Deconversion and Identity Formation in Adolescents: The Role of Internal Dialogs and Religiousness of Parents

ABSTRACT

Adolescence is a period of exceptional sensitivity to the ideals that are subject to verification. Therefore, a phenomenon of deconversion (i.e. abandonment of religion) is observed among adolescents. The paper aims to analyze deconversion and its connections with the identity formation as well as mediators and moderators of these relationships. Participants were 272 adolescents aged between 14 and 18. Three scales were used: the Circumplex Identity Modes Questionnaire, the Internal Dialogical Activity Scale-Revised, and the Adolescent Deconversion Scale. We found that identity modes such as moratorivity, diffusion, and defiance are positively related to deconversion, whereas socialization and normativity are negatively related to deconversion. The negative relationships between normativity and deconversion exist if the parent (especially mother) is assessed as religious or very religious. Moreover, internal dialogs moderate and mediate links between different identity modes and dimensions of deconversion.

KEYWORDS:

• deconversion
• identity modes
• internal dialog
• parents’religiousness
• adolescents

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Ewelina Kukla and Monika Kiwak for their assistance in the research.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The Research Ethics Committee at the Institute of Psychology, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, approved the study (KEBN_44/2020).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12153/1491

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12153/1491.

Notes

¹ It was a different group from the one mentioned in the article by the same authors entitled “Deconversion processes and quality of life among Polish adolescents: The mediating role of social support”.