraversion and Satisfaction

With Life. The resulting statistically significant model (P < .0001) explained more of the variance (.13) in SES scores than the first model. Extraversion (B = 1.58) remained statistically significant while Intrinsic (B = .56), Extrinsic (B = .66) , and Existential (B = .63) replaced SWL as statistically significant variables. The remaining predictor variables failed to achieve statistical significance. An additional regression model was built by adding Quest and SWBR to the statistically significant variables from the previous regression. This model accounted for less of the variance in SES scores (p <.0001, R2 = .09) than the previous regression model. All of the betas in the three regression models fell in the same direction as the Pearson correlations.

Multiple regression analyses were also performed using the Exuberance and Dread sub- scale scores as the criterion variables. Since the SES scale scores and the Exuberance sub-scales scores were correlated with many of the scores from the same measures, similar non-theoretical regression models were constructed. The predictor variables Extraversion, Satisfaction With

Life, and Experiential Ability were entered in the first of these models. The resulting model was statistically significant (P = .0002) and accounted for .09 of the variance in the SES scale. 43 Extraversion (B = .66) and Satisfaction With Life (B = .35) were statistically significant predictor variables while Experiential Ability was not statistically significant. A second model was constructed by adding Experiential Engagement, Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Existential, Doubt, Change, and SWBR to Extraversion and Satisfaction With Life. The resulting statistically significant model (P < .0001) explained more of the variance (.12) in SES scores than the first model.

Extraversion (B = .66) and SWL (B = .24) remained statistically significant variables.

Experiential Engagement (B = .13), Intrinsic (B = .18), and Existential (B = .26) predicted subscale scores while the remaining predictor variables failed to achieve statistical significance.

An additional regression model was built by adding Quest and SWBR to the statistically significant variables from the previous regression. This model accounted for less of the variance in SES scores (p< .0001, R2 = .12) than the previous regression model. A regression model was also constructed using the scores on the 5 Personality factors as predictor variables. While this model accounted for only .09 of the variance in the Exuberance sub-scale scores (p <.0001 ),

Extraversion (B = .61), Openness (B = .56), and Neuroticism (B = .68) all constituted statistically significant predictor variables. All of the regression effects were consistent with the direction of the Pearson correlations. None of the regression models using the Dread subscale of the SES as a criterion variable achieved statistical significance.

Responses to Open-Ended Questions about the Sacred Experience

Participants were asked to describe a sacred experience which had occurred in the past.

The average latency of these reported experiences was approximately 8 years and 2 months.

Participants reported a wide range of spiritual encounters with the sacred. Responses could be generally grouped using two dimensions: traditional theistic belief structures versus non- traditional spiritual belief structures and sacred encounters that occurred during religious 44 activities versus sacred encounters that occurred during non-religious activities. The following abridged but otherwise verbatim quotes constitute representative examples for each of these categories.

Sacred encounters involving a deity. 1. “One night, when I was at my lowest, I cried out and actually heard the voice of God instruct me not to give up, that He would take care of me and I would know when I needed to make the next step.” 2. “The moon was sitting behind a cloud when I started the chant, and as soon as I was done, the moon came out and shined brightly on my face. I was suddenly filled with a light, airy feeling. I danced and I danced, and I literally felt completely moved in heart and soul. I feel like the Goddess was really smiling on me and my choice of spiritual path that night.”

Sacred encounters not involving a deity. 1. “There was a lightness that came upon me and

I knew I wasn't alone. It was relieving and felt like I was breathing new air. The powers I felt were divine and lifted me up and made me feel secure.” 2. “While meditating on if I was on the right path, I had a feeling of unconditional love and joy come over me. Everything in my mind became clear. I felt at peace. It seemed I was finally living in my truth.”

Sacred encounters that occurred during religious practices. 1. “I was at church, singing songs and focusing on God. I felt in awe of God. He gave me peace and joy. I felt refreshed as I stood with my eyes closed, worshiping.” 2. “I attended a Satsung […] during the chanting I became saturated with joy until I was crying tears of love and joy. I felt as if I was floating, like nothing could hurt me. I felt one with God and everything in the universe.”

Sacred encounters that did not occur during religious practices. 1. “I was standing and looking out the window with my arms wrapped tight against myself […] I felt pressure on my 45 left arm just above my elbow....like someone squeezing your arm to let you know, "it's okay, I understand...it'll be okay." I looked down and realized there was no one there. I firmly believe it was an angel.” 2. “I had a very vivid dream of the forces of good and evil fighting over my spirit.

When I woke up I had a feeling of calmness and safeness come over me. I released that that the angels had won and they would watching over me and protecting me from this point forward.” 46 DISCUSSION

The aim of this study was to construct a scale that captures a set of emotions characterizing individuals’ religious experiences. The design of the scale was partially derived from Rudolf Otto’s conceptualization of the religious experience. Otto’s theory was operationalized by creating a set of 32 positively and negatively valenced emotion items. The composition of the scale was also inspired by research linking emotions and behaviors (Frijda,

N.H., 2004). Research has shown not only that pre-existing emotional states affect people’s cognitions (Oatley, K., Parrott, W.G., Smith, C., & Watts, F., 2011), attention (Shafer et al.,

2012), and motivate their behaviors (Panksepp, J., 2004), but also that people’s actual behaviors often result in the experience of emotions (Harmon & Peterson, 2009; Laird, 2007; Kellerman,

Lewis, & Laird, 1989). Accordingly, an additional 16 behavioral actions, designed to be analogous to the emotional items, were included in the scale.

The study’s findings provided encouraging evidence for the use of the SES along with its two sub-scales as a measure of the emotions associated with religious and spiritual experiences.

These results, however, mandated a considerable departure from Otto’s ideas. Otto’s conceptualization of the two dimensions comprising people’s religious experiences depended largely on the concepts of awe and fascination. The term awe, which has historically indicated a nuanced mix of attraction and fear, has evolved linguistically into a purely positive term. Since the factor analysis of the SES differentiated clearly between positive and negative items, the item containing awe, the defining term for the proposed second sub-scale, had migrated to the first factor. These sub-scales were accordingly renamed Sacred Exuberance and Sacred Dread. While we use simple dichotomous labels to describe emotions, people do not experience discrete emotions. Their emotional responses to phenomena tend to be ambivalent and complex. 47 Researchers studying emotional experience and expression have proposed two primary contending theories to explain the structure of affect. Proponents of the bipolar theory of emotion suggest that since positive affect and negative affect constitute the polar sides of a single dimension, experiencing one emotion indicates the absence of the opposite emotion (Green,

Goldman, & Salovey, 1993). Accordingly, positive affect is theorized to be strongly inversely correlated with negative affect since the more often an individual feels positive emotions, the less often that person should feel negative emotions (Diener, Larsen, Levine, & Emmons, 1985).

Proponents of the theory that positive affect and negative affect are constructs which represent two distinct dimensions argue that the affective factors are largely independent (Watson, Clark,

& Tellegen, 1988). Positive affect is accordingly theorized to be either uncorrelated or weakly inversely correlated with negative affect since an individual can experience both positive and negative emotions simultaneously (Merz & Roesch, 2011). The modest negative correlation between the Sacred Exuberance and Sacred Dread subscales fits with the dual factor theory of the structure of affect. Summing the subscale scores conforms to Otto’s theory that people’s response to the Mysterium is made up of a complex combination of positive and negative emotions. While Otto had little interest in the field of psychology, his theory appears to be consistent with the dual factor theory of the structure of affect. By extension, Otto would likely have supported the idea that the study’s empirical findings – a weak negative correlation between the subscales – are consistent with the theory that individuals can experience positive and negative affect at the same time.

The SES and its renamed sub-scales retained 41 of the original 48 scale items. Two of the items, item 34 (“Being perfectly still and quiet”) and item 35 (“Closing my eyes”), failed to load adequately. It is possible that these two items did not load because they both constituted passive 48 behavioral responses which could not be readily associated with a specific or a distinct emotion.

One of the original emotion items was excluded due to excessive cross-loading. All 16 of the original analogous action items, which were included to investigate the hypothesized close relationship between people’s emotions and their behaviors, were heavily endorsed by participants. Four of these items, despite achieving high factor loadings, could not be assigned to either of the sub-scales. The pattern of participant responses nevertheless seemed to validate the inclusion of action items in the sacred emotions scale.

Since the study’ results suggest that individuals’ experience of the sacred can be quantified and/or measured in terms of their emotions and related behaviors, the SES and its sub- scales may provide insight into the psychological processes and mechanisms underlying their spiritual experiences. The use of an emotion-based measure substantively derived from a well- established psychological construct and a substantive body of research would enable researchers to apply greater empirical rigor to the study of religious experiences. The study’s results also suggest that people’s experience of their emotions is grounded in their physical behaviors. Future research examining psychologically complex experiences such as religious experiences may be able to document a more complete version of people’s emotional experiences by avoiding the use of measures which are comprised strictly of emotion-label words.

Very little of the research in the field of the psychology of religion has used experimental paradigms (Park, 2012). Greater use of measures such as the SES may provide a means of transcending the limitations inherent in non-experimental studies. For example, measuring the emotions individuals experience during sacred moments may provide insights into the nature of the psychological mechanisms which are responsible for the linkages between religion and health outcomes. Testing whether people are actually experiencing the types of emotions which 49 characterize religious and spiritual experiences in situations when they are employing religious coping tools may help explain how religion affects the ways people cope with life stressors.

Individual differences in the experience of religious emotions might also help researchers understand when and why spiritually based interventions fail or succeed.

The SES’ utility as a research tool may be enhanced by the fact that it appears to produce readily interpretable results. For example, the total Sacred Exuberance and Sacred Dread scale scores were modestly negatively correlated. This suggests that individuals may manifest diverse patterns of positive and negative emotions. The correlation and regression analyses produced a combination of expected and unexpected results. As predicted, individuals who scored high in

Experiential processing style also scored high on the SES. This suggests that these individuals may be especially sensitive to the emotional nature of their sacred experience. The finding that people higher in experiential ability and experiential engagement tended to score higher in the

SES and the Exuberance subscale accords with Maas and van den Bos’ (2009) finding that people with an experiential processing style tended to be much more influenced by individual differences in affect intensity than individuals with a rationalistic processing style. Research has also shown that people’s reactions to events are moderated not only by individual differences in affective-experiential processing style, but also by individual differences in intensity of affective response (Maas & van den Bos, 2009; Larsen, Billings, & Cutler, 1996; Larsen, Diener,

Cropanzano, 1987; Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1986).

The results of the correlation analysis supported the hypothesis that individuals with an

Intrinsic religious orientation would achieve high SES scores. These individuals also scored high on both the Exuberance and the Dread subscales. These findings accord with the research 50 literature indicating that individuals with an intrinsic religious orientation are attuned to and derive reward from their emotional experience of religion.

Some of the findings were unexpected. Individuals who scored high in Rational processing style did not score lower on the SES as hypothesized. This result, however, is not inconsistent with Epstein’s (1994) cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) of perception.

While the CEST, along with research validating the CEST, suggests that some individuals have a preference for processing information in a rational way, a tendency to think rationally does not imply that such individuals are unaffected by emotionally evocative situations, nor that they never process information in an experiential way (Epstein et al., 1996).

Individuals who score higher on Neuroticism had been predicted to score higher on the

SES. Although prior research results have demonstrated a correlation between neuroticism and negative affect (Amin, Constable, & Canli, 2004; Richards, French, Johnson, Naparstek, &

Williams, 1992), there was no relationship between neuroticism and the SES or its sub-scales.

This result suggests that the negative emotions which may characterize some individuals’ experience of the sacred are not a function of this aspect of personality.

It is notable that individuals who scored higher on extroversion also scored surprisingly higher on the SES total and, in particular, on the Exuberance sub-scale. Prior research examining the relationship between the personality trait of extroversion and the psychological construct of emotion suggests two possible explanations for this finding. Firstly, research has shown that individuals high in extroversion tend to have a bias for positively valenced stimuli

(Amin, Constable, & Canli, 2004). Secondly, extroverted individuals have been shown to tend to be more emotionally expressive (Riggio & Riggio, 2002). 51 Hypotheses relating to the sub-scales were affected by the reallocation of scale items which transformed the Sacred Fascination and Sacred Awe sub-scales into the Sacred

Exuberance and Sacred Dread sub-scales. Individuals with a high Quest religious orientation had been predicted to score high on the Awe sub-scale. Even though individuals who scored high on

Quest Orientation did not score high on either of the new sub-scales, the hypothesis is generally supported by the correlation between a high Quest Orientation and high scores on the SES. These results suggest that individuals with a quest orientation characterized by a greater openness and willingness to question and explore personal religious values and identity (Messayb, B., Dixona,

L.J., & Ryec, M.S., 2012) consistently and frequently experience a mixture of intense positive and negative emotions in connection with the sacred.

The study’s findings did not support the hypothesis that individuals who scored high on the Dread sub-scale would score lower on Satisfaction with Life. The lack of a relationship between the negative emotion sub-scale and SWL may be related to the nature of the construct we are measuring. An individual’s experience of negative emotions during an encounter with the sacred does not necessarily indicate that this individual experiences high levels of negative affect in general. If emotions that characterize a particular sacred experience are transitory in nature, then they may not impact a person’s satisfaction with life in general. This may also suggest that although negative emotions can arise during a sacred moment, this does not necessarily constitute a harmful psychological experience.

Individuals who scored high on Exuberance had been hypothesized to score high on

Religious Satisfaction while, conversely, individuals who scored high on Dread had been hypothesized to score low on Religious Satisfaction. The linkages were expected to work as follows: people who scored high in Exuberance would experience higher satisfaction with life 52 which would translate into high religious satisfaction while people who scored low in

Exuberance would experience lower satisfaction with life which would translate into low religious satisfaction. Although individuals who scored high on Exuberance and on the overall

SES did report higher levels of satisfaction with life, this did not translate into a high level of satisfaction with their religious lives. While other studies have shown a positive correlation between satisfaction with life and religious well-being, this study’s findings indicated a negative correlation of -0.276 (p<.0001) between satisfaction with life and spiritual well-being. The

Spiritual Well Being Scale measures both existential and spiritual well-being. All the items that measure spiritual well-being make specific references to “God”. If a relationship with “God” does not lie at the center of an individual’s religious identity or sacred beliefs, then the scale may not properly measure their satisfaction with their religious life. Since a significant portion of the study’s participant sample identified as atheistic, agnostic or spiritual (17.8%) or as Christian but non-denominational (28.7%), such individuals may not have identified with an overtly theistic conceptualization of the sacred.

The non-theoretical hierarchical multivariate regression models provided only limited insight into the nature of the relationship between the SES, its sub-scales and the additional measures for which data were collected. Regressions had low explanatory power without loading a large number of predictor variables. The composition of regression models with numerous predictor variables turned out to be highly unstable as the list of statistically significant variables proved to be highly changeable across models. For instance, while the positive correlation between the SES and the Openness to experience factor of the BFI confirmed a hypothesized relationship, Openness to experience ceased to be a statistically significant variable when loaded into multivariate regression models. 53 Interestingly, in comparison to the Exuberance scale, the Dread scale was linked with fewer significant findings. When positive and negative affect are measured separately, they often correlate differently with other psychological variables (Diener, Larsen, Levine, & Emmons,

1985). Trait or dispositional affect and state or situational affect also appear to be associated to other psychological constructs in different ways. (Merz & Roesch, 2011). The presence of negative emotions in a person’s experience of the sacred likely constitutes state affect - a set of emotions which arises transiently in response to this particular experience. Such an occurrence does not appear to hold strong implications for how individuals feel about themselves, their life in general, or their satisfaction with their religious or spiritual life. State affect would likely relate strongly to other measures of emotion (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). State negative affect has been linked to self-esteem and to measures of achievement (Merz & Roesch, 2011).

While state negative affect has been associated with depression, fluctuations in negative emotionality have been shown to be a particularly useful predictor of changes in depression

(Clark, Vittengl, Kraft, & Jarrett, 2003). These constructs were not measured in this study. It is possible that Dread may have more significant effects when it is perceived more consistently. A longitudinal study could be designed to test the possible effects of multiple exposures to sacred experiences.

One of the objectives of this research was to compose a scale which could be used to measure the emotional experience of people from as wide a range of belief systems and cultures as possible. In order to achieve this, individual scale items were intentionally written to be neutral with respect to specific religious belief systems. The proposed scale was also intended to encompass the emotional response to the sacred experiences of individuals without religious, spiritual or theistic beliefs. The set of emotion and action items chosen for the scale was 54 theorized to elicit a response pattern that would be common not only to people of different religious beliefs and faiths but also to Agnostics, Atheists, and individuals with no spiritual or religious affiliation.

The study’s results provide preliminary evidence suggesting the presence of a common set of emotional responses to the experience of the sacred separate and distinct from people’s cognitive understanding of their religious beliefs. Individual religious beliefs - what a person believes the sacred to be, whether a person is religious, or whether a person believes in God - did not seem to affect people's emotional experience of the sacred. These results provide support for a more phenomenological definition of people's religious and spiritual lives which deemphasizes distinctions due to religious beliefs and affiliations. This has potentially significant implications for future research in the field of the psychology of religion. Research underpinned by theoretical assumptions which emphasize the psychological implications of differences in specific belief systems may be limiting the scope of understanding of religious related human behavior and may be misattributing causal factors.

As predicted, the participants grouped as agnostics/atheists did not experience significantly different emotional responses to the sacred from the religious believers. Future research in the field of the psychology of religion should increasingly include nondenominational, non-religion specific, and atheist populations. The relevance of such a more inclusive approach to understanding the nature of spiritual and religious experiences is supported by recent demographic research documenting that a growing number of people ascribe to no religious or spiritual beliefs (“religiously unaffiliated” or “nones”), or are atheists and/or agnostics. The results of the Pew Research Center’s summer 2012 Religion and Politics Survey indicates that the fastest growing category of respondents - one-fifth of Americans and one-third 55 of individuals under the age of 30 – are religiously unaffiliated. The same study found that nearly 6% of the U.S. population is comprised of self-described agnostics and atheists and that approximately 14% of the population has no particular religious affiliation. The existence of an empirically validated measure of religious experience that includes the religiously unaffiliated is thus both timely and warranted.

The finding that demographic and socioeconomic variables did not appear to affect responses to the SES was notable. Widely documented gender differences in emotional functioning feature important differences in emotional experience and expression (Brody & Hall,

2008). Women have rated themselves as being more emotionally expressive than men in numerous studies (Simon & Nath, 2004). Women typically describe their specific emotional experiences with greater intensity than men (Tobin, Graziano, Vanman, & Tassinary, 2000).

Individuals’ emotional experiences also often depend on social and cultural context (Shweder,

Haidt, Horton, & Joseph, 2008). It would have been reasonable to expect, in this context, that men, women, and individuals from varying ethnic backgrounds might emotionally respond differently to sacred experiences. T-Test and ANOVA analyses, however, indicated that factors which make up a person’s social identity - gender, level of education, marital status, ethnic background, and income levels – failed to cause statistically significant differences in SES scores. These results seem to suggest that individuals who have experienced an encounter with the sacred may share a common set of emotional responses which appear to transcend demographic factors which are often associated with differences in emotional experience and expression. 56 Limitations and Future Directions

While the SES appears to hold considerable promise as a measure of emotional responses to sacred experiences, it has not been validated. This study collected data from only one group of participants. The lack of a validation sample made it impossible to perform a confirmatory factor analysis. The study was not designed to assess whether the SES predicts various criteria over and above other predictors. The SES needs to be statistically validated before it can be used in future research.

The scope of the current study is limited by its cross-sectional design. While the study’s findings did not demonstrate any strong relationships between participant scores on the SES and on measures of psychological and spiritual well-being, the research paradigm involved participants recalling only a single spiritual experience. It is possible that repeated exposure to the same sacred experience drawn from an individual’s memory or to the recall of multiple spiritual experiences may be necessary to demonstrate such an effect. A study assessing the effect of multiple memory-recall sacred experiences over a period of several months on mood disorders and depression may be practically useful to mental health professionals.

Participants in this research study provided detailed descriptions of their experiences with the sacred in response to an open-ended question. An analysis of these data could provide a more nuanced understanding of people’s experiences of the sacred by examining the specific information that contextualizes the emotions they endorsed in the scale. Analyzing the relative lack of predictability of the Dread subscale lay beyond the scope of this study. Data could be collected from a new participant sample to compare the pattern of responses on the Dread 57 subscale to the responses on scales such as the Full RCOPE and the Spiritual Struggles scales which gather information on the negative aspects of individuals’ religious lives.

The study’s participant sample was insufficiently diverse to properly assess the intriguing possibility that the pattern of emotional responses to the experience of the sacred constitutes a widely shared psychological phenomenon. Data need to be collected from additional participants spanning a greater variety of cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. This data collection should specifically include individuals with no religious affiliation. The current study’s findings suggest that religiously unaffiliated individuals’ emotional experience of the sacred greatly resembles that of people who ascribe to a set of religious or spiritual beliefs. Confirming such a finding would have important implications for understanding the nature of secularization. Future studies could investigate the possibility that even when individuals abandon their organized religion and its associated public rituals, their underlying private emotional response to the sacred remains unchanged.

Additional studies are needed to explore how the SES can be used to further study how experiences of the sacred compare to other complex human experiences. Aesthetic experiences involving works of art or scenes of natural beauty have often been described as being quite similar to religious experiences (Jay, 2005). Cohen et al (2010) analyzed a set of cognitive appraisals and emotion ratings derived from narratives provided by individuals who described either a spiritual experience or an experience of profound beauty. The researchers, however, failed to clearly differentiate the groups of participants. They included individuals in their

“spiritual” experience group who reported having had an experience of art or nature as long as they considered their experience to have been spiritually transformative. Only 34% of the participants in this group indicated that religion or the sacred constituted the origin or cause of 58 their transformational experience. Moreover, the research paradigm also created a possible confounding factor since participants in the spiritual condition were explicitly asked to describe a

“transformative” experience whereas participants in the other condition were asked to describe an experience “that involves a profound sense of beauty”. Accordingly, it becomes unclear whether the reported differences in emotional responses between the two groups (e.g.,37 % of the differences in ratings achieved statistical significance at the p .05 level) were attributable to different emotional responses to the spiritual or aesthetic experiences, or to the transformative nature of the spiritual experience, or to a combination of both factors. Using the SES would provide a theoretically based method for analyzing emotional responses to sacred and aesthetic experiences. The ability to differentiate between religious and aesthetic experiences based on patterns of emotional responses could lead to the development of a typology or a classification of complex human experiences. This study does not advocate, nor does it present any evidence for the existence of specific religious/spiritual emotions. People’s emotional vocabulary is made up of a basic set of emotions. They experience a complex combination of these emotions in response to encounters with the sacred. The SES is designed to measure this distinctive mixture of emotions as well as their intensity.

Conclusion

The SES showed promise as an instrument to measure emotional responses to experiences of the sacred. The two subscales which emerged from the factor analyses explained

66.2% of the variance in participant responses and demonstrated internal consistency.

Administering the SES would enable researchers to verify whether participants in an induction experiment or a memory protocol study have actually had an experience of the sacred. It also appears that using the scale in future research may provide an opportunity to further explore the 59 linkage between emotions and actions. The SES should be useful to researchers looking for a theoretically meaningful measure derived from an established psychological construct. 60 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Blackwell. 72 Table 1

Summary of Sample Characteristics

(N = 230)

32.2 Mean Age (SD) (10.9) % Gender Male 33.6 Female 66.4 % Race/Ethnicity African-American or Black 7.8% Latino or Hispanic 8.5% Asian or Pacific Islander 5.1% Middle Eastern 0.7% Native American 3.1% White or Caucasian 83.1% Other (please specify) 1.4% Education Some High School 1.5% High School Diploma 15.3% Technical College or Trade 5.2% School College Level Course or 64.8% Degree Professional School 1.2% Graduate Level Course or 11.9% Degree Income Less than $25,000 30.9% $25,000 to $49,999 30.3% $50,000 to $74,999 21.4% $75,000 to $100,000 11.0% Greater than $100,000 6.4% Marital Status Single 33.0% Living with a romantic partner 16.3% Widowed 1.0% Married 39.8% Divorced 10.2% Other 1.7% 73 TABLE 2

Summary of religious characteristics of sample

(N = 230)

Not Religious or Spiritual 10.0% Spiritual 7.8% Religious 82.2%

Religious Preference Christian - Total 70.4% Catholic 11.7% Orthodox 0.4% Protestant 26.5% Mormon 3.0% Christian - Nondenominational 28.7% Jewish 1.3% Buddhist 2.2% Moslem 0.4% Hindu 0.4% Other 7.4% Spiritual 7.8% Atheist/Agnostic 5.2% None 4.8%

74 Table 3

Factor loadings and communalities (N=230)

2 Item Number Item F1 F2 h 1 Filled with awe 0.57 0.40 2 I felt small 0.39 0.16 3 I wanted to give my whole self over to my experience. 0.61 0.42 4 I felt humble. 0.42 0.18 5 I felt that I had been blessed. 0.57 0.40 I felt unworthy of being in the presence of something so 0.37 0.22 6 great. 7 I felt worried. -0.34 0.71 0.62 8 I was completely fascinated. 0.57 0.42 9 I had an uncomfortable feeling inside my body. -0.42 0.62 0.56 10 I felt insignificant. 0.51 0.26 I felt that I had been given the greatest gift that anyone 0.69 0.50 11 could receive. 12 My mind had been opened to new thoughts. 0.44 0.20 13 I couldn’t tear myself away. 0.53 0.29 14 I felt extremely calm and excited at the same time. 0.62 -0.44 0.59 15 I felt concerned that I would be found wanting or at fault. 0.40 0.16 16 I felt vulnerable. 0.68 0.46 17 I was experiencing something too wonderful for words. 0.73 -0.33 0.63 18 I felt weak. 0.71 0.50 19 I felt like a great mystery was being revealed. 0.42 0.19 20 I felt completely exposed. 0.56 0.33 21 I felt uncertain. -0.32 0.64 0.51 All of my attention and awareness was focused on my 0.40 0.16 22 experience. 23 I felt afraid. 0.72 0.69 24 I wanted to draw closer to my experience. 0.74 0.59 25 I was completely consumed by the moment. 0.47 0.23 26 I felt powerless. 0.70 0.53 27 I felt that my heart would burst with joy. 0.80 0.70 28 I felt like I could cease to exist. 0.44 0.21 29 I felt that I been released from a great burden. 0.56 0.32 30 I felt ashamed. 0.59 0.35 31 Every part of my self was fully alive and aware. 0.58 0.41 I felt I was experiencing a love greater than any love I 0.69 0.48 32 could imagine. 33 Bowing my head. 0.37 0.22 34 Being perfectly still and quiet. 0.01 35 Closing my eyes. 0.17 36 Burying my face in my hands. 0.62 0.40 37 Turning away. 0.54 0.32 75 38 Asking for forgiveness. 0.49 0.29 39 Crying. 0.49 0.32 40 Falling to my knees. 0.37 0.48 0.37 41 Staring up at the sky. 0.34 0.12 42 Reaching out with my hands open upwards. 0.53 0.33 43 Opening up my arms as if to embrace someone. 0.61 0.42 44 Giving praise. 0.59 0.36 45 Giving thanks 0.57 0.33 46 Dancing. 0.54 0.30 47 Laughing 0.52 0.28 48 Singing out loud. 0.61 0.38

% of variance explained 40.28 25.92

76 Table 4

Final factor items

Item Number Item

Sacred Exuberance 1 I was filled with awe 3 I wanted to give my whole self over to my experience. 4 I felt humble. 5 I felt that I had been blessed. 7 I was completely fascinated. 10 I felt that I had been given the greatest gift that anyone could receive. 11 My mind had been opened to new thoughts. 12 I couldn’t tear myself away. 13 I felt extremely calm and excited at the same time. 16 I was experiencing something too wonderful for words. 18 I felt like a great mystery was being revealed. 21 All of my attention and awareness was focused on my experience. 23 I wanted to draw closer to my experience. 24 I was completely consumed by the moment. 26 I felt that my heart would burst with joy. 28 I felt that I been released from a great burden. 30 Every part of my self was fully alive and aware. 31 I felt I was experiencing a love greater than any love I could imagine. 34 Staring up at the sky. 35 Reaching out with my hands open upwards. 36 Opening up my arms as if to embrace someone. 37 Giving praise. 38 Giving thanks 39 Dancing. 40 Laughing 41 Singing out loud.

Sacred Dread 2 I felt small 6 I felt worried. 8 I had an uncomfortable feeling inside my body. 9 I felt insignificant. 14 I felt concerned that I would be found wanting or at fault. 15 I felt vulnerable. 17 I felt weak. 19 I felt completely exposed. 20 I felt uncertain. 22 I felt afraid. 77 25 I felt powerless. 27 I felt like I could cease to exist. 29 I felt ashamed. 32 Burying my face in my hands. 33 Turning away.

78 Table 5

Descriptive Statistics

Standard Cronbach Observation Items Mean Deviation Alpha Range SES - Overall Scale 41 150.73 28.92 n/a 1 to 6 Sacred Exuberance 26 116.02 25.92 0.93 1 to 6 Sacred Dread 15 34.71 17.02 0.9 1 to 6

Standard Observation Individual Items Mean Deviation Range 1 I was filled with awe 5.17 1.28 1 to 6 2 I felt small 3.18 1.97 1 to 6 3 I wanted to give my whole self over to my 1 to 6 experience. 4.80 1.57 4 I felt humble. 4.80 1.48 1 to 6 5 I felt that I had been blessed. 5.30 1.28 1 to 6 6 I felt worried. 2.31 1.89 1 to 6 7 I was completely fascinated. 4.78 1.42 1 to 6 8 I had an uncomfortable feeling inside my 1 to 6 body. 2.07 1.71 9 I felt insignificant. 2.13 1.65 1 to 6 10 I felt that I had been given the greatest gift 1 to 6 that anyone could receive. 4.74 1.55 11 My mind had been opened to new thoughts. 4.98 1.41 1 to 6 12 I couldn’t tear myself away. 4.49 1.65 1 to 6 13 I felt extremely calm and excited at the same 1 to 6 time. 4.79 1.58 14 I felt concerned that I would be found 1 to 6 wanting or at fault. 1.60 1.24 15 I felt vulnerable. 2.83 1.99 1 to 6 16 I was experiencing something too wonderful 1 to 6 for words. 4.68 1.61 17 I felt weak. 2.44 1.79 1 to 6 18 I felt like a great mystery was being revealed. 4.13 1.72 1 to 6 19 I felt completely exposed. 2.77 1.97 1 to 6 20 I felt uncertain. 2.25 1.75 1 to 6 21 All of my attention and awareness was 1 to 6 focused on my experience. 5.30 1.11 22 I felt afraid. 2.18 1.77 1 to 6 79 23 I wanted to draw closer to my experience. 4.73 1.52 1 to 6 24 I was completely consumed by the moment. 5.37 1.06 1 to 6 25 I felt powerless. 2.78 2.00 1 to 6 26 I felt that my heart would burst with joy. 4.26 1.82 1 to 6 27 I felt like I could cease to exist. 2.13 1.75 1 to 6 28 I felt that I been released from a great burden. 4.38 1.88 1 to 6 29 I felt ashamed. 1.49 1.14 1 to 6 Every part of my self was fully alive and 1 to 6 30 aware. 4.79 1.50 31 I felt I was experiencing a love greater than any 1 to 6 love I could imagine. 4.87 1.57 32 Burying my face in my hands. 2.88 2.03 1 to 6 33 Turning away. 1.67 1.38 1 to 6 34 Staring up at the sky. 4.00 2.01 1 to 6 35 Reaching out with my hands open upwards. 3.52 2.05 1 to 6 36 Opening up my arms as if to embrace someone. 3.83 1.92 1 to 6 37 Giving praise. 4.57 1.81 1 to 6 38 Giving thanks 5.05 1.53 1 to 6 39 Dancing. 2.63 1.87 1 to 6 40 Laughing 3.02 2.01 1 to 6 41 Singing out loud. 3.02 2.07 1 to 6 80

Table 6

Scale Correlations

SES Exuberance Dread SES 1.00 0.82 <.0001 0.45 <.0001 Exuberance 0.82 <.0001 1.00 -0.15 0.02 Dread 0.45 <.0001 -0.15 0.02 1.00 Rational - Analytical -0.01 0.91 0.04 0.52 -0.08 0.23 Rational - Experiential 0.04 0.56 0.06 0.40 -0.02 0.77 Experiential Ability 0.13 0.05 0.16 0.02 -0.03 0.69 Experiential Engagement 0.14 0.04 0.20 0.00 -0.07 0.27 EXTRAVERSION 0.23 0.00 0.20 0.00 0.07 0.27 AGREEABLENESS 0.08 0.22 0.08 0.23 0.02 0.81 CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 0.11 0.09 0.13 0.05 -0.01 0.92 NEUROTICISM -0.03 0.69 -0.08 0.21 0.08 0.21 OPENNESS 0.20 0.00 0.22 0.00 0.00 0.94 Satisfaction with Life 0.22 0.00 0.24 0.00 0.00 0.95 Intrinsic Orientation 0.25 0.00 0.28 <.0001 0.00 0.99 Extrinsic Orientation 0.26 <.0001 0.20 0.00 0.14 0.03 Extrinsic Personal 0.28 <.0001 0.23 0.00 0.12 0.06 Extrinsic Social 0.14 0.03 0.09 0.18 0.10 0.13 Quest Orientation 0.14 0.03 0.11 0.09 0.07 0.27 Existential - Quest 0.17 0.01 0.15 0.02 0.06 0.37 Doubt - Quest 0.13 0.05 0.09 0.18 0.08 0.22 Change - Quest 0.03 0.66 0.01 0.89 0.03 0.60 SWBE 0.01 0.88 0.02 0.72 -0.02 0.77 SWBR -0.22 0.00 -0.28 <.0001 0.05 0.48

81 Table 7

Regression analyses

Dependent (SE P Independent Variables B F ǻ52 R2 Variable B) Value

SES Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Quest SES Intrinsic 0.79 0.17 21.04 <.0001 0.08 Extrinsic 0.69 0.25 7.87 0.0055 0.03 Quest 0.33 0.13 6.01 0.015 0.02 Overall Model 14.06 <.0001 0.13

SES Extrinsic Personal, Extrinsic Social Extrinsic Personal 1.59 0.40 15.66 0.0001 0.06 Extrinsic Social 0.49 0.40 1.51 0.2204 0.01 Overall Model 10.94 <.0001 0.07

SES SWBE, SWBR SWBE 1.07 0.63 2.86 0.0924 0.01 SWBR -2.43 0.58 17.37 <.0001 0.07 Overall Model 8.72 0.0002 0.08

Exuberance Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Quest Intrinsic 0.28 0.07 17.95 <.0001 0.07 Extrinsic 0.01 0.09 0 0.9537 0.00 Quest 0.18 0.05 12.06 0.0006 0.05 Overall Model 8.48 <.0001 0.12

Exuberance . Extrinsic Personal, Extrinsic Social Extrinsic Personal 0.40 0.15 6.63 0.0107 0.03 Extrinsic Social -0.08 0.15 0.26 0.611 0.00 Overall Model 3.35 0.037 0.03

Exuberance SWBE, SWBR SWBE 0.45 0.24 3.66 0.057 0.02 SWBR -0.88 0.22 16.51 <.0001 0.07 Overall Model 8.4 0.0003 0.08

SES Extraversion, SWL, EA Extraversion 1.56 0.63 6.11 0.0142 0.02 SWL 0.89 0.29 9.1 0.0028 0.04 EA 0.21 0.32 0.41 0.5246 0.00 Overall Model 6.83 0.0002 0.06 82 Dependent Independent P B(SE B)F ǻ52 R2 Variable Variables Value

SES Extraversion, SWL, EE, Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Existential, Doubt, Change, SWBR Extraversion 1.58 0.59 7.13 0.01 0.03 SWL 0.38 0.29 1.70 0.19 0.01 EE 0.19 0.17 1.32 0.25 0.00 Intrinsic 0.56 0.19 8.79 0.00 0.03 Extrinsic 0.66 0.24 7.21 0.01 0.03 Existential 0.63 0.27 5.27 0.02 0.02 Doubt 0.63 0.44 2.03 0.16 0.01 Change -0.63 0.46 1.84 0.18 0.01 SWBR -0.55 0.60 0.82 0.37 0.00 Overall Model 7.19 <.0001 0.13

SES Extraversion, SWL, Intrinsic, EE, Quest, SWBR Extraversion 1.53 0.58 6.85 0.01 0.02 SWL 0.42 0.29 2.11 0.15 0.01 Intrinsic 0.59 0.19 9.63 0.00 0.03 Quest 0.28 0.13 4.67 0.03 0.02 SWBR -0.80 0.59 1.84 0.18 0.01 Overall Model 9.54 <.0001 0.09

Exuberance Extraversion, SWL, EA Extraversion 0.66 0.23 8.25 0.00 0.03 SWL 0.35 0.11 10.59 0.00 0.04 EA 0.23 0.12 3.87 0.05 0.01 Overall Model 10.87 <.0001 0.09

Exuberance Extraversion, SWL, EE, Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Existential, Doubt, Change, SWBR Extraversion 0.66 0.22 8.66 0.00 0.03 SWL 0.24 0.11 4.73 0.03 0.02 EE 0.13 0.06 4.26 0.04 0.02 Intrinsic 0.18 0.07 6.04 0.01 0.02 Extrinsic 0.00 0.09 0.00 1.00 0.00 Existential 0.26 0.10 6.61 0.01 0.02 Doubt 0.12 0.17 0.55 0.46 0.00 Change 0.01 0.17 0.00 0.96 0.00 SWBR -0.26 0.23 1.32 0.25 0.00 Overall Model 6.47 <.0001 0.12 83

Independent P Dependent Variable B(SE B)F ǻ52 R2 Variables Value

ExuberanceExtraversion, SWL, Intrinsic, EE, Quest, SWBR Extraversion 0.73 0.22 11.09 0.00 0.04 SWL 0.24 0.11 4.86 0.03 0.02 Intrinsic 0.17 0.07 5.68 0.02 0.02 Quest 0.14 0.05 8.04 0.01 0.03 SWBR -0.39 0.22 3.09 0.08 0.01 Overall Model 8.60 <.0001 0.12

Exuberance Big Five Personality Factors Extraversion 0.61 0.27 5.25 0.02 0.02 Agreeableness -0.23 0.29 0.63 0.43 0.00 Openness 0.59 0.21 7.72 0.01 0.03 Neuroticism -0.68 0.26 7.03 0.01 0.03 Conscientiousness 0.37 0.26 2.12 0.15 0.01 Overall Model 7.05 <.0001 0.09

84 APPENDIX A. MECHANICAL TURK SCREENING PAGE.

Welcome to the Life Experiences Study

Thank you for your interest in this study! This research study will be examining people’s emotions about important life events. To determine whether you are eligible to participate in this study, please answer the following question.

Please indicate which of the following types of life events you have experienced (select all that apply):

Ƒ([SHULHQFHGWKHGHDWKRIDORYHGRQH

Ƒ%HFDPHDSDUHQW

Ƒ+DGDQHDU-death experience.

Ƒ([SHULHQFHGWKHSUHVHQFHRI*RGRURWKHUGLYLQHIRUFH

Ƒ Got married.

Ƒ+DGDQRXW-of-body experience.

Ƒ$FKLHYHGDPDMRUOLIHJRDO

Ƒ+DGDSURIRXQGVSLULWXDORUVDFUHGH[SHULHQFH

Ƒ&KDQJHGFDUHHUV

Ƒ0RYHGWRDIRUHLJQFRXQWU\

85 APPENDIX B. SACRED EMOTIONS SCALE.

With your thoughts focused on your sacred moment please review the following statements and indicate the degree to which you experienced these feelings. It is not unusual for people to feel a mixture of feelings that seem to contradict each other. For example, a person may experience both feelings of joy and sadness at the same time. If you similarly experienced a mixture of opposing emotions during your encounter with the sacred, please include all of them in your responses. Please indicate the degree to which you experienced the following during your encounter with the sacred: Sacred Awe I felt like I could cease to exist. I felt afraid. I was filled with awe. I felt uncertain. I felt worried. I felt powerless. I felt vulnerable. I had an uncomfortable feeling inside my chest or stomach. I felt weak. I felt humble. I felt unworthy of being in the presence of something so great. I felt small I felt completely exposed. I felt ashamed. I felt insignificant. I felt concerned that I would be found wanting or at fault. Sacred Fascination I was completely fascinated. I wanted to draw closer to my experience. Every part of my self was fully alive and aware. I felt like a great mystery was being revealed. I was experiencing something too wonderful for words. I felt extremely calm and excited at the same time. I was completely consumed by the moment. All of my attention and awareness was focused on my experience. I felt that my heart would burst with joy. I couldn’t tear myself away. My mind had been opened to new thoughts. I felt I was experiencing a love greater than any love I could imagine. I felt that I had been blessed. I felt that I been released from a great burden. I wanted to give my whole self over to my experience. I felt that I had been given the greatest gift that anyone could receive. 86 Sacred Emotions Scale (Con’t.)

The following is a list of descriptions of different actions. Read each description and imagine the type of emotion you might be experiencing while performing that action. Now think about your sacred experience. Though you may not have actually performed any of these actions during your sacred experience, please indicate the degree to which the following actions reflect how you felt during your sacred experience:

During my sacred experience I felt like…

Analogous Behaviours

Sacred Awe

Bowing my head. Being perfectly still and quiet. Closing my eyes. Burying my face in my hands. Turning away. Asking for forgiveness. Crying. Falling to my knees.

Sacred Fascination

Staring up at the sky. Reaching out with my hands open upwards. Opening up my arms as if to embrace someone. Giving praise. Giving thanks Dancing. Laughing Singing out loud. 87 APPENDIX C. INSTRUCTRIONS FOR RECALLING A SACRED ENCOUNTER.

This research study is interested in learning about people’s individual personal experiences of the sacred. The sacred for many people is the central focus of their religious or spiritual beliefs. The sacred can mean many different things to different people. For some people the sacred may be God, a divine being or beings, a holy life force, or some other higher power.

Please think back to a time when you personally experienced an encounter with the sacred. Try to remember every detail of the moment to the best of your ability.

Please describe your personal encounter with the sacred in the space below. You may take as long as you need and write as much as you would like, though it would be appreciated if you would write at least a paragraph or two.

Please describe your sacred encounter here:

88 APPENDIX D. ENCOUNTER DETAIL QUESTIONS, AFTER LEVINE ET AL. (2009).

Please answer the following questions about your sacred encounter. Please answer all of the questions to the best of your ability. If you provided the information earlier, please enter it again.

When did your encounter with the sacred take place?

Year

Month/Season

Date/Time

Where did this encounter take place?

Describe the setting of the encounter (description of location).

Please describe any visual images or objects that you remember from your encounter.

Please describe any colors you remember.

Please describe any sounds you experienced.

Please describe any smells you remember.

Please describe any tastes you experienced.

Please describe any other physical sensations (e.g., textures, pain, temperature).

Describe anyone else who was with you during the encounter.

Describe any actions or movements you made.

How long did your encounter last?

How clearly can you 1 2 3 4 5 6 visualize this event? Vague memory Extremely clear

No recollection as if it were happening now

Please describe any thoughts you experienced during your encounter. 89 Please describe any emotions you experienced during your encounter.

How much did your emotional 1 2 3 4 5 6 state change from before the encounter occurred to after it No change Underwent tremendous happened? in how I felt emotional change

How personally important is this event to you now? 1 2 3 4 5 6 No importance at all Of great importance How personally important was 1 2 3 4 5 6 this event to you then? No importance at all Of great importance

How often do you think or talk 1 2 3 4 5 6 about this encounter? (see cue sheet)

90 APPENDIX E. RATIONAL-EXPERIENTIAL INVENTORY.

Please use the following scale to answer these questions.

completely false completely true

1234 5

1. ______I have a logical mind.

2. ______I prefer complex problems to simple problems.

3. ______I believe in trusting my hunches.

4. ______I am not a very analytical thinker.

5. ______I trust my initial feelings about people.

6. ______I try to avoid situations that require thinking in depth about something.

7. ______I like to rely on my intuitive impressions.

8. ______I don’t reason well under pressure.

9. ______I don’t like situations in which I have to rely on intuition.

10. ______Thinking hard and for a long time about something gives me little satisfaction.

11. ______Intuition can be a very useful way to solve problems.

12. ______I would not want to depend on anyone who described himself or herself as intuitive.

13. ______I am much better at figuring things out logically than most people.

14. ______I usually have clear, explainable reasons for my decisions.

15. ______I don’t think it is a good idea to rely on one’s intuition for important decisions.

16. ______Thinking is not my idea of an enjoyable activity.

17. ______I have no problem thinking things through carefully.

18. ______When it comes to trusting people, I can usually rely on my gut feelings.

19. ______I can usually feel when a person is right or wrong, even if I can’t explain how I know.

20. ______Learning new ways to think would be very appealing to me.

21. ______I hardly ever go wrong when I listen to my deepest gut feelings to find an answer.

22. ______I think it is foolish to make important decisions based on feelings.

23. ______I tend to use my heart as a guide for my actions. 91 24. ______I often go by my instincts when deciding on a course of action.

25. ______I’m not that good at figuring out complicated problems.

26. ______I enjoy intellectual challenges.

27. ______Reasoning things out carefully is not one of my strong points.

28. ______I enjoy thinking in abstract terms.

29. ______I generally don’t depend on my feelings to help me make decisions.

30. ______Using logic usually works well for me in figuring out problems in my life.

31. ______I think there are times when one should rely on one’s intuition.

32. ______I don’t like to have to do a lot of thinking.

33. ______Knowing the answer without having to understand the reasoning behind it is good enough for me.

34. ______Using my gut feelings usually works well for me in figuring out problems in my life.

35. ______I don’t have a very good sense of intuition.

36. ______If I were to rely on my gut feelings, I would often make mistakes.

37. ______I suspect my hunches are inaccurate as often as they are accurate.

38. ______My snap judgments are probably not as good as most people’s.

39. ______I am not very good at solving problems that require careful logical analysis.

40. ______I enjoy solving problems that require hard thinking. 92 APPENDIX F. BIG FIVE INVENTORY (JOHN ET AL., 1991).

How I am in general

Here are a number of characteristics that may or may not apply to you. For example, do you agree that you are someone who likes to spend time with others? Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement.

1 2 3 4 5 Disagree Disagree Neither agree Agree Agree Strongly a little nor disagree a little strongly

I am someone who…

1. _____ Is talkative 36. _____ Is outgoing, sociable 2. _____ Tends to find fault with others 37. _____ Is sometimes rude to others 3. _____ Does a thorough job 38. _____ Makes plans and follows through with them 4. _____ Is depressed, blue 39. _____ Gets nervous easily 5. _____ Is original, comes up with new ideas 40. _____ Likes to reflect, play with ideas 6. _____ Is reserved 41. _____ Has few artistic interests 7. _____ Is helpful and unselfish with others 42. _____ Likes to cooperate with others 8. _____ Can be somewhat careless 43. _____ Is easily distracted 9. _____ Is relaxed, handles stress well. 44. _____ Is sophisticated in art, music, or literature 10. _____ Is curious about many different things 11. _____ Is full of energy 12. _____ Starts quarrels with others 13. _____ Is a reliable worker 14. _____ Can be tense 15. _____ Is ingenious, a deep thinker 16. _____ Generates a lot of enthusiasm 17. _____ Has a forgiving nature 18. _____ Tends to be disorganized 19. _____ Worries a lot 20. _____ Has an active imagination 21. _____ Tends to be quiet 22. _____ Is generally trusting 23. _____ Tends to be lazy 24. _____ Is emotionally stable, not easily upset 25. _____ Is inventive 26. _____ Has an assertive personality 27. _____ Can be cold and aloof 28. _____ Perseveres until the task is finished 29. _____ Can be moody 30. _____ Values artistic, aesthetic experiences 31. _____ Is sometimes shy, inhibited 32. _____ Is considerate and kind to almost everyone 33. _____ Does things efficiently 34. _____ Remains calm in tense situations 35. _____ Prefers work that is routine 93 APPENDIX G. THE SATISFACTION WITH LIFE SCALE (SWLS; DIENER ET AL., 1985).

Please indicate your level of agreement with each item from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

In most ways my life is close to ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ideal.

The conditions of my life are ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ excellent.

I am satisfied with my life. ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰

So far I have gotten the ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ important things I want in life.

If I could live my life over, I ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ would change almost nothing.

94 APPENDIX H. EXTRINSIC/INTRINSIC RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION SCALE

(GORSUCH & MCPHERSON, 1989).

1. I enjoy reading about my religion.

2. I go to church because it helps me to make friends.

3. It doesn’t much matter what I believe so long as I am good.

4. It is important to me to spend time in private thought and prayer.

5. I have often had a strong sense of God’s presence.

6. I pray mainly to gain relief and protection.

7. I try hard to live all my life according to my religious beliefs.

8. What religion offers me most is comfort in times of trouble and sorrow.

9. Prayer is for peace and happiness.

10. Although I am religious, I don’t let it affect my daily life.

11. I go to church mostly to spend time with my friends.

12. My whole approach to life is based on my religion.

13. I go to church mainly because I enjoy seeing people I know there.

14. Although I believe in my religion, many other things are more important in my life.

95 APPENDIX I. QUEST ORIENTATION SCALE (BATSON & SCHOENRADE, 1991). 96 APPENDIX J. HSRB APPROVAL LETTER.

DATE: August 30, 2012

TO: Donna Burdzy FROM: Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [361008-3] Sacred Emotions Scale SUBMISSION TYPE: Revision

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: August 30, 2012 EXPIRATION DATE: July 30, 2013 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category # 7

Thank you for your submission of Revision materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board has APPROVED your submission. This approval is based on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio and a project design wherein the risks have been minimized. All research must be conducted in accordance with this approved submission.

The final approved version of the consent document(s) is available as a published Board Document in the Review Details page. You must use the approved version of the consent document when obtaining consent from participants. Informed consent must continue throughout the project via a dialogue between the researcher and research participant. Federal regulations require that each participant receives a copy of the consent document.

Please add the text equivalent of the HSRB IRBNet approval/expiration date stamp to the "footer" area of the electronic consent document.

Please note that you are responsible to conduct the study as approved by the HSRB. If you seek to make any changes in your project activities or procedures, those modifications must be approved by this committee prior to initiation. Please use the modification request form for this procedure.

You have been approved to enroll 700 participants. If you wish to enroll additional participants you must seek approval from the HSRB.

All UNANTICIPATED PROBLEMS involving risks to subjects or others and SERIOUS and UNEXPECTED adverse events must be reported promptly to this office. All NON-COMPLIANCE issues or COMPLAINTS regarding this project must also be reported promptly to this office.

This approval expires on July 30, 2013. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

Good luck with your work. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Research Compliance at 419-372- 7716 or [email protected]. Please include your project title and reference number in all correspondence regarding this project. 97 This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board's records.