Sherman A. Lee

When religion makes grief worse: negative religious coping as associated with maladaptive emotional responding patterns

Past research has demonstrated negative religious copings relation to dysfunctional moods during bereavement, but no study has examined negative religious copings influence on emotion processes tied to loss. A total of 99 college students who had experienced a loss provided demographics and measures of social desirability, religiousness, spirituality, neuroticism, and two forms of religious coping. Participants also completed a Loss Interview (LI) that was designed to elicit grief by discussing memories of the deceased. Participants were also asked to evaluate their emotional state before the L1, immediately following the LI, one minute and five minutes after the LI. As hypothesised, negative religious coping predicted dysregulation of grief in the form of heightened reactivity and prolonged recovery. These results are the first ones to relate negative religious coping to maladaptive emotion patterns as well as identify specific aspects of religious coping relevant to dysfunction.

The Fading Affect Bias shows healthy coping at the general level, but not the specific level for religious variables across religious and non-religious events

The research on fading emotions has shown that unpleasant emotions fade more over time than pleasant emotions, which is a phenomenon referred to as the Fading Affect Bias (FAB). Based on the negative relation between the FAB and dysphoria (Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003), some researchers have argued that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism (Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003). As religious variables are related to positive emotions and emotional coping (e.g., Cohen, 2002; Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998), we examined the FAB as a healthy coping mechanism at the general and specific levels of analysis in the context of religion. General healthy coping was supported by (1) FAB effects across both religious events (REs) and non-religious events (NREs) and (2) a positive relation for spirituality and the FAB. However, specific healthy coping was not supported by a small FAB for (1) REs at high levels of positive religious coping (PRC) for NREs, (2) NREs at low levels of PRC for NREs, and (3) purely REs relative to REs involving spirituality. Other implications are discussed.

Testing the fading affect bias for healthy coping in the context of death

ABSTRACT Affect fades faster for unpleasant events than for pleasant events (e.g., Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997), which is referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB; Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003). Although research has generally shown that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism, this same finding has not been demonstrated at a specific level of analysis accounting for particular event types and related individual differences (e.g., Gibbons et al., 2013). Given the strong unpleasant emotions associated with death (Rask, Kaunonen, & Paunonen-Ilmonen, 2002), the current study examined FAB in the context of death events and participant attitudes toward death. General healthy coping was shown by robust FAB across death and control (i.e., everyday) events and by a negative correlation between negative religious coping and FAB. Although healthy coping at a specific level of analysis was supported by increased FAB for participants who held accepting attitudes toward death when they recalled everyday events, it was not supported by decreased FAB for the same participants when they recalled death events. This effect was mediated by rehearsal ratings, not depression. Implications are discussed.

Factorial structure of the persistent complex bereavement inventory: Testing a hierarchical factor model

ABSTRACT The present study examined the validity of deriving a global or general measure of grief from the Persistent Complex Bereavement Inventory using an online survey of 180 bereaved adults. Confirmatory factor analyzes indicated that a hierarchical factor structure best fit the data such that an overarching, general grief factor accounted for the covariation among three first-order symptom clusters. The construct validity of this grief factor was further supported by correlations with related variables such as negative religious coping, neuroticism, meaning-made, and post-traumatic growth. These findings are consistent with DSM-5 and support the commonly used total scale score approach.

School and religious factors impact the neuroticism-grief link in adolescents

ABSTRACT Researchers have long recognized neuroticism as a risk factor for complicated grief. However, the mediating influences of school belongingness and negative religious coping have not been examined. To explore these connections, adolescents from two high schools and a choir group were recruited to complete a brief survey. Data from 99 students revealed that both factors independently partially mediated the impact of neuroticism on persistent complex bereavement symptoms. Findings suggest that social isolation and spiritual struggles contribute adversely to the grief of some emotionally sensitive students. The results also support the efficacy of a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach to studying adolescent grief.

Grief and Avoidant Death Attitudes Combine to Predict the Fading Affect Bias

The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs when unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. To detect mechanisms that influence the FAB in the context of death, we measured neuroticism, depression, anxiety, negative religious coping, death attitudes, and complicated grief as potential predictors of FAB for unpleasant/death and pleasant events at 2 points in time. The FAB was robust across older and newer events, which supported the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Unexpectedly, complicated grief positively predicted FAB, and death avoidant attitudes moderated this relation, such that the Initial Event Affect by Grief interaction was only significant at the highest 3 quintiles of death avoidant attitudes. These results were likely due to moderate grief ratings, which were, along with avoidant death attitudes, related to healthy outcomes in past research. These results implicate complicated grief and death avoidant attitudes as resiliency mechanisms that are mobilized during bereavement to minimize its unpleasant effects.

Persistent complex bereavement symptoms explain impairments above depression, posttraumatic stress, and separation anxiety: an incremental validity study

Abstract The present study examined the incremental validity of persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD) symptoms using an on-line survey of 255 bereaved college students. A series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses examined the extent to which PCBD symptoms explained unique variance in different domains of life impairment, beyond symptoms of depression, posttraumatic stress, and separation anxiety. The results supported the incremental validity of PCBD symptoms for fear of future losses, sleep impairment, and work/social impairment. However, PCBD symptoms did not account for loneliness scores. These findings collectively support the validity and clinical utility of the DSM-5’s PCBD construct.

Spiritual struggles and compassion: the positive side of moral concerns

ABSTRACT A large body of research has focused on the negative consequences associated with spiritual struggles, with little consideration to the potential positive aspects of these experiences. To fill this void in literature, we investigated the relationship between spiritual struggles and state compassion using film methodology. The results of this study show that the moral concerns component of spiritual struggles is the only one that predicted feelings of compassion, and this relation was not explained by other individual differences factors. The results demonstrated that one facet of spiritual struggles can predict positive outcomes, such as compassion.