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Spirituality

Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Mysticism; Personal religion/religiosity; Search for the sacred; Self-transcendence

Introduction

Recent decades have seen a surge of scholarly interest in the study of spirituality. In the decade from 1976 to 1985, PsycInfo reports just 33 publications that used the word “spirituality” in their title; this accounts for 0.1‰ of all registered publications. In the following decade, 201 publications (0.3‰) can be identified, 1.224 (1.5‰) in the decade thereafter, and 3.161 (1.9‰) in 2006–2015. The term spirituality is used for a broad range of beliefs, practices, and experiences related to a search for the sacred (Hill et al. 2000) or self-transcendence (Schnell 2012; Streib and Hood 2016). Alas, a widely acknowledged conceptualization of spirituality is still far off.

The Spirituality/Religion Debate

Scholars tend to disagree about the relationship between spirituality and religion. Both can be conceptualized as referring to “the feelings, thoughts, experiences, and behaviors...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Tatjana Schnell

Authors
  1. Tatjana Schnell
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Correspondence to Tatjana Schnell .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    John F. Rauthmann

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Schnell, T. (2017). Spirituality. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1916-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1916-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Spirituality
    Published:
    22 June 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1916-2

  2. Original

    Spirituality
    Published:
    13 July 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1916-1

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