People more spiritual in morning, less at work

New York: Spiritual awareness varies throughout the day in people, with the highest levels reported in the morning when they engage in activities like praying, worship and meditation, finds a study.

The spiritual quotient was low when people were doing work-related activities or playing video games, said researchers from the University of Connecticut.

Spiritual awareness was also high when people listened to music, read or exercised.

"What surprised us is how much people vary in awareness of god across the day and across activities," said Bradley R.E. Wright, associate professor of sociology and a co-author of the study.

Being at work reduced spiritual awareness. Those who worked the most appeared to have the lowest awareness.

Additionally, the study found that the kind of people who watched the news had higher overall spiritual awareness than those who did not.

There is a complex interplay between spiritual awareness and the situation.

"Sometimes the situation you are in affects your spiritual awareness. Other times your spiritual awareness affects the situation you are in," he said.

This study analysed data from 2,439 people who were part of the larger SoulPulse study (SoulPulse.org) which collects data using participants' smartphones.

This experience sampling method allowed researchers to track spiritual awareness in real time during study participants' normal daily activities.

Each daily survey included 15 to 25 randomly selected questions from a larger pool of 120 daily questions.

"Although the participants were socially and geographically diverse, the study group is not a nationally representative sample because it was limited to people who owned a smartphone," the authors said.

The study was set to be presented at the 110th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).