Religion or spirituality has long been considered a factor in mental health in the United States. A recent study using a smartphone-based experience looks into the effect of daily spiritual experiences and the stressors of psychological well-being.
The study by Baylor University and Harvard Medical School was published in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. The researchers used data from SoulPulse, which uses smartphones to collect data for 14 days to monitor spiritual experiences through survey questions.
Over 2,700 participants were involved in the study as the researchers kept track of daily stressors. As SoulPulse collected data on daily spiritual experiences, the researchers analyzed its impact on factors such as depressive symptoms and flourishing or well-being indicators such as happiness, meaning, purpose, virtue, and close relationships.
SoulPulse via Smartphones
SoulPulse, an ongoing study since 2017, measures religious and spiritual development, commitment to beliefs, and concepts of God. It also measures religious coping as it combines theology and psychology.
The team discovered that frequent texting helped with the participant's spiritual experiences rather than receiving just one or two points. Since most of us spend hours using our smartphones, the researchers explained that it is a useful tool to link overall well-being and daily spiritual experiences.
During the study, the participants used smartphone check-ins twice a day for 14 days. The researchers analyzed if a person's spirituality was linked with satisfaction momentarily or if it was stable.
Professor Matt Bradshaw from Baylor University shared that their study uniquely examined people's "daily spiritual experiences - such as feeling God's presence, finding strength in religion or spirituality, and feeling inner peace and harmony - as both stable traits and as states that fluctuate."
Both consistent spiritual experiences and short-term periodic spiritual experiences proved to make an impact on one's flourishing. The daily spiritual experiences also helped the participants coped with everyday stress.
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Daily Spiritual Experiences and Overall Well-Being
Smartphones will also enable the researchers to do a study on a larger scale compared to previous technology of using pagers for data collection, shared Blake Victor Kent from Harvard Medical School. Their findings, explained by Kent, showed that daily stressors were associated with increased depressive symptoms as expected. Stressors also decreased levels of flourishing.
He explained that if two people with equal stress levels were compared, the person with more spiritual experiences would likely have less depressive symptoms and indicate feelings of flourishing. For example, one Christian belief is that there can be joy in
suffering or that perseverance is about focusing on the goal and not on the current circumstances.
The sociologists also showed how the participants' daily spiritual experiences varied each day. For example, days with spiritual experiences that were above average indicated better mental health compared to below-average days.
In conclusion, the authors wrote that daily spiritual experiences "serve as a buffer against daily stressors" and flourishing is a holistic indicator of overall well-being. The team also believes that the smartphone-based experience sampling method can be a useful tool in understanding people's well-being.
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