Deciphering the religious orientation of a sacred space: Disparate impressions of worship settings by congregants and external observers

Although existing research has assessed the factors associated with judgments of novel sacred spaces, comparatively little work has investigated how these environmental properties relate to the beliefs, emotions, and satisfaction of the congregants who worship there. In this study, individuals from 23 churches evaluated their worship space, and an online sample provided their impressions of these settings and the type of people they believe worship there. A series of linear mixed-effects models revealed that (a) worship spaces that offer exploration were associated with greater satisfaction, feelings of restoration, and more positive emotions among congregants, particularly for those high in quest orientation, (b) external raters' explicit judgments of a congregation's religious orientation from observations of their worship space were highly inaccurate, but (c) an external rater's similarity to the congregation's actual religious attitudes, even when it was unknown to the perceiver, predicted greater liking of that congregation's worship space.