Most scientists agree that religiosity (also called religiousness) is not an independent personality trait, despite there being some commonality between their characteristics. Religiosity and personality traits both relate to one's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. However, unlike for personality, one's level of religiosity is often measured by the presence or lack of belief in and relationship with a higher power, certain lifestyles or behaviors adopted for a higher power, and a sense of belonging with other followers of one's religion. Additionally, personality traits tend to follow a normal distribution, such that the majority of individuals' scores for a personality trait will be concentrated towards the middle, rather than being extremely high or low. Distributions for religiosity, however, follow a non-normal distribution, such that there are more individuals who score particularly high or low on religiosity scales.
Examining religiosity as it relates to personality characteristics could provide an empirical way to study a difficult concept. With the use of modern, empirically tested personality measures, researchers can look for links and obtain quantitative results to provide insight into how and why religion is such an important element of being human. Overall, when the research on religiosity and personality is summarized, there does not appear to be a strong link between the two. While there is research to suggest that there is a modest relationship between mental ability and religiosity, mental ability is not considered an aspect of personality. It appears that, rather than by personality, religiosity is better explained by environment and upbringing, such that people are likely to maintain the beliefs of the household they grew up in. Research on religiosity is also limited in that much psychological research is biased to Western populations, and therefore research on religiosity and personality may also be skewed towards Western religions.
Five-factor model of personality The five-factor model of personality is currently accepted as a comprehensive model of personality. The five-factor model (FFM) identifies five broad traits (the Big Five) underlying the many, narrower traits that together can be used to describe personality. The identified traits are:
Extraversion — outgoing, talkative, and sociable vs. reserved, shy, and withdrawn. Neuroticism — anxious, moody, and sensitive vs. relaxed and stable. Conscientiousness — organized, thorough, and precise vs. disorderly, careless, and unreliable. Agreeableness — cooperative, kind, and gentle vs. rude, harsh, and cold. Openness to Experience — unconventional, innovative, and complex vs. shallow, uninquisitive, and simple.
The Big Five are good for correlating with religiosity, because each trait is orthogonal, or completely independent from one another. In having the ability to separate each essential trait from the other, it is possible to study each personality characteristic and how it relates to religiosity.
Studying the psychology of religion through as it relates to personality is not a new idea, however. There has been research to both support and refute the ability of personality traits to explain religious or spiritual involvement. Research using Eysenck's model has found that religiosity in general is associated with low Openness to Experience, as well as low psychoticism, a factor associated inversely with Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. A review of studies examined the relations between the FFM and measures of religiosity, spiritual maturity, religious fundamentalism, and extrinsic religion. General religiosity was mainly related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness of the Big Five traits. The same was found in a second review, which also noted that the relationship was consistent across different dimensions of religiosity, different cultures, and different measures of the Big Five. The relationship, however, appeared to be weaker in young adults than the rest of the adult population. Additionally, there was a weak positive correlation with Extraversion, and a very small but significant relationship with low Openness to Experience. This same study also found that the two different concepts of religiosity and spirituality both involve an overall compassionate attitude towards others and positively correlates with Agreeableness. Open, mature religiosity and spirituality were associated with high Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, and with low Neuroticism. Religious fundamentalism was associated with higher Agreeableness, and lower Neuroticism and lower Openness to Experience. Because of these findings, those with higher religiosity scores seemed to be more altruistic and more well behaved. However, this correlation is pretty small. It is not known if religious people tend to be better behaved or if better behaved people are more attracted to religion. Extrinsic religiosity was associated with higher Neuroticism but unrelated to the other personality factors. Levels of Neuroticism among religiousness vary, with European samples exhibiting higher levels than in the United States, which was speculated to be due to the dominance of Catholicism in European samples.
Another study done on a group of Canadian university students, noted some differences between men and women as it related to their religiosity scores. According to this study, women tended to be more religious than men, but both men and women showed positive correlations of agreeableness and conscientiousness when compared to their religious involvement. Women who reported having no religious affiliation scored significantly higher in Neuroticism than those affiliated with a formal religion.
Strengths and weaknesses As previously stated, one of the major strengths for using the FFM to study religiosity in people is that it is empirically tested and considered a reliable and valid measure. Another strength is that the Big Five is laid out simply, making it easier to use for examining potential links between personality and religiosity. While this is a huge strength, some research argues that its downfall lies in that it is solely a personality indicator, and is not compatible with religious or spiritual matters. For example, in another study that investigated the correlation between religiosity and the FFM, a conclusion was drawn that religiosity and/or spirituality should be made into a sixth personality factor in order to truly make research using this model accurate.
Additionally, many of the relationships between personality and religion were small. Religiousness has also been correlated with other personality traits not encompassed by the FFM. Therefore, more research is needed to determine if the FFM is an accurate way to examine relationships between personality and religiosity and to determine if there are significant relationships.
HEXACO model While the Big Five is the most commonly used model of personality, newer personality research suggests that the HEXACO model may be an improvement on the Big Five. However, to shed light on what the Big Five is and why the HEXACO model allows for a greater way to correlate religiosity and personality, understanding the Big Five is likely beneficial. In addition, the Big Five have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each trait allows for its own characteristics, such as: openness to experience reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety a person has; conscientiousness is the tendency to be organized and dependable; extraversion is when one shows positive emotions, assertiveness, sociability; agreeableness is when one is considered to be compassionate and cooperative; lastly, neuroticism is when one experiences unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. The HEXACO model makes slight modification to the factors of the Big Five traits, but most notably it adds a sixth trait Honesty-Humility, which captures an individual's tendency towards honesty, humility, sincerity, greed-avoidance, and modesty. Religiosity has been positively correlated to Honesty-Humility, such that individuals who score higher on religiousness were also likely to score higher for Honesty-Humility.
It is unclear, however, if these results would be replicated in other studies.
Other personality traits related to religiosity While some traits from the Big Five and the HEXACO model have been correlated with religiosity, these models do not encompass all known personality traits.
Traits such as femininity and conservatism have both been linked to religiosity, such that those who scored higher on religiousness were likely to also score higher for femininity and conservatism. Religiosity was negatively correlated with traits relating to sexual expression, such as eroticism, sexiness, and sensuality, such that individuals who scored higher on religiosity tended to score lower on these factors of sexuality. Humour has also been negatively correlated with religiosity, such that individuals who scored higher on religiousness tended to score lower on humour.
Many of the links between traits and religiosity have not been looked at on a larger scale like traits from the Five Factor Model have. Therefore, these results may not replicate in future research and may not be accurate.
Attachment theory Attachment Theory is another example of a personality indicator with the ability to help researchers understand religiosity and spirituality. The basic premise of attachment theory is that infants form relationships with their caregivers, and the type of attachment influences an individual's personality and future relationships. It is thought that these future relationships could be with the particular god or higher power.
In attachment theory, there have been four attachment styles identified:
secure attachment — confidence in the availability of caregiver during times of need. anxious-avoidant attachment — avoidance and ignoring of caregiver, due to insecurity and lack of trust in the ability of others to care for one's needs. anxious-ambivalent attachment — a mixture of seeking behaviors and ambivalence towards caregiver, due to the caregiver's unpredictable responses. disorganized/disoriented attachment — mixed, contradictory behaviors towards caregiver, often including displays of fear.
Secure attachment styles are believed to have positive outcomes for individuals' personality and future relationships, while disrupted attachment styles are believed to be related to disordered personalities, antisocial behaviors, and life-course persistent criminal behaviors. Attachment theory is also thought to be related to religiosity, because a relationship with God can mirror relationships with an adult attachment figure. Additionally, much like Attachment Theory describes with separation from caregivers, a sense of separation from God has been reported to invoke similar distress.