Zhuo Job Chen

• PhD Psychology, MS Mathematics, MS Psychology, BA Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Mysticism refers to extraordinary human experiences that transcend perceived reality and transform the individual. Much of the study of mysticism has focused on monistic, unitary experiences, often overlooking indigenous traditions that emphasize pluralistic experiences. This research examines lived Daoist experiences, expanding the theory of mysti...

Belief in life after death is among the oldest forms of spiritual belief, found in nearly every world civilization and religion. While several national surveys highlight differences in afterlife beliefs across countries, none have explored the sociodemographic factors associated with these beliefs. Using data from Wave 1 of the Global Flourishing S...

Belief in life after death is one of the oldest and most widespread spiritual convictions, and it has been shown to offer various psychological benefits. Understanding the predictors of afterlife beliefs is crucial for gaining insight into religious tenets and their broader impacts on individuals and societies. This retrospective longitudinal study...

Background Suffering has been identified as an important public health issue worthy of closer attention. This preregistered study takes an initial step toward developing an epidemiology of suffering by exploring the distribution of suffering in 22 countries and testing for sociodemographic disparities in suffering. Methods Using nationally represe...

The Global Flourishing Study is a longitudinal panel study of over 200,000 participants in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries, spanning all six populated continents, with nationally representative sampling and intended annual survey data collection for 5 years to assess numerous aspects of flourishing and its possible determinants....

Within a stress-and-coping theory of forgiveness, two dimensions of forgiveness have been hypothesized—decisional forgiveness (DF) and emotional forgiveness (EF). Each is theorized to have different impacts on different dimensions of well-being—psychological, spiritual (or religious), social, volitional, and physical. A scoping review was performed...

Background Advance care planning (ACP) is a complex process where individuals communicate decisions about their future health care before becoming incapable to participate in medical decision-making. While ACP has many potential benefits, little is known about ACP among older adults with cancer and their family caregivers. The purpose of this study...

Religious experiences are ubiquitous and many would argue they can alter a person’s life. Regrettably, there are few studies of transformative religious experiences (TREs) outside of the US or that compare different religious groups. There is, however, more comparative research about conversions and about ‘paranormal’ experiences, e.g., telepathy,...

The Global Flourishing Study is a longitudinal panel study of over 200,000 participants in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries, spanning all six populated continents, with nationally representative sampling, and intended annual longitudinal panel data collection for five years on numerous aspects of flourishing and its determinants....

Belief in life after death is one of the oldest and most widespread spiritual convictions, and it has been shown to offer various psychological benefits. Understanding the predictors of afterlife beliefs is crucial for gaining insight into religious tenets and their broader impacts on individuals and societies. This retrospective longitudinal study...

Belief in life after death is among the oldest forms of spiritual belief, found in nearly every world civilization and religion. While several national surveys highlight differences in afterlife beliefs across countries, none have explored the sociodemographic factors associated with these beliefs. Using data from Wave 1 of the Global Flourishing S...

Background: Empirical research suggests that suffering may degrade health and wellbeing. However, further research is needed to develop an epidemiology of suffering that can contribute to identifying potential targets for addressing population-level suffering.Methods: This cross-sectional study used the first wave of nationally representative data...

Background Suffering has been identified as an important public health issue worthy of closer attention. This preregistered study takes an initial step toward developing an epidemiology of suffering by exploring the distribution of suffering in 22 countries and testing for sociodemographic disparities in suffering.Methods Using nationally represent...

Objective: Based on Fowler’s wide definition of faith as finding meaning in life, and progressing with his perspective on faith as a typology of hierarchically ordered styles that can optimally be assessed with the faith development interview (FDI), this study breaks new ground by investigating predictors and outcomes of faith development. Methods:...

What are the differences in attitudes toward incoming people who seek refuge from war and toward those who supposedly are coming because of the better living conditions? How could this attitudinal difference be explained? This article presents spotlights on the attitudes toward refugees in Germany based on national representative surveys in two per...

The REACH Forgiveness intervention has been shown to promote forgiveness. However, most of the studies have involved college students. Whereas studies have shown that Christian-accommodated REACH Forgiveness has been effective with Christians, few studies have examined whether a secular version of REACH Forgiveness might promote forgiveness for Chr...

This prospective study examined the primary, secondary and complex conceptual models of religious/spiritual struggles with 18 indicators of whole person functioning across five domains: psychological well-being, psychological distress, social well-being, physical well-being and character. We used three waves of longitudinal data (Wave 1: August/Sep...

Research on the benefits of prayer have mainly focused on frequency and often neglect other aspects of prayer. In this Brief Research Report, we reported independent and joint effects of prayer frequency and two prayer orientations on distress and well-being variables. Data included a cross-sectional national sample (n = 579) and a three-wave longi...

Objectives To determine whether a brief self-directed forgiveness workbook intervention could alter forgiveness, depression symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Design A multisite randomised waitlist-controlled trial was conducted among 4598 participants. Recruitment occurred from 11 February 2020 to 30 September 2021. Final follow-up occurred on 25 Oc...

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of a forgiveness public health intervention at promoting forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing. Methods: Colombian students (N = 2,878) at a private, nonreligious university were exposed to a 4-week forgiveness community campaign and were assessed pre- and post-campaign. Results: Forgiveness, mental h...

We examine whether an orientation to promote good serves as a potential buffer against distress and facilitator of well-being outcomes in three non-Western samples with a recent history of conflict (Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico) and across three different time frames (1, 4 and 12 months). Longitudinal surveys provided data for cross-lagged panel mod...

Objective Leader humility has been linked to many positive outcomes but not examined in humanitarian aid work. Three studies examined the multilevel correlates, contributions, and consequences of leader humility in Medair—a large, multinational, faith-based aid organization. Study 1 examined correlates of leader humility in a sample of 308 workers...

Migration of refugees into Germany is a huge challenge for politics and society. We present results about the attitudes toward refugees in the German population. Data were three national representative samples in times, when the German borders were crossed by high numbers of war refugees (a) mainly from Syria in August 2015 (n = 637) and (b) in Mar...

Bereavement increases in prevalence as people age and is associated with multiple psychological and health risks, including cardiovascular risk. Religious and existential variables may play an important role in the health impacts of bereavement. Theorized pathways linking religious and existential variables with health have suggested these associat...

When the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak developed into a global public health issue, many countries instituted strict COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns to limit or control transmission of the virus. Stringent lockdowns emplaced people within their homes for extended periods of time, precipitating loss of valued resources that served to support their well-being. Emp...

This chapter makes the case that, by connecting us to the past, present, and future, the indoor environments where most of us now spend much of our lives have the potential to help address several important human psychological needs. We suggest that, as sources of recollection, indoor spaces can evoke feelings of security, belonging, and self-actua...

Abstract: Deconversion is being studied at Bielefeld University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since two decades which allows for longitudinal analysis. This presentation will focus on new quantitative results based on three times of measurement. Results: Deconverts, compared to their peers who stay in their religious organizations,...

Early adolescence is a time of unique risks in relation to academic outcomes, and family socioeconomic adversity poses added risk. Social support from parents has demonstrated significant associations with academic outcomes, but less is known about the unique contributions of mothers and fathers. This study investigated the relation between materna...

Importance: Forgiveness interventions have been shown in prior randomized trials to reduce depression and anxiety symptoms. Most such interventions require trained therapists, limiting scalability. Objective: To determine whether a brief self-directed forgiveness workbook intervention could alter forgiveness, depression symptoms, and anxiety sympto...

Importance: Forgiveness interventions have been shown in prior randomized trials to reduce depression and anxiety symptoms. Most such interventions require trained therapists, limiting scalability. Objective: To determine whether a brief self-directed forgiveness workbook intervention could alter forgiveness, depression symptoms, and anxiety sympto...

People who self-identify as predominantly spiritual constitute a considerable and well-established part of the religious landscape in North America and Europe. Thus, further research is needed to document predictors, correlates, and outcomes associated with self-identifying primarily as a spiritual person. In the following set of studies, we contri...

We used prospective data (spanning 8 years) from a national sample of older U.S. adults aged > 50 years (the Health and Retirement Study, N = 13,771) to evaluate potential factors that lead to subsequent religious service attendance. We applied a lagged exposure-wide epidemiologic design and evaluated 60 candidate predictors of regular subsequent r...

This study examined the negative associations between religiosity and analytic thinking and defensiveness against secularism as a potential explanation. In 14 experimental studies, with n = 3,232 (n = 2,615 retained in the final analyses) American Protestant, Catholic, and nonreligious participants, we tested six causal hypotheses: analytic thinkin...

Three waves of Petra’s interviews (her case study appears in Chapter 11) have been coded with the recently developed content coding scheme that applies over 150 prominent codes to describe each interview. These content codes are subject to quantitative analysis and visualization using the mathematical tools provided by network analysis. For each in...

This chapter examines the meaning and development of the six aspects of faith development, perspective taking, social horizon, morality, locus of authority, world coherence, and symbolic function. In the existing literature on faith development, the aspects have been used to account for the variety of dimensions that are important for faith, and to...

Research has shown that people sometimes report self-perceived growth as a result of dealing with a potentially traumatic event, but relatively few methodologically rigorous studies have examined whether perceived posttraumatic growth is associated with improved subsequent well-being across a wide range of outcomes. In this three-wave longitudinal...

Abstract: Since ‘spirituality’ has escaped the walls of the monasteries and the niches of “spiritual discipline” to become the popular self-identification “I am spiritual,” the scientific study of religion is presented with new developments in the religious field such as the pronounced self-identification of “spiritual but not religious” or the ris...

Many studies have reported evidence suggesting that dispositional forgivingness has positive implications for different domains of well-being. However, relatively few methodologically rigorous studies have been conducted in the Global South, particularly in post-conflict settings where forgiveness could play an important role in supporting individu...

The Integrative Islamic Personality Inventory (IIPI) is a newly developed measure evaluating Muslim ideal of testification and self-development with four factors: belief in God, awareness of prophetic teaching, self-striving, and self-regard. In a Malaysian Muslim student sample (n = 254), the four-factor structure of IIPI received psychometric sup...

Religiosity and spirituality are intimately connected concepts. Numerous studies have jointly assessed religiosity and spirituality, but the causal associations between them have seldomly been examined. With six waves of data from a sample of n = 212 Pakistani Muslim students, we used random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling to examine the reci...

Progress in psychology of religion and spirituality benefits from advancement and enrichment of definitions. Dozens of definitions of religion and spirituality have been offered in the history of the field, however, most of them were generated from a top-down, theory-driven process. This study utilized a bottom-up approach to examine folk definitio...

Spiritually incorporating couple therapy (SICT)-couple therapy that incorporates spiritual interventions-has a growing research base. Information is limited on how spiritual interventions are used in practice; thus we studied treatment-as-usual (TAU). SICT is treatment that, at a couple's request, sometimes draws upon spiritual resources when addre...

Research on the subjective experience of suffering has typically focused on older clinical samples living in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries. To further extend the existing body of empirical research on suffering to less WEIRD contexts, we use three waves of data (Wave 1: December 2020; Wave 2: January 2021...

Hope has been conceptualized as agency and pathways to achieve goals. However, this goal-directed conceptualization does not encapsulate all situations in which hope may be beneficial. To address the dispositional motivation to endure when a desired goal seems unattainable, unlikely, or even impossible (i.e., goal-transcendent hope), we provide ini...

This longitudinal intervention study examines the effectiveness of a 6-day intensive experiential group therapy program for survivors of mass shootings. The sample consisted of 36 participants (83.33% female; Mage = 41.66, SDage = 22.52) who survived a mass shooting episode in the U.S. Self-reported mental health (i.e., PTSD, depression, and anxiet...

Religious coping is a double-edged sword. Clarification of the psychological benefits for positive religious coping requires statistical controls for negative religious coping and vice versa. This study sought to further explore the complexities of Muslim religious coping by extending the analysis to Afghans who coped with the sufferings associated...

In Ghana, collectivism holds people together in marital relationships, even if partners are religiously different. Married partners still hurt, betray, or offend each other and might develop avoidance or vengeful (i.e., unforgiving) motives. We investigated whether religious homogamy moderated connections of personality and marriage variables to un...

This article reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects, specifically between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer’s sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from i...

A growing body of research is emerging on the role of adaptive resources and processes that support positive transformation in the aftermath of adversity. However, few studies in this strand have focused on people who have had prolonged exposure to a complex climate of trauma through long-term civil war. This study examined wisdom as a process by w...

Faith, as a way of how people understand God and the world and make or discover meaning in their life, is characterized by individual differences and changes over the lifetime. Our research investigates these changes over the life span in terms of hierarchically ordered types that are the elements in our developmental model, which is a critical adv...

Objective: This study tested three conceptual explanatory models that have been theorized to account for the linkages between religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles and psychological distress: the primary model (i.e., R/S struggles lead to psychological distress), the secondary model (i.e., psychological distress leads to R/S struggles), and the comp...

How are mystical experiences related to self-rated spirituality? Is the recently developed short 8-item version of Hood’s (1975) Mysticism Scale an efficient measurement? The current study expands evidence for both questions using N = 1,582 American and N = 1,492 German samples measured in three waves, average 4 to 5 years apart. Results show that...

This chapter presents results about one of the questions that our research has focused from the beginning: religious change and deconversion. While in the Deconversion Study (2001-2005) we could use only cross-sectional data to estimate characteristics of deconverts in the U.S.A. and Germany, the analyses reported in this chapter are based on repea...

Mysticism has so far been studied primarily at an individual level and often in the context of a religious tradition. However, one can and often does acquire strong spiritual experience in a mundane and interpersonal context, such as with one’s soulmate. The current study used a semistructured interview to investigate mystical experiences in the de...

How are mystical experiences related to self-rated spirituality? Is the recently developed short 8-item version of Hood’s Mysticism Scale an efficient measurement? The current study expands evidence for both questions using N = 1,582 American and N = 1,492 German samples measured in three waves, average 4 to 5 years apart. Results show that the 8-i...

This paper reports the results of a series of experiments examining the potential psychological link between spatial and temporal prospects; specifically, between variations in the degree of foreground obstruction and spatial depth of external window views and an observer’s sense of connection to the future. It was found that external views from in...

Prayer is an important aspect of many religions. Existing measures of prayer have mostly originated from the Christian West and emphasized various “verbal” aspects of making a supplication. An “active” aspect of prayer, in which the supplicants strive for what they pray, has not received sufficient attention despite being crucial to Muslim belief....

Religion, as a way of how people understand God and the world and make or discover meaning in their life, changes over the lifetime. Based on a wide conceptualization of religion, our research investigates change over the lifespan in terms of hierarchically ordered religious types that are the elements in our model of religious development, which i...

This article presents a typology that categorizes people according to their profile of religious styles, which concerns, among other things, the sources where they derive validity and stability, when confronted with religious and existential questions or inter-religious challenges. The modeling of this typology is an empirical complement to Streib’...

The current research investigated whether various aspects of mindfulness were differentially associated with risk preference in decision-making. In Studies 1 and 2, attention and present-focus aspects of trait mindfulness were associated with lower risk preference in making monetary gains. In Study 3, participants completed either a mindfulness tra...

This study examined measurement invariances of the 14-item Muslim Attitudes Toward Religion (MAR) and the 15-item Muslim Experiential Religiousness (MER) scales in 4 Muslim samples in China (N = 191), Iran (N = 346), Malaysia (N = 236), and Pakistan (N = 320). Results supported weak invariance (equal indicator loadings) for both MAR and MER and par...

Spiritually integrated couple therapy addresses spiritual needs, strivings and struggles as part of a couple’s therapeutic process. It is common for couples to have spiritual distress that coincides with their relationship distress. Research has indicated that marital relationships are often perceived as sacred parts of the couple’s life, and there...

The goal of this research was to determine whether visual cues in indoor environments could evoke positive connections to the past and present, and what, if any, psychological benefits might flow from such links. Subjects preferred spaces with sloping ceilings, hearths, and refuge and prospect to spaces without these features, and this was positi...

Aims To describe turnover intention of emergency nurses and clarify the effects of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and workplace violence on turnover intention. Background Research has showed the predictors of turnover intention differed among nurses of different specialties. However, research on turnover intention has mostly focused o...

Over the last two decades the psychological benefits of mindfulness, a state of heightened awareness of the present centered on one’s own thoughts, have been widely reported. Typically this is achieved through deliberate meditation or during activities that require little or no direct attention. Such self-awareness is difficult to combine with task...

Over the last two decades the psychological benefits of mindfulness, a state of heightened awareness of the present centered on one's own thoughts, have been widely reported. Typically this is achieved through deliberate meditation or during activities that require little or no direct attention. Such self-awareness is difficult to combine with task...

Amanah refers to the accountability of Muslims to their community. In Malaysian Muslim university students (N = 209), an Amanah Scale predicted a stronger sense of identity along with more adaptive religious and psychosocial functioning. Multiple regression analyses identified Accountability to Society as especially influential, but Accountability...

The Christian REACH Forgiveness intervention is a 5-step psychoeducation program that focuses on promoting decisional and emotional forgiveness for an identified transgression and fostering forgivingness in general. In this study, the Christian REACH Forgiveness model was used with Ghanaian Christians (N = 264; 260 are analyzed) who experienced spe...

This first analysis of the Religious Fundamentalism Scale in Iran further examined findings that conservative religious commitments have positive adjustment implications outside the West. Religious Fundamentalism in a sample of 385 Iranian university students displayed direct relationships with Muslim religiosity and spirituality and correlated pos...

The current study’s aims were to develop and validate a measure of acculturative stress among Iranian diaspora population. The instrument of 27 items was administered to a total of 610 Iranian students studying in Malaysian universities. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses offered evidence for a reliable and valid six-factor construct that...

This article presents a typology that categorizes people according to their profile of religious styles, which concerns, among other things, the sources where they derive validity and stability, when confronted with religious and existential questions or inter-religious challenges. The modeling of this typology is an empirical complement to Streib’...

This conference presentation examines how indoor spaces could better connect their occupants to the present. It explains why this is psychologically and physiologically important, how extending the moment is central to the process, and how natural phenomenal movement could be a practical means of achieving it in the indoor environments where most p...

These two cross-sectional studies examined whether trauma impacts disaster survivors’ psychological well-being through its influence on positive and negative religious coping and on dispositional forgivingness and hope. Colombia was selected because it is a highly religious country that has endured a protracted armed conflict (1964-present) and rec...

In this book review, we offer chapter-by-chapter review and general comments of Hadley Wickham’s (2016) ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Two examples of 2-way interaction plots were included to highlight the flexibility and power of the ggplot2 package in R.

Purpose: The chemotherapy-induced taste alteration scale (CiTAS) is a reliable and valid instrument to comprehensively assess patients' taste alterations in an easy way. We aimed to translate it and test its psychometric properties among Chinese cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Method: A convenience sample of 227 cancer patients were rec...

This paper presents two studies concerned with developing a brief version of the 32-item God Mysticism Scale (GMS; Hood Jr. and Williamson Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 19(3), 232–244, 2000). Study 1 submitted 12 representative items from the GMS to an exploratory factor analysis and found a two-factor solution (Interpretation, 6 items; E...

Few existing research has tested the effects of gratitude in risk decisions. The current study conducted four experiments with MTurk samples to test the primary hypothesis that gratitude promotes risk aversion in decision making. Results from Study 1 (N = 228) with a measure of dispositional gratitude and Study 2 (N = 125) by priming grateful exper...

Bifactor models were applied to the NEO-FFI-3, HEXACO PI-R, and BFI-2 questionnaires. Factor scores of factors representing the domains of the questionnaires, evaluation, and acquiescence were estimated. Simple and multiple validities of the factor scores were compared with summated scale validities. The evaluation factor was a significant predicto...

Self-compassion is natural, trainable and multi-faceted human capacity. To date there has been little research into the role of culture in influencing the conceptual structure of the underlying construct, the relative importance of different facets of self-compassion, nor its relationships to cultural values. This study employed a cross-cultural de...

Assumptions associated with Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) suggest that self-compassion, but not self-esteem, should be incompatible with irrational beliefs and with the emotional disturbances that they produce. In this study, 184 university students responded to a self-compassion scale along with measures of irrational beliefs, self-este...

Background While previous studies have investigated the interplay between affect and health (1) over an extended period of time, (2) in a representative population, and (3) while modelling positive and negative affect simultaneously, no single study has done all three at once. Methods The present study accomplishes this by sampling adults from the...

While research documents conservative religious tendencies towards a fear (“phobia”) of the stranger (“xeno”), this investigation sought to evaluate possible additional potentials for a love (“philia”) of the stranger (“xeno”). Procedures explored a preliminary measure of religious xenophilia that defined xenophilic love and xenophilic grace factor...

Previous research indicates that spirituality expressed in tradition-specific terms may initiate, invigorate, and integrate Muslim religious commitments, suggesting a 3-I Model of Religious Spirituality. In a test of this model, Islamic seminarians, university students, and office workers in Iran (N = 604) responded to Muslim Experiential Religious...

Development of a Greater Jihad Scale sought to record “jihad” as a Muslim spiritual struggle. Pakistani madrassa and university students responded to items that described Self Jihad as a struggle against corruptions within the self and Societal Jihad as an effort to bring social life into conformity with Islamic ideals. Greater Jihad factors correl...

Religious groups outside the West have displayed a positive correlation between faith and intellect-oriented reflection in contrast to the negative relationship found with American Christians. This study extended the analysis to Pakistani Muslims. University students (N = 180) responded to religious reflection scales along with measures of religiou...

Exploratory bifactor models with keying factors were applied to item response data for the NEO–FFI–3 and HEXACO–PI–R questionnaires. Loadings on a general factor and positive and negative keying factors correlated with independent estimates of item valence, suggesting that item valence influences responses to these questionnaires. Correlations betw...