Implicit Theories of Spirituality Across Three Generations: A Cross-Cultural Comparison in the U.S. and Japan

To investigate the meanings of spirituality across cultures and generations, American (n = 219) and Japanese (n = 154) samples from young, middle-aged and older cohorts rated the similarity of nine pre-generated descriptors. Multidimensional scaling analysis in conjunction with hierarchical cluster analysis revealed distinctive clustering patterns across cultures and to a lesser degree across cohort groups. For the Americans, “spirituality,” “having faith,” and “religious” formed a core cluster, whereas the Japanese groups yielded four distinctive paired-clusters–“spirituality/religious”; “wise/intelligence”; “having meaning in life/having faith”; and “caring/suffered hardship.” Further, the findings from the self-evaluation of spirituality and religiosity revealed that the Americans had more favorable understanding of these concepts than did the Japanese counterparts. These results suggest that the frame of reference in which these two concepts are applied may be context specific.