Peter C Hill
Biographic Data
| ID | 281987 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter C Hill |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter C |
| FAMILY NAME | Hill |
| SIGNATURE | HILL P C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Biola University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3423-5719 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 80 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 502 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 80 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Discriminating the dimensions of humility: A validation study with religious identifying individuals
Spiritual Formation in Theological Education: A Multi-case Exploration on Seminaries and Student Development
In recent decades, theological schools have demonstrated increased interest in educational models that not only transmit knowledge and skill to students, but also prepare them to have the character and virtue dispositions needed to successfully navigate the moral challenges that await them in future ministry settings. This shift is reflected in the most recent 2020 accreditation standards of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), which hig…
An Undeserved Gift from God: Conservative Christian Experiences of Divine Grace
The reception of God’s grace is a salient spiritual experience and is one that lies at the heart of Christianity. The present study sought to address a gap in the psychological literature pertaining to the experience of divine grace among Protestant Christians in a qualitative study with 30 adult self-identified Protestant Christians. By using Strauss and Corbin’s grounded theory data analysis, themes emerged to reveal how these Christians concei…
Growing in grace: How the experience of divine grace cultivates humility
The perception that one is a recipient of divine grace is a salient spiritual experience and is one that lies at the heart of Christianity. This qualitative study sought to address a gap in the psychological literature regarding how the perceived experience of divine grace enacts internal change. For the sake of this study, grace was defined as God’s undeserved gifts to believers. Thirty adult, self-identified evangelical Christians were intervie…
What Does CSR Believe about Religion and CSR
In chapter 5 of her text, Claire White discusses what the CSR has discovered regarding how people develop beliefs about the nature of the world and how it works. Cognitive science recognizes several mechanisms that influence beliefs, both religious and nonreligious. We review some of the literature on the cognitive origin of beliefs and apply the principles identified by cognitive science to CSR beliefs about religion. What do CSR researchers bel…
Attachment to God and Quest as Moderators of the Relationship between Religious Doubt and Mental Health
The present study examined attachment to God and quest as potential moderators of the relationship between religious doubt and mental health. A sample of Christian participants ( N = 235) completed a survey which included measures of attachment to God, quest, religious doubt, and mental health. As hypothesized, attachment to God and quest significantly moderated an individual’s experience of religious doubt. Low avoidant attachment to God (i.e., …
The Congregational Character Questionnaire: An Initial Empirical Examination of the Significance of Collective Church Character Traits
Researchers in several academic disciplines have begun to take an interest in group character traits, including the character traits of religious congregations. This article reports the first empirical studies of congregational virtues. The Congregational Character Questionnaire was developed for measuring 12 different virtues of Christian churches: clinging to apostolic teaching, honoring teachers, prayerfulness, hopefulness, discipleship, emoti…
Trust in God: An evaluative review of the literature and research proposal
Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for …
Intellectual Humility in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
Based on the premise that psychologists of religion and spirituality tend to define our objects of interest only on our own terms and not on the terms of the people we study, it is suggested that we need to be more intellectually humble in our work. The empirical study of intellectual humility is provided as a case in point. Recent research by the author and his colleagues provide evidence that research findings showing that religious people are …
Tangible Experiences of Grace: A Qualitative Investigation of Divine Grace in Roman Catholics
Measurement Tools and Issues in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
This chapter examines Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a crowdsourcing pool of potential participants for completing online tasks, as a resource for gathering novel data on religiosity and secularity (or other topics). MTurk provides an easily accessible, cost-efficient option for piloting new measures and conducting split-ballot experiments to assess measurement effects. The authors use MTurk data to evaluate measures of religious identity, dem…
Religious and spiritual struggles as a mediator of the link between stressful life events and psychological adjustment in a nationwide sample
Psychology of Religion
The psychological study of religion and spirituality in a disaster context: A systematic review.
Measuring the Spiritual, Character, and Moral Formation of Seminarians: In Search of a Meta-Theory of Spiritual Change
Theological schools are well situated to create intentional cultures for the purpose of spiritual formation. Indeed, most schools of theology have this goal as an essential part of their mission as well as a requirement for continued accreditation. And yet, the measurement of spiritual formation over time is fraught with challenges. This article seeks to address some of these challenges by means of developing a meta-theory of positive change/grow…
Stressful events and religious/spiritual struggle: Moderating effects of the general orienting system
Exploring religious and/or spiritual identities: Part 1 – assessing relationships with health
There is considerable debate about the distinction between being religious and being spiritual. It is time to move beyond this issue to an examination of the health-related implications of being religious and/or spiritual. Three health outcomes are used in this study: self-rated health, depressive symptoms, and alcohol use. The data are from a large nationwide random probability survey of adults of all ages who reside in the United States (N = 2,…
Meaning-making, suffering, and religion: A worldview conception
Park’s meaning-making model suggests that events such as the loss of a loved one may cause distress because people’s appraised meaning of the difficult event may challenge their global orienting systems. Meaning-making alleviates distress by reducing this discrepancy. Research has shown the important role that religions often play in the meaning-making process. However, this body of research has largely been limited by a reluctance to address the…
Exploring religious and/or spiritual identities: Part 2 – a descriptive analysis of those who are at risk for health problems
Previous analysis of the data that are used in this study reveal that compared to people who self-identify as religious and spiritual, spiritual only, and neither religious nor spiritual, study participants who are religious only are more likely to experience physical and mental health problems. The purpose of this study is to conduct a descriptive analyses that is designed to see why this may be so. Differences between the religious only and mem…
Evaluating the relationships among religion, social virtues, and meaning in life
There is growing evidence that a sense of meaning in life may emerge, in part, from the social relationships that people maintain. But it is not clear how the relationship between social ties and a sense of meaning might arise. The purpose of this study is to see if meaning in life is associated with three socially focused virtues: compassion, forgiveness of others, and providing social support to others. In the process, an effort is made to see …
Perspectives on character formation from three religious worldviews: The case of humility and intellectual humility
This article advocates for the inclusion of theistic beliefs in the study of humility and intellectual humility and recommends the construct of worldview as a promising resource for this endeavor. The promise of this approach is tested by exploring the contrasting worldviews of three religious traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, and atheism. In so doing, the ontological and anthropological turn of these worldviews will be contrasted with implicat…
Religion vs. the welfare state—the importance of cultural context for religious schematicity and priming
Prior research, using correlational and self-report methodologies, suggests that religion and public welfare function as alternate security/insurance systems. Consequently, in countries with more e
Students in Faith-Based Doctoral Psychology Programs: Religious/Spiritual Struggles Moderate the Effect of Distress from Clinical Work on Negative Affect
Objective: The present study assessed 96 doctoral psychology students at APA-accredited faith-based institutions to further understand the relationships between distress from clinical work, religious and spiritual ( r/s) struggles, and negative affect. Based on past research it was hypothesized that distress from clinical work would predict heightened r/s struggles and negative affect. Furthermore, we hypothesized r/s struggles would moderate the…
Religious and Spiritual Salience, Well-Being, and Psychosocial Functioning Among Psychotherapy Clients: Moderator Effects for Humility
Assessing gender differences in the relationship between religious coping responses and alcohol consumption
The purpose of this study is to see if the use of religious coping responses is associated with alcohol intake. In addition, tests are conducted to see if the relationship between religion and alcohol use varies by gender. Data from a recent nationwide survey (N = 2173) indicate that greater use of religious coping responses is associated with less alcohol consumption. The findings further reveal that even though women use religious coping respon…
Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research
Empirical studies have identified significant links between religion and spirituality and health. The reasons for these associations, however, are unclear. Typically, religion and spirituality have been measured by global indices (e.g., frequency of church attendance, self-rated religiousness and spirituality) that do not specify how or why religion and spirituality affect health. The authors highlight recent advances in the delineation of religi…
Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality: Points of Commonality, Points of Departure
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 Virtues of Positive Psychology: The Rapprochement and Challenges of an Affirmative Postmodern Perspective
Toward a Multicultural Positive Psychology: Indigenous Forgiveness and Hmong Culture
The growing field of positive psychology is encouraging advances in the scientific research of developmental strengths and virtues like forgiveness. However, multicultural and indigenous psychology perspectives can raise valuable questions about positive psychology and the relationship between cultural particularity and virtues like forgiveness. In this article, the authors consider the meaning of virtue in psychology and then focus on the cultur…
Generativity, Relational Spirituality, Gratitude, and Mental Health: Relationships and Pathways
In this study, the authors investigated generativity strivings or commitments in relation to spirituality, spiritual transformation (ST), gratitude, and mental health in the educational training context of graduate-level students (N = 194) at a university-based theological seminary in North America. Relational spirituality was operationalized based on a relational theoretical model (Shults & Sandage, 2006 Shults, F. L. and Sandage, S. J. 2006. Tr…
The accessibility of religious beliefs
Religion and Refugee Resettlement in the United States: A Research Note
Validation of students' self-reported cigarette smoking status with plasma cotinine levels
Plasma cotinine levels were measured in 137 students (ages 14 to 17 years), as an independent validation of self-reported cigarette smoking status. Ninety-five per cent of the students who reported daily cigarette smoking had detectable cotinine levels. In contract, only 2 per cent of students who reported that they never smoke cigarettes had detectable levels of plasma cotinine. Results suggest that adolescents can report accurately on their smo…
Giving Religion Away: What the Study of Religion Offers Psychology
A major implication of psychology's new zeitgeist is that the study of religion and spirituality may no longer be neglected. To take full advantage of this new recognition and increased opportunity, psychologists of religion must demonstrate that the study of religion is relevant to underlying psychological and social processes. In the spirit of Jones's ( 1994) constructive mode of interaction between psychology and religion, 2 broad research dom…
Toward an Attitude Process Model of Religious Experience
Une adaptation de la theorie de Fazio offre la possibilite de constituer un modele utile en psychologie religieuse. Le concept de l'attitude est defini a l'interieur de ce modele comme une association entre un objet et l'evaluation de cet objet. Les attitudes sont considerees comme des activations automatiques spontanees auxquelles on ne peut echapper et qui ne sont pas reflechies ou comme des activations controlees qui demandent de l'attention e…
Tangible Experiences of Grace: A Qualitative Investigation of Divine Grace in Roman Catholics
Intellectual Humility in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
Based on the premise that psychologists of religion and spirituality tend to define our objects of interest only on our own terms and not on the terms of the people we study, it is suggested that we need to be more intellectually humble in our work. The empirical study of intellectual humility is provided as a case in point. Recent research by the author and his colleagues provide evidence that research findings showing that religious people are …
Neighborhood conditions, religious coping, and uncontrolled hypertension
The Inevitable Metathesis of the Retiring Athlete
Validation of students' self-reported cigarette smoking status with plasma cotinine levels
Plasma cotinine levels were measured in 137 students (ages 14 to 17 years), as an independent validation of self-reported cigarette smoking status. Ninety-five per cent of the students who reported daily cigarette smoking had detectable cotinine levels. In contract, only 2 per cent of students who reported that they never smoke cigarettes had detectable levels of plasma cotinine. Results suggest that adolescents can report accurately on their smo…
Religion and Refugee Resettlement in the United States: A Research Note
A Reexamination of the Bogus Pipeline
A variant of a technique developed to enhance the validity of self-reports, the generalized bogus pipeline (GBP), was investigated in three experiments reported in this paper. Empirical support for both the construct validity and the efficacy of the GBP was generally supportive for that manipulation. An important serendipitous finding, however, was that the GBP may be unnecessary when respondent anonymity is assured. Empirical support for the con…
Comparing Psychological Guilt and Godly Sorrow: Do Christians Recognize the Difference
Two studies primarily involving college students were conducted to determine whether or not Christians were able to differentiate Narramore's (1984) distinctions between guilt and Godly sorrow. The first study found that Christians could identify the difference as a function of resulting changes, the person and attitude/action in primary focus, and attitude toward God, three important distinctions in Narramore's model. Another important distincti…
Helping Christians Reclaim Some Abandoned Emotions: The ACE Model of Emotion
The arousal-cognition-expression (ACE) model of emotion suggests that all emotions have the capacity to be pleasing to God, displeasing to God, and/or morally neutral. Therefore, all emotions are potentially appropriate for the Christian. According to the ACE model, what determines the moral direction of an emotion, and thus the appropriateness of an emotion for a Christian, is factors in the cognitive and expressive domains. The ACE model origin…
Lecture Summaries
Six lecture summaries:The Northumbrian church at WhithornMonuments on record: the work of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland at the end of the 20th centuryCanadian Ethnology and the Wilson BrothersFleas, Flies and Farmers, an entomology of archaeologyHigh Society on the Antonine frontierA history of the Arts & Crafts movement in Edinburgh, 1885-1939
Confronting the Avoided Spot
Toward an Attitude Process Model of Religious Experience
Une adaptation de la theorie de Fazio offre la possibilite de constituer un modele utile en psychologie religieuse. Le concept de l'attitude est defini a l'interieur de ce modele comme une association entre un objet et l'evaluation de cet objet. Les attitudes sont considerees comme des activations automatiques spontanees auxquelles on ne peut echapper et qui ne sont pas reflechies ou comme des activations controlees qui demandent de l'attention e…
Invitation to the Psychology of Religion (Book)
The Ace Model of Emotion: Living Jesus Christ While Experiencing Emotions
This article presents a model that integrates Christian and psychological perspectives on emotion: the ACE model of emotion. This model proposes that all emotions are morally ambidextrous. Any emotion, from anger to love, has the capacity to be experienced in a manner that is pleasing or displeasing to God. The ACE model further assumes that emotions contain three elements: (a) A = arousal or physiological activity, (b) C = cognition, and (c) E =…
Affect, Religion, and Unconscious Processes
After a brief review of the central and organizing role of affect in both personality and religion, the bridge between psychoanalytic and contemporary cognitive perspectives of the unconscious is investigated, with a special focus on an affectively based experiential component as outlined in Epstein’s (1973, 1993, 1994) Cognitive‐Experiential Self‐Theory (CEST) model. Four basic needs postulated by CEST are applied to religious experience: the ne…
Giving Religion Away: What the Study of Religion Offers Psychology
A major implication of psychology's new zeitgeist is that the study of religion and spirituality may no longer be neglected. To take full advantage of this new recognition and increased opportunity, psychologists of religion must demonstrate that the study of religion is relevant to underlying psychological and social processes. In the spirit of Jones's ( 1994) constructive mode of interaction between psychology and religion, 2 broad research dom…
Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality: Points of Commonality, Points of Departure
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…
Young, Douglas
The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Mental and Physical Health
An increased interest in the effects of religion and spirituality on health is apparent in the psychological and medical literature. Although religion in particular was thought, in the past, to have a predominantly negative influence on health, recent research suggests this relationship is more complex. This article reviews the literature on the impact of religion and spirituality on physical and mental health, concluding that the influence is la…
The Virtues of Positive Psychology: The Rapprochement and Challenges of an Affirmative Postmodern Perspective
Measures of Religiosity
Journal Article Measures of Religiosity, Peter C. Hill and Ralph W. Hood, Jr. (eds.). Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1999, 531pp. $99.95 Get access Patricia M.Y. Chang Patricia M.Y. Chang Center for Religion and American Public Life Department of SociologyBoston College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 62, Issue 2, Summer 2001, Pages 267–268, https://doi.org/10.2307/371…
Forgiveness and Justice: A Research Agenda for Social and Personality Psychology
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…
Assessing clinically significant religious impairment in clients: Applications from measures in the psychology of religion and spirituality
This article reviews measures in the psychological study of religion and spirituality (RS) in terms of Hathaway's (1999) conceptualization of clinically significant religious impairment (CSRI). It is maintained that RS can be regarded as an endogenous variable impaired by psychopathology. Specific RS measures are discussed in terms of how they may be used to assess RS impairment in clients in terms of performing RS activities, achieving RS goals,…
Assessing clinically significant religious impairment in clients: Applications from measures in the psychology of religion and spirituality
This article reviews measures in the psychological study of religion and spirituality (RS) in terms of Hathaway's (1999) conceptualization of clinically significant religious impairment (CSRI). It is maintained that RS can be regarded as an endogenous variable impaired by psychopathology. Specific RS measures are discussed in terms of how they may be used to assess RS impairment in clients in terms of performing RS activities, achieving RS goals,…
Toward a Multicultural Positive Psychology: Indigenous Forgiveness and Hmong Culture
The growing field of positive psychology is encouraging advances in the scientific research of developmental strengths and virtues like forgiveness. However, multicultural and indigenous psychology perspectives can raise valuable questions about positive psychology and the relationship between cultural particularity and virtues like forgiveness. In this article, the authors consider the meaning of virtue in psychology and then focus on the cultur…
Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research
Empirical studies have identified significant links between religion and spirituality and health. The reasons for these associations, however, are unclear. Typically, religion and spirituality have been measured by global indices (e.g., frequency of church attendance, self-rated religiousness and spirituality) that do not specify how or why religion and spirituality affect health. The authors highlight recent advances in the delineation of religi…
Living on the Boundary: Scriptural Authority and Psychology
For Christian psychologists to move from their marginalized position with mainstream psychology, they must be able to substantively demonstrate the unique insights that the integration of psychology with Christian theology offers to the discipline. To do this, Christian psychologists must be able to show, not just claim, the authority of Scripture by demonstrating its explanatory power on psychology's terms. Three factors in psychology's new zeit…
Religion as Culture: Religious Individualism and Collectivism Among American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants
We propose the theory that religious cultures vary in individualistic and collectivistic aspects of religiousness and spirituality. Study 1 showed that religion for Jews is about community and biological descent but about personal beliefs for Protestants. Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity were intercorrelated and endorsed differently by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants in a pattern that supports the theory that intrinsic religiosity relates to …
Psychology (69 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (57 works) · Social Psychology (57 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · Spirituality (22 works) · Theology (22 works) · Epistemology (21 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (21 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (18 works)