Virtues as Mediators of the associations between Religious/Spiritual Commitment and Well-being

Religious/spiritual commitment tends to show positive associations with well-being, and yet, questions remain about the mechanisms for the association. Some have recently proposed that virtues may mediate the religious/spiritual commitment – well-being association. However, empirical support for this mediating role stems largely from cross-sectional studies. Further, scholars have increasingly drawn attention to validity concerns when studying religiousness/spirituality, virtues, and well-being. As such, we explored associations among religious/spiritual commitment, virtues, and well-being, prior to and after conducting factor analysis. Our sample consisted of graduate students attending 18 seminaries across North America ( N = 580; M age = 31.50; SD = 11.12; 47.3% female; 62.9% White). Patterns of associations initially showed evidence of construct overlap among two pairs of virtues, which was confirmed by factor analytic findings, the latter which suggested a five-factor first-order structure of the virtues. Latent variable modeling showed cross-sectional associations between greater religious/spiritual commitment and greater well-being through greater blessedness and forgiveness . Longitudinal associations did not replicate the cross-sectional findings, but did show associations between prior levels of greater humility and later levels of greater eudaimonic well-being, and between greater hedonic well-being at time 1 and greater blessedness at time 3 through greater eudaimonic well-being at time 2. Greater religious/spiritual commitment at time 1 also predicted greater well-being at time 3, through a synchronous mediation process involving blessedness at time 2. Findings highlight the importance of attending closely to potential construct overlap in the measurement of religiousness/spirituality, virtues, and well-being.