Relationships among spirituality, cognitive processing, and personal control

The current study was a cross-sectional investigation of how spirituality as a positive life theme might be related to a unique style of cognitive processing. Of secondary interest were the relationships among spirituality and other personal control variables. Using memory recall and recognition tasks, the current study sought to determine whether or not participants would attend more to positive, negative, neutral, or religious words. The results of the current study indicate that (1) older adults are more spiritual than younger adults, (2) higher spirituality is related to higher levels of optimism, (3) spirituality is related to an external locus of control, but only for the unknown forces locus of control, and (4) spirituality neither relates to optimism, nor does it appear to be related to the cognitive bias of optimism.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2002

Author dc:creator

• Bonner, Karri

Contributors dc:contributor

• Stanley H. Cohen.
• Barry Edelstein
• Julie H. Patrick

• Religious education
• Religion
• Cognitive psychology

Identifier

https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/782

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchrepository.wvu.edu:etd-1785