Abstract
How explain, from a psychological perspective, why some people turn to religion today? What are the motives? This question is particularly important in the current context of secularized societies and religious market. There is substantial evidence in previous literature on psychology of religion to support the idea that attraction to religion occurs in the presence of pre-existing psychological vulnerabilities (socio-affective and cognitive). In addition to these compensation needs, we theorized that modem religious people can also be characterized by motivations that denote self-realization and optimal development (self-growth motives). In the present paper, seven studies are presented. Among specific populations (New Religious Movements members and ex-members, converts to traditional religions, free-lance spiritual seekers, and atheists), a variety of measures were examined in the frame of these two paradigms (compensation needs vs. self-growth motives). Comparisons to scores from the general population on the same measures suggested a co-existence of these two kinds of motives. Moreover, interesting quantitative differences observed between populations studied could be interpreted in terms of correspondence between supply (people's motives) and offer (group's characteristics).
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