Abstracts Category : Other

DEMANDINGNESS, DESERVINGNESS, AND SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING: THEROLE OF ENTITLEMENT IN PREDICTING RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUALSTRUGGLES

by Joshua Briggs Grubbs

A growing body of research has illustrated theprevalence of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles among adultsin the U.S. In response to this new line of research, there is nowa growing interest in examining those factors that might predisposeone to experience r/s struggles, One such factor is psychologicalentitlement, which has emerged as a robust predictor of certainstruggles. The present work sought to build upon this finding,examining how spiritual entitlement, a domain specificmanifestation of psychological entitlement, predicted a variety ofreligious and spiritual struggles. Using a large, cross-sectionalsample of adults (N = 747), the structure of the SpiritualEntitlement Scale was tested using both confirmatory factoranalyses and item response theory, revealing two dimensions ofspiritual entitlement. The first dimensionPositive Expectationsreflected an optimistic attitude toward ones spiritual life andwas wholly unrelated to r/s struggle when psychological entitlementwas held constant statistically. The second dimension MaladaptiveSpiritual Entitlement reflected demanding attitudes toward deityand a sense of unmerited deservingness in ones spiritual life.This second dimension was robustly predictive of r/s struggles withthe divine, but not with any other r/s struggles. The implicationsof these findings are discussed.Advisors/Committee Members: Exline, Julie (Committee Chair).