Religion and the Experiential System: Relationships of Constructive Thinking with Religious

Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (CEST) differentiates an emotional experiential from a rational system of thepersonality. CEST further hypothesizes that religion can express adaptive experiential potentials, and a Constructive Thinking Inventory has been devised for recording a healthy functioning of the experiential system. In the present project, the Intrinsic scale and type largely predicted constructive thinking, whereas the Extrinsic and Quest scales and the Extrinsic type were largely associated with destructive thinking. Quest also correlated inversely with a personal interest in religion, and a number of findings suggested concerns about the basic validity of the Quest scale. Most important, these data confinned that CEST offers an empirically useful interpretation of religious commitment.