Fundamentalists vs. flexible questers: Who is prosocial and happy? Comparing personalities across religions and countries
(2017) 29th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science — Location: Boston, MA, USA (25.May.2017)
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- Are fundamentalists antisocial and neurotic, as generally believed? Are people with high flexibility in their worldviews prosocial and happy? Does religious tradition make a difference? In this work, we extended previous research on culture, personality, and religion (Saroglou, in press, for review) and on well-being-related characteristics of conservatives vs. liberals (Stavrova & Luhmann, 2016). We investigated, across 14 countries from Western and South Europe, North and Central America, Turkey, Israel, and Taiwan, the personality characteristics of people as a function of their scores on religious fundamentalism as well as their readiness to question their worldviews (total N = 2,912). To do so, we used the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling et al., 2003), the short version of the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), and the Existential Quest scale (Van Pachterbeke et al., 2012). (These data are part of a larger data set). We computed associations by the dominant religion of the respective countries, i.e. Protestant, Catholic, mixed, Orthodox, Jew, Muslim, and Eastern religions. In each country, we retained participants who either identified with the dominant religious tradition or were non-believers. In line with previous research, the associations were modest. However, overall, the findings question public perceptions of the personality of fundamentalists vs. those flexible in their worldviews. Moreover, interesting similarities as well as differences were found across countries of different religious traditions. First, the associations of existential quest with personality were consistent across all religions/groups of countries (with one exception, Greece). Existential questers tended to be low in conscientiousness—but not necessarily high in openness to experience. Interestingly, and somehow surprisingly, they also tended to be low in agreeableness, as well as slightly high in neuroticism and low in extraversion. Second, and to some extent on the contrary, religious fundamentalism reflected high agreeableness, and this consistently across religions/groups of countries. Interesting and meaningful religious differences were observed on the other personality traits. Religious fundamentalism was positively associated with conscientiousness across religions, but not among Easterners—what extends previous research on the low relevance of self-control in psychologically understanding Eastern religiosity. It was slightly associated with low Openness, across religions/groups of countries, except Israel—what is open to multiple interpretations. Finally, no links were observed between fundamentalism and neuroticism and extraversion, with a notable exception of the Protestant and the mixed (Protestant plus Catholic) countries, where fundamentalism reflected positive emotionality, i.e. high extraversion and low neuroticism. Overall, at least based on self-reports, the present findings solidify the idea that prosocial personality dispositions characterize fundamentalists rather than existential questers—possibly because of the underlying religiosity. Existential questers rather than fundamentalists seem to somehow be marked by negative emotionality, what possibly indicates a more global “swimming against the stream” tendency---but Protestant fundamentalism may be a cultural exception. Finally, Eastern “hard” religiosity contrasts with Western monotheisms in that it may not function to primarily solidify need for order and related personality tendencies.
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Saroglou, V., & et al. (2017). Fundamentalists vs. flexible questers: Who is prosocial and happy? Comparing personalities across religions and countries. 29th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston, MA, USA. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/110133