708 vII. APPLICATIONS  AND  IMPLICATIONS
world population is unaffiliated with a re -
ligion (Pew-  Templeton, 2012). Thus, for at 
least a substantial percentage of the popula -
tion, an acute sense of spirituality is likely to 
be central to their self-  concept, identity, and 
relationship to God and others.
Across the lifespan, spirituality and reli -
gion are important, perhaps central, dimen -
sions of human experience and activity. Ac -
cording to the General Social Survey, about 
57% of adults report praying at least once 
a day, and 37% attend religious services 
at least once a month. Among older adults 
(ages 60–74 years), rates of daily prayer and 
weekly attendance are substantially higher at 
64% and 66%, respectively (National Opin -
ion Research Center, 2014). In the United 
States, 72% of the population reportedly 
believes in life after death, and the majority 
(58%) of people believe in eternal judgment 
and Hell (Pew Research Center, 2014).
Although on an absolute level these num -
bers are impressive, data also indicate that 
people’s religious commitments, behaviors, 
and identities change as they pass through 
adulthood. Longitudinal studies show that 
adults in the United States generally become 
more religious as they age. Religiousness is 
quite stable in a rank-order sense (test–  retest 
correlations have ranged from .40 to .70 over 
3-, 10-, 20-, 30-, and even 40-year intervals 
during adulthood; Idler & Kasl, 1997; Lu -
binski, Schmidt, & Benbow, 1996; Milfont, 
Milojev, & Sibley, 2016; Wink & Dillon, 
2001), but many adults’ absolute levels of re -
ligiousness also change over the life course. 
As personality psychologists concern them -
selves with stability and change in personal -
ity, these shifts in religious commitments are 
interesting theoretically.
The Religion and Personality Landscape
Religion and  Spirituality  Defined
In order for progress to occur in a scientific 
discipline, there must be some consensus 
concerning the meaning of core constructs 
and their measurement. However, agree -
ment on the meaning of spirituality and 
religion has been hard to come by, as the 
religious landscape in the broader culture 
and in psychology is changing, with a new 
breed of spirituality that is often distinct from traditional conceptions of religion. Re -
ligion  often, but not necessarily, connotes 
a belief in a faith system, whereas spiritu -
ality connotes those values, ideas, or goals 
and purposes that transcend a person and 
to which he or she is committed. Both re -
ligion and spirituality involve commitment 
to something that transcends the individual 
person. At a psychological functional level, 
each one seems to imply the other, and there 
may be little difference between them other 
than personal preference for which language 
(and its connotations) one uses to describe 
transcendent values and ultimate concerns.
It has become fashionable, both culturally 
and in the scientific literature, to differenti -
ate between the spiritual and the religious. 
The noun spirit  and the adjective spiritual  
are being used to refer to an ever-  increasing 
range of experiences rather than being re -
served for those occasions of use that spe -
cifically imply the existence of nonmaterial 
forces or persons. Spirituality comes from 
the Latin spiritus,  meaning breath, or “the 
animating or vital principle of a person” 
(The Oxford English Dictionary ; Simp -
son & Weiner, 1989). Spirituality  has been 
defined as “a deep sense of belonging, of 
wholeness, of connectedness, and of open -
ness to the infinite” (Shafranske & Gorsuch, 
1984, p. 233), as that which involves ulti -
mate and personal truths, and as “a way of 
being and experiencing that which comes 
about through awareness of a transcen -
dent dimension and that is characterized by 
certain identifiable values in regard to self, 
others, nature, life and whatever one consid -
ers to be the Ultimate” (Elkins, Hedstrom, 
Hughes, Leak, & Saunders, 1988, p. 12). 
Spirituality—  in contrast to religion—  means 
something spontaneous, informal, creative, 
and universal; it means authentic inner ex -
perience, freedom of individual expression, 
of seeking, even of religious experimenting.
In contrast, religions are rooted in au -
thoritative spiritual traditions that tran -
scend the person and point to larger reali -
ties within which the person is embedded. 
Durkheim proposed that “A religion is a 
unified system of beliefs and practices rela -
tive to sacred things, that is to say, things set 
apart and forbidden—  beliefs and practices 
which unite into one single moral commu -
nity, called a Church, all those who adhere 