Consideration of Religion and Personality

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Religion and Personality
The consideration of religion and personality from a psychological perspective logically seems to stem from the desire to evaluate correlations to increase the understanding of humanity and potentially improve human development or well-being. The findings from research conducted as well as the challenges associated with the inquiry of the relationship of religion and personality serve to inform our understandings.
Personality trait perspective
The association of religion personality has been investigated primarily from the perspective of personality trait research. Research in this area typically seeks to show the association of broadly defined personality traits and religiosity. Different personality trait systems and factors and different definitions of religiosity have been used, including worship attendance, prayer, and dimensions of spirituality. Frequently research has centered on three factors developed by H.J. Eysenck; extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism or on the Big Five factors of personality; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism and also on Catell’s sixteen factors of personality and their relationships with religiosity.
Three Factors
Based on analysis of research of his own and that conducted by others, Michel Eysenck concluded in 1998 that no solid evidence exists to show a correlation between religion and extraversion and neuroticism, while evidence did manage to indicate a negative relationship between religion and psychoticism. Further, there was no determination of the definition of the source of the relationship, meaning whether low-psychotic personalities are attracted to religion, or whether religion has an impact on levels of psychot...

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...rstanding and because they have been exploited as labels that create bias, especially so in the realm of education. There are other perceptions by which the associations of religion and personality can be viewed that are growing in popularity. One such considers both personality and religion from the evolutionary angle. This small body of research that has developed primarily in the last decade explains that religion is a byproduct of mechanisms that evolved for other purposes and is expressed because of interactions in the environment and other cognitive processes (Kirkpatrick, 1999). Whether the pendulum of popular theory swings from trait based research and Western ideals to biologically based research encompassing a combination of philosophies, we can conclude only that questions about the association of religion and personality will become increasingly complex.

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