Julie Exline
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 254960 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Julie Exline |
| NOMBRES | Julie |
| APELLIDO | Exline |
| FIRMA | EXLINE J |
| AFILIACIONES | Case Western Reserve University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3544-2469 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 113 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 325 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 113 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1999 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Seeing oneself or others headed for hell or purgatory
Christian nationalism, fundamentalism, traditional masculinity beliefs, and authoritarian aggression
A brief, broad measure of six spiritual struggles
Coping with Conflict
This qualitative meta-synthesis examines ways in which sexual minorities navigate sexual orientation/religious identity conflict. We searched two databases, PsycINFO and SocINDEX with Full Text, between January 1, 2011, and January 4, 2025, for published, peer-reviewed, qualitative journal articles. We included studies involving sexual orientation/religious identity conflict and reporting coping strategies to reduce the conflict. Thirty-four stud…
How Do People Think About the Relationship Between Science and Religion? A Cross-Cultural Psychometric Investigation
Few studies have systematically measured positions about the relationships between science and religion, and existing work has primarily focused on Christian samples from Western cultures. We collected data from individuals living in Australia, China, and the United States, encompassing both adults and undergraduates (total N = 985). We employed existing self-report instruments and novel items to measure positions about science and religion as we…
Spirituality Beyond Religion
Emerging evidence suggests that nonreligious individuals may desire existential meaning and transcendent connection that extends beyond religious contexts. Personality psychology has long incorporated religion and spirituality, however, existing tools assess the presence of religious beliefs or general spirituality, and there is no validated measure to assess the motivational state that we term spiritual yearning. This study aimed to examine the …
Spiritual harm and abuse in religious deidentification from ultra-Orthodox Judaism
Many reasons for religious doubt
The cosmic battle
Agnostics Have More Spiritual Struggles Than Atheists—But More Positive Images, Emotions, and Motivations Around the Idea of God
Behind every artwork is a story
Sacred moments as a source of life altering change
This paper examines recent work on an epiphanic construct that has begun to receive attention in the psychological literature—sacred moments. Sacred moments are brief periods of time in which people experience a sense of transcendence, boundlessness, ultimacy, deep interconnectedness, and spiritual emotions. The paper begins by considering the concept of sacred moments, noting how they overlap with and depart from related constructs, such as self…
Disclosure of afterdeath communication
Torn at the seams
How psychedelic experiences can cause, worsen, or resolve spiritual struggles
Cross-cultural Covid-19 conspiracy thinking and religious, spiritual, and supernatural variables
Forgiving Hurts from Religious Communities
Yearning for Something More
Psychedelic experiences and long-term spiritual growth
Psychedelic substances, which can occasion mystical experiences, are sometimes used for religious and spiritual reasons. Despite strong links between psychedelics and spirituality, no previous systematic review has investigated connections between psychedelics and indicators of long-term spiritual growth. Thus, 34 empirical studies were analyzed with 19,724 total participants from 32 independent samples. A variety of methodologies were used among…
Perceptions of psychedelic use by adults in the United States
Supernatural Attributions for Extraordinary Events
Why do people make supernatural attributions (SA) for events? This article focused on five possible predictors: stressfulness, unusual events, religiousness, seeing a supernatural explanation as meaningful, and seeing supernatural entities as powerful. We also predicted that people would be more likely to adopt supernatural explanations seen as highly accessible, motivating, and plausible. We focused primarily on SA in general and secondarily on …
Human interaction with the divine, the sacred, and the deceased
Humans have likely been attempting to communicate with entities believed to exist, such as the divine, sacred beings, and deceased people, since the dawn of time. Across cultures and countries, many believe that interaction with the immaterial world is not only possible but a frequent experience. Most religious traditions across the globe focus many rituals and activities around prayer to an entity deemed divine or sacred. Additionally, many peop…
A mixed-methods study of communing with and complaining to the divine
The RSS-14
Approach, disengagement, protest, and suppression
Anger toward God
Many people see themselves as being in a relationship with God and see this bond as comforting. Yet, perceived relationships with God also carry the potential for experiencing anger toward God, as shown here in studies with the U.S. population (Study 1), undergraduates (Studies 2 and 3), bereaved individuals (Study 4), and cancer survivors (Study 5). These studies addressed 3 fundamental issues regarding anger toward God: perceptions and attribut…
The perils of outperformance
Outperforming others, although privately satisfying, can be a source of interpersonal strain. This article presents the framework of a major form of outperformance-related distress, which we label sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison (STTUC). To become STTUC, an individual must believe that another person is making an upward comparison against the self and feels threatened by the contrast in status. The outperform…
When God Disappoints
In light of growing empirical interest in the links between forgiveness, religious belief, and well-being, a study was designed to examine the emotional impact of a specific problem with forgiveness: difficulty forgiving God. Difficulty forgiving God was found to predict anxious and depressed mood within a college student sample ( N 5 200), and its contribution was independent of difficulties forgiving the self and others. Two psychological facto…
Too Proud to Let Go
Narcissistic entitlement impedes forgiveness in ways not captured by other robust predictors (e.g., offense severity, apology, relationship closeness, religiosity, Big Five personality factors), as demonstrated in 6 studies. Narcissistic entitlement involves expectations of special treatment and preoccupation with defending one's rights. In Study 1, entitlement predicted less forgiveness and greater insistence on repayment for a past offense. Com…
Transgression as Addiction
Seeing God as Cruel or Distant
Many people experience what psychologists refer to as divine struggle: struggle focused on ideas about God or a perceived relationship with God. When trying to predict this type of spiritual struggle, it may be useful to consider a person's basic concept of God. We examined two facets of a negative God concept—seeing God as cruel or distant—as potential predictors of divine struggle. We expected that views of God as cruel and distant would correl…
Bifactor Models of Religious and Spiritual Struggles
The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS) measures important psychological constructs in an underemphasized section of the overlap between religion and well-being. Are religious/spiritual struggles distinct from religiousness, distress, and each other? To test the RSS' internal discriminant validity, we replicated the original six-factor measurement model across five large samples (N = 5705) and tested the fit of a restricted bifactor mod…
Interpersonal consequences of forgiveness
Psychological Entitlement and Ambivalent Sexism
Not so innocent
People are more forgiving toward transgressors if they see themselves as capable of committing similar offenses, as demonstrated in 7 studies. Methods included hypothetical scenarios, actual recalled offenses, individual and group processes, and correlational and experimental designs. Three factors mediated the link between personal capability and forgiveness: seeing the other's offense as less severe, greater empathic understanding, and perceivi…
Spiritual Struggles among Atheists
Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles)-tension or conflicts regarding religious or spiritual matters-have been robustly linked to greater psychological distress and lower well-being. Most research in this area has relied on samples consisting predominantly of participants who believe in god(s). Limited research has examined R/S struggles among atheists, generally conflating them with agnostics and other nontheists. This study investiga…
Social Desirability Bias in Pornography-Related Self-Reports
In a large online survey of undergraduates, we examined the degree to which social desirability concerns might bias pornography-related self-reports and whether these biases are stronger among highly religious participants than among less-religious ones. Recent state-level analyses have put forward a controversial suggestion that religious individuals tend to search for pornography more than their less-religious peers, despite self-reports to the…
Trait entitlement
Psychological entitlement is a personality trait characterized by pervasive feelings of deservingness, specialness, and exaggerated expectations. The present review expands upon this understanding by conceptualizing entitlement as a cognitive-personality vulnerability to psychological distress. A review of research is conducted, and a novel, multipart model is described by which entitlement may be seen as such a vulnerability. First, exaggerated …
Private gain, social strain
Outperforming others can be satisfying, in part because it allows us to make self‐enhancing social comparisons against those we have surpassed. However, competitive success can clash with relational goals, leading outperformers to experience discomfort when they believe that their superior status poses a threat to the outperformed person (Exline & Lobel, 1999 ). Two studies revealed that relationship factors play a critical role in responses to s…
Religious and Spiritual Struggles, Past and Present
The present research examined the relations between the Big Five factors of personality, religious/spiritual (r/s) struggles (tensions, conflicts, and strains pertaining to r/s life), and well-being. Participants comprised U.S. adults from an online sample (N = 1,047) and an undergraduate sample (N = 3,083). Regressions showed that people who reported higher Neuroticism and Openness, as well as lower Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, reported …
Declines in American Adults' Religious Participation and Beliefs, 1972-2014
Previous research found declines in Americans' religious affiliation but few changes in religious beliefs and practices. By 2014, however, markedly fewer Americans participated in religious activities or embraced religious beliefs, with especially striking declines between 2006 and 2014 and among 18- to 29-year-olds in data from the nationally representative General Social Survey ( N = 58,893, 1972-2014). In recent years, fewer Americans prayed, …
Prevalence, Predictors, and Implications of Religious/Spiritual Struggles Among Muslims
The current investigation explored prevalence, predictors, and psychological implications of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles among an Israeli-Palestinian, Muslim sample. R/s struggle was assessed by the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (Exline et al. 2014), a newly developed scale that assesses a wide array of r/s struggles. Factor analysis of the scale in this study revealed five factors of struggle: Divine and Doubt, Punitive Ent…
Trajectories of Religious/Spiritual Struggles Between Years 1 and 2 of College
Religious and spiritual struggles involve tensions, conflicts, and strains pertaining to religious and spiritual life. This research examined whether broad measures of religiousness predicted differences in the development and resolution of struggles over 1 year in a sample of undergraduates (N = 451) from three U.S. universities: secular public (n = 146), secular private (n = 126), and faith-based Christian (n = 179). Latent class growth analyse…
Internet Pornography Use, Perceived Addiction, and Religious/Spiritual Struggles
An Empirical Examination of Religious/Spiritual Struggle Among Israeli Jews
The current investigation examined the prevalence, predictors, and psychological implications of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles among a sample of Israeli-Jewish university students. R/s struggle was assessed by the Religious and Spiritual Struggles (RSS) Scale. This is a newly constructed scale that assesses a wide array of r/s struggles. The RSS is composed of six factors of struggles: Divine, Doubt, Demonic, Interpersonal, Moral, and U…
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness
Gratitude to God
When good things happen, what thoughts elicit gratitude to God (GTG)? Building on work highlighting divine attributions and appraisals, we examined whether consciously priming people to think about God would increase subsequent reports of GTG. U.S. adult participants (N = 553) completed an online survey asking them to describe a positive event from the past month. They were then randomly assigned to one of six conditions, five of which brought up…
Anxiety Predicts Increases in Struggles with Religious/Spiritual Doubt Over Two Weeks, One Month, and One Year
Struggles with religious/spiritual (r/s) doubt occur when uncertainty, questions, and hesitancy about aspects of r/s beliefs and experiences become a source of conflict. Cross-sectional research suggests that doubt-related struggles correlate with anxiety, yet no studies have investigated the temporal patterning of the associations between these constructs. We employed three large samples (Ns = 268, 527, 292) to examine concurrent and prospective…
Beliefs and Experiences Involving God, the Devil, Spirits, and Fate
Many people believe in supernatural entities, which might be personal (deities, devils, ghosts) or impersonal (fate/destiny, karma, luck). Some people see such entities as causing events in the world, including experiences in their own lives. Our study draws on social, motivational, and cognitive frameworks to predict beliefs and experiences involving supernatural entities. We hypothesized that positive predictors of beliefs in specific entities …
Brazilian Adaptation and Validation of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles (RSS) Scale-Extended and Short Version
Studies highlight that although the spiritual/religious dimension is commonly used as a resource for coping with stress and suffering, sometimes this dimension can also be a locus of struggles. The Religious and Spiritual Struggles (RSS) Scale, composed of 26 items (extended version), is an instrument that assesses the presence of six types of spiritual struggles, categorized into three major categories: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Supernat…
Virtue, Personality, and Social Relations
Morality is a set of rules that enable people to live together in harmony, and virtue involves internalizing those rules. Insofar as virtue depends on overcoming selfish or antisocial impulses for the sake of what is best for the group or collective, self‐control can be said to be the master virtue. We analyze vice, sin, and virtue from the perspective of self‐control theory. Recent research findings indicate that self‐control involves expenditur…
When God Disappoints
In light of growing empirical interest in the links between forgiveness, religious belief, and well-being, a study was designed to examine the emotional impact of a specific problem with forgiveness: difficulty forgiving God. Difficulty forgiving God was found to predict anxious and depressed mood within a college student sample ( N 5 200), and its contribution was independent of difficulties forgiving the self and others. Two psychological facto…
The perils of outperformance
Outperforming others, although privately satisfying, can be a source of interpersonal strain. This article presents the framework of a major form of outperformance-related distress, which we label sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison (STTUC). To become STTUC, an individual must believe that another person is making an upward comparison against the self and feels threatened by the contrast in status. The outperform…
Private gain, social strain
Outperforming others can be satisfying, in part because it allows us to make self‐enhancing social comparisons against those we have surpassed. However, competitive success can clash with relational goals, leading outperformers to experience discomfort when they believe that their superior status poses a threat to the outperformed person (Exline & Lobel, 1999 ). Two studies revealed that relationship factors play a critical role in responses to s…
Target Article
Religion, although often a powerful source of comfort, can also become a source of sadness, stress, or confusion in people's lives. Given the many demonstrated links between religiosity and well-being, some people may turn to religion with the primary aim of seeing how religion might help or profit them. Granted, religious belief and involvement can provide many benefits, including social support, a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction for on…
Mystical Self Loss
(2002). Mystical Self Loss: A Challenge for Psychological Theory. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 15-20
Forgiveness and Justice
Forgiveness and related constructs (e.g., repentance, mercy, reconciliation) are ripe for study by social and personality psychologists, including those interested in justice. Current trends in social science, law, management, philosophy, and theology suggest a need to expand existing justice frameworks to incorporate alternatives or complements to retribution, including forgiveness and related processes. In this article, we raise five challengin…
Belief in Heaven and Hell among Christians in the United States
In situations involving impending death or bereavement, afterlife beliefs may become salient. Although prior studies have examined afterlife beliefs, little attention has been devoted to the specific constructs of Heaven and Hell. Using data from United States Christians in the 1998 General Social Survey, the current analysis revealed that the majority believed in both Heaven and Hell. Fundamentalist Protestants reported greater belief in Heaven …
Psychological Entitlement
Nine studies were conducted with the goal of developing a self-report measure of psychological entitlement and assessing its interpersonal consequences. The Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) was found to be reliable and valid (Study 1, 2), not associated with social desirability (Study 2), stable across time (Study 3), and correlated negatively with two of the Big Five factors: agreeableness and emotional stability (Study 4). The validity of …
Perceptions of Humility
Coren and Porac (1976) reported that objects looked larger in the right eye of right-eye dominant subjects and in the left eye of left-eye dominant subjects. This paper attempts to repeat that finding. Two circles of same or different size were presented haploscopically in a binocular three-field tachistoscope, to right or left visual half-field and to the upper or lower visual field, one to the right eye and one to the left. A total of 43 subjec…
Too Proud to Let Go
Narcissistic entitlement impedes forgiveness in ways not captured by other robust predictors (e.g., offense severity, apology, relationship closeness, religiosity, Big Five personality factors), as demonstrated in 6 studies. Narcissistic entitlement involves expectations of special treatment and preoccupation with defending one's rights. In Study 1, entitlement predicted less forgiveness and greater insistence on repayment for a past offense. Com…
Research
Writing about traumatic events can produce physical and psychological health benefits, especially when individuals use language to transform emotionally laden events into meaningful narratives. Because religion often facilitates the search for meaning, we predicted that the use of religious themes in writing would moderate mood-related outcomes. Fifteen individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) wrote in each of 3 sessions about their …
Self-forgiveness versus excusing
Recent self-forgiveness research raises thorny issues: Are people who claim to forgive themselves merely excusing their offenses? Might it be adaptive for people to feel distress after they hurt others? This study asked 138 undergraduates to reflect on times when they offended others. Feelings of self-condemnation were associated with maladjustment, as shown in prior studies. However, participants reported more prosocial responses (repentance and…
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness
Interpersonal consequences of forgiveness
Not so innocent
People are more forgiving toward transgressors if they see themselves as capable of committing similar offenses, as demonstrated in 7 studies. Methods included hypothetical scenarios, actual recalled offenses, individual and group processes, and correlational and experimental designs. Three factors mediated the link between personal capability and forgiveness: seeing the other's offense as less severe, greater empathic understanding, and perceivi…
Development, refinement, and psychometric properties of the Attitudes Toward God Scale (ATGS-9)
Perceived relationships with God can be a source of comfort or struggle. To advance the study of spiritual comfort and struggle, we develop the nine-item Attitudes toward God Scale (ATGS-9), and we describe six studies (2,992 total participants) reporting its development and psychometrics. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified two factors: (1) Positive Attitudes toward God and (2) Disappointment and Anger with God. Subscale scor…
Reparative Behaviors and Self-forgiveness
Two studies evaluated a laboratory-based exercise designed to facilitate reparative behaviors (e.g., apology, amends) and self-forgiveness. In Study 1, all participants (undergraduates; 50 men, 37 women) did the exercise. Participants reported self-forgiveness increases that were partly maintained over two weeks. In Study 2, undergraduates (75 men, 92 women) were randomly assigned to conditions: responsibility/repair (yes/no) × self-forgiveness (…
“If I Tell others about my Anger toward God, How will They Respond?” Predictors, Associated Behaviors, and Outcomes in an Adult Sample
When people experience anger or other negative feelings toward God, do they admit these emotions to others? Participants in an internet survey (n = 471; mean age 41.7) described an incident involving suffering and their responses. Among those reporting negative feelings toward God (n = 256), those who had stronger negative feelings and saw such feelings as morally acceptable were more likely to disclose their feelings to others. Supportive respon…
Anger toward God
Many people see themselves as being in a relationship with God and see this bond as comforting. Yet, perceived relationships with God also carry the potential for experiencing anger toward God, as shown here in studies with the U.S. population (Study 1), undergraduates (Studies 2 and 3), bereaved individuals (Study 4), and cancer survivors (Study 5). These studies addressed 3 fundamental issues regarding anger toward God: perceptions and attribut…
The Science and Theology of Godly Love
Arguing that there are ways to move beyond the limitations of methodological atheism without compromising scientific objectivity, the essays gathered in The Science and Theology of Godly Love explore the potential for collaboration between social science and theology. They do so within the context of the interdisciplinary study of Godly Love, which examines the perceived experience of loving God, being loved by God, and thereby being motivated to…
Anger, exit, and assertion
There's Room for All of Us
There are many creative ways to combine psychology with religious and spiritual beliefs, as shown in recent writings on the interface between Christianity and psychology (Johnson, 2010; Stevenson, Eck, & Hill, 2007). To help Christians with interests in psychology begin to discern where they might best fit within this larger integration movement, this brief article raises several practical questions. The questions focus on five areas: bases for t…
I deserve better and god knows it! Psychological entitlement as a robust predictor of anger at God
Anger at God has begun to receive empirical attention as a psychological construct. Studies have shown that anger at God is common, and is often associated with various indicators of psychological distress. Past research has demonstrated that multiple aspects of personality, including psychological entitlement, are related to anger at God. The goal of the present study was to evaluate whether psychological entitlement is robustly associated with …
Negative Views of Parents and Struggles with God
Could a negative view of one's mother or father be related to struggles with God? If so, what mediating variables might explain this connection? We conducted two studies to examine these questions, one with a broad-based internet sample (n = 471) and one with undergraduates (n = 236). Both studies confirmed that seeing one's mother or father as cruel was associated with two types of divine struggle: anger toward God and concern about God's anger …
Psychology (97 obras) · Social Psychology (92 obras) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (74 obras) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (28 obras) · Spirituality (27 obras) · Psychotherapist (26 obras) · Clinical Psychology (25 obras) · Philosophy (24 obras) · Social Psychology (20 obras) · Epistemology (19 obras)