(2015, June). Poster presented at the 4th convention of the Association for Research in Personality, St. Louis, MO. Religious and spiritual struggles arise in various forms and circumstances. The newly developed Religious and Spiritual Struggles (RSS) scale reveals a coherent, multidimensional structure in these domain-specific problems that applies to religious and nonreligious people alike. Thus new questions emerge. Do religious people struggle less with religion, or more? Struggles and stress seem likely to coincide, but might stress give rise to fewer religious struggles among religious people? We tested this moderation hypothesis in a large sample of American undergraduates, who completed the RSS and measures of stressful life events, religious belief salience, and religious participation. A hierarchical regression of factor scores based on a structural equation model of polychoric correlations found support for the hypothesis. Religion and stress related positively to all subscales of the RSS and their overall mean, but a small, negative interaction also manifested, which suggested a weakening relationship between struggles and stress as religiousness increases.

1. Introduction
Religious and spiritual aspects of life present a variety of challenges.
The Religious and Spiritual Struggles scale (RSS; Exline, Pargament, Grubbs,
& Yali, 2014) proposes a 6-factor structure of these problems’ themes:
Divine: conflict or insecurity in relationship with God
Demonic: perceived persecution by the devil or evil spirits
Interpersonal: conflicts with people related to religion/spirituality
Moral: concerns with morality of one’s actions and desires
Meaning: doubting the importance, purpose, or meaning of one’s life
Doubt: discomfort with religious/spiritual doubts and questions
Greater lifetime trauma should provide more opportunities/triggers for various types
of R/S struggle, as struggles often arise when people try to cope with negative events.
All RSS factors relate positively to anxiety, depression, anger, and loneliness.
Spiritual struggles relate to many other forms of distress (Ano & Pargament, 2012).
RSS correlations with religiousness vary across the six factors.
A strong religious orienting system may buffer any effects of trauma on struggles.
This would imply weaker correlations for trauma & RSS, given high religiousness.
Hypothesis 1: Lifetime trauma predicts greater religious & spiritual struggles.
Hypothesis 2: Religiousness and trauma interact, predicting less RSS.
Method
Participants
N = 3,106 USA undergraduates Mean age = 19.1 63% female
72% White / Caucasian / European American 73% Christian
Measures
Religious and Spiritual Struggles (Exline et al., 2014)
Six subscales rated on a 5-point Likert scale for applicability over past few months
Religious belief salience and religious participation (Blaine & Crocker, 1995)
Belief salience: 4 items rated for agreement on an 11-point Likert scale
E.g., “My religious/spiritual beliefs lie behind my whole approach to life.”
Excluded 355 people who chose, “Does not apply; I have no religious/spiritual beliefs”
Participation: 8 items rated for frequency in past week on a 6-point scale
E.g., “prayed or meditated”, “thought about religious/spiritual issues”
Lifetime trauma (Turner & Lloyd, 1995)
List of 19 traumatic life events: rated “No”, “Yes, once”, or “Yes, more than once”
E.g., “Did your parents get a divorce?” “Has a spouse, child, or other loved one died?”
Nick Stauner, Joshua A. Wilt, & Julie J. Exline Kenneth I. Pargament
Case Western Reserve University Bowling Green State University
References
Ano, G. G., &
Pargament, K. I.
(2012). Predictors of
spiritual struggles:
An exploratory study.
Mental Health, Religion,
& Culture, 16(4), 1–16.
Blaine, B., & Crocker, J.
(1995). Religiousness,
race, and
psychological well-
being: Exploring
social psychological
moderators. PSPB,
21(10), 1031–1041.
Exline, J. J., Pargament,
K. I., Grubbs, J. B., &
Yali, A. M. (2014).
The Religious and
Spiritual Struggles
scale: Development
and initial validation.
Psychology of Religion
and Spirituality, 6(3),
208–222.
Turner, R. J., & Lloyd, D.
A. (1995). Lifetime
traumas and mental
health: The
significance of
cumulative adversity.
Journal of Health and
Social Behavior, 36(4),
360–376.
Acknowledgement
We wish to express our
gratitude for funding
from the John
Templeton Foundation
(Grant #36094).
Results
SEM and factor scores estimated using robust DWLS fit to 2-step polychoric correlations
Religiousness was estimated as a second-order factor from belief salience & participation.
Religious belief salience & participation are strongly collinear (r = .86, VIFs = 4).
No interactions in multiple regressions predicting RSS from trauma and religiousness.
Main effects were estimated as a structural equation model (see Figure).
Second-order RSS factor scores estimated from 6 1st-order factor scores.
Predicting 2nd-order RSS factor: lifetime trauma β = .31; religiousness β = .14
When calculating religiousness as the mean of religious belief salience and participation,
weak interactions emerged:
Divine Demonic Interpersonal Moral Meaning Doubt Total
Religiousness × Trauma β: -.06 -.04 -.05 -.06 -.03 ns -.06 -.06
All ps < .02, except when predicting Meaning struggle. Informal replication attempts failed.
Contact: NickStauner@gmail.com
Figure. Structural equation model predicting struggles from trauma and religiousness
Model fit
Scaled Χ²
Χ² df
TLI
RMSEA
WRMR
statistics
6025
1454
.973
.035
2.135
Discussion
Hypothesis 1: supported. Lifetime trauma predicts moderately greater R/S struggles independently of religiousness.
Trauma explains the most variance in struggles overall. Religiousness only explains more in demonic and moral struggles.
Religious and spiritual struggles may arise from traumatic experiences generally.
Religiousness may also increase some struggles and decrease others.
Predictive relationships are independent.
Hypothesis 2: inconclusive. Interactions were very weak. Significance depended on the method of estimating religiousness.
Religiousness does not substantially reduce any effects of lifetime trauma on R/S struggles.
People with low religiousness may struggle more with traumatic experiences, but only to a very small degree if so.
Religiousness provides at most a negligible buffer against effects of trauma on R/S struggles.
Divine Demonic Interpersonal Moral
Ultimate
Meaning
Doubt
R. Belief
Salience
Religious
Participation
Lifetime
Trauma
Religiousness
.87 .95
.55
.28 .23 .30
.17 .34
.15
-.18 -.06
.27 .21
Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale
(RSS)
Note. All paths p < .02. RSS factor correlations and insignificant paths omitted. The strongest predictor of each struggle factor is bolded.