Why Be Spiritual? Five Benefits of Spirituality

Spiritualism—a search for something sacred—is an increasingly important topic to people today. Individuals approach the realm of spirituality through religion, meditation, yoga, and even personal reflection.

In a recent study conducted in my lab, we investigated the personal and societal benefits of spiritualism by examining participants' responses to over 30 surveys. Here are the top five positive characteristics of spiritual people.

Spiritual people are gracious. Psychology has demonstrated that expressing gratitude is associated with many positive emotions such as optimism, being generous with time and resources, and overall vitality. Spirituality encourages people to be positive, which may be expressed in many of these life practices.

Spiritual people are compassionate. Experiencing compassion toward others is one of the strongest correlates with living a spiritual life. A variety of positive or pro-social emotions have strong links to spiritualism, including allowing one to feel good about the little things in life and look at the world through empathetic eyes.

Spiritual people flourish. Spirituality is linked to many important aspects of human functioning—spiritual people have positive relationships, high self-esteem, are optimistic, and have meaning and purpose in life.

Spiritual people self-actualize. Spiritual individuals strive toward a better life and consider personal growth and fulfillment a central goal. Spirituality can be considered to be a path toward self-actualization, because it requires people to focus on their internal values and work on becoming a better individual.

Spiritual people take time to savor life experiences. Individuals who value spirituality take the time to reflect on their daily activities and ultimately build lasting memories of their experiences. Because spiritual people are more conscious of small, daily activities, they experience positive emotions associated with the smaller pleasures in life.

Beyond The Purchase, the website where we collected this data, is dedicated to understanding the psychology behind spending decisions and the relationship between money and happiness. We study how factors like your values and personality interact with spending decisions to affect your happiness. You can take quizzes that help you understand what motivates your spending decisions, and you’ll get personalized feedback and tips.

For example: How do you score on the five fundamental dimensions of personality? How do you feel about your past, present, and future? With these insights, you can better understand the ways in which your financial decisions affect your happiness.