Growth in research on the psychology of religion is contributing to a greater
understanding of the impact of religious variables on mental health. The purpose of the
current project was to examine how religious orientation (RO), locus of control (LOC),
and spiritual meaning (SM) relate to anxious symptoms (AS) and depressive symptoms
(DS) in a college sample. Specifically, locus of control (LOC) and spiritual meaning
(SM) were hypothesized to mediate the relations between RO and AS and DS. The
sample analyzed consisted of 401 undergraduate students who were primarily Caucasian
and Christian. Correlational analyses, mediated regression analyses, and moderated
regression analyses were used to examine the hypotheses.
Because gender differences are noted in the literature when examining the
relations between RO and mental health variables and were also found in the present
study, gender was controlled in all analyses. In the current study, females had lower
levels of internal LOC (ILOC) and chance LOC (CLOC) and higher levels of God LOC
(GLOC), AS, and SM than males. Many mediational hypotheses were supported. SM mediated the relations
between intrinsic religiousness (IRO) and AS and between IRO and DS. SM partially
mediated the relation between extrinsic religious orientation (ERO) and AS. ILOC was
not found to mediate the relations between RO and AS or between RO and DS. Powerful
others LOC (PO LOC) mediated the relation between IRO and AS. PO LOC partially
mediated the relations between ERO and AS, between quest religiousness (QRO) and
AS, between IRO and DS, and between QRO and DS. CLOC mediated the relations
between IRO and AS, between ERO and AS, between QRO and AS, and between QRO
and DS. CLOC partially mediated the relation between IRO and DS. GLOC partially
mediated the relation between QRO and DS.
Social desirability was examined as moderating the relations between RO and AS
and between RO and DS. Social desirability was found to moderate the relation between
ERO and DS.
In sum, LOC and SM were found to mediate relations between RO and AS and
DS. Social desirability moderated the relation between ERO and DS.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4329 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Wiley, Elizabeth Stirling |
| Contributors | Heffer, Robert W., Koehly, Laura M. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 441386 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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