Religious Dogmatism and Peak Experiences: A Test of Maslow's Hypothesis

Maslow (1964) hypothesized a negative relationship between adherence to conventional religious beliefs and the ability to experience peak moments. T o test this hypothesis, a sample of 110 male and female students from a southern urban, state-supported university were administered a Religious Dogma Scale (Fagan & Breed, 1970) and asked to report peak experiences. Ss, given a description of peak experiences which had been modified from Maslow's instructions, were asked to describe two such experiences, if they had had them. The two authors separately rated the validity of the experiences on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The two scores were then pooled for a score of 0 to 20. Correlation between raters' judgments was .84. Twenty-one Ss did not write descriptions and thus were not included.