Spirituality and Religious Practices: Do they make a difference to the ability to exercise Self-Control?

1. Spirituality and Religious Practices: Do they make a difference to the ability to exercise Self-Control?

2. Why Study Self-Control? • Links to health and well-being • Suffering and breakdowns in self-control • Addiction • Abuse ( alcohol, smoking, gambling, substance) • Binge –eating /eating disorders • Violent acts • Debt • Affect regulation

3. “The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.” -H.L. Mencken

4. Costs- Health, Human, and Financial • $63 billion on low carb, low fat, low-sugar, low calorie foods • Over 1 billion on smoking cessation products and programs • $46 million on diet and fitness programs, drugs , and surgeries • Hundreds of billions in health care costs to treat preventable illnesses

5. Positive correlations with high levels of self-control and positive outcomes • Good interpersonal skills and relationships (secure attachment, better family cohesion, and less family conflict) • Better grades • Better psychological adjustment (more self-acceptance) • More guilt (an adaptive response) than shame( a more problematic response) Where guilt produces constructive, future-oriented change and shame elicits irrational anger and poor impulse control).

6. Four Categories of Self-Control • Impulse control • Control over thoughts • Affect regulation • Optimal performance

7. Self-Control as related to Goals Serial killer vs. virtuous act? The good , the bad, and the ugly

8. The Relationship to Positive Psychology : Virtue (Latin for Strength) Self-control as related to religious behavior and spiritualityStrength ModelMaster Virtue Depletion Renewal

9. Study aims The study was intended to examine the relationship between aspects of religious behavior and spirituality to the ability to exercise self-control.

10. Procedure A series of hierarchical multiple regressions was conducted with personality entered on the first step followed by religious variables entered on the second step and then spiritual variables entered on the third step to predict their relationship to self-control.

11. Study Variables • Predictor Variables Outcome Variable • Personality FFM Self-Control • Daily Spiritual Experiences • Spiritual Person • Spiritual Alienation • Religious Person • Faith Maturity Vertical • Faith Maturity Horizontal • Congregational Support • Negative Congregational support • Religious service • Religious Practices

12. Measures • 50-Item IPIP Inventory (Goldberg,1999). • Self-Control Scale (SSCS:Tangney,Baumeister&Boone,2004).Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality • (BMMRS : Fetzer /National Institute on Aging Working Group,1999). • Daily Spiritual Experiences, Private Religious Practices, Congregational Support, Spiritual Person, Religious Person, Negative Congregational Support, Spiritual Discontent • Faith Maturity Scale (FMS: Benson, Donahue & Erickson, 1993).

13. Table1.Incremental Validity of Religious and Spiritual variables over the Five Factor Personality Domains on the Outcome of Self-Control

14. Table 2.Beta Weights for Predictor Variables of Self-Control According to Entry Order

15. Results • Congregational support had a significant positive relationship to self-control. • Religious communities support moral behavior and self-control. • For example, many of the ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17) regulate interpersonal behavior prohibiting socially disruptive acts and promoting stability and harmony among people. “If you want to change and maintain behavior over time, you need people who are going to be supportive of those changes” –John Holtgrave (Head of Health, Behavior and Society Dept. of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) • For example, Weight Watchers, Alcoholics Anonymous, other 12 –Step Groups, all use group support and to a certain extent peer pressure.

16. Peer Support?

17. Results (cont.) • There was a negative relationship between spiritual discontent and self –control. • Therefore, a person who is alienated spiritually may have less self-control.

18. Conclusions • Helping a person to resolve spiritual struggles could have an impact on a person’s ability to exercise self-control. If a person is able to eliminate his or her experience of spiritual discontent, it is possible other aspects of self-regulation may improve. • This is consistent with research related to negative images of God which points to negative affect and inhibits well-being. • If a person has adequate support in a religious community, they may exercise relatively more ability to exercise self-control.

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