RELIGIOSITY AND SPIRITUALITY

Religiosity and spirituality



Religiosity and spirituality

Introduction

Religiosity as a concept in communal research has a long annals, dating as far back as early twentieth century (Durkheim 1912; Marx 1912), and has been an significant facet of industrialized and evolving societies (Harris' Interactive 2003; Wuthnow 1998). Religiosity and religiousness in general, can be characterised in terms of fundamentalism, the degree of conviction in one's beliefs about the unconditional definiteness and inherent factual features of a religion's educating and scripter (Stark and Glock 1968). It can habitually be defined in periods of spirituality that refers to knowledge and convictions associated to the transcendent aspect of belief common to most beliefs (Seidlitz et al. 2002).

Religion seems to leverage one's demeanour, well-being, and life in general (e.g. Ebaugh 2002; Francis and Kaldor 2002; Poloma and Pendlenton 1990; Sloan et al. 1999; Woods et al. 1999). There is furthermore clues that suggests that belief may influence certain aspects of buyer demeanour, although the causes for these leverages are not well-understood. For demonstration, devout persons are accepted to be less materialistic because material things are viewed as obstacles to religious transcendence by many world's religions (Smith 1991), encompassing Buddhists and Christians (Kavanaugh Zimmer 1993), and this belief has obtained empirical support (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002). However, it is not clear if the causal variable is religiosity or other factors associated with it. Findings of several investigations display that religious people are inclined to be older (Moschis 1992), and age is inversely associated to materialism (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002; LaBarbera and Gurhan 1997). Could the connection between religiosity and buyer demeanour reflect the influence of other age-related components rather than religiosity per se?

What is religiosity?

Before reconsidering the living assesses in the locality of psychology and belief we will succinctly talk about religiousness and spirituality and the connection between them. Aperusal of the literature on belief and spirituality over the past ten years reveals a very wide spectrum of conceptualizations that range from New Age mysticism to conventionally devout approaches directed to everyday life. Increasingly, there is discussion in the publications considering the relation between belief and spirituality. Some consider the constructs as similar, while others contend that belief and spirituality are uniquely different with belief mentioning to a group activity that involves exact behavioral, communal, doctrinal, and denominational characteristics (Fetzer organisation, 1999). Religiosity and spirituality have furthermore been conceptualized to foster the development of the other. For demonstration, religious practices boost religious growth, while religious practices are often a salient facet of devout participation (Armstrong and Crowther, 2002). Many scholars contend that it is possible to take up the outward pattern of devout demeanour without developing a relative with God, sometimes referred to as an extrinsic orientation to religion (e.g. Allport and Ross, 1967).

There has been a move in both the estimation of religiosity and spirituality to be more individual (Slater et al., 2001). There is furthermore a lack of a clear operational definition of the constructs. Thus, many of the assesses in this paper contemplate both ...