This article was downloaded by: [University of South Florida]On: 19 November 2014, At: 07:48Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Mental Health, Religion & CulturePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmhr20

Personality and the psychology ofreligionMichael W. Eysenck aa Royal Holloway University of London , London, UKPublished online: 08 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Michael W. Eysenck (1998) Personality and the psychology of religion, MentalHealth, Religion & Culture, 1:1, 11-19, DOI: 10.1080/13674679808406493

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674679808406493

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1998 11

Personality and the psychology of religion

MICHAEL W . EYSENCK Royal Holloway University of London, London, UK

ABSTRACT Three major personality dimensions were identij5ed: extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. According to the theorizing, extraversion and psychoticism were predicted to be negatively related to religiosity, whereas neuroticism was positively related. The evidence has generally failed to support the predictions with respect to extraversion and neuroticism. However, low psychoticism is consistently reLated to reli@xity, and this relationship is stronger with respect to the personal rather than public orientation to religion. Most of the available evadence is correlational in nature, so it is ve y dzfficult to explain this relationship. Future research should be broadened to include longitudinal studies and mood manipulations in order to clanfy the processes underlying the potentially important links between psychoticism and religiosity.

Introduction

This article is concerned with relationships between personality and religion. More specifically, the focus will be on these relationships in the context of H.J. Eysenck’s theory of personality (e.g. Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). Accordingly, this theory will first be discussed, before relating it to the available evidence on personality and religion.

H.J. Eysenck assumed that there are three major independent or uncorre- lated personality dimensions , which he called extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. Extraversion has sociability and impulsivity components; the former component became increasingly important in the tests which H. J. Eysenck designed to measure extraversion. Neuroticism is concerned with emotional instability, and includes elements such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and tension. The third personality dimension, psychoticism, is concerned with a lack of impulse control. It includes components such as aggression, coldness, egocentricity, and impulsivity.

How adequate is this theoretical approach to personality? The evidence indicates strongly that extraversion and neuroticism are major personality di- mensions, but that psychoticism is not. In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that there are five major personality factors (often known as the ‘Big Five’). Individual theorists differ slightly in terms of the factors they include. However, extraversion and neuroticism are almost invariably present, whereas

Correspondence to: Professor Michael W. Eysenck, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, TW20 OEX, UK.

1367-4676/98/010011-09 0 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

12 Michael W. Eysenck

psychoticism is practically never included. Perhaps the most influential version of the Big Five approach to personality was provided by McCrae and Costa (1985). They identified the following five personality factors: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.

Convincing evidence that the Big Five approach is essentially correct was reported by Goldberg (1990). He carried out a series of studies using large numbers of trait adjectives that were not systematically selected. His findings led him to the following conclusion: ‘It now seems reasonable to conclude that analyses of any reasonably large set of English trait adjectives in either self- or peer-descriptions will elicit a variant of the Big-Five factor structure’ (p. 1223).

Apart from the limitation that psychoticism has not consistently emerged as a personality dimension in most research, there is also the issue of whether it is appropriately labelled. H. J. Eysenck (1 978) claimed that psychoticism is a dimension relating to the predisposition to suffer psychotic breakdown. This seems unlikely in view of the findings of Zuckerman (1989). He found that juvenile delinquents and prisoners scored higher on psychoticism than a psy- chotic group of schizophrenics. This suggests that the psychoticism dimension is actually a measure of psychopathy, i.e. the tendency to commit aggressive crimes and to have an anti-social personality.

In addition to measuring extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (eg Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) contains a Lie scale. There has been some controversy about the meaning of a high score on the Lie scale. There are various possibilities. One is that high scorers are engaging in other-deception or a deliberate attempt to misrepresent themselves to other people. Another possibility is that high scorers are self-deceivers, who genuinely believe that their responses on the Lie scale are accurate. The evidence suggests that the Lie scale is a measure of other-deception rather than of self-deception (Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1992).

How do these personality dimensions relate to religiosity? Eysenck (1 954) argued that there are two major orthogonal dimensions of social attitudes: radicalism and tough-mindedness versus tender-mindedness. In subsequent research, Eysenck (1975, 1976) obtained evidence that religious attitudes and beliefs load on tender-mindedness and are not related to radicalism. He further argued that tender-minded attitudes arise as a result of conditioning. Originally, it was assumed that the personality dimension of introversion-extraversion was of most relevance to conditioning, with introverts being more conditionable than extraverts. However, subsequent evidence indicated that psychoticism is nega- tively related to ease of conditioning (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). As a conse- quence, it is possible to predict that positive attitudes towards religion or religiosity will be associated with low extraversion or low psychoticism. It has also been predicted that religiosity will be associated with high neuroticism, in spite of the fact that neuroticism tends to be positively related to ease of conditioning (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985).

The notion that the effects of personality on attitudes in general or religious attitudes in particular are attributable to individual differences in conditionabil-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Personality and the Psychology of Religion 13

ity is no longer tenable. There is very little evidence for a general factor of conditionability (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985), and there is no compelling evi- dence that ease of conditioning is related to attitude formation.

Empirical evidence

Neuroticism and extraversion

Nearly all of the available evidence on personality and religion is correlational in nature. The early studies focused on neuroticism and extraversion. It was found in several of these studies that those with positive attitudes to religion tended to be introverted rather than extraverted, and high in neuroticism rather than low (Brown, 1987). However, the correlations tended to be fairly low. Moreover, there was a potential problem, because females tend to be more introverted than males and higher on neuroticism, and they also tend to have more positive attitudes towards religion. When sex differences are partialled out, then there is often no relationship between personality and religiosity (Brown, 1987).

Neither extraversion nor neuroticism has been found to be related to religious attitudes and beliefs in most recent studies. For example, Francis and Wilcox (1 996) reported non-significant associations of extraversion and neurot- icism with self-reported church attendance and prayer among female A-level students. Francis (1 993) reported non-significant findings between attitudes towards Christianity and the personality dimensions of extraversion and neurot- icism in a group of undergraduate students. Precisely the same findings (or non-findings) were reported by Lewis and Maltby (1995) in a group of US adults.

In summary, there is practically no convincing evidence that either extraver- sion or neuroticism is related to religiosity. It is presumably for this reason that there is little or no discussion of personality and religion in most recent textbooks on the psychology of religion.

Psychoticism

During the 1990s, interest has switched from extraversion and neuroticism to psychoticism. Psychoticism is typically higher in males than in females, and it tends to be negatively correlated with age (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). Accord- ingly, most researchers have assessed the relationship between psychoticism and religiosity with sex, or sex and age, partialled out.

There have been several reports of a relationship between psychoticism and various measures of religious attitudes and observances in general samples. Francis (1992) found that there was a negative relationship between psychoti- cism and religiosity in 14- to 16-year-olds. White et al. (1995) reported a negative association between psychoticism and religiosity as assessed by the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity, a finding that was replicated by

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

14 Michael W. Eysenck

Gillings and Joseph (1996). Smith (1996) found that low psychoticism was associated with high religiosity, whereas extraversion and neuroticism were not.

There is also evidence that low psychoticism is associated with religiosity within other, non-Christian, religions. For example, Wilde and Joseph (1997) obtained a significant negative correlation between psychoticism and scores on a Moslem Attitude towards Religion scale. Francis and Katz (1 992) found that psychoticism correlated negatively with religiosity in a sample of Israeli students.

The relationship between psychoticism and religion has also been con- sidered among the religiously committed. Francis (1 992) found among male and female clergy that psychoticism was inversely related to religious attitudes as measured by the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity. Carter et al. (1996) reported that psychoticism was negatively related to religious attitudes in a sample of adults highly committed to Christianity and attending a Christian study programme. Francis and Kay (1995) found that male Pentecostal ministry candidates attending the British Assemblies of God and Elim bible colleges were significantly below population norms on psychoticism. However, this was not the case for female ministry candidates.

An important issue that has received very little attention is that of identify- ing those aspects of psychoticism that are related to religiosity. This issue was addressed by White et al. (1995). They carried out a principal components analysis based on several sceles. The key finding was that religiosity did not load significantly on a factor of general psychosis proneness on which psychoticism did load. However, religiosity and psychoticism both loaded highly on an asociality factor, reflecting a general lack of concern about the welfare of others. These findings can be regarded as generally supportive of the view (Zuckerman, 1989) that psychoticism is more a measure of psychopathy than of vulnerability to psychosis.

Finally, there are some indications in the literature that psychoticism is negatively related to some aspects of religiosity but not to others. Maltby, Talley, Cooper and Leslie (1995) distinguished between a personal orientation towards religion (including religious attitude and personal prayer), and a public orientation to religion (e.g. church attendance). They found that low psychoti- cism was related to a personal (rather than a public) orientation towards religion. Related findings were reported by Lewis and Maltby (1996). They studied American male college students, and found a significant negative correlation between psychoticism and frequency of personal prayer. However, psychoticism was unrelated to frequency of church attendance.

Lie scale

The relationship between Lie scale scores and religiosity has been considered in several studies. The findings are somewhat inconsistent, but positive correla- tions have often been obtained. Francis (1 992) found that greater religiosity was associated with higher Lie scale scores in a sample of clergy. Lewis and Maltby (1995) reported that religiosity was related to high Lie scale scores in females

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Personality and the Psychology of Religion 15

but not in males. Francis and Kay (1995) found that male Pentecostal ministry candidates scored higher than men in general on the Lie scale, but this was not the case for women. Wilde and Joseph (1997) obtained a highly significant correlation of + 0.55 between religiosity and Lie scale scores.

Gillings and Joseph (1996) tried to clarify some of the issues relating to Lie scale scores, social desirability and religiosity. They failed to obtain any relation- ship between Lie scale scores and religiosity. However, they also used other scales which divided social desirability into impression management or other- deception and into self-deception. Religiosity was associated with impression management or other-deception, but was not associated with self-deception.

There is an important issue here that has not been investigated enough. Is the relationship between psychoticism and religiosity ‘contaminated’ by social desirability as assessed by the Lie scale? Wilde and Joseph (1 997) addressed this question. They found that the negative correlation between psychoticism and religiosity remained significant even when Lie scale scores were partialled out. However, this finding is in need of replication by others.

Evaluation of the evidence

The clearest finding that has emerged from studies relating H.J. Eysenck’s personality dimensions to various measures of religion is that there is a fairly consistent negative relationship between psychoticism and religiosity. Critics of personality research (e.g. Mischel, 1968) argue that individual differences in personality typically account for only small percentages of the variance in the dependent variable, and thus are of rather limited importance. Psychoticism typically accounts for approximately 10% of the variance in religiosity. Is this sufficient to treat psychoticism as an important variable? One way of addressing this question is to consider the findings of Sarason et al. (1975). They re- analysed 138 experiments in which personality and situational variables were both included. Across these experiments, the situation accounted on average for 10.3% of the variance, personality for 8.7% of the variance, and the interaction between the two for 4.6% of the variance. It follows that if we argue that a variable accounting for 10% of the variance is of little consequence, then there is a danger that we will not be left with any variables worth considering!

It has been assumed that the appropriate interpretation of the relationship between psychoticism and religiosity is that those who are low in psychoticism will be more attracted to religion and have more positive religious attitudes than those who are high in psychoticism. However, an alternative interpretation is that those who espouse religious attitudes and practices will tend to become lower in psychoticism as a result. At present, there are no compelling data to favour either alternative.

Another possible interpretation of the negative relationship between psy- choticism and religiosity is that it is mediated by social desirability. In other words, low psychoticism and high religiosity are both regarded as socially desirable, and so individuals high in social desirability claim to be low in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

16 Michael W. Eysenck

psychoticism and high in religiosity. Some evidence against this interpretation was reported by Wilde and Joseph (1997), but it remains possible that social desirability played a role in producing personality-religiosity correlations in other studies.

In more general terms, the greatest weakness of the research literature on personality and religiosity is that very little has been discovered of the underlying processes mediating any of the observed relationships. This weakness stems directly from the substantial over-reliance on correlational evidence, which by its very nature can demonstrate neither causal relationships nor the nature of mediating processes.

Future directions

There are various ways in which future research might usefully develop. As yet, very little is known about possible interactions between personality and situa- tional factors in determining individual levels of religiosity. One way of ap- proaching this issue would be by carrying out longitudinal studies in which intra-individual changes in religiosity over time could be related to personality and major life events. If personality were also assessed at regular intervals, such an approach could also clarify whether the direction of causality is from personality to religiosity, from religiosity to personality, or both.

Another possible development is to carry out laboratory studies that might shed light on some of the processes mediating the relationship between psy- choticism and religiosity. Suppose, for example, that it were assumed that those high in psychoticism do not have positive attitudes towards religion because they experience high levels of anger and hostility. It would be possible to manipulate people’s moods in order to see whether sensitive measures of religiosity were affected by prevailing mood.

A line of research such as that described above would resemble studies on good moods and generosity. For example, Isen (1970) found that participants who had been told they had performed very well on various tests were more likely to help a woman struggling with an armful of books than were participants who had been told they had performed very poorly, or who had been given no feedback. In similar fashion, the relatively positive moods of those low in psychoticism may make it easier for them than for those high in psychoticism to adopt the caring and unselfish attitudes associated with religion.

One of the important issues that has been identified in this article is the need to work out the extent to which any apparent relationship between psychoticism and religiosity is affected by social desirability. A useful technique that could be applied to this issue is the so-called bogus pipeline (Jones & Sigall, 197 1). In essence, the participants are attached to elaborate physiological recording equipment (the bogus pipeline), and led to believe that this equip- ment will detect any dishonesty in their responses. When responses under the bogus pipeline condition are compared with those under standard conditions, it is generally found that the participants admit to far more socially undesirable

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Personality and the Psychology of Religion 17

attitudes in the bogus pipeline condition. This technique could be applied to participants completing questionnaires measuring psychoticism and religiosity. It would be of interest to see whether the typical inverse relation between psychoticism and religiosity was still obtained under bogus pipeline conditions. If it were, this would strengthen the argument that the relationship does not depend on social desirability to any significant extent.

Finally, it has been accepted in social psychology for several decades that there can be substantial discrepancies between attitudes or beliefs on the one hand and behaviour on the other. The relevance of this to research on religion can be seen in the research of Lewis and Maltby (1996). They found that there was a non-significant association between frequency of personal prayer and frequency of church attendance. As discussed earlier, they also found that psychoticism correlated with the former measure of religiosity, but not with the latter one. These findings, and others also discussed earlier, suggest that low psychoticism is associated with religiosity in a personal sense rather than in terms of public behaviour. This interesting notion can only be tested properly by taking a range of attitudinal and behavioural measures, and relating both sets of measures to psychoticism.

Conclusions

Research on personality and the psychology of religion has uncovered a reason- ably consistent and potentially important finding: individuals who are high in religiosity are significantly more likely than those low in religiosity to be low in psychoticism. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that this finding is stronger when personal rather than public aspects of religious observance are considered. In addition, there are indications that it is the asocial or uncaring characteristics of high psychoticism scorers rather than their proneness to psychosis that is associated with their low level of religiosity.

Further progress in understanding the relationship between psychoticism and religiosity will involve focusing on the mediating processes (e.g. positive and negative mood states) that may underlie it. Progress will also require much more consideration of the situational, environmental, and educational factors which combine with personality to determine people’s religious attitudes and behav- iour. The robustness of the association between psychoticism and religiosity indicates that it would be worth pursuing these lines of research.

Acknowledgement

The assistance of Dr Kate Loewenthal in identifying key issues and references is gratefully acknowledged.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

18 Michael W. Eysenck

REFERENCES

BORKENAU, P. & OSTENDORF, F. (1992). Social desirability scales as moderator and suppressor

BROWN, L. (1987). The Psychology of Religious Belief. London: Academic Press. CARTER, M., KAY, W.K. & FRANCIS, L.J. (1996). Personality and attitude toward Christianity

among committed adult Christians, Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 265-266. EYSENCK, H.J. (1954). The Psychology of Politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. EYSENCK, H.J. (1975). Structure of social attitudes, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,

EYSENCK, H.J. (1976). Structure of social attitudes, Psychological Reports, 39, 463466. EYSENCK, H.J. (1978). Superfactors P, E, and N in a comprehensive factor space. Multivariate

Behavioral Research, 13, 475482. EYSENCK, H.J. & EYSENCK, M.W. (1985). Personality and Individual differences. New York

Plenum. EYSENCK, H.J. & EYSENCK, S.B.G. (1991). Manual of the Eysenck Personality Scales. London:

Hodder & Stoughton. FRANCIS, L.J. (1992). Neuroticism and intensity of religious attitudes among clergy in England,

Journal of Social Psychology, 125, 577-580. FRANCIS, L.J. (1993). Personality and religion among college students in the UK. Personality and

Individual Differences, 14, 6 19-622. FRANCIS, L.J. & KATz, Y.J. (1992). The relationship between personality and religiosity in an

Israeli sample, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31, 153-162. FRANCIS, L.J. & KAY, W.K. (1995). The personality characteristics of Pentecostal ministry

candidates, Personality and Individual Differences, 18, 581-594. FRANCIS, L.J. & WILCOX, C. (1996). Prayer, church attendance, and personality revisited: a study

among 16- to 19-yr-old girls, Psychological Reports, 79, 1265-1266. GILLINGS, V. & JOSEPH, S . (1996). Religiosity and social desirability: impression management and

self-deceptive positivity, Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 1047-1050. GOLDBERG, L.R. (1990). An alternative “Description of personality”: The Big-Five factor struc-

ture, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 12 16-1 229. ISEN, A.M. (1 970). Success, failure, attention, and reactions to others: the warm glow of success,

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 15, 294-301. JONES, E.E. & SIGALL, H. (1971). The bogus pipeline: A new paradigm for measuring affect and

attitude, Psychological Bulletin, 76, 349-364. LEWIS, C.A. & MALTBY, J. (1995). Religiosity and personality among US adults. Personality and

Individual Differences, 18, 293-295. LEWIS, C.A. & MALTBY, J. (1996). Personality, prayer, and church attendance in a sample of male

college students in the USA, Psychological Reports, 78, 976-978. MALTBY, J., TALLEY, M., COOPER, C. & LESLIE, J.C. (1995). Personality effects in personal and

public orientations toward religion, Personality and Individual DiTerences, 19, 157-1 63. MCCRAE, R.R. & COSTA, P.T. (1985). Updating Norman’s “adequate taxonomy”: Intelligence

and personality dimensions in natural language and in questionnaires, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 7 10-72 1.

variables, European Journal of Personality, 6, 199-214.

14, 323-333.

MISCHEL, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment. New York Wiley. SARASON, I.G., SMITH, R.E. & DIENER, E. (1975). Personality research: Components of variance

attributable to the person and the situation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32,

SMITH, D.L. (1996). Private prayer, public worship and personality among 11-15-year-old

WHITE, J., JOSEPH, S . & NEIL, A. (1995). Religiosity, psychoticism, and schizotypal traits, Person-

199-204

adolescents, Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 1063-1 065.

ality and Individual Differences, 19, 847-85 1.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Personality and the Psychology of Religion 19

WILDE, A. & JOSEPH, S. (1997). Religiosity and personality in a Moslem context, Personality and

ZUCKERMAN, M. (1989). Personality in the third dimension: a psychobiological approach, Person- Individual Diflerences, 23, 899-900.

ality and Individual Dzfferences, 10, 39 1-4 19.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Flor

ida]

at 0

7:48

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14