Religious Identity, Mystical Experience, and Psychopathology: A Study among Secular, Christian, and Muslim Youth in England and Wales
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 1,058 |
| Population | Adolescents aged 14 to 18 in England and Wales: 203 Muslims, 477 Christians, and 378 religiously unaffiliated |
| Topics | Mystical experience |
| Key findings | Religiously unaffiliated adolescents report lower levels of mystical experience than Christians or Muslims, and no association was found between mystical experience and psychopathology across all three groups. |
Abstract
This study addressed two research questions among three samples of 14- to 18-year-old adolescents: 203 Muslims, 477 Christians, and 378 religiously unaffiliated young people in England and Wales. The first question examined the comparative extent to which the religiously unaffiliated reported mystical experience. The second question examined the association between mystical experience and psychopathology as defined by the psychoticism and neuroticisim scales within Eysenck’s dimensional model of personality. The data found a lower level of reported mystical experience among the religiously unaffiliated, although such experiences were reported by between a quarter and a third of this group. The data found no association between reported mystical experience and psychopathology among the Christians, the Muslims, or the religiously unaffiliated.