Charlotte V O Witvliet
Biographic Data
| ID | 337912 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charlotte V O Witvliet |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charlotte V |
| FAMILY NAME | O Witvliet |
| SIGNATURE | WITVLIET C V O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hope College |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4364-6816 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Where Hope Thrives: Demographic Variation in Hope across 22 Countries
202,898) and employing random effects meta-analysis, we explore the cross-national variations in self-rated hope across various sociodemographic factors, including age, gender, marital status, employment, religious service attendance, education, and immigration status. Our findings reveal considerable variations in levels of hope across countries, and some notable differences across demographic groups, highlighting unique individual and societal …
Religion, Accountability, and the Risk of Aggressive Misconduct Among Prisoners: Preliminary Evidence of Restorative Rehabilitation
Prior research has found inverse relationship between religious involvement and misconduct among prisoners. In this study, we examined the mediating role of accountability as welcoming responsibility for one’s actions with respect to the transcendent (e.g., God or a higher power) and other people. We applied structural equation modeling to analyze data from surveys with 339 individuals (108 females and 231 males) incarcerated at three facilities …
Hope as a virtue: Toward a theoretically-grounded measure in English, isiZulu, and Portuguese
Pursuing personal goals: Temporal associations of welcoming accountability, personal responsibility, and progress satisfaction
Seeds of Hope: Cross-National Analysis of Childhood Predictors of Hope in 22 Countries
This study investigates childhood predictors of adult hope across 22 countries, leveraging data from 202,898 participants in the Global Flourishing Study. Key findings indicate that positive childhood experiences, such as excellent or very good health, supportive parental relationships, and regular religious attendance, are strongly associated with higher levels of hope in adulthood. Conversely, negative experiences like abuse and feeling like an…
Childhood Predictors of Dispositional Forgivingness in Adulthood: A Cross-National Analysis with 22 Countries
A robust body of empirical evidence suggests that forgiveness of others is positively related to individual wellbeing. However, less empirical work has been done to identify the factors that may help children not only forgive better during childhood but also develop into adults who practice forgiveness more consistently. To support a population health agenda aimed at the promotion of forgiveness, further research is needed to identify potential d…
The interaction between forgiveness and resentment on mental health outcomes: Two sides of the same coin
Forgiveness is a foundational tenet across all religions that has consistently been shown to be related to positive health outcomes. Although specific theoretical dimensions of “forgiveness” have been proposed (e.g., decisional, emotional, dispositional), there is limited evidence to suggest that they are statistically distinct constructs. However, a recent factor analysis (Yoon et al., 2022) indicated that a frequently used measure of forgivenes…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Transcendent Accountability and Pro-Community Attitudes: Assessing the Link Between Religion and Community Engagement
Prior research has established a positive relationship between religiosity and civic engagement but focused on public religiosity rather than private religiosity without explaining the relationship. We examined private religiosity as well as public religiosity in relation to community engagement, explaining the religiosity-community engagement relationship with two understudied mechanisms: "transcendent accountability" (seeing oneself as accounta…
Explaining the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation: The Mediating Roles of Transcendent Accountability and Religiopolitical Awareness
Prior research tends to find a positive relationship between religiosity and political participation. Explanations of this relationship have focused mostly on religiosity-generated organizational resources (e.g., civic skills), while paying less attention to psychological resources. We simultaneously examined different aspects of religiosity (belief, behavior, and belonging) and political participation (electoral and nonelectoral) in a structural…
Perceptions of Accountability to God and Psychological Well-Being Among US Adults
Relationships between psychometrically distinct Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) factors and mental health among U.S. college students
The current study tested the extent to which demographic, personality, spiritual, and religious variables accounted for variance in physical and mental health measures using recently identified psychometrically distinct factors of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality. Based on a non-clinical sample of 249 U.S. undergraduate students, hierarchical multiple regressions were significant for mental, but not physical, healt…
Conceptualising spirituality and religion as psychological processes: Validation of the factor structure of the BMMRS
This study validated previous principal component analyses of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) that have been conducted with persons with diverse medical conditions and traumatic brain injuries from diverse cultures (India, US), ethnicities (African American, Caucasian, South Asian), and religions (Christian, Hindu, Muslim). Participants included 398 healthy undergraduate students who completed the BMMRS on…
Gratitude and patience moderate meaning struggles and suicidal risk in a cross‐sectional study of inpatients at a Christian psychiatric hospital
Objective Suicidal behavior is a leading cause of injury and death, so research identifying protective factors is essential. Research suggests gratitude and life hardships patience are character strengths that might protect against the deleterious association of struggles with ultimate meaning and suicide risk. However, no studies have evaluated their utility among people experiencing acute/severe mental health concerns. Method We tested the prot…
Understanding the roles of religious comfort and strain on depressive symptoms in an inpatient psychiatric setting
Understanding the role of religion in mental illness has always been complicated as some people turn to religion to cope with their illness, whereas others turn away. The overarching purpose of this study was to draw on quantitative and qualitative information to illuminate ways in which religiousness might be associated with changes in depressive symptomatology in a spiritually integrated inpatient treatment program. This repeated measures mixed…
Apology and Restitution: Offender Accountability Responses Influence Victim Empathy and Forgiveness
Two experiments ( N = 487) tested the effects of receiving an apology (absent, present) and restitution (absent, present) in imagery of a one-sided transgression and common property crime, a burglary scenario. Within a framework of accountability, apology and restitution represent relationally responsive responsibility-taking and repair efforts by a perpetrator. Experiments 1 and 2 found that a thorough apology and restitution each decreased unfo…
Virtue, positive psychology, and religion: Consideration of an overarching virtue and an underpinning mechanism
The virtues are a central focus of research at the intersection of positive psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality. Humility, patience, and gratitude are addressed in the target articles of this special issue. Beyond examining each individual virtue, we argue here that the connections among virtues also warrant empirical attention. Specifically, we explain the unity of the virtues thesis, which suggests that individual virtues…
Not so innocent: Does seeing one's own capability for wrongdoing predict forgiveness
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…
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness: An experimental psychophysiology analysis
Posttraumatic mental and physical health correlates of forgiveness and religious coping in military veterans
This study assessed mental and physical health correlates of dispositional forgiveness and religious coping responses in 213 help‐seeking veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Controlling for age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, combat exposure, and hostility, the results indicated that difficulty forgiving oneself and negative religious coping were related to depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptom severity. Difficulty forgiving others was associated wit…
Forgiveness and Health: Review and Reflections on a Matter of Faith, Feelings, and Physiology
Empirical research on the links between forgiveness and both mental and physical health is burgeoning. This article reviews current research, with reflections on how Christians might engage this literature. It considers Christian and psychological conceptualizations of forgiveness, reviews the published literature on forgiveness and mental and physical health, addresses theoretical and interpretive issues, and reflects on ways that Christians may…
Not so innocent: Does seeing one's own capability for wrongdoing predict forgiveness
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…
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness: An experimental psychophysiology analysis
Explaining the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation: The Mediating Roles of Transcendent Accountability and Religiopolitical Awareness
Prior research tends to find a positive relationship between religiosity and political participation. Explanations of this relationship have focused mostly on religiosity-generated organizational resources (e.g., civic skills), while paying less attention to psychological resources. We simultaneously examined different aspects of religiosity (belief, behavior, and belonging) and political participation (electoral and nonelectoral) in a structural…
Transcendent Accountability and Pro-Community Attitudes: Assessing the Link Between Religion and Community Engagement
Prior research has established a positive relationship between religiosity and civic engagement but focused on public religiosity rather than private religiosity without explaining the relationship. We examined private religiosity as well as public religiosity in relation to community engagement, explaining the religiosity-community engagement relationship with two understudied mechanisms: "transcendent accountability" (seeing oneself as accounta…
Forgiveness and Health: Review and Reflections on a Matter of Faith, Feelings, and Physiology
Empirical research on the links between forgiveness and both mental and physical health is burgeoning. This article reviews current research, with reflections on how Christians might engage this literature. It considers Christian and psychological conceptualizations of forgiveness, reviews the published literature on forgiveness and mental and physical health, addresses theoretical and interpretive issues, and reflects on ways that Christians may…
Posttraumatic mental and physical health correlates of forgiveness and religious coping in military veterans
This study assessed mental and physical health correlates of dispositional forgiveness and religious coping responses in 213 help‐seeking veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Controlling for age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, combat exposure, and hostility, the results indicated that difficulty forgiving oneself and negative religious coping were related to depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptom severity. Difficulty forgiving others was associated wit…
Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness: An experimental psychophysiology analysis
Not so innocent: Does seeing one's own capability for wrongdoing predict forgiveness
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…
Virtue, positive psychology, and religion: Consideration of an overarching virtue and an underpinning mechanism
The virtues are a central focus of research at the intersection of positive psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality. Humility, patience, and gratitude are addressed in the target articles of this special issue. Beyond examining each individual virtue, we argue here that the connections among virtues also warrant empirical attention. Specifically, we explain the unity of the virtues thesis, which suggests that individual virtues…
Understanding the roles of religious comfort and strain on depressive symptoms in an inpatient psychiatric setting
Understanding the role of religion in mental illness has always been complicated as some people turn to religion to cope with their illness, whereas others turn away. The overarching purpose of this study was to draw on quantitative and qualitative information to illuminate ways in which religiousness might be associated with changes in depressive symptomatology in a spiritually integrated inpatient treatment program. This repeated measures mixed…
Apology and Restitution: Offender Accountability Responses Influence Victim Empathy and Forgiveness
Two experiments ( N = 487) tested the effects of receiving an apology (absent, present) and restitution (absent, present) in imagery of a one-sided transgression and common property crime, a burglary scenario. Within a framework of accountability, apology and restitution represent relationally responsive responsibility-taking and repair efforts by a perpetrator. Experiments 1 and 2 found that a thorough apology and restitution each decreased unfo…
Relationships between psychometrically distinct Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) factors and mental health among U.S. college students
The current study tested the extent to which demographic, personality, spiritual, and religious variables accounted for variance in physical and mental health measures using recently identified psychometrically distinct factors of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality. Based on a non-clinical sample of 249 U.S. undergraduate students, hierarchical multiple regressions were significant for mental, but not physical, healt…
Conceptualising spirituality and religion as psychological processes: Validation of the factor structure of the BMMRS
This study validated previous principal component analyses of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) that have been conducted with persons with diverse medical conditions and traumatic brain injuries from diverse cultures (India, US), ethnicities (African American, Caucasian, South Asian), and religions (Christian, Hindu, Muslim). Participants included 398 healthy undergraduate students who completed the BMMRS on…
Gratitude and patience moderate meaning struggles and suicidal risk in a cross‐sectional study of inpatients at a Christian psychiatric hospital
Objective Suicidal behavior is a leading cause of injury and death, so research identifying protective factors is essential. Research suggests gratitude and life hardships patience are character strengths that might protect against the deleterious association of struggles with ultimate meaning and suicide risk. However, no studies have evaluated their utility among people experiencing acute/severe mental health concerns. Method We tested the prot…
Perceptions of Accountability to God and Psychological Well-Being Among US Adults
The interaction between forgiveness and resentment on mental health outcomes: Two sides of the same coin
Forgiveness is a foundational tenet across all religions that has consistently been shown to be related to positive health outcomes. Although specific theoretical dimensions of “forgiveness” have been proposed (e.g., decisional, emotional, dispositional), there is limited evidence to suggest that they are statistically distinct constructs. However, a recent factor analysis (Yoon et al., 2022) indicated that a frequently used measure of forgivenes…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Transcendent Accountability and Pro-Community Attitudes: Assessing the Link Between Religion and Community Engagement
Prior research has established a positive relationship between religiosity and civic engagement but focused on public religiosity rather than private religiosity without explaining the relationship. We examined private religiosity as well as public religiosity in relation to community engagement, explaining the religiosity-community engagement relationship with two understudied mechanisms: "transcendent accountability" (seeing oneself as accounta…
Explaining the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation: The Mediating Roles of Transcendent Accountability and Religiopolitical Awareness
Prior research tends to find a positive relationship between religiosity and political participation. Explanations of this relationship have focused mostly on religiosity-generated organizational resources (e.g., civic skills), while paying less attention to psychological resources. We simultaneously examined different aspects of religiosity (belief, behavior, and belonging) and political participation (electoral and nonelectoral) in a structural…
Hope as a virtue: Toward a theoretically-grounded measure in English, isiZulu, and Portuguese
Pursuing personal goals: Temporal associations of welcoming accountability, personal responsibility, and progress satisfaction
Seeds of Hope: Cross-National Analysis of Childhood Predictors of Hope in 22 Countries
This study investigates childhood predictors of adult hope across 22 countries, leveraging data from 202,898 participants in the Global Flourishing Study. Key findings indicate that positive childhood experiences, such as excellent or very good health, supportive parental relationships, and regular religious attendance, are strongly associated with higher levels of hope in adulthood. Conversely, negative experiences like abuse and feeling like an…
Childhood Predictors of Dispositional Forgivingness in Adulthood: A Cross-National Analysis with 22 Countries
A robust body of empirical evidence suggests that forgiveness of others is positively related to individual wellbeing. However, less empirical work has been done to identify the factors that may help children not only forgive better during childhood but also develop into adults who practice forgiveness more consistently. To support a population health agenda aimed at the promotion of forgiveness, further research is needed to identify potential d…
Where Hope Thrives: Demographic Variation in Hope across 22 Countries
202,898) and employing random effects meta-analysis, we explore the cross-national variations in self-rated hope across various sociodemographic factors, including age, gender, marital status, employment, religious service attendance, education, and immigration status. Our findings reveal considerable variations in levels of hope across countries, and some notable differences across demographic groups, highlighting unique individual and societal …
Religion, Accountability, and the Risk of Aggressive Misconduct Among Prisoners: Preliminary Evidence of Restorative Rehabilitation
Prior research has found inverse relationship between religious involvement and misconduct among prisoners. In this study, we examined the mediating role of accountability as welcoming responsibility for one’s actions with respect to the transcendent (e.g., God or a higher power) and other people. We applied structural equation modeling to analyze data from surveys with 339 individuals (108 females and 231 males) incarcerated at three facilities …
Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Political science (9 works) · Clinical Psychology (8 works) · Forgiveness (8 works) · Forgiveness and Related Behaviors (8 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (8 works) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (7 works) · Psychiatry (7 works) · Religiosity (7 works)