Hypocrisy and intolerance drive religious doubt among college students

College students often question their faith because of the intolerant or hypocritical behaviors of religious groups, and while these doubts can increase emotional distress, they also frequently foster intellectual humility and an open-minded search for meaning. These nuanced effects of questioning one’s faith are detailed in newly published research in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

In the United States, religious affiliation has steadily declined over the past few decades. A growing number of young adults identify as nonreligious, often leaving the traditions in which they were raised. Sociologists and psychologists sometimes refer to this demographic of formerly religious individuals as the “Dones.”

Julie J. Exline, a researcher at the University of Virginia, led a team to investigate how questioning faith affects mental health and personal growth. Exline and her colleagues focused specifically on college students, as the transition to adulthood is typically a time of intense identity exploration. During this developmental window, young adults often encounter new ideas that challenge their childhood worldviews.

To understand this process, psychologists look at how people build their global meaning systems. A meaning-making system is essentially the mental framework a person uses to make sense of the world and their place in it. Deeply held religious beliefs often form the core of this orienting framework.

When people encounter information that contradicts their core beliefs, they experience psychological tension. To resolve this discomfort, individuals must engage in a process called accommodation. Accommodation involves putting in the mental effort to revise existing belief structures so that new, conflicting ideas can be integrated.

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This tension frequently surfaces as religious doubt, which is a feeling of uncertainty about religious teachings. Psychologists separate general religious doubt from what they call doubt struggles. General doubt might simply be an intellectual questioning of a doctrine, like wondering if a specific historical event actually occurred.

Doubt struggles, on the other hand, involve deep worry, confusion, or emotional pain regarding those uncertainties. For an individual whose entire life and social circle revolve around a church, doubting God’s existence could trigger profound distress. Conversely, someone who is barely religious might have many doubts without experiencing any emotional turmoil.

To explore these dynamics, the researchers surveyed 3,953 undergraduate students across three different college campuses in the United States. These institutions included a private research university, a public state university, and a private Christian university. The participants answered extensive questionnaires about their religious background, current spiritual identity, and mental health.

The researchers categorized the students into six distinct groups based on their level of religious engagement. These categories ranged from students who were never religious to those who had completely disengaged, all the way to those who remained highly active in their faith. This allowed the team to see how current religious identity influenced a person’s reaction to skepticism.

Students were asked to rate twenty different reasons for religious doubt based on a psychological scale developed in the late 1990s. The survey also included measures of emotional distress, such as depression, anxiety, anger, and stress. To balance this out, the survey tested indicators of well-being like life satisfaction and self-compassion.

To measure the potential benefits of questioning faith, the team assessed participants on their quest orientation. Quest orientation is a psychological term for a mindset that views religion and spirituality as an ongoing, flexible search for truth. People with a high quest orientation embrace complexity and are willing to change their minds when presented with new evidence.

When the team analyzed the data, the most highly endorsed reasons for doubting religion were primarily social rather than theological. Students ranked the hypocrisy of religious people and intolerance toward gay and lesbian individuals as their top two reasons for questioning faith. Other highly rated factors included intolerance toward other religions and the tendency of religious groups to pressure outsiders.

While the problem of evil and unfair suffering was also a highly ranked reason for doubt, social grievances dominated the top of the list. The students were largely troubled by the negative behaviors of religious adherents rather than logical inconsistencies in sacred texts. This suggests that interpersonal friction is a primary driver of religious disengagement among young adults.

Different types of students did prioritize slightly different concerns. Highly religious students were more likely to report struggles with concepts like the afterlife or the conflict between evolutionary science and creationism. Still, across the board, the behavior of religious individuals proved to be a major stumbling block for the undergraduate population.

As the researchers anticipated, the presence of doubt was linked to negative mental health outcomes. Both general religious doubt and specific doubt struggles predicted greater emotional distress and lower overall well-being. Even when controlling for their overlapping similarities, both variables independently predicted negative mental health scores.

These negative mental health outcomes were most pronounced among students who were highly engaged with their religion. For highly religious students, having questions about their faith was tightly connected to internal turmoil and anxiety. Because their belief systems were central to their identity, cracks in that foundation caused intense worry.

In contrast, nonreligious students reported plenty of doubts but did not experience the same level of emotional distress over them. For students who had already left their faith, having many reasons for doubt simply validated their decision to exit the religion. The relationship between religious doubt and mental health challenges was also stronger at the Christian university compared to the secular institutions.

Although the mental health impacts seem discouraging, the data revealed a much brighter side to questioning one’s faith. Students who reported higher levels of religious doubt also scored highly on measures of quest orientation. They demonstrated a strong desire to search for meaning and a willingness to embrace nuanced worldviews.

In addition, the doubting students exhibited greater intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is the recognition that one’s own beliefs might be wrong, combined with a willingness to listen to opposing viewpoints. Students who identified as spiritual but not religious, or who had disengaged from organized religion entirely, showed elevated scores on these open-mindedness variables.

The research team determined that having doubts is not simply a mental health liability. Instead, experiencing religious uncertainty can serve as a catalyst for personal growth and deeper existential exploration. Wrestling with difficult questions often helps emerging adults build more flexible, compassionate, and resilient worldviews.

There are some limitations to this research that require consideration. The participants were mostly White, Christian, cisgender women, which means the results might not perfectly reflect the attitudes of the broader population. The data was also collected several years ago, meaning it does not capture the cultural shifts of the last decade.

The specific survey used to measure reasons for doubt was originally created in 1997. Because of this, it did not include political factors that might cause religious disillusionment today. Issues like reproductive rights, climate change, and the merging of religion with partisan politics are likely major sources of modern skepticism.

Future research could use open-ended questions to identify new reasons young people are stepping away from faith. Scientists might also incorporate updated tools to measure intellectual humility and spiritual yearning more precisely. Exploring how different demographic groups handle spiritual questions will help psychologists better support individuals navigating faith transitions.

The study, “Many Reasons for Religious Doubt: Links With Doubt Struggles, Mental Health, and an Open, Humble, Questing Orientation,” was authored by Julie J. Exline, Yehudis Keller, Andrew C. Moffitt, Joshua A. Wilt, and Kenneth I. Pargament.