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When are we more likely to permit immoral behaviours? The current research examined a generalized compensation belief hypothesis that individuals, as observers, would morally tolerate and accept someone paying forward unfair treatment to an innocent person as a means to compensate for the perpetrator's previously experienced mistreatment. Across five experiments (N = 1107) based on economic games (Studies 1-4) and diverse real-life scenarios (Study 5), we showed that participants, as observing third parties, were more likely to morally permit and engage in the same negative act once they knew about previous maltreatment of the perpetrator. This belief occurred even when the content of received and paid-forward maltreatment was non-identical (Study 2), when the negative treatment was received from a non-human target (Study 3) and when the maltreatment was intangible (e.g. material loss) or relational (e.g. social exclusion; Study 5). Perceived required compensation mediated the effect of previous maltreatment on moral permission (Studies 4 and 5). The results consistently suggest that people's moral permission of immoral behaviours is influenced by perpetrator's previous mistreatment, contributing to a better understanding of the nature and nuances of our sense of fairness and contextualized moral judgement.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect countless individuals. Traumatic events like COVID-19 can often lead to significant resource loss and negatively affect mental health. As a result, people often go through various types of struggles, including those that are religious or spiritual (e.g., existential doubt). Also, in the wake of trauma, people often try to engage in coping strategies, including drawing on religious or spiritual resources, to work through negative emotions in the face of adversity. The current qualitative study explored religious and spiritual struggles and coping strategies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants (N = 172) described the types of religious and spiritual struggles they experienced, as well as the types of coping strategies they engaged in. Four themes of religious and spiritual struggles emerged: interpersonal struggles, moral struggles, doubt struggles, and ultimate meaning struggles. Four themes of coping strategies emerged: psychological coping, health-related coping, religious/spiritual (R/S) coping, and interpersonal/social coping. These themes suggested a wide range of R/S struggles and coping strategies and provided implications for the intersection between R/S and trauma as well as patterns of coping in a pandemic context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Traumatic events, such as natural disasters, often lead to significant resource loss for survivors, which can negatively affect emotional well-being. In these situations, it is common for people to draw on their religious or spiritual faith to cope with their pain and struggle. One construct that has received increased attention within the field of religious/spiritual coping is spiritual fortitude (SF). SF refers to one's ability to draw on spiritual resources to transcend negative emotions in the face of stressors (Van Tongeren et al., 2019). In this review, we analyze eight empirical studies with 3,455 total participants. Specifically, we explore the relationship between SF and mental health and well-being, with a particular focus on its role in traumatic contexts (e.g., natural disasters). SF has been found to demonstrate a series of positive mental health benefits including higher meaning in life, spiritual well-being, positive religious coping, and perceived posttraumatic growth. We discuss areas for future research and implications for clinical practice, with specific consideration to coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Both the subfields of positive psychology (PP) and the psychology of religiousness and spirituality (PRS) are producing interesting, relevant, and impactful research, but very little integration of this research occurs between these subfields. We propose that a meaning system framework may be useful in unifying science and practice at the intersection of PP and PRS. In this chapter, we describe this meaning systems framework and summarize each subfield’s key meaning-related areas of focus, methods, and applications. We then highlight the convergences and divergences in these key areas of both subfields. We conclude that meaning is a unifying construct around which future theory and empirical research on PP and PRS can coalesce, and we propose some specific directions for a fruitful integration of these two subfields.

Both theoretical reflection and empirical research have purported a mutual exchange of benefits for the collaboration between positive psychology (PP) and Christianity. However, the varied belief systems and worldviews held among adherents of distinct Christian traditions may interfere with practical collaborative efforts between PP and Christianity. In this chapter, we explore important considerations for effective collaboration between PP and Christianity. Namely, we argue that Christianity can provide a framework for what individuals should value and what virtues a person should pursue, whereas PP can provide the tools and methodology for how to pursue the goals that are identified by Christianity. We first review the geographic distribution and demographic composition of Christians around the world, emphasizing the value of context when working with Christian populations. Second, we highlight fundamental beliefs and values that may influence how Christians interpret and utilize empirical findings from the field of PP. Third, we discuss how Christian beliefs, traditions, and doctrines influence our understandings of well-being, health, and virtue development. Throughout the chapter, we discuss strategies and implications for positive collaboration between the fields of PP and Christianity.

In this chapter, we review the literature on religion/spirituality (R/S) and the twin virtues of humility and gratitude. We focused on articles that were published in peer-reviewed journals and included both a measure of religion/spirituality and humility or gratitude. We focus our review by exploring two questions: (1) how is R/S associated with humility and gratitude, and (2) how might humility and gratitude work in tandem (consistent with the social oil hypothesis of humility)? We found cross-sectional evidence linking R/S and humility and gratitude. Additional work is needed to test the recent theory on how humility and gratitude may work together to promote and protect strong relationships, especially at the collective level. We suggest ways to catalyze research in this area, including the potential for future work aligning humility and gratitude. We also identify implications for practice both in clinical settings and religious communities.

Research has accumulated over the years to support the adage that ‘money can’t buy happiness.’ As an alternative to the high-consumption lifestyle often found in Western cultures, voluntary simplic...

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined...

People often favor their ingroup and derogate members of the outgroup. However, less is known about "religious dones," who used to identify as religious but no longer do and have more transitional identities. Across six studies (

Organisational scientists are paying increasing attention to humility, following a larger trend in scholarship highlighting the relational and interdependent nature of leadership and business. A growing body of evidence identifies humility as vital to effective organisational leadership, facilitating positive organisational outcomes, such as lower voluntary turnover and greater follower job satisfaction. To date, research on the subject has focused on certain specific organisational contexts, including businesses, hospitals, and schools. This paper reviews the existing literature and explores why humility may be an especially important leader trait in international humanitarian aid organisations and relief work-a context that is not only uniquely challenging, but also one that would seemingly stand to benefit keenly from the quality. It argues that humility is essential for effective leadership because it is normative of good character, it is predictive of positive outcomes, and it corresponds to a genuine representation of the nature of humanitarian aid.

OBJECTIVE: This prospective longitudinal study examined whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to changes in psychological and spiritual outcomes among adults with chronic disease. METHOD: Participants (N = 302) were a stratified, nonrandom sample of adults (Mage = 64.46, SD = 10.86, 45.7% female). The sample was representative of the chronically ill, U.S. adult population in gender, race/ethnicity, region, and religious affiliation but older in age and higher in socioeconomic status. Participants completed online-administered measures 1 month before the March 11 pandemic declaration (T1) and then 1 and 3 months after it (T2 and T3). At T1 through T3, they completed measures of depression, anxiety, personal suffering, psychological well-being, trait resilience, optimism, hope, grit, spiritual struggles, spiritual fortitude, and positive religious coping. At T2 and T3, they also completed measures of social support, physical health, resource loss, perceived stress, and COVID-19 fears and exposure. RESULTS: Overall, people did not change substantially in psychological or spiritual outcomes over time. However, trait resilience increased and personal suffering declined. People highest in prepandemic suffering increased in spiritual fortitude. Racial/ethnic minorities increased in religious importance. Roughly half (48.9%) of participants exhibited psychological resilience (no/minimal depression or anxiety symptoms) at both T2 and T3. Perceived stress and psychological resource loss were associated with adverse mental health outcomes, but social support and physical health were not. COVID-19 fears contributed more to mental health than COVID-19 exposure. CONCLUSIONS: Even among vulnerable populations such as adults with chronic disease, during pandemic conditions like COVID-19, many people may exhibit-or even increase slightly in-psychological and spiritual resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Natural disasters can disrupt and challenge survivors’ core belief systems, leading to negative health consequences. People often rely on religion/spirituality to help them cope and make meaning, but to date very few studies have specifically focused on exploring spiritually oriented expressive writing interventions with natural disaster survivors. Therefore, the current longitudinal, mixed-methods study utilized an experimental design with random assignment of 132 survivors of the 2016 Louisiana flooding. Quantitative measures were completed before and after the writing intervention, then at 1-month and 6-month follow-up time points. Results indicated that the spiritually oriented intervention was effective in promoting meaning in life but not life satisfaction. Survivors with lower preintervention positive attitudes toward God evidenced the strongest growth over time regarding meaning in life. Qualitative analyses, using a directed content analysis approach, revealed six themes in the experimental group’s written responses that expanded previous research. Finally, we discuss implications for counseling and future research.

Many people spend money on religious and secular products. How do spending preferences change when people stop identifying as religious? People who stop identifying as religious (religious dones) m...

Positive psychologists have used science to understand many virtues but have only just started to study grace, recently defined as ‘ … the gift of acceptance given unconditionally and voluntarily t...

Two experiments ( N = 487) tested the effects of receiving an apology (absent, present) and restitution (absent, present) in imagery of a one-sided transgression and common property crime, a burglary scenario. Within a framework of accountability, apology and restitution represent relationally responsive responsibility-taking and repair efforts by a perpetrator. Experiments 1 and 2 found that a thorough apology and restitution each decreased unforgiveness while eliciting increased empathy and forgiveness from student and community samples, respectively. Experiment 2 found that a custody condition consistent with a perpetrator’s willing accountability for wrongdoing (i.e., spontaneous confession with surrender) decreased unforgiveness while increasing empathy and forgiveness in comparison to a custody condition in which the offender was being held accountable externally (involuntary apprehension) or a no-custody control condition. This experimental evidence points to offender accountability efforts through apology, restitution, and surrender as important for decreasing victims’ unforgiving motivations and promoting their empathy and forgiveness.

As the current political environment in the United States and around the world becomes more polarized, it is important to better understand the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of engaging p...

The political climate in the United States is turbulent. The current study examined how (a) one’s own political humility and (b) one’s perceptions of the political humility of another person affect one’s willingness to forgive another person for a political hurt or offense. Participants ( N = 494) reported a recent political conflict and reported their forgiveness of the transgressor of this political hurt. Both the participant’s political humility and perceptions of the offender’s political humility were positively associated with forgiveness, whereas political commitment was negatively associated with forgiveness. Moreover, political humility buffered the negative relationship between political commitment and forgiveness. We conclude by discussing limitations, suggestions for future research, and practical applications.

Objective Religious/spiritual (R/S) growth is a core domain of posttraumatic growth (PTG). However, research on R/S growth following disasters has over-relied on retrospective self-reports of growth. We therefore examined longitudinal change in religiousness/spirituality following two disasters. Method Religious survivors of Hurricanes Harvey (Study 1) and Irma (Study 2) completed measures of perceived R/S PTG, general religiousness/spirituality ("current standing"-R/S PTG), and subfacets of religiousness/spirituality (spiritual fortitude, religious motivations, and benevolent theodicies). In Study 1, 451 participants responded at 1-month and 2-month postdisaster. In Study 2, participants responded within 5-days predisaster and at 1-month (N = 1,144) and 6-months postdisaster (N = 684). Results In both studies, perceived R/S PTG was weakly related to longitudinal increases in general religiousness/spirituality and in most of its subfacets, but reliable growth in any R/S outcome was rare. Additionally, Study 2 revealed evidence that actual change in psychological well-being is associated with actual (but not perceived) R/S PTG, but disaster survivors tend to exhibit declines in their religiousness/spirituality, spiritual fortitude, and religious motivations. Conclusions Results suggest disaster survivors are only modestly accurate in perceiving how much positive R/S change they experience following a disaster. We discuss implications for clinical practice, scientific research, and empirical and conceptual work on PTG more broadly.