PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Progress in psychology of religion and spirituality benefits from advancement and enrichment of definitions. Dozens of definitions of religion and spirituality have been offered in the history of the field, however, most of them were generated from a top-down, theory-driven process. This study utilized a bottom-up approach to examine folk definitions of religion and spirituality and, with the help of text analytic tools, offers a complementary from people’s (vs. scholarly) perspective. Data were free entries of defining “religion” and “spirituality” collected from English-speaking American individuals. Three waves of data were collected. Wave 1 included n = 1,046 individual definitions, Wave 2 included n = 276 individuals, and Wave 3 included n = 214 individuals. Word frequency approaches showed that religion can be best defined as specific organized beliefs whereas spirituality can be defined as relating to personal world and life. Topic Modeling confirmed the distinctiveness of words that went into defining religion versus spirituality. Finally, a dictionary approach using LIWC suggested that the definition of religion involved social connections and power, and a mindset of authority and class. Definition of spirituality involved various human experiences and reflected high level of interest and cognitive complexity. Cohort data suggested a trend that over time definitions of spirituality shifted to focus more on connectedness, personal feelings, and humanity from a previous focus on religious ideas of belief and god.