Ralph W Hood
Biographic Data
| ID | 1382736 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ralph W Hood |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ralph W |
| FAMILY NAME | Hood |
| SIGNATURE | HOOD R W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tennessee at Chattanooga |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5165-6830 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 180 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 670 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 177 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Commentary On the varieties of spiritual experience
Faith in Development
How has faith developed in the US and German societies across the last decades? In a three-wave longitudinal investigation of faith development, this study presents the changes of worldview and meaning-making that people associate with their religious, spiritual, agnostic and atheist identifications. For almost two decades, research teams in Chattanooga (USA) and Bielefeld (Germany) have invited and re-invited hundreds of people to participate in…
Methodological Exclusion of the Transcendent? Implications for Theory and Research in Religion, Spirituality and Health
Faith development as change in religious types
Faith, as a way of how people understand God and the world and make or discover meaning in their life, is characterized by individual differences and changes over the lifetime. Our research investigates these changes over the life span in terms of hierarchically ordered types that are the elements in our developmental model, which is a critical advancement and modification of Fowler’s theory of faith development. This study is the first to invest…
Translation, Cultural Adaptation, and Analysis of the Psychometric Properties of the Death Transcendence Scale for the Brazilian Context
The study of the coping strategies used by humans to cope with their finitude has been the center of attention of several researchers throughout the history of psychology. The present study aimed to translate, culturally adapt, and validate the Death Transcendence Scale (DTS) for the Brazilian context. This was a cross-sectional study with a sample of 517 Brazilians. The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer - Quality of Life…
God and Psychology
God and Psychology: How the Early Religious Development of Famous Psychologists Influenced their Work." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 33(3), pp. 246–247
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 32
Marsha Aileen Hewitt, Legacies of the Occult
Absorption, Mentalizing, and Mysticism
Research suggests trait absorption, individual differences in Theoryof Mind (ToM), and orthopraxical training are importantfor explaining a variety of extraordinary experiences typicallyassociated with religion. However, no studies exist quantifyingToM ability or testing its relationship with trait absorption inthe prediction of what is arguably the most ubiquitous type ofextraordinary experience-the mystical experience. To addressthis, two explo…
Concealment of nonreligious identity
Negative attitudes toward the nonreligious persist in America. This may compel some nonreligious individuals to conceal their identity to manage feelings of social identity threat. In one correlational study and one experiment, we found evidence of social identity threat and concealment behavior among nonreligious Americans. Our first study showed that Southern nonreligious individuals reported higher levels of stigma consciousness and self-repor…
An Atheist Perspective on Self-Esteem and Meaning Making while under Death Awareness
In accordance with Terror Management Theory research, secular beliefs can serve an important role for mitigating existential concerns by providing atheists with a method to attain personal meaning and bolster self-esteem. Although much research has suggested that religious beliefs are powerful defense mechanisms, these effects are limited or reveal more nuanced effects when attempting to explain atheists’ (non)belief structures. The possibility o…
Traditionality, Spirituality and Somatoform Dissociation Symptoms in Chinese Buddhists
Categorizing People by Their Preference for Religious Styles
This article presents a typology that categorizes people according to their profile of religious styles which concerns, among other things, the sources where they derive validity and stability, when confronted with religious and existential questions or inter-religious challenges. The modeling of this typology is an empirical complement to Streib’s model of religious styles which, in turn, is a critical advancement of Fowler’s faith development t…
The association between different spiritual practices and the occurrence of Exceptional Human Experiences in a non-clinical sample
The present study aims to analyse the association that different types of spiritual and religious practices have with the occurrence of Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs) as well as their emotional evaluation. We analysed the relation that meditation, prayer, and ‘other’ spiritual practices, or the lack of them, have with the occurrence of EHEs, which were measured employing the Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire (EEQ). Samples were recruite…
An introduction to atheism, agnosticism, and nonreligious worldviews
Religious and non-religious predictors of life satisfaction in a sample of American college students
To promote understanding of young people behavioural mechanisms related to health, we evaluated religious attribution, meaning in life, and emotion regulation strategies as predictors of life satisfaction in the sample of 791 religious and non-religious American college students. Participants completed Religious Attribution Scale, Meaning in Life Questionnaire, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. A multiple lin…
Abrahamic Religiosity Scale
There are a large number of commonly used measures of religiosity, yet these measures have been developed within a specific culture or religion. Based on the commonality of Abrahamic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the present study aimed to develop an initial cross-cultural validation of the Abrahamic Religiosity Scale (ARS). The data were collected from 12 countries from Asia, Europe, Africa and America, and exploratory facto…
The Religious Attribution Scale
The Religious Attribution Scale (RAS) was developed recently and validated with a predominantly Muslim Indonesian sample. This study aimed to demonstrate the validity of the RAS with a sample of individuals from the US. Students from two US colleges participated in this research. In addition to the RAS, other constructs such as meaning in life and life satisfaction were assessed. Reliabilities for all measures were acceptable. Similar to the find…
Guest editors' foreword
Death, quest, and self-esteem
Terror management theory suggests that when mortality concerns are salient, religion can serve as a defence in order to boost self-esteem and shield against the potential for anxiety. The current study examined whether individual differences in religious orientation (i.e., quest) interacted with reminders of death to influence well-being. To the extent that religiosity buffers against mortality awareness on defensiveness, the present results demo…
Deconversion
This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from orientations, because these have much in common with conversion; Termination of membership may eventually be the final step of deconversion, but it involves biographical and psychological dynamics which ca…
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion
This volume includes a wide range of papers that explore individual and institutional aspects of religion from a social-science perspective. The special section has articles from research groups in Europe, the USA and Australia on clergy work-related psychological health, stress, burnout and coping strategies. The general papers include studies on coping strategies among Buddhists, gender differences in response to church decline, teenage partici…
Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality
In a reflective survey of psychology and religion, Fraser Watts, psychologist, theologian, and Anglican priest, has produced a remarkable book. It is a highly selective and focused assessment of wh
A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experience
A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experience: Understanding Altered Psychological and Neurophysiological States." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 31(3), pp. 223–224
Freud and Religion
Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality
Psychologists' emerging interest in spirituality and religion as well as the relevance of each phenomenon to issues of psychological importance requires an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of each construct. On the basis of both historical considerations and a limited but growing empirical literature, we caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the term…
The psychology of religion
Scholarly and comprehensive yet accessible, this state-of-the-science work is widely regarded as the definitive psychology of religion text. The authors synthesize classic and contemporary empirical research on numerous different religious groups. Coverage includes religious thought, belief, and behavior across the lifespan; links between religion and biology; the forms and meaning of religious experience; the social psychology of religious organ…
The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience
Various forms of self-loss have been described as aspects of mental illness (e.g., depersonalization disorder), but might self-loss also be related to mental health? In this integrative review and proposed organizational framework, we focus on self-transcendent experiences (STEs)-transient mental states marked by decreased self-salience and increased feelings of connectedness. We first identify common psychological constructs that contain a self-…
The Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Reported Mystical Experience
Intrinsic-Extrinsic Religious Orientation
Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Intrinsic-Extrinsic Religious Orientation: The Boon or Bane of Contemporary Psychology of Religion?, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 442-462
Modeling the Religious Field
Mapping the religious field of present-day Western cultures such as America and Europe requires a synopsis of perspectives. There are, on the one hand, classical ways of defining religion in theology, sociology and psychology, and also established sociological models of the religious field; and there are, on the other hand, recent changes in how people on the street implicitly and explicitly understand themselves and behave. Many are reluctant to…
Muslim-Christian Religious Orientation Scales
Allport and Ross (1967) Religious Orientation Scales were administered along with nine new Muslim-Christian Religious Orientation Scales (MCROS) to students in Iran and the United States. Religious extrinsicness was associated with self-reported symptoms of psychological disturbance; with the Iranians, intrinsicness predicted adjustment. Most relations among the religious variables were positive with the two samples displaying similar, though not…
Of Roots and Fruits
Experiences of profound existential or spiritual significance can be triggered reliably through psychopharmacological means using psychedelic substances. However, little is known about the benefits of religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences (RSMEs) prompted by psychedelic substances, as compared with those that occur through other means. In this study, 739 self-selected participants reported the psychological impact of their RSMEs and indic…
Dimensions of the Mysticism Scale
In a mostly Christian American sample (N = 1,379), confirmatory factor analysis of Hood's (1975) Mysticism Scale verified the existence of Stace's (1960) introvertive and extrovertive dimensions of mystical phenomenology along with a separate interpretation factor. A second study confirmed the presence of these three factors in not only another group of Americans (N = 188), but also in a sample of Iranian Muslims (N = 185). Relationships of the i…
Mystical Experience Among Tibetan Buddhists
In the study of mysticism the debate has centered on whether a universal experiential core exists regardless of religious interpretation. The current investigation combines Jamesian empiricist and social constructivist perspectives to argue that stable experiential facets load variously on factors to construct local interpretations. Local interpretations reflect a family resemblance—a mystical common core experienced across cultures. Results of c…
The Religious Schema Scale
This article presents the Religious Schema Scale (RSS). Its conceptual background is the model of religious styles. After a conceptual discussion of the relation between religious styles and religious schemata, the steps of scale construction are reported. Based on 822 responses from research participants in the United States and Germany to a preliminary 78-item version, we used construct-oriented iterative and factor-analytic procedures for redu…
Religious Orientation, Identity, and the Quest for Meaning in Ethics Within an Ideological Surround
Controversies in the religious orientation literature may reflect the unavoidable influences of ideology in the psychology of religion. Support for this possibility was observed when religious intrinsicness was associated with the idealism and antirela- tivism of an absolutist ethical position. Quest Scales, in contrast, were incompatible with this absolutist search for meaning in ethics. Quest Scales also predicted identity confusion, were assoc…
Religiosity and Social Desirability
A series of five studies explored the meaning of the positive relationship between End religiosity and the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (SDS). Among the more noteworthy findings were the observations that 1) End religiosity was largely unrelated to measures conceptually associated with social desirability response sets; 2) neither End nor the SDS yielded any important evidence of a relationship with rnaladaptive psychological function…
Psychological Strength and the Report of Intense Religious Experience
A measure of intense religious experience was related to measures of psychological strength in two studies. In the first study a significant negative correlation was found between intense religious experience and Barron's (1953) measure of ego-strength. However, this correlation was reduced to insignificance when the religion subscale was removed from Barron's total EgoStrength Scale. In the second study intense religious experience was more freq…
Research
(2002). RESEARCH: Negatively Reinforcing Personal Extrinsic Motivations: Religious Orientation, Inner Awareness, and Mental Health in Iran and the United States. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion: Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 255-276
Eliciting Mystical States of Consciousness with Semistructured Nature Experiences
Religious Orientation and the Report of Religious Experience
Differential Triggering of Mystical Experience as a Function of Self Actualization
Ebola salience, death-thought accessibility, and worldview defense
According to terror management theory, individuals defend their cultural beliefs following mortality salience. The current research examined whether naturally occurring instances of death (i.e., Ebola) correspond to results found in laboratory studies. The results of two experiments demonstrated that participants experienced a greater accessibility of death-related thoughts in response to an Ebola prime during a regional outbreak. Study 2 also sh…
Common Core Thesis and Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Mysticism in Chinese Buddhist Monks and Nuns
This study explores the phenomenological structure of mystical experience among 139 Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monks and nuns. Semi-structured interviews, thematic coding, and statistical analyses demonstrated that Stace's common facets of mysticism as measured by Hood's Mysticism Scale (M Scale) successfully described Buddhist experience as modified by Buddhist doctrines. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that these facets cou…
A Phenomenological Analysis of the Anointing among Religious Serpent Handlers
Holiness-Pentecostal sects that practice serpent handling do so out of compliance with a literal interpretation of Mark 16:17-18. To investigate the meaning of this practice from within its religious context, phenomenological interviews were conducted with 8 men and 3 women who focused on specific experiences of taking up serpents. Participants reported that serpents were taken up either by faith or by the anointing, but most often by the anointi…
Boundary Maintenance, Social-Political Views, and Presidential Preference among High and Low Fundamentalists
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ronald J. Morris, Boundary Maintenance, Social-Political Views, and Presidential Preference among High and Low Fundamentalists, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Dec., 1985), pp. 134-145
Anticipatory Set and Setting
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Anticipatory Set and Setting: Stress Incongruities as Elicitors of Mystical Experience in Solitary Nature Situations, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 279-287
The Usefulness of the Indiscriminately Pro and Anti Categories of Religious Orientation
The intrinsic and extrinsic scales were used to create four categories of religious orientation: intrinsic, indiscriminately pro, extrinsic, and indiscriminately anti. Specific a priori preductions concerning differences between the two indiscriminate categories as well as post hoc analyses of differences between all four categories were investigated. Predicted differences were obtained for various indices of religious manifestation (reported mys…
A Comparison of the Allport and Feagin Scoring Procedures for Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religious Orientation
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., A Comparison of the Allport and Feagin Scoring Procedures for Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religious Orientation, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1971), pp. 370-374
Cultural Availability
It was demonstrated that difficulty of RAT items is related to the cultural availability of correct RAT item response to the stimulus triads composing the RAT. The more frequently missed RAT items are those items to which the correct response is not a culturally dominant associate of the particular RAT stimulus words in question. Interest in the RAT, not as a measure of creativity, but as an object of psychological value in its own right was stre…
On Creativity as Defined by the Remote Associates Test
Connotative Similarity of Remote Associates Test Items as a Function of Their Cultural Availability
The connotative similarity of Remote Associates Test (RAT) items as a function of their cultural availability was investigated. It was demonstrated that RAT items whose correct answers are readily available in the culture as associative responses to the stimulus terms comprising their respective RAT items are more connotatively dissimilar than RAT items whose correct responses are not so readily available. The implication that the RAT is a hetero…
Cultural Availability
The stability of the previously obtained relationship between the difficulty and the cultural availability of RAT items is demonstrated. Item difficulty is greatest for those items whose answers are not readily available in the local culture as associates to the stimulus words of the item. This effect has been obtained in two geographically separate study populations, one largely metropolitan in origin and the other heavily rural. It also is show…
Effects of Foreknowledge of Manner of Death in the Assessment from Genuine and Simulated Suicide Notes of Intent to Die
(1970). Effects of Foreknowledge of Manner of Death in the Assessment from Genuine and Simulated Suicide Notes of Intent to Die. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 82, No. 2, pp. 215-221
Religious Orientation and the Report of Religious Experience
A Comparison of the Allport and Feagin Scoring Procedures for Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religious Orientation
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., A Comparison of the Allport and Feagin Scoring Procedures for Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religious Orientation, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1971), pp. 370-374
Personal Value Orientation and Judgment of Categories of Creative Behavior
Ss classified on the basis of the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values as either aesthetic, theoretical, or economic in value orientation rated for their creativity 48 behavior episodes classified on the basis of their reference to science, art, or business. A 3 × 3 analysis of variance with repeated measures indicated that both main effects and the interaction term were significant. These data were interpreted as indicating that persons are mo…
Normative and Motivational Determinants of Reported Religious Experience in Two Baptist Samples
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Normative and Motivational Determinants of Reported Religious Experience in Two Baptist Samples, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 13, No. 3, Denominational and Interdenominational Studies (Spring, 1972), pp. 192-196
Dogmatism and Opinions about Mental Illness
Opinions about mental illness were studied among a group of introductory psychology students categorized on the basis of their dogmatism. 3 scales were developed to measure belief aspects of opinions concerning the specific categories of homosexual and suicide and the general category of mental illness. Results indicated that highly dogmatic persons tended to hold stereotypical beliefs concerning all categories with a greater intensity than low-d…
Hypnotic Susceptibility and Reported Religious Experience
The relationship between reported religious experience and hypnotic susceptibility was investigated in an initial sample of 96 Ss. The correlation between a measure of reported religious experience and the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility was .36 based upon 81 Ss who completed both measures
Rater Originality and the Interpersonal Assessment of Levels of Originality
Forms of Religious Commitment and Intense Religious Experience
Religious Orientation and the Experience of Transcendence
Cognitive and Affective Rejection of Mentally ILL Persons as a Function of Dogmatism
Cognitive and affective attitudes toward the mentally ill were studied in introductory social psychology students categorized on the basis of their dogmatism. On a purely cognitive level highly dogmatic Ss held more stereotypical attitudes toward the mentally ill than low-dogmatic Ss. After a series of regularly scheduled lectures on the social psychology of deviance in a normal classroom situation, highly dogmatic Ss significantly decreased thei…
Psychological Strength and the Report of Intense Religious Experience
A measure of intense religious experience was related to measures of psychological strength in two studies. In the first study a significant negative correlation was found between intense religious experience and Barron's (1953) measure of ego-strength. However, this correlation was reduced to insignificance when the religion subscale was removed from Barron's total EgoStrength Scale. In the second study intense religious experience was more freq…
The Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Reported Mystical Experience
Social Comparison and Effect of Discrimination among Levels of Originality on Self-Assessed Originality
Ss high and low in originality as defined by the “picture construction” portion of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Form A (Torrance, 1968) judged the originality of drawings made by others and by themselves. 52 Ss low in originality discriminated among three independently defined levels of originality of drawings made by others more accurately than 52 Ss high in originality. Ss low in originality who were told they had made accurate judg…
Mystical Experience as Related to Present and Anticipated Future Church Participation
The relationship between reported mystical experience and present and anticipated patterns of church participation was investigated in an initial sample of 324 persons. A scale to measure reported mystical experience that allowed for a distinction between the report of mystical experience (Factor I) and its religious interpretation (Factor II) was utilized. Each factor differentially related to church denomination, frequency of church attendance,…
Conceptual Criticisms of Regressive Explanations of Mysticism
Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change
(print) x, 389 p. : ill. ; 22 cm
Comparison of Reported Religious Experience in Caucasian, American Indian, and Two Mexican American Samples
Intense religious experience was investigated in four samples matched on sex, age, social economic status, education, religious membership, and importance of religion. As predicted the American Indian and Mexican American samples ( ns = 18) reported more intense religious experiences than either the Caucasian or acculturated Mexican American samples
Differential Triggering of Mystical Experience as a Function of Self Actualization
Eliciting Mystical States of Consciousness with Semistructured Nature Experiences
Anticipatory Set and Setting
Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Anticipatory Set and Setting: Stress Incongruities as Elicitors of Mystical Experience in Solitary Nature Situations, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 279-287
Psychology (147 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (125 works) · Social Psychology (107 works) · Philosophy (103 works) · Sociology (93 works) · Epistemology (74 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (67 works) · Theology (49 works) · Social Psychology (39 works) · Mysticism (31 works)