Religiosity and personality

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Religiosity and personality

• Connections between religiosity, personality type
  and coping

Ladislav Koubek, Vladimír Smékal International
Conference on Spirituality, 2007
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THEORETICAL BASE

• Typology of personality C.G. Jung
• Well-tried way of observing personality
• Jung as representant of spiritually-oriented
  psychology
• Application of Jungian Typology in the scope of
  spiritual growth groups and in the context of
  Christian churches
• Dimensions of personality types Introversion
  -Extroversion, Thinking - Feeling, Sensing
  Intuition, Judging - Perceiving

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THEORETICAL BASE

• Allports distinction of intrinsic and extrinsic
  religiosity
• One of leading conceptions of spirituality
  dimensions
• Its starting point are the resources of
  religious experience
• Unidimensional or two-dimensional conception?

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THEORETICAL BASE

• Sense of Coherence by A. Antonovsky
• Characteristic of basic life sentiment
• Orientation on salutogenesis, not on pathogenesis
• Ability of coping
• Dimensions comprehensibility, meaningfulness,
  manageability

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THEORETICAL BASE

• Religiosity in the nature of Quest
• Openness to new religious experience
• Dialogue with existential questions
• Positive attitude to religious doubt

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PREVIOUS RESEARCH

• Eysencks typology
• Negative connection of religiosity with
  pychoticism, none connection to extrversion and
  neuroticism(Fearn, Lewis et al., 2003)
• Big Five
• Positive connection between religiosity and
  Conscientiousness, negative with Neuroticism and
  with Openness to experience (Mc Rae, 1996,
  Barett, 2003)

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PREVIOUS RESEARCH

• Jungian typology
• More positive attitudes towards Christianity by
  Feeling-oriented people (Francis et al., 2003)
• Bigger distinction between sacred and prophane by
  sensing-oriented people
• Different resources of religious experience by
  introverts and extroverts
• Openness to religious changes by intuitive
  personality type
• Superiority of judging by believers (Ross, 1996)

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Religiosity and Health

• Metastudy of A. E. Bergin 23 of researches
  show negative connection between religiosity and
  mental health, 47 positive and 30 show no
  connection
• Intrinsic religiosity is connected to lower
  anxiety and lower guilt
• Extrinsic religiosity opposite tendencies ( J.
  W. Jones)
• Gartner, Larson a Allen (1991) state positive
  correlation between religiosity and health, when
  health is measured by means of hard data (i.e.
  length of life, occurrence of heart attacks,
  blood pressure) when mental health is measured
  by means of questionnaires, no connection is find
  out
• A lot of intervening variables (e.g. Different
  role of religion in society)

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OBJECTIVES OF OUR RESEARCH

• Validation and specification of the idea of
  extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity
• Connections between religiosity and personality
  type
• Religiosity and Coping (Sense of coherence)
• Connection between religious praxis and
  personality types

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RESEARCH SAMPLE

• 523 students of Masaryk university and other
  colleges in Brno (age 18-30) (188 - M, 334 F)
• Declared religiosity
• Believers 282 (54)
• Non-believers 241 (46)
• Confessional structure of the sample
• Without confession 319 (61,0)
• Catholics 189 (36,1)
• Other churches 15 (2,9)

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USED METHODS

• Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) Czech short
  version (32 items)
• Swedish Religious Orientation Scale (SROS)
• Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (SOC)
• Religious Maturity Scale (RMATS)
• Questionnaire of Religious Praxis (for believers)

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RESULTS

• Extrinsic religiosity in SROS
• Low inner consistence of the scale
• Factor analysis two strong independent factors
• Factor 1 irrelevance of religion
• Even if my religious faith is important for me,
  I can feel that there are many more important
  tings in life.
• Factor 2 religion as instrument
• It is good, that the church exists, because
  everybody can fall into situation, in which he
  would need comfort and mental support.

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RESULTS

• Religiosity and personality type
• Statistically significant differences between
  believers and non-believers believers
  significantly higher score of feeling, lower of
  thinking and extroversion
• Very low positive correlation between intrinsic
  religiosity and introversion, Very low positive
  correlation between intrinsic religiosity and
  judging
• Comparison of extreme groups with low and high
  score of Intrinsic religiosity statistically
  significant difference in the dimension
  judging-perceiving (both by men and women)
• Religious praxis of believers is determined by
  their personality type

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RESULTS
Faith and SOC
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RESULTS

• Religiosity and Sense of Coherence
• No difference between believers and non believers
  (or between group with high, resp. low score of
  intrensic religiosity) in SOC
• Different structure of SOC
• Higher score of meaningfulness by believers
• No difference in manageability
• Lower score of comprehensibility by believers

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DISCUSSION

• Capacity of the concept of intrinsic religiosity
• Religiosity as uni-dimensional category
• Low relationship between religiosity and
  personality type (judging-perceiving)
• Hints for religious life of people with different
  personality type
• Different mechanisms of coping (religious vs.
  non-religious people)

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• Thank you for your attention