Abstract:

This study examines whether participants in a wilderness experience, similar to the vision quest practiced in many Native American cultures, demonstrate changes in four values: spirituality, cooperation, humility, and power. The experimental group of 31 participants, ages 24 to 59, who engaged in an 11-day program of fasting, ritual, and solitude, is compared with a group of 17 members of the 1991 entering class at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.

Both groups were pretested on site and posttested by mail 2 months after the program. The pretest includes: (a)~a Goals Survey, including a Divine scale to measure spirituality and an Others scale to measure cooperation; (b)~the Ego Grasping Orientation Inventory, a measure of humility; (c)~the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory to measure power; and (d)~the Maslach Burnout Inventory, which includes three additional measures of cooperation. The posttest includes these same four items plus the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, to assess the level of stress, and a self-reporting form.

Data are analyzed using {\it t\/}-test comparisons of pretests and posttests between groups, and of pretests and posttests within each group. The vision quest group shows significant increases in measures of spirituality and power, while the comparison group shows significant increases in two measures of cooperation.

Additional analyses of vision quest participants reveal that participants reporting low stress show significant increases in humility and power, while those reporting high stress show an increase in spirituality. Participants with a high level of education show increases in both spirituality and power. Men show more changes than women. Participants who report previous near-death or questing experience show either significant increases or trends in three of the four values. This suggests that prior spiritual experience may affect the participant's ability to benefit from transformative experiences.