Authors:
Pamela Ebstyne King, Sam A. Hardy, and Sean Noe
Abstract:
Despite the prevalence of religiousness and spirituality among adolescents, little is known about the psychology of adolescent religious and spiritual development. The purpose of this article is to explain how scholars within the discipline of developmental psychology have begun to approach the topic. Specifically, the article details how developmental theory advances understanding of religious and spiritual development and overviews developmental methods that enable rigorous examination of the structure and function of adolescent religious and spiritual development. A Relational Developmental Systems metatheoretical approach, emphasizing longitudinal methods, is utilized to highlight ideographic and nomothetic aspects of adolescent religiousness and spirituality. Examples of theoretically and methodologically cutting-edge developmental research provide illustration. In conclusion, the article shows that developmental psychology provides insight toward a comprehensive approach to the study of religious and spiritual development and broadens the perspectives of other disciplines, while relying on other disciplines to deepen developmentalists’ research.
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Spirituality
Religion as Fertile Ground
Abstract An extensive body of research points toward spirituality and religiousness as resources for promoting human thriving. People with strong connections to the transcendent and religious meaning in life often view morals and values as central to their self-concepts. Although moral identity theory and contemporary views of virtue development emphasize the importance of narrative identity for habituated moral action, the two are often discussed in isolation of each other. In this chapter, the authors highlight how their commonality is particularly evident when examining the potential of religion to provide a transcendent self-narrative that leads to virtue formation and moral action…
Youth
Interrogating Ergodicity & Specificity in Youth Development Programs
The CI research team look at instances of commonality and specificity in Salvadoran youth enrolled in CI programs.
Gratitude
How diverse beliefs shape the experience of transcendent gratitude
Author: Jeane Nelson, Susan Mangan, Rebecca Ann Baer, Jeff V. Ramdass, Pamela Ebstyne King Abstract: As a novel contribution, this study considers transcendent gratitude (e.g. gratitude towards non-human benefactors such as God, Science, or Karma) across diverse belief systems. The sample included 619 participants (M age 37.5, 52.6% female) across the U.S. with beliefs across three distinct categories: a) Theistic; 38.4%), b) Spiritual but not theistic; 26.4%, and c) Non-theistic/Non-spiritual (Other); 35.2%. Across the three belief systems, we tested the associations between gratitude and theistic predictors (e.g. feeling comfort or anger towards God, fidelity, interaction with God, attachment to…