Are you Spiritual or Religious? People with Undefined Religious Belief's Show Higher Crime Rates

Whether you believe in something or not, a new study suggests that young adults who feel they are "spiritual but not religious" may be more likely to commit property crimes or even violent ones than those who consider themselves more conservatively religious.

Researchers from Baylor University found that, surprisingly, those who don't consider themselves religious or spiritual, were the least likely to commit crimes.

"The notion of being spiritual but not associated with any organized religion has become increasingly popular, and our question is how that is different from being religious, whether you call yourself 'spiritual' or not," said Sung Joon Jang, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. He is lead author of the study, "Is Being 'Spiritual' Enough Without Being Religious? A Study of Violent and Property Crimes Among Emerging Adults."

A news release also notes that until the 20^th century, the terms "religious" and "spiritual" were relatively interchangeable.

Yet previous studies have shown that those who claim they are religious tend to participate in criminal activities less than other groups.

Jang and his colleagues analyzed data from a sample of 14,322 individuals from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 28.

Participants were asked to discuss their religious background in a controversial survey along with the number of crimes they had committed in the last 12 months.

"Calling oneself 'spiritual but not religious' turned out to more of an antisocial characteristic, unlike identifying oneself as religious," said Baylor researcher Aaron Franzen, via a press release, a doctoral candidate and study co-author.

"We were thinking that religious people would have an institutional and communal attachment and investment, while the spiritual people would have more of an independent identity," Franzen added.

The press release writes that previous studies have shown that spiritual but not religious people tend to have lower self-esteem and more problems with anxiety and depression.

"It's a challenge in terms of research to know what that actually means to be spiritual, because they self-identify," he said. "But they are different in some way, as our study shows."