RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE EPISODES MEASURE (REEM)

Abstract

The RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE EPISODES MEASURE (REEM) was initially constructed by Hood (1970) to serve as an operational measure quantifying the degree of reported religious experience, addressing what was perceived as a historical empirical neglect and overly simplistic operationalizations of the construct in psychological research. Hood utilized a novel “literary exemplar” methodology to mitigate interpretational ambiguities among respondents.

The original REEM consisted of 15 first-person accounts of religious experiences gathered from the classic compilation by William James (1902/1985). Participants rate the similarity of their own experiences to these accounts using a 5-point scale, yielding a total score range of 15 to 75. A subsequent modification (Rosegrant, 1976) introduced three key changes: the removal of archaic language, the deletion of the five most explicitly Christian accounts, and the expansion of the response format from 5 points to 9 points, aiming to enhance the scale’s breadth and applicability.

Keywords

Religious Experience, Mysticism, Religious Orientation, Psychological Scale, Hood, Rosegrant, Construct Validity, Psychology of Religion, Literary Exemplar.

Authors

Ralph W. Hood, Jr., John Rosegrant.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the REEM, as defined by Hood (1970), is to provide a standardized, operational measure for assessing the extent to which an individual reports having experienced episodes of intense religious or mystical phenomena. It aims to move beyond simple self-identification by requiring respondents to compare their personal, powerful experiences against established, detailed literary accounts.

The scale was developed specifically to facilitate empirical research into the psychological dimensions and correlates of religious experiences, which had previously been difficult to quantify reliably.

Construct

The REEM measures the degree of reported religious experience. This psychological construct is operationalized through the use of first-person narratives derived from autobiographical accounts of religious and mystical experiences, primarily sourced from James’s work, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

A significant practical consideration is the scale’s inherent culture boundedness. Because the literary exemplars are drawn from early 20th-century compilations of North American diaries and autobiographies, the content and language of the REEM bear the distinct imprint of North American Protestantism. This cultural specificity means that the administration of the original or shortened REEM outside of a religiously committed North American Christian sample may lead to confusing results, as observed in Holm’s (1982) research requiring a culture-specific Swedish adaptation.

Validity

There is reasonable evidence supporting the REEM scale’s construct validity. Hood’s initial and subsequent studies (1970; 1978b) consistently found that REEM scores were moderately positively correlated with intrinsic religious orientation, but uncorrelated with extrinsic religious orientation (as measured by the Allport and Ross, 1967 scales).

Further validation comes from studies relating the REEM to other measures of mystical experience. Holm (1982) reported that the Christian-based items in his Swedish adaptation were specifically related to the religious/noetic subscale of Hood’s (1975) Mysticism Scale, while the non-Christian items correlated with the general/phenomenological subscale. Additionally, the scale demonstrated sufficient sensitivity to function as a dependent variable in quasi-experimental research, successfully detecting shifts in reported religious experience following manipulations of stress and expectancy in nature settings (Hood, 1978a).

Reliability

Both the original and shortened versions of the REEM demonstrate sufficient reliability for research applications.

• Hood (1970) reported high temporal stability for the original 15-item REEM, yielding a 2-week test-retest reliability coefficient of 0.93.
• Internal consistency for the original version, calculated using the Kuder-Richardson formula, was 0.84.
• The modified 10-item version (Rosegrant, 1976) also showed adequate internal consistency, reporting a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.73.

Factor Analysis

Explicit factor analysis results are not detailed in the core documentation for the original REEM (Hood, 1970) or the modified version (Rosegrant, 1976). However, research utilizing adaptations of the REEM suggests an underlying structure related to the nature of the experience reported.

Holm’s (1982) use of Christian-based versus non-Christian-based item clusters in his Swedish adaptation implies a dimensional distinction within the measure, correlating with different subscales of the Mysticism Scale (religious/noetic vs. general/phenomenological). Furthermore, Hood and Hall (1977) developed a 5-item “culture-fair” version, suggesting that subsets of items can be identified and utilized to reduce cultural bias, although the specific factor structure leading to this selection is not elaborated upon in the source material.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire, Experiential Measure.

Format: 15 items (Original Hood, 1970) or 10 items (Modified Rosegrant, 1976), consisting of first-person accounts of religious experiences.

Language Available: English (Original), Swedish (Culture-specific adaptation by Holm, 1982).

Population Group: Primarily used with college undergraduates and specific community samples; best suited for religiously committed North American Christian populations due to cultural specificity.

Age Group: Adults (college age and older).

Population Details: Hood’s original sample comprised 51 psychology undergraduates at South Dakota State University. Rosegrant’s sample included 91 participants in an outdoor program in North Carolina. Cultural variation studies have included Mexican-American, Native American, and European-American samples.

Test Methodology: Respondents read each literary account and rate the degree to which any of their own personal experiences resemble the described experience. The original used a 5-point scale (1=absolutely no experience like this; 5=almost identical experience). The modified version (Rosegrant, 1976) uses a 9-point scale.

Keywords

Religious Experience Episodes Measure, REEM, Mystical Experience, Scale Development, Intrinsic Religiousness, Test Reliability, Cultural Bias, Psychology of Religion.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Not provided in source)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Not provided in source)

Correspondence Address: Interested readers are instructed to contact the respective authors (Hood or Rosegrant) for complete versions of the scale.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original REEM was first published in 1970 (Hood). A significant modification (Rosegrant) was published in 1976. Information regarding current usage permissions and associated fees is not provided in the source material; readers are advised to contact the authors directly for scale copies and usage rights.

Reference’s

• Allport, G. W., & Ross, J.M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432–443.

• Holm, N. G. (1982). Mysticism and intense experiences. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 21, 268-276.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1970). Religious orientation and the report of religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 9, 285-291.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1973). Hypnotic susceptibility and reported religious experience. Psychological Reports, 33, 549-550.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1974). Psychological strength and the report of intense religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 65-71.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (l 975). The construction and preliminary validation of a measure of reported mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 29-41.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1978a). Anticipatory set and setting: Stress incongruity as elicitors of mystical experience in solitary nature situations. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17, 278-287.

• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1978b). The usefulness of the indiscriminately pro and anti categories of religious orientation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17, 419-431.

• Hood, R. W., Jr., & Hall, J. R. (1977). Comparison of reported religious experience in Caucasian, American Indian, and two Mexican American samples. Psychological Reports, 41, 657-658.

• Hood, R. W., Jr., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. New York: Guilford.

• James, W. ( 1985). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published in 1902)

• Rosegrant, J. (1976). The impact of set and setting on religious experience in nature. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15, 301-310.

Items of the RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE EPISODES MEASURE (REEM)

Religious Experience Episodes Measure: Form 2 (Rosegrant, 1976)

Instructions: People sometimes have very moving and powerful experiences. It is hard to measure this sort of thing, especially since there can be many kinds of moving experiences. What I want you to do is compare your experience with the following descriptions of significant experiences that different people have had. Most of the descriptions use religious language. What I want you to decide is not whether you like the language used, but whether you think that your experience was moving and powerful in the same way as the experience that the person was trying to describe.

Below each description are numbers running from 1 to 9. Please circle one number for each experience; the higher the number, the more similar it is to your experience.

• 1. Indicates that your experience was not at all like the experience described.
• 3. Indicates that your experience was vaguely similar to the experience described.
• 5. Indicates that your experience was similar to the experience described.
• 7. Indicates that your experience was quite similar to the experience described.
• 9. Indicates that your experience was almost identical to the experience described.

Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, I thought that perhaps it was necessary to be near other people for a happy and healthy life. To be alone was somewhat unpleasant. But during a gentle rain, while I had these thoughts, I was suddenly aware of such a good society in nature, in the pattern of the drops and in every sight and sound around my house, that the fancy advantages of being near people seemed insignificant, and I haven’t thought about them since. Every little pine needle expanded with sympathy and befriended me. I was so definitely aware of something akin to me that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

My mind, deeply under the influence of the thoughts and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking but letting thoughts and emotions flow by themselves through my mind. All at once, without any warning, I found myself wrapped in a flamecolored cloud. For an instant I thought a great fire might be in the nearby city; the next moment I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward I felt a sense of exultation, of immense joy and intellectual insight impossible to describe.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I have several times felt that I have enjoyed a period of communion with the divine. These meetings are unexpected but clear, and consist of the disappearance of the conventionalities that fill my life. Once it happened when from the top of a high mountain I looked over a rugged landscape extending to a long curve of ocean which reached the horizon. Another time it happened when from the same point I could see nothing beneath me but an endless expanse of white cloud. Above the windblown clouds a few high peaks, including the one I was on, seemed to be plunging about as if they were dragging their anchors. On these occasions I felt a temporary loss of my identity, and I realized that life was more significant than I had thought.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

My thoughts went back to what they had been busy with for three years-the search for God. I wondered how I had ever come by the idea of God. And with this thought a glad desire for life arose in me. Everything in me became meaningful. I realized that I did not have to look farther. To acknowledge God and to live are one and the same thing. God is what life is.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I would suddenly feel the mood coming when I was at church, or with people, or reading, but only when my muscles were relaxed. It would irresistibly take over my mind and will, last what seemed like forever, and disappear in a way that resembled waking up from anesthesia. One reason that I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not describe it to myself; even now I can’t find the right words. It involved the disappearance of space, time, feeling, and all the things that I call my self. As ordinary consciousness disappeared, the sense of underlying or essential consciousness grew stronger. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract self.

l 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I remember the night and almost every spot on the hilltop where my soul opened out and the inner and outer worlds rushed together. My own deep struggle was being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stood alone with him who had made me, and all the beauty, love, and sorrow of the world. I felt the union of my spirit with his. The ordinary sense of things around me faded, and for the moment nothing remained but an indescribable joy.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I felt something within me had broken on which my life had always rested, that I had nothing to hold on to, and that my life no longer had meaning. I felt forced to commit suicide. It wouldn’t exactly be right to say I wished to kill myself, because the force which drew me away from life was more powerful and more general than any mere wish. It was a force like my old desire to live, but it moved me in the opposite direction. I was driven to die, and in spite of that I still hoped for something from life.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I feel God’s presence and I feel it more as I live in closer harmony with his laws. I feel God in the sunshine or rain, and my feelings are best described as awe mixed with delirious restfulness.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The highest experiences I have had of the presence of God have been rare and brief flashes of consciousness which have made me exclaim with surprise, or less intense moments of happiness and insight, only gradually passing away. I have severely questioned whether these moments were worthwhile, but I find that after every questioning, they stand out today as the most real experiences of my life.

l 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I have never had such an immediate, powerful experience. I don’t know what it was in that flower, what shape or secret, that made me see it in a limitless beauty. I will never enclose in a conception this power, this indescribable greatness, this uncontainable form, this ideal of a better world, which I felt but which nature has not made actual.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9