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A recent study reveals that while religious and spiritual struggles are linked to higher anxiety in college students, developing patience for daily annoyances can predict a reduction in general anxiety over time. The research, published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, suggests that patience improves mental health independently rather than shielding students from the specific stress of existential doubts.
Religion and spirituality often provide a sense of meaning and social support. Yet these belief systems are not uniformly beneficial for psychological well-being. Many people experience profound tensions, doubts, and negative emotions related to their faith. Psychologists refer to these experiences as religious and spiritual struggles.
These struggles can take many forms. They might involve anger toward a divine figure, conflicts with members of a religious community, or deep concerns about moral failures. Previous research links these faith-based tensions to higher anxiety and depressive symptoms. The college years are a particularly common time for these struggles to emerge, as emerging adults frequently question inherited beliefs and explore new frameworks of meaning.
Laura Upenieks, a sociologist at Baylor University, and her colleagues wanted to understand which psychological traits might help people navigate these difficulties. They focused on the virtue of patience. In psychological terms, patience is an active coping skill that involves emotional regulation and the ability to endure hardship without acting impulsively.
The researchers looked at three distinct types of patience. Interpersonal patience involves managing frustration with other people. Life hardship patience reflects the capacity to endure major life difficulties. Daily hassles patience is the ability to tolerate everyday irritations, such as waiting in a long line or sitting in heavy traffic.
The research team suspected that patience might protect individuals from the anxiety associated with spiritual turmoil. They theorized that a patient person might have the emotional stability to process deep existential questions without becoming overwhelmed by fear or stress.
To test this, the researchers examined data from 274 undergraduate students attending a large Christian university in the southern United States. They tracked the students across their college careers. The students completed surveys during their first semester and again during their senior year.
The surveys asked students to rate how often they experienced struggles related to religion or spirituality over the past year. The students also completed a questionnaire designed to measure their generalized anxiety symptoms over the past week. A separate section of the survey measured their levels across the three different types of patience.
The researchers used a technique called latent change score modeling. This statistical approach allowed them to evaluate the starting baseline levels of each trait while simultaneously tracking how those traits evolved and influenced one another over the four-year period. By separating the initial states from the changes over time, the researchers could better isolate the direction of the associations.
At the beginning of college, students who reported more frequent spiritual struggles also reported higher levels of anxiety. This pattern held true over time. Students whose spiritual struggles increased over the four years were likely to experience an increase in their anxiety symptoms as well.
The researchers then looked at whether patience acted as a buffer against this anxiety. They expected that highly patient students would be less affected by the stress of spiritual doubts. The data did not support this hypothesis. The statistical interaction between patience and spiritual struggles was not statistically significant. Patience did not change the trajectory of how spiritual struggles fueled anxiety.
Spiritual struggles often challenge the core belief system that a person uses to understand the world. Because these struggles strike at the foundation of how someone finds meaning, emotional endurance alone is likely not enough to eliminate the resulting distress. The anxiety generated by a crisis of identity or a fear of divine abandonment might simply bypass the regulatory mechanisms of patience.
However, patience still operated as an independent predictor of mental health. During their first semester, students with high levels of interpersonal patience and life hardship patience exhibited lower initial levels of anxiety. Being able to endure major setbacks and tolerate difficult people provided a distinct mental health benefit from the start.
When looking at changes over the four-year period, a different pattern emerged. Changes in interpersonal and life hardship patience did not predict changes in anxiety. Instead, students who developed more daily hassles patience over time showed a notable decrease in anxiety symptoms by their senior year.
This suggests that learning to tolerate everyday annoyances might relieve a general accumulation of stress. Preventing minor irritations from escalating could create the emotional space needed for better overall mental health. Patience seems to set a baseline of emotional stability, even if it does not solve the specific existential crises associated with religious doubt.
The study has a few methodological limitations. The sample consisted entirely of students at a religiously affiliated university. The experiences of these students might not reflect the experiences of individuals at secular institutions or the broader public. The shared religious environment on campus could make spiritual struggles more visible and prominent, as theological commitments are heavily integrated into the academic and social life of the school.
Additionally, the researchers measured religious and spiritual struggles using a single survey question. This broad approach captures the general frequency of distress, but it cannot differentiate between specific types of issues. A person arguing with their pastor might experience a very different type of anxiety than someone secretly doubting the existence of a deity.
The study also relied on self-reported data, which can introduce bias if participants answer in ways they think are socially desirable. The analytical models used in the study are highly complex for a sample of 274 individuals. Replicating the analysis with larger and more diverse populations would help verify the results.
Future research could explore behavioral interventions based on these findings. Training people to manage their reactions to minor daily inconveniences might offer an accessible way to lower generalized anxiety. At the same time, addressing the root causes of spiritual struggles may require entirely different support systems, such as community conversations or pastoral care.
The study, “Religious/Spiritual Struggles, Patience, and Anxiety: A Longitudinal Examination of Virtue and Vulnerability,” was authored by Laura Upenieks, Hiroki Matsuo, Kevin D. Dougherty, Perry L. Glanzer, and Sarah A. Schnitker.