Religious motivations for everyday goals: their religious context and potential consequences

Abstract

The present studies explored different religious reasons for everyday goals. We proposed that religious reasons can include transcendental religious motivation (TRM, e.g. striving for spiritual communion with the transcendent) and normative religious motivation (NRM, e.g. following church norms). In the study, transcendental and normative religious motivation for personal projects was explored in three cross-sectional samples of Hungarian adults (Study 1, N = 158 and 224, Study 2, N = 512). In Study 1 TRM and NRM were found to be interrelated, however differently associated with constructs of religiosity (sanctification of projects, types of religious self-regulation, intrinsic-extrinsic religiosity, and basic religious attitudes). In Study 2, TRM was associated with autonomous regulation of personal projects while NRM was associated with controlled regulation. Moreover, path analysis showed that NRM predicted negatively and TRM predicted positively indices of well-being and that these links were partially mediated by regulation types. Results indicated that the description of religiosity on the level of everyday goals is a viable concept, although it cannot be treated as a uniform phenomenon. Further theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in terms of the link between forms of religiosity, everyday functioning and autonomy support.