Psychological explanation of conceptual components of "Sharh-e-Sadr" based on Islamic sources

The concept of “Sharh-e-Sadr” is one of the Qur’anic concepts that due to its various psychological effects on life, has always been considered by Islamic thinkers and researchers. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to extract the components of “Sharh-e-Sadr” and explain the psychology of those components.

To do so, dictionaries, idioms, and Islamic texts including the Qur'an and books of Hadiths were examined through the qualitative content analysis.

The findings have shown that the components of “Sharh-e-Sadr” are divided into two categories of cause ("divine knowledge", "remembrance of God" and "certainty") and effect ("patience", "surrender", "peace", "trust in God" and "full attention to the Hereafter") components. Moreover, the mentioned components were presented to eight theological psychologists in order to examine the content validity index (CVI), and finally, the validity of all components was approved.

“Sharh-e-Sadr” is a meta-attribute that contains several psychological traits including patience, calmness, acceptance, and trust so that the existence of all these traits can indicate “Sharh-e-Sadr” in a human being. These traits have been found from a comprehensive study of Islamic and lexical texts.