Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Yeh Hsueh

Committee Member

Chia-chen Yang

Committee Member

Christian Mueller

Committee Member

Leigh Williams

Abstract

College students undergo identity development in emerging adulthood, including adjustments in relationships, exploration of occupations, and revisions of spiritual worldviews (Arnett, 2000). Using a modified portion of Lents (2004) normative model of life satisfaction, this study sought to construct a moderated mediation path to assess the role spiritual models play in college students developing traits of spirituality, mindfulness, forgiveness, and hope, and the associations these traits had with college self-efficacy. Additionally, this study proposed perspective-taking as a moderator of the association between environmental support from spiritual models and spirituality, mindfulness, forgiveness, and hope, such that college students high in perspective-taking would understand and internalize traits of models rather than only imitating the spiritual practices of the model. Participants (n = 384) in this one-time survey study were recruited from a public, urban university and a private, Christian university. Participants responded to the following inventories: Spiritual Modeling Inventory of Life Environments (SMILE), Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments Short Form (ASPIRES), Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale, Revised (CAMS-R), Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), The Hope Scale, Perspective-Taking subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (CSEI). Results of the moderated mediation paths show spirituality, mindfulness, forgiveness, and hope mediated the association between environmental support from spiritual models and college self-efficacy, but perspective-taking did not moderate associations from environmental support from spiritual models to the mediators. These findings supported the modified portion of Lents (2004) normative model of life satisfaction which states that environmental support, including support given by spiritual models, enhanced the development of healthy traits such as spirituality, mindfulness, forgiveness, and hope. In turn, the healthy traits were associated with increased college self-efficacy.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

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