Linking Basic Beliefs and Spiritual Well-Being: Evidence From Russia

Well-being and mental health are considered to be fundamentally influenced by implicit, global, and stable beliefs about the world and oneself. These beliefs shape a person’s perception of certain life situations, their attitudes toward these situations, and the behavioral strategies they choose. This study aims to ascertain the precise nature of the relationship between spiritual well-being and its components and basic beliefs. A total of 959 Russian-speaking respondents aged 14 to 72 were included in the study sample. Spiritual well-being that includes two subscales—religious and existential well-being—was assessed using the Spiritual Well-Being Scale by Paloutzian and Ellison, as adapted by Bakushkin and Ershova (2025). Basic beliefs—Benevolence of the World, Luck, Justice, Beliefs about Control, Self-Worth—were assessed using the World Assumptions Scale by Janoff-Bulman, as adapted by Padun and Kotelnikova (2008). Along with these scales, mathematical and statistical data processing methods were employed. For religious well-being, Luck showed the greatest predictive power. In the multivariate model, the negative influence of Beliefs about Control increased. For existential well-being, the Luck, Benevolence of the World, and Justice subscales served as positive predictors, explaining 51.9% of the variance in the dependent variable. For spiritual well-being, these same predictors explained 42.4% of the variance. Results showed that the Beliefs about Control subscale was a negative predictor of spiritual well-being. Meanwhile, the Self-Worth scale tended to be negatively associated with spiritual well-being. The models demonstrated the greatest explanatory power for existential (29.2%) and spiritual (26.9%) well-being, while the contribution to religious well-being (19.2%) was less pronounced. These findings could inform the development of spiritually integrated counselling and meaning-centered interventions for Russian-speaking clients.