Religiousness and the HEXACO personality factors and facets in a large online sample

To examine the associations of religiousness with personality characteristics.

We obtained self-ratings of religiousness along with self-reports on the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised in a sample of nearly 200,000 online respondents. Respondents also indicated their religious affiliation, religiousness of upbringing, and political orientation; a subset of the respondents also indicated attitudes about immigration and foreign aid.

Religiousness showed weak associations (|r|s < 0.15) with several HEXACO factors but somewhat stronger associations with the Fairness and Altruism facets (both rs > 0.20). On those facets, participants with the highest religiousness self-rating (7 on a 1-to-7 scale) averaged about 1 SD higher than did participants with the lowest religiousness self-rating. In addition, religiousness was negatively related to the Unconventionality facet among persons whose upbringing was very religious, but not among persons whose upbringing was very nonreligious. Religiousness/personality associations were generally quite similar within different religious affiliations (Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and several branches of Christianity) but were stronger within relatively religious countries than within nonreligious countries. Despite the positive association of religiousness with the Altruism facet, religiousness was uncorrelated with pro-out-group attitudes (i.e., favoring multicultural immigration and foreign aid).

The findings advance our understanding of religiousness/personality associations.