The distinction between authoritarianism and fundamentalism in three cultures: factor analysis and personality correlates

Krauss SW, Streib H, Keller B, Silver CF. The distinction between authoritarianism and fundamentalism in three cultures: factor analysis and personality correlates. Archive for the Psychology of Religion. 2006;28:341-348.The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism

Introduction to Special Issue in Honor of Ralph W. Hood, Jr.

Williamson WP, Silver CF, Streib H. Introduction to Special Issue in Honor of Ralph W. Hood, Jr. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. 2021;31(3):153-155

Design, Methods, and Sample Characteristics of the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of "Spirituality"

Keller B, Streib H, Silver CF, Klein C, Hood RW. Design, Methods, and Sample Characteristics of the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of "Spirituality". In: Streib H, Hood RW, eds. Semantics and Psychology of "Spirituality". A Cross-cultural Analysis. Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016: 39-51.The Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality” aims at an in-depth understanding of what people call “spirituality.” For this aim, a multi-method design has been applied. Self-report instruments such as psychometric scales were used with a large sample in Germany and the USA. Our sampling pro-cedure, aiming at capturing the varieties of being “spiritual,” resulted in a sample of 1113 participants in the USA and 773 in Germany. This chapter introduces the instruments which were compiled for our questionnaire, the Faith Development Interview, and the Implicit Association Task which we used with a selected small-er sample. The chapter also describes the construction of “focus groups,” groups defined according to participants’ self-identification as “spiritual,” as “religious” or as “atheist/non-theist.” These focus groups have been used to structure the sample with respect to positions in the religious field. They were also used for the selection of participants for personal interviews, the Faith Development Interview (FDI), and an experiment, the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The characteriza-tion of the focus groups concludes the chapter

Is "Spirituality" nothing but "Religion"? An Indirect Measurement Approach

Klein C, Hood RW, Silver CF, Keller B, Streib H. Is "Spirituality" nothing but "Religion"? An Indirect Measurement Approach. In: Streib H, Hood RW, eds. Semantics and Psychology of "Spirituality". A Cross-cultural Analysis. Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016: 71-85.While people might distinguish strictly between “spirituality” and “reli-gion” on the explicit level of cognition, it is possible that such differences disap-pear on the implicit level. Implicit Association Tests (IATs) provide a reliable and valid indirect procedure to measure implicit cognition. However, IATs comparing “spirituality” and “religion” have not been used often in research yet. Earlier stud-ies have tried to contrast both concepts either directly in one IAT or have used both concepts as a single category. Thus, in their operationalization they did not take the broadness, vagueness, and partial overlap of both terms into account satisfyingly. For a more valid comparison, in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality,” both “spirituality” and “religion” have been assessed by using the same stimuli and have been contrasted with “atheism” as a third concept. The results based on a subsample of 104 participants (USA: n = 67, Germany: n = 37) show that the task difficulties were reasonable and that both IATs proved to be reliable. The general IAT effects were .33 (USA) and .36 (Germany) for “spirituality” and .26 (USA) and .22 (Germany) for “religion,” indicating a preference for both “spirituality” and “religion” when contrasted with “atheism.” The effect sizes differ in parts significantly between four groups of explicit “spiritual/religious” self-identification in both countries. Explicit “spiritual”/“religious” self-identifications correlate highly significant with the IAT effects for “spirituality” and “religion.” Although, in general, the IAT scores are also very highly correlated, comparison between the four subgroups revealed that explicit self-description and implicit attitude towards “spirituality” differ significantly among those who distinguish between their “spirituality” and “religion” on the explicit level

Positive Adult Development and "Spirituality": Psychological Well-Being, Generativity, and Emotional Stability

Klein C, Keller B, Silver CF, Hood RW, Streib H. Positive Adult Development and "Spirituality": Psychological Well-Being, Generativity, and Emotional Stability. In: Streib H, Hood RW, eds. Semantics and Psychology of "Spirituality". A Cross-cultural Analysis. Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016: 401-436.This chapter deals with the association between “spirituality” and indi-cators of positive adult development. While possible links of “spirituality” to men-tal health, well-being, and psychological growth have been the subject of exten-sive research, this broad interest in salutary effects of “spirituality” has gone along with an inflationary usage of the term “spirituality,” vague concepts and invalid measures. This is particularly true when “spirituality” itself is implicitly understood in terms of mental health and well-being (e. g. as meaning, self-efficacy, or inner peace). Such an overlap of concepts results in illusionary associations because the same phenomenon is measured twice. Therefore it is important to distinguish between the conceptualizations of “spirituality” and their possible associations with dimensions of mental health and well-being. In the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality,” mystical experiences have been measured using Hood’s M-Scale; and SEM analyses (see Chapter 11) have evidenced that the M-Scale is an excellent predictor of self-rated “spirituality.” Thus, the M-Scale can be used as a measure for what many people today call “spirituality.” An ad-vantage of the M-Scale in comparison to more recently developed measures of “spirituality” within health research is that the M-Scale is unsuspicious to be a hidden measure of well-being. But – and this is the focus of this chapter – a set of structural equation models illustrates that the subscales of the M-Scale predict psychological well-being as measured with the Psychological Well-Being and Growth Scale, generativity as measured with the Loyola Generativity Scale, and neuroticism/emotional stability as measured with the NEO-FFI. It can be conclud-ed from these findings that “spiritual” experiences are indeed associated with positive adult development in terms of well-being, generativity, and emotional stability

"Spirituality" and Mysticism

Klein C, Silver CF, Coleman TJ, Streib H, Hood RW. "Spirituality" and Mysticism. In: Streib H, Hood RW, eds. Semantics and Psychology of "Spirituality". A Cross-cultural Analysis. Cham, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2016: 165-187.This chapter explores the relationship between the self-ratings as “spir-itual” and mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale (1975). The intro-duction provides an overview of recent attempts to measure “spirituality” psy-chometrically, of the theoretical and empirical approaches to mysticism and already empirically observed relations between mysticism and “spirituality.” Many scales trying to operationalize “spirituality” lack a solid conceptual back-ground and convincing empirical validity. Citing the work of Stace and James, Hood constructed a scale that provided detailed and measurable descriptions of mystical experiences, the Mysticism Scale. Since the Mysticism Scale measures varieties of personal experiences of unity with some kind of transcendence, it proves to be an excellent measure for what many people today call “spirituality.” This can be shown empirically by utilizing the three factor solution of the M-Scale, identified as introvertive, extrovertive, and interpretive mysticism, in struc-tural equation models exploring the relationships between mysticism and self-rated “spirituality” as well as self-rated “religion.” This chapter concludes by ar-guing that “spirituality” may be the product of experiences that can be described in terms of mysticism

Quantitative Perspectives on Deconverts and Traditionalists Revisited

Streib H, Keller B. Quantitative Perspectives on Deconverts and Traditionalists Revisited. In: Streib H, Keller B, Bullik R, et al., eds. Deconversion Revisited. Biographical Studies and Psychometric Analyses Ten Years Later. Research in Contemporary Religion. Vol 33. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; 2022: 59-82

Utility of Intracranial Vessel Wall MRI as a Diagnostic Tool for Primary CNS Vasculitis: Protocol for a Systematic Review

This study will describe the available evidence for use vessel wall MRI in the diagnosis of Primary CNS Vasculitis. A better understanding of the effectiveness of vessel wall MRI as an alternative to more invasive diagnostic testing will be helpful in the development of future diagnostic guidelines for Primary CNS Vasculitis