Spirituality

Forgivingness is an important character strength in interpersonal relationships. Our panel study showed heightened forgivingness followed the Christian conversion experience, indicating a directional effect of religious conversion on forgivingness. Interestingly, our findings also suggested a bidirectional relationship between pessimism and unforgivingness. On one hand, a pessimistic worldview prevents people from being forgiving; on the other hand, the unwillingness to forgive may entrap us in a vicious cycle of interpersonal conflicts, thus strengthening one’s expectation of negative things to happen across various areas of life. Of note, being forgiving can reduce one’s pessimistic and cynical view of the world, as well as induce optimism, regardless of religious faith. Hence, having a deeper understanding of these character strengths (i.e. forgivingness, optimism and spirituality) offers therapists and educators alternative routes in achieving character growth. 

It is common to say religiosity is associated with values. Our studies showed that it could not simply say, "Values predetermine religiosity" or "Religiosity changes our values". We found that having relatively high values of conformity, compassion, and universalism and relatively low values of stimulation, accomplishment, and power make some individuals tend to believe that the teachings of the faith of Christianity are acceptable and may even make some people Christians in the first place. In contrast, people who place a low value on conformity, compassion, and universalism or value arousal, success, and power are less willing to believe in a religion. However, in a second study, prior value orientations did not predict religious conversion, although religious conversion did predict later changes in some values.

In this study, 632 Chinese Protestant Christians were surveyed on the psychological changes and individual characteristics of faith exiters and would-be exiters within a 3-year time frame. 188 participants of them left their faith within 3 years. By comparison, faith exiters had higher level of the fate control belief and stimulation values and lower level of religiosity social axiom than the stayers. The findings strongly suggest that changes in beliefs and values might have begun long before the actual faith exit, whereas personality change, if any, might take a long time after the transition. Changes in psychological symptoms after faith exit can be multitrajectory.

In this controlled group prospective study, 2,077 Chinese responded to six waves of survey. At Wave 3, 198 reported having lost a family member recently. Fate control predicted depressive mood at all four post-loss measurements, anxiety at three post-loss measurements, and stress at two post-loss measurements. Bereavement status predicted the psychological symptoms only at Wave 3. Latent growth modeling showed that the bereaved people’s mood trajectory depended on whether they believed in fate. The harmful effects of holding a strong belief in fate control on depressive mood are aggravated by losing someone significant.

In this three-year longitudinal prospective study, we compared 46 Chinese Christian converts who, at the beginning of the study, were non-Christians with a matched sample of 92 individuals who had always been Christians and a matched sample of 92 individuals who remained as non-believers throughout the duration of the study. Findings showed tha­t neither personality, personal values, nor social axioms predict whether one would become converted. However, experiencing anxiety and having religious friends were precursors. Several personal values, depressive mood, and anxiety, but not personality, can predict conversion to a certain extent during the three-year period.

2074 students (706 males), filled out the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), the Future Disposition Inventory-24 (FDI-24), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). We found that only the Presence of Meaning subscale in the MLQ mediated the relation between hopelessness and suicidal behaviours, while both the Presence of Meaning subscale and Search for Meaning subscales within FDI-24 mediated Positive Focus, Suicide Orientation, and Negative Focus and suicidal behaviours, respectively.