RESEARCH: "A Motivational SystemsTheory Approach to the Relation Between Religious Experiences and Religious Motives"

Abstract

This study used motivational systems theory (MST; Ford, 1992) to clarify a number of ambiguities surrounding conceptualizations and measures of religious experience and motivation. These ambiguities refer to the differences between numinous and mystical religious experience, extrovertive and introvertive mystic religious experience, and intrinsic and extrinsic religious experience. On the basis of the assumption that personal goals and affective processes are central and relatively independent components of motivation, this investigation explores the relation between a multidimensional measure of religious motives recently developed by Lazar, Kravetz and Frederich-Kedem (2002) and Hood's (1975) multidimensional measure of religious experience. Correlation analysis of the responses of 164 young adult male Jewish orthodox students of Jewish parochial schools to the previously mentioned measures lead to a number of speculations about the ambiguities concerning religious experience and motives.