Articles Section

Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies,

Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2008, 1-16.

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS,
IRRATIONAL BELIEFS, AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
Bianca MACAVEI* & Mircea MICLEA
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Abstract
The present studies have experimentally investigated the relationship
between religious beliefs and negative emotions. We found that the
mere association of a chain of negative events with the presence of a
merciful and omnipotent spiritual being induced less worry and sadness
and increased hope in the future than when the same events were
presented alone. The former religious attitudes may intensify the impact
of the actual religious beliefs in the generation of positive emotions. We
also found that the meaning-making process induced by the religious
beliefs is an implicit, tacit rather than an explicit inferential process.
Also, subjects who (1) unconditionally accept themselves, (2) hold less
self-downing beliefs (negative global self-evaluation) and (3) have more
religious beliefs tend to experience lower levels of emotional distress
under normal, non-traumatic circumstances. Also, participants who
believe in the love and forgiveness from God tend to endorse less selfdowning beliefs (one of the proximal causes of depression). Limits and
implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Keywords: religious beliefs and values, negative emotions, irrational beliefs

During the last 20 years the interest in religion and its connections to
psychology has increased substantially. The topic became accepted as part of
mainstream psychology and psychological intervention once multiculturalism
became a forth force in psychology (Worthington, Kurusu, McCullough, &
Sandage, 1996).
In an attempt to define concepts, religiousness came to be considered by
most researchers as a multidimensional construct (Spilka, Hood, & Gorsuch,
1985). Most researches rely on Allports (1959) definition of intrinsic versus
extrinsic religiousness. According to Allport, intrinsic religiousness "regards faith
*

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to:

E-mail: biancamacavei@psychology.ro
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Articles Section

as a supreme value in its own right. It is oriented toward a unification of being,

takes seriously the commandment of brotherhood, and strives to transcend all
self-centered needs" (Allport, 1966 p. 455). On the other hand, extrinsic
religiousness is "strictly utilitarian; useful for the self in granting safety, social
standing, solace and endorsement for one's chosen way of life" (Allport, 1966 p.
455). Although initially considered bipolar constructs, the two types of
religiousness are now considered rather as separate unipolar constructs (Donahue,
1985). A number of studies show religion to be associated positively with mental
health (understood as lack of psychopathology and/or prosocial behavior) in
persons with intrinsic religious motivation and negatively in persons with
extrinsic religious motivation (Donahue, 1985). Some data also suggest that
intrinsic religiousness is negatively related to trait anxiety (e.g., Baker & Gorsuch,
1982; Bergin, Masters, & Richards, 1987; Petersen & Roy, 1985), while extrinsic
religious orientation and negative religious coping (e.g., avoiding difficulties
through religious activities, blaming God for difficulties) are associated with
higher levels of depressive symptoms (Smith, McCullough, & Poll, 2003).
We should also make a clear distinction between religious beliefs and
religious values. Religious beliefs are propositional statements a person considers
to be true about religion. Religious values are superordinate organizing statements
of what a person considers important (closer to the concept of intrinsic religious
motivation presented above) (Worthington et al., 1996). If a person holds
religious beliefs but does not consider them important in his/her life it is likely
that these beliefs will not influence behaviors and emotions. Furthermore, as
some authors suggest (Worthington et al., 1996), it is important to focus on
specific religious beliefs/values and their impact on behavior and affect. In an
attempt to increase specificity and rigor, as well as connect religious beliefs to
other cognitive factors proved to play a major role in the development of certain
functional and dysfunctional behaviors and emotions, during the last years more
and more researchers have tried to bring religious beliefs closer to the classical
models of mental disorders. In a meta-analysis involving 147 studies, Smith et al.
(2003) showed that depressive symptoms and religious beliefs show a mild but
negative correlation (r = -.096) and that the negative correlation between
religiousness and depressive symptoms is higher when subjects go through
stressful situations. Using a group of 271 persons diagnosed with clinical
depression, Murphy, Ciarrocchi, Piedmont, Cheston, Peyrot, and Fitchett (2000)
tried to connect the cognitive factors emphasized in the well-known hopelessness
theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989) to religious beliefs
and behaviors. Their results show that religious belief, but not religious behavior,
is a significant predictor of lower levels of hopelessness and depression beyond
demographic variables. Religious beliefs proved to be both indirectly (by levels of
hopelessness), and directly (though a weaker association) related to depression,
which points out to a largely unexplored category of affect-generating cognitions
in need of investigation.
2

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However, to our knowledge, there is no study attempting to connect

religious beliefs as major factors in the generation of functional and dysfunctional
negative emotions (depression and sadness) to A. Elliss rational emotive
behavior therapy (REBT). According to the REBT theory of emotion formation,
the proximal factors responsible for the generation of emotions are evaluative
cognitions (rational and irrational beliefs). Specific to Ellis cognitive theory of
emotion is the assumption that there are qualitative differences between certain
similar emotions. As such, there is a qualitative difference between functional
(adaptive) and dysfunctional (maladaptive) emotions. Rational beliefs underlie
functional emotions, while dysfunctional emotions rely mostly on irrational
beliefs. As a consequence, depressed people are also sad, while sad people do not
have to also be depressed. The major irrational beliefs underlying depression are
demandingness and the global negative evaluation of personal worth.
Demandingness (DEM) refers to absolutist requirements expressed in the form of
musts and shoulds. Global negative evaluation of personal worth or selfdowning (SD) appears when people tend to be excessively critical of themselves
and make rather global negative evaluations about their personality. On the other
hand, sadness appears when people prefer their wishes and desires come true and
accept themselves as fallible and having better or worse specific performances
rather than globally evaluating their personal worth (Ellis & Dryden, 1997).
Elliss solution to the problem of self-rating is that people abandon the quest for
self-esteem and strive for unconditional self-acceptance. Unconditional self
acceptance (USA) means that the individual fully and unconditionally accepts
himself whether or not he behaves intelligently, correctly, or competently and
whether or not other people approve, respect, or love him(Ellis, 1977, p. 101),
and has been proved extremely important in promoting mental health.
Concerning peoples ability to tell apart functional from dysfunctional
emotions, a recent study by Opris and Macavei (2005) showed that people
without psychopathology could easily differentiate between the prototypical
functional and dysfunctional feelings at the subjective level.
Taking into consideration both the need to investigate specific religious
beliefs and the intent to bring these particular types of cognitions closer to the
mainstream psychology models of emotion and emotional disturbance, in the
following prospective studies we aim to:
1 investigate the impact of specific religious beliefs (i.e. the use of major
characteristics of Jesus Christ in the meaning-making process associated to
negative events) on emotional distress in a non-clinical population; and
2 investigate the relationship between specific religious beliefs (referring to
major characteristics of Jesus Christ) and evaluative beliefs in the generation of
both functional and dysfunctional emotions.

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STUDY 1
METHOD
Participants
Seventy students from Babes-Bolyai University, assigned in a framing
group and a non-framing group, participated in the study in exchange for course
credits. Eligible subjects were at least 19 years of age, completed study materials,
and had no major mental or physical illnesses. Age ranged from 19 to 32 years
(mean age=19.81, SD= 1.70). Eighty-five point seven percentages (85.7%) of the
sample described themselves as Orthodox, 4.3% as Roman-Catholic, 2.9% as
Greek-Catholic, 2.8% as Baptists, and 4.3% as other religion or no religion. Of all
participants, 15.7% were male and 84.3% were female. When questioned about
the importance of religion in their life, 45.7% stated it was very important, 34.3%
said it was important enough, 14.3% indicated medium importance, 4.3%
indicated very little importance, and 1.4% said religion was not important at all.
Materials1
A story was created, describing the following negative chain of events:
1. An astronaut has remained isolated on a remote planet (activating statistically
negative event);
2. Loss of radio contact with other humans (loss situation);
3. Death of the only other survivor who was his friend (loss situation and social
isolation);
4. Progressive sickness and increased physical weakness of the astronaut (threat
situation).
For the framing group, but not for the non-framing group, other two
elements were added:
1. Belief of the astronaut that all events on that planet are due to the presence of
a spiritual entity (attribution of cause of events);
2. Belief that the spiritual entity has the following characteristic:

unseen;

omnipotent;

kind;

omniscient;

just;

loving;

merciful with the astronauts. These are, in fact the main
characteristics of God extracted from the Holy Bible in a preliminary
study applied to the study situation but the name of God did not occur
in the story.
1

study materials can be obtained on request from the first author (BM).
Bianca Macavei, Mircea Miclea

Articles Section

Following the reading of the story the participants from the non-framing
group were asked to answer the following questions:
1. What could the astronaut believe about the troubles he has been
through? (construction of meaning, free answer);
2. How trustful could the astronaut be in his future? (hope in the future,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
3. How worried could the astronaut feel? (negative emotions worry,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
4. How sad could the astronaut feel? (negative emotions sadness,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
5. What could the astronaut believe to be the cause of all the trouble he
had been through? (attribution of cause, free answer).
Following the reading of the story, including the additional beliefs of the
astronaut about the cause of the events and the characteristics of the spiritual
being, participants were asked to answer the following questions:
1. What could the astronaut believe about the troubles he has been
through? (construction of meaning, free answer);
2. How trustful could the astronaut be in his future? (hope in the future,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
3. How worried could the astronaut feel? (negative emotions worry,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
4. How sad could the astronaut feel? (negative emotions sadness,
evaluated on a 1-100 Likert scale);
5. What does the astronaut know about the spiritual entity present on the
planet (recalling of entity characteristics, evaluated by number of
listed attributes).
Variables
The independent variable was the context, with two modalities framing
(the story included information about the presence of the spiritual entity and its
positive attributes) and non-framing (the story did not include any information
about the presence of a spiritual entity).
The dependent variables were: (1) trust in the future, (2) worry, and (3) sadness.
Procedure
Initial screening was meant to exclude persons with mental and physical
illnesses and persons younger than 18. Persons not meeting the inclusion criteria
but in need of psychological assistance were offered low-cost therapy referrals.
The administration of experimental tasks was conducted by a licensed
psychologist. Thirty-one subjects read the story without framing and thirty-nine
participants read the story with framing. Immediately after having read the story,
all participants answered the 5 questions corresponding to each situation (framing

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or non-framing). All study materials were administered in group, in one session,

without time limit after obtaining the informed consent of the participants.
Data analyses methods
Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS. The independent samples T
test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to compare the framing and non-framing
groups on variables like trust in the future, worry and sadness.
To assess the possible impact of importance of religion for the subjects
involved in our study, comparison analysis was performed separately for subjects
who indicated religion as very important and important enough on the one
hand and subjects who indicated religion as medium important, of very little
importance and not important at all on the other hand.
To assess the impact of explicit memory of the entity characteristics upon
the dependent variables, extreme score groups were created (m +/- 1SD) and
compared on the three dependent variables.
Qualitative preliminary analysis (calculation of percentages) was used to
assess (1) construction of meaning for both groups, and (2) causal attribution of
events for the non-framing group.
RESULTS
Group statistics, t and p values for comparisons between framing and
non-framing groups are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Group statistics, t and p values for comparisons between framing and nonframing groups
Framing/Non-framing
Trust in the future
Worry
Sadness

t
2.53
3.78
2.26

p
.01
<.001
.02

Group Statistics
N
TRUST
WORRY
SADNESS

non-framing
framing
non-framing
framing
non-framing
framing

31
39
31
39
31
39

Mean
43.45
58.51
77.26
55.21
76.39
62.26

Std.
Deviation
23.09
25.81
21.90
25.90
23.39
27.85

Std. Error
Mean
4.15
4.13
3.93
4.15
4.20
4.46

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We found that both worry and sadness are significantly lower for the
framing group than for non-framing. We found also, that faith in the future is
significantly higher for the framing group as compared to the non-framing one
(all ps < .05). Thus we can say, relying on these data, that the experienced
sadness and worry is reduced when a negative chain of events is associated with
the involvement of a spiritual entity and hope is increased.
However, when subjects are separated in two groups according to the
declared importance of religion in their life, the above results are maintained only
for the more religious group, meaning that the framing induced experimentally is
intensified by the former religious attitudes of the subjects.
Because the explicit memory of the characteristics of the spiritual being
could impact on the emotions experienced, in case of the framing group extreme
score subgroups were created (m +/- 1SD) and compared on the three dependent
variables (i.e., trust in the future, worry, and sadness).

Table 2. Group statistics, Mann-Whitney U and p values for comparisons between

framing and non-framing groups for the subjects for whom religion is medium and little
important

Framing/Non-framing
Trust in the future
Worry
Sadness

Mann-Whitney U
19.00
11.00
23.00

p
.47
.08
.84

RANKS
Framing/Non-framing
TRUST
non-framing
framing
WORRY non-framing
framing
SADNESS non-framing
framing

Religion, irrational beliefs, and distress

N
7
7
7
7
7
7

Mean rank
6.71
8.29
9.43
5.57
7.29
7.71

Sum of ranks
47.00
58.00
66.00
39.00
51.00
54.00

Articles Section
Table 3. Group statistics, t and p values for comparisons between framing and nonframing groups for the subjects for whom religion is very important or important enough
Framing/Non-framing
Trust in the future
Worry
Sadness

t
2.42
3.18
2.56

p
.01
.002
.01

Group Statistics
N
TRUST
WORRY
SADNESS

non-framing
framing
non-framing
framing
non-framing
framing

Std.
Deviation
21.46
22.94
20.79
25.50
23.13
28.00

Mean
48.13
62.75
77.92
57.59
75.96
57.91

24
32
24
32
24
32

Std. Error
Mean
4.38
4.06
4.24
4.51
4.72
4.95

Results show that there are no significant differences between the

subgroup who recalled very few and the subgroup who recalled very many
spiritual entity characteristics. Our interpretation was that the framing effect is
produced rather by implicit processes, tacitly than through explicit inferences.

Table 4. Group statistics, Mann-Whitney U and p values for comparisons between

subjects in the framing group who recalled very few and subjects in the framing group
who recalled very many spiritual entity characteristics

High/Low recalling

MannWhitney U
52.00
52.00
41.50

Trust in the future

Worry
Sadness

p
.77
.78
.31

RANKS
High/Low recalling
TRUST
high rec.
low rec.
WORRY high rec.
low rec.
SADNESS high rec.
low rec.

N
14
8
14
8
14
8

Mean rank
11.21
12.00
11.79
11.00
12.54
9.69

Sum of ranks
157.00
96.00
165.00
88.00
175.50
77.50

Bianca Macavei, Mircea Miclea

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Construction of meaning seems to be highly influenced by framing.

Results suggest that when subjects associate a negative chain of events with the
presence of a merciful and omnipotent spiritual entity they tend to interpret events
as parts of a divine plan and find meaning in the positive ending of that plan
(74.35%) despite transitory hardship. On the other hand, the non-framing group
has interpreted the negative events rather as a punishment (41.93%), or the
implacable involvement of fate (22.58%)

Table 5. Construction of meaning (percentages of the framing and non-framing groups

indicating different ways of interpreting the event)

Framing
N=39
Non-framing
N=31

Divine plan
with a
positive
ending
29
(74.35%)
5
(16.12%)

Learning
experience

3
(7.69%)
1
(3.22%)

Punishment
from a
spiritual
entity
7
(17.94 %)
13
(41.93%)

Bad luck

Destiny

5
(16.12%)

7
(22.58%)

Table 6. Attribution of cause (percentages of the non-framing group indicating different

possible causes for the situation in which the astronaut finds himself)
An upset Destiny Hazardous Inadequacy Unidentified
spiritual
job
of
causes
entity
equipment
2
2
7
4
9
5
2
(16.12%)
(6.45%) (6.45%) (6.45%) (22.58%) (12.90%) (29.03%)
Other
people

Nonframing
N=31

Self

Considered all together our results show that a religious frame induces a
tacit meaning-making process that mediate the impact of negative events. People
feels less worried and sad and more trustful in future when a chain of negative
events is connected to the involvement of a merciful and omnipotent spiritual
being than when it is absent in the meaning-making process.

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STUDY 2
METHOD
Participants
One hundred and ninety-four subjects participated in the study. They
were adults who were offered the possibility to have their level of negative
emotions evaluated free of charge, and consented to allow us to use the results for
experimental purposes. Eligible subjects responded to an announcement in the
local media, were at least 18 years of age, completed study materials, and had no
major mental or physical illnesses. Age ranged from 18 to 74 years (mean
age=23.62, SD= 8.20). Eighty-two point nine percentage (82.9%) of the sample
described themselves as Orthodox, 5.7% as Roman-Catholic, 2.6% as GreekCatholic, 1.6% as Baptists, and 7.2% as other religion or no religion. Of all
participants, 21.2% were male and 78.8% were female. When questioned about
the importance of religion in their life, 34.2% stated it was very important, 38.9%
said it was important enough, 17.6% indicated medium importance, 6.2%
indicated very little importance, and 3.1% said religion was not important at all.
Instruments
Unconditional self-acceptance was measured with a self-report measure
of USA (Chamberlain & Haaga, 2001).
Irrational beliefs (global evaluation/self-downing) was measured with the
Attitudes and Beliefs Scale 2 (DiGiuseppe, Leaf, Exner, & Robin 1988). ABS2 is
a 72-item scale consisting of a 4x3x2 matrix. The first factor consists of belief
processes and has four levels representing demandingness (DEM), self-worth or
self-downing (SD), low frustration tolerance (LFT) and awfulizing (AWF). The
second factor includes content/context information and has three levels
representing beliefs about affiliation, achievement and comfort. The third factor
determines if the item is worded rationally or irrationally. Therefore, the scale
allows the discrete evaluation of irrationality, rationality, demandingness, selfdowning, frustration tolerance and awfulizing. The scale is a valid measure of the
four irrational beliefs central to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and has the
quality of measuring cognition without confounding it with emotion. It has high
internal consistency and discriminative validity for both American (DiGiuseppe,
Robin, Leaf, & Gormon, 1989) and Romanian populations (Macavei, 2002).
Distress or negative affect was assessed using a 47-item measure
constructed based on the The Profile of Mood States-Short Version (Shacham,
1983; DiLorenzo, Bovbjerg, Montgomery, Valdimarsdottir & Jacobsen, 1999);
the list is available from the senior author. It contains 8 anxiety related items, 16
depression related items, 5 anger-hostility related descriptors, 9 vigor-activity
related items, 4 fatigue-inertia related items, and 5 confusion-bewilderment
related descriptors. All ratings were made on a 5-point rating scale, where 0 = not
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at all, 1 = a little, 2 = moderately, 3 = quite a bit, 4= extremely. Participants were

specifically instructed to read carefully the items describing emotional states and
to choose only the answers that best described what they have felt during the last
four weeks. Alpha Cronbach of the scale was .95.
The scale was later refined to become The Profile of Affective Distress
(PAD), an instrument elaborated to assess the subjective dimension of functional
and dysfunctional negative emotions, as well as positive emotions. PAD is a 39item self-report instrument that measures functional and dysfunctional negative
emotions from the "concern/anxiety" and "sadness/depression" categories and
positive emotions. The scale allows for the calculation of a general score of
distress and also of separate scores for "concern functional", "anxiety dysfunctional", "sadness - functional", "depression - dysfunctional", and "positive
emotions". The scale was elaborated by Opri and Macavei (2005), based on the
Profile of Mood States, Short Version (DiLorenzo, Bovbjerg, Montgomery,
Valdimarsdottir, & Jacobsen, 1999). In addition to the items selected from
POMS-SV, items with similar meaning extracted from a Romanian Synonyms
Dictionary were added. The 39 items of the final version are those that remained
following expert validation and experimental studies designed to establish their
relevance and the subscale in which they fit. Alpha Cronbach of the scale was .94.
Religious beliefs were assessed using a 12-item measure consisting of
beliefs about Gods love and forgiveness. The scale was constructed by authors
starting from the concept of unconditional self-acceptance (Chamberlain &
Haaga, 2001), and drawing on two major characteristics of God as a spiritual
attachment figure love and forgiveness. Six of the items referred explicitly to
love, while the rest of them referred to forgiveness. Three items from each
category were phrased directly (e.g., God loves me just the way I am, with all
my qualities and all my flaws, God forgives me even if sometimes I act badly
toward the others), and three items from each category were phrased indirectly
(e.g., God loves me only if I obey His commands, God punishes me every
time I make a mistake). All ratings were made on a 5-point rating scale, where 1
= I totally disagree, 2 = I disagree partly, 3 = Neutral, 4 = I agree partly, 5= I
totally agree. The two types of beliefs (love and forgiveness) were selected
following an open question addressed to 40 lay people and 40 clergy: What are
the most specific characteristics of God?. Alpha Cronbach of the scale was .82.
Procedure
Initial screening was meant to exclude persons with mental and physical
illnesses and persons younger than 18. Persons not meeting the inclusion criteria
but in need of psychological assistance were offered low-cost therapy referrals.
After giving an informed consent, participants were tested individually, without
time limit. A licensed psychologist conducted the administration of tests. All
participants were debriefed and scheduled for one hour of psychological
counseling in which the results of the testing was communicated.
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Data analyses methods

Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS. Linear correlations (r) were
calculated among all variables measured.
To assess the impact of religious beliefs (love and forgiveness), extreme
score groups were created (m +/- 1SD) and compared on three dependent
variables: negative emotions, unconditional self-acceptance and negative global
evaluation. The independent variables were religious beliefs (love and
forgiveness) with two modalities high and low. The dependent variables were: (1)
distress/negative emotions, (2) unconditional self-acceptance, and (3) negative
global evaluation. The independent samples T test and was used to compare the
high and low religious beliefs groups on variables like distress/negative emotions,
unconditional self-acceptance, and negative global evaluation.
RESULTS
Correlation coefficients (r) are presented in Table 7. Results show that the
stronger, most significant positive correlation is between self-downing and
distress (r= .36). Also, the most significant negative correlations are between selfdowning and USA (r= -.63), USA and distress (r= -.43), and religious beliefs and
self-downing (r= -.16). Religious beliefs are negatively associated with distress,
but not significantly (r= -.13); also religious beliefs and USA are mildly positively
associated (r= .06). Also, depression (one item measure) correlates mildly
negatively with religious beliefs (r= -.08), as so does sadness (one item measure)
(r= -.13). These data are consistent with that provided by a meta-analysis
performed on 147 independent investigations (N=98,975), which indicated a
correlation between religiousness and depressive symptoms of .096 (Smith et al.,
2003).
Table 7. Correlation values (r) for religious beliefs, USA, and distress

Religious beliefs
Religious beliefs - love
Religious beliefs forgiveness
Self-downing
USA

Self-downing
-.16*
-.14*
-.13*

USA
.06
.04
.05

Distress
-.13
-.12
-.11

Depression
-.08
-.02
-.12

Sadness
-.13
-.12
-.11

1.00
-.63**

-.63**
1.00

.36**
-.43**

.29**
-.33**

.26**
-.20**

*p = 0.05
**p = 0.01

When comparing the extreme score groups created on basis of religious

beliefs (high and low), results show that for both love and forgiveness significant
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differences can be found only in case of negative global evaluation (selfdowning). In other words, participants who believe in the love and forgiveness
from God tend to endorse less self-downing beliefs (one of the proximal causes of
depression).
Table 8. Group statistics, t and p values for comparisons between subjects in the high and
low religious beliefs groups
Descriptive Statistics (1=love; 2=forgiveness)
Mean
N
Minimum Maximum
Distress1
USA1
SD1
Distress2
USA2
SD2
Valid N (listwise)

Forgiveness
Distress
USA
SD

Distress
USA
SD

high
low
high
low
high
low

42
42
42
41
41
41
39

30
53
3
28
56
0

136
96
48
129
105
51

Group Statistics
N
Mean
22
19
22
19
22
19

73.00
80.74
76.95
74.16
18.14
25.89

Love

Group Statistics
N
Mean

high
low
high
low
high
low

15
27
15
27
15
27

Religion, irrational beliefs, and distress

56.80
69.30
79.00
73.44
18.53
25.59

64.83
75.43
23.07
76.59
75.66
21.73

Std.
Deviation
27.24
9.89
10.81
28.75
10.42
11.44

Std.
Deviation
27.25
30.61
12.19
7.99
12.35
8.88

Std. Error
Mean
5.81
7.02
2.60
1.83
2.63
2.04

Std.
Deviation

Std. Error
Mean

19.40
30.16
9.17
9.88
10.82
10.14

5.01
5.81
2.37
1.90
2.79
1.95

13

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High/Low religious beliefs - love
Distress
USA
Self-downing (SD)

t
-1.443
-1.790
-2.119

p
.15
.08
.04

High/Low religious beliefs - forgiveness

Distress
USA
Self-downing (SD)

t
-0.856
0.854
-2.276

p
.39
.39
.02

CONCLUSIONS AND GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Results from our first study suggest that the mere association of a chain of
negative events with the presence of a merciful and omnipotent spiritual being
produces less worries and sadness and increased hope for the future. However, it
is important to notice that the association between belief in the presence of a
positive spiritual entity on the one hand, and negative emotions and faith in the
future on the other hand is valid only for those subjects for whom religious
attitudes play a major part in their life. In other words, it is possible that, unless
basic religious beliefs are not central to ones belief system they will not
significantly impact emotions. We also found that religious beliefs mediate the
relationship between negative events and emotional reactions rather via an
implicit meaning-making process than through an elaborated, explicit, inferencebased mechanism. Next, results suggest that in the absence of framing and in the
context of severe negative life events people who believe in God tend to develop
fear of being punished by Him. Should this hypothesis be validated in future
studies, a major implication would reside in the way prayers and other religious
rituals are performed during times of distress. Positive characteristics of God may
have to be repeatedly cued in order to lead to negative emotion reduction.
Results from our second study emphasize the relationship between
irrational beliefs, unconditional self-acceptance, religious values and emotional
distress. Subjects who unconditionally accept themselves also seem to hold less
self-downing beliefs (negative global self-evaluation) and have more religious
beliefs. As a consequence, they tend to experience lower levels of emotional
distress. Further studies are needed to clarify the distinct contribution of religious
values and irrational beliefs to distress.
The results of our studies are limited in several ways. First, we used nonclinical subjects, in normal life situations. However, Smith et al. (2003) suggest
that depression is strongly associated with religiousness in studies involving
people who are undergoing stress due to recent life events. Therefore, it is also
possible that some of the cognitive factors involved in the generation of
depressive symptoms (e.g., irrational beliefs, unconditional self-acceptance) as
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Articles Section

well as religious beliefs be associated more strongly with emotional distress if

subjects were going through difficult life events. Further, in future studies we
should also consider using clinical groups to make our findings useful in terms of
clinical practice.
Another limit of the present study (as well as direction for future
investigations) refers to the use of valid depression and anxiety measures to help
identify the impact of religious beliefs on clinically relevant symptoms. Extensive
validation of the newly created religious beliefs measure used in this study also
constitutes a target for our future investigations, as does the more detailed and
elaborated investigation of the relationship among religious beliefs and other
types of beliefs involved in emotion generation (automatic thoughts, schemata,
irrational beliefs) and their impact on emotions.

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