An empirical study on the psychology of religious devotion

This study aims to examine the concept of religious devotion by establishing its theoretical framework, defining its conceptual dimensions, and identifying its developmental position. At its core, the research investigates the dynamic structure and psychological nature of religious devotion in terms of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Additionally, the study explores the relationships between religious devotion and the psychological constructs of patience, perseverance, and hope. In the first part of the study, literature review and document analysis techniques were employed to determine the conceptual and theoretical boundaries of religious devotion based on scientific, historical, and theological sources. As a result, religious devotion was conceptualized under three dimensions: Religious Consciousness, Action/Sacrifice, and Religious Fanaticism. The Religious Consciousness dimension reflects the level of religious awareness and intention underlying a person's devotion. The Action/Sacrifice dimension represents the individual's efforts to act according to religious principles and, when necessary, to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of religion. These two dimensions together represent the "positive" aspects of religious devotion. In contrast, the Religious Fanaticism dimension reflects a rigid, aggressive, and radical orientation toward religion, constituting its "negative" aspect. Based on this conceptual model, a valid and reliable measurement tool was developed and added to the literature. In the second part of the study, the Religious Devotion Scale, Patience Scale, Perseverance Scale, and Hope Scale, along with a Personal Information Form, were administered to a sample of 960 individuals aged 25 and above residing in Türkiye.Independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were conducted to determine whether levels of religious devotion differed significantly according to demographic variables (such as education level, age, and gender) and other independent variables (such as level of religious knowledge, subjective religiosity, and sources of religious education). The Levene test was used to assess homogeneity of variance, and post-hoc comparisons were performed using the Tukey HSD test where appropriate. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between religious devotion and the psychological variables. Regression analysis was also applied to identify the predictive roles of patience, perseverance, and hope. The results revealed significant positive correlations between religious devotion and both patience and perseverance, particularly with the subdimensions of religious consciousness and action/sacrifice (e.g., patience: r = .399, p < .01). A significant negative correlation was found between patience and religious fanaticism (r = –.066, p < .01). Perseverance also showed significant positive relationships with the positive dimensions of religious devotion but was not significantly associated with fanaticism (r = –.024, p = .450). Interestingly, hope was positively correlated with all three dimensions of religious devotion—including religious fanaticism (p < .01). Regression results indicated that patience, perseverance, and hope significantly predicted overall religious devotion and its positive dimensions. In the case of religious fanaticism, patience emerged as a weak negative predictor, hope as a limited but significant predictor, and perseverance as a non-significant predictor.