A new study of emerging adult college students suggests that adverse childhood experiences may cast a long shadow over well-being—but that two potentially changeable resources, religious or spiritual meaning and social support, may help explain why some young adults continue to flourish despite difficult beginnings. Published in the Journal of Adult Development, the research examined how childhood adversity was linked to flourishing among 475 U.S. college students between 18 and 29 years old. Rather than focusing only on depression, anxiety, illness, or other negative outcomes, the researchers measured flourishing, a broader concept that includes emotional, psychological, and social functioning. Their findings point toward a more complete picture of recovery: surviving adversity is one outcome, but building a purposeful, connected, and optimistic life is another.
The study was grounded in the Research Domain Criteria, or RDoC, an approach developed by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health to investigate psychological functioning through interacting biological, behavioral, and social systems rather than through diagnostic categories alone. The researchers focused on two RDoC-informed areas. Religious beliefs and spirituality were treated as a construct related to the positive valence system, which involves motivation, reward, meaning, and the evaluation of future outcomes. Perceived social support was examined as part of the social processes system, which includes affiliation, attachment, and interpersonal communication. The researchers proposed that adversity might be associated with lower flourishing partly because it disrupts meaning-making and spiritual confidence, while strong social relationships might weaken the relationship between early adversity and later well-being.
Participants completed an online survey between November 2022 and January 2023. They were recruited from universities in the Midwest, Southeast, and South of the United States. The final sample was predominantly female and White: 339 participants identified as female and 136 as male, while 304 participants identified as White. Approximately 70.5 percent identified as heterosexual, and 29.5 percent identified as sexual minorities. The average age was 21.32 years. Although the sample was not designed to represent every emerging adult in the country, it offered a view of college students navigating a developmental stage marked by increasing independence, relationship changes, educational pressure, and decisions about work and identity.
Childhood adversity was measured using the World Health Organization’s Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questionnaire. The instrument assessed 10 categories of adversity occurring before age 18, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; household violence; mental health problems in the household; incarceration; substance use; and parental separation. Researchers combined the responses into a cumulative score ranging from zero to 10. The results revealed a striking concentration of adversity in the sample. Forty-four percent of participants met the commonly used threshold of four or more adverse childhood experience categories. Emotional neglect was reported by 95 percent of participants, while emotional abuse was reported by 59 percent, household violence by 60 percent, physical abuse by 46 percent, and sexual abuse by 31 percent.
Flourishing was measured with the eight-item Flourishing Scale, which includes statements such as “I lead a purposeful and meaningful life,” “My social relationships are supportive and rewarding,” and “I am optimistic about my future.” Participants rated their agreement on a seven-point scale, with higher total scores representing stronger well-being and functioning. Religious beliefs and spirituality were assessed with three measures addressing the importance of religious or spiritual beliefs and practice, the belief that God cares about personal problems, and the belief that God has plans for one’s life. Perceived social support was measured through questions about family, friends, and significant others. All three measures showed high internal consistency in this sample, although the researchers noted that a short spirituality scale cannot capture the full diversity of religious experience or spiritual struggle.
The first major finding involved religious beliefs and spirituality as a statistical mediator. Participants reporting more adverse childhood experiences tended to report lower levels of religious beliefs and spirituality. In turn, stronger religious or spiritual beliefs were associated with higher flourishing. The indirect association was statistically significant, with an estimated effect of –0.19 and a bootstrapped 95 percent confidence interval from –0.30 to –0.09. In technical terms, mediation does not prove that adversity directly destroys spirituality or that spirituality necessarily produces flourishing. Instead, the analysis indicates that differences in spirituality accounted for part of the statistical relationship between childhood adversity and flourishing after adjustment for age, sex, sexual identity, and racial or ethnic identity. The authors suggest that faith, sacred purpose, and meaning-making may help some students develop a coherent life narrative and maintain motivation while facing the demands of emerging adulthood.
The second major finding concerned social support. Overall, adverse childhood experiences were negatively associated with flourishing. However, the strength of that association depended on how much support participants believed they received from family, friends, or significant others. Among students with lower social support, each increase in adversity was associated with a substantial decline in flourishing, with a regression coefficient of –0.93. At moderate levels of support, the association remained significant, with a coefficient of –0.57. Among students with higher social support, the estimated association weakened to –0.21 and was no longer statistically significant because its confidence interval included zero. This pattern is consistent with a buffering effect: supportive relationships did not erase childhood adversity, but they appeared to reduce its observable connection with current well-being in this sample.
The researchers also tested whether social support strengthened the relationship between religious or spiritual beliefs and flourishing. It did not. The interaction between spirituality and social support was not statistically significant, with an estimated coefficient of –0.01 and a confidence interval extending from –0.02 to 0.00. This result contradicted the researchers’ third hypothesis. They had expected that spiritual beliefs might be especially beneficial when reinforced by strong interpersonal networks. Instead, the positive association between spirituality and flourishing appeared relatively consistent across different levels of perceived support. One possible explanation is that internal meaning and spiritual motivation may operate independently of external relationships. Another is that the broad measure of social support did not distinguish between general support and support from people who share a student’s religious or spiritual values.
The study’s findings were accompanied by several important demographic patterns. Older participants within the 18-to-29 age range reported somewhat greater exposure to adverse childhood experiences and lower levels of flourishing and religious or spiritual belief. Female participants reported more adversity than male participants, while Black participants reported higher religious or spiritual beliefs than other groups in the analyses. Heterosexual-identifying participants reported lower adversity and higher religious or spiritual beliefs and flourishing than sexual minority participants. These patterns do not establish why the groups differed, and they may reflect social conditions, identity-related stress, sampling characteristics, or other unmeasured influences. They do, however, underscore that emerging adulthood is not a uniform experience and that protective resources may be shaped by culture, identity, community, and access to safety.
The authors argue that universities could use the results to expand trauma-informed support beyond symptom reduction. Voluntary and inclusive programs might include counseling that allows students to explore meaning, faith, values, or existential questions without promoting any particular religion. Mentoring, peer-support groups, student organizations, community service, and faculty relationships could help strengthen social connection. The researchers also point to well-being programs, positive psychotherapy, well-being therapy, and courses focused on relationships, self-awareness, and personal growth as possible components of a broader campus strategy. Such interventions would need to respect students who are religious, spiritual but not religious, uncertain, or nonreligious. The findings support offering pathways to meaning and connection, not assuming that one form of belief or support is appropriate for everyone.
The evidence should nevertheless be interpreted cautiously. The study was cross-sectional, meaning all key variables were measured at one time, so the data cannot establish that adverse experiences caused lower spirituality, that spirituality caused flourishing, or that social support caused resilience. Childhood experiences were reported retrospectively and may have been affected by memory and current emotional state. The participants were recruited from universities and were mostly White and female, limiting generalization to emerging adults who are working, in vocational training, taking gap years, or living in other regions and cultures. The study also examined positive religious and spiritual beliefs but not spiritual struggles, such as anger at God, doubts, religious conflict, or feeling abandoned by a higher power. Future longitudinal studies could track students over time, include broader populations, test specific interventions, and examine additional protective factors such as self-control, caring adults, peer relationships, neighborhood safety, cognitive flexibility, and emotion regulation. Even with these limitations, the research highlights a potentially important shift in trauma science: early adversity may increase risk, but flourishing is influenced by the meanings people construct and the relationships that surround them.
Subject of Research: Adverse childhood experiences, flourishing, religious beliefs and spirituality, perceived social support, emerging adult college students, and RDoC-informed psychological mechanisms.
Article Title: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Flourishing Among Emerging Adult College Students: Religious Beliefs/Spirituality and Social Support as Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-Informed Mechanisms
Article References: Kim, J.-Y., Lee, J. M., Park, Y., Lee, H., & Lee, J. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Flourishing Among Emerging Adult College Students: Religious Beliefs/Spirituality and Social Support as Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-Informed Mechanisms. Journal of Adult Development (2026).
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s10804-026-09560-2
Keywords: Adverse childhood experiences; flourishing; religious beliefs; spirituality; perceived social support; college students; emerging adulthood; resilience; Research Domain Criteria; positive valence system; social processes system.
