Child abuse, personality, and spirituality as predictors of happiness in maltese college students

Abstract

Abstract This study examined the incremental validity of spirituality and religiosity controlling for personality and child abuse history among Mal tese college students. A total of 214 female and 98 male undergraduates completed the Spiritual Transcendence Scale, the Brief Adjective Rating Scale, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, items about religious practices, a positive affect scale, a negative affect scale, and the Satisfaction with Life scale. Multiple regression analysis indicated that spirituality but not religious practices predicted positive affect and satisfaction with life after controlling for child abuse history and personality. The study suggests that spirituality may be an important potential source of resiliency for persons with a childhood history of abuse. Spirituality’s ability to predict positive but not negative affect suggests it may be especially suited as a useful variable in the positive psychology movement. Research has established a consistent relationship between important life events and one’s tendency toward transcendence (Ellison, 1991; Marrone, 1999; Pargament, 1992; Young, Cashwell, & Shcherbakova, 2000). Adjustment to negative events in one’s life often results in seek-ing spiritual consolation and meaning. For example childhood trauma is related to increased religious behaviors such as frequency of prayer and self-reported spiritual experience (Lawson, Debring, Berg, Vincel-lete, & Penk, 1998).Spirituality can serve both as a predictor variable and an outcome variable. Most studies have found that spirituality was negatively affected in victims of child abuse. This fi nding was consistent across gender and types of abuse (Hall, 1995; Rossetti, 1995). A closer look at this research, however, indicates that the picture is complex. The destruction of the

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