Positive emotions as leading to religion and spirituality

Abstract

A great deal of research has shown that a variety of negative events and emotions can increase religion and spirituality. We argue that positive events and emotions (that imply some self-transcendence) can increase religion and spirituality. In two experiments, participants (N  = 91 and N  = 87) were exposed to a neutral video or one of three videos eliciting positive emotions: humor, appreciation of nature, and wonder at childbirth. Religiousness was to some extent affected by the positive emotions elicited (Study 1), and spirituality was higher among participants who were exposed to the videos eliciting self-transcendent emotions (appreciation of nature and wonder at childbirth) but not among those exposed to humor (Study 2). Both religiousness and spirituality may fit with the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, but the correspondence seems to be clearer for spirituality, a reality marked by universalism and openness to experience.

Keywords:

• positive emotions
• religion
• spirituality
• awe
• wonder
• humor

Notes

Notes

1. Note that the descriptions of these four emotions made by the respective scholars are original, detailed, and rather convincing, but they are also overlapping and, as acknowledged by these scholars themselves, quite speculative rather than empirically based. The empirical investigation of distinct positive emotions, including awe, is only beginning (Shiota, Keltner,  & John, 2006; Shiota, Keltner,  & Mossman, 2007).

2. The result relative to sadness may point to a complex issue that is presented in theoretical work on awe. The emotion of awe, although positive, also includes some negative components: it is located ‘in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundaries of fear,’ a fear resulting from the perception of a high power and the obscurity of the sublime (Keltner  & Haidt, 2003, p. 297). Similarly, Bulkeley (cited in Emmons, 2005) has observed that, in the emotion of wonder, after a decentering of the self when faced with an unexpected powerful reality, there is ultimately a recentering of the self as a response to new knowledge and understanding. It is not impossible that the discovery of the limits of the self during a self-transcendent emotional experience may produce some negative emotions such as sadness.