Understanding Varieties of Religious Types: A Latent Profile Analysis of U.S. National Data

Religion and spirituality are multidimensional features of adult life, yet most research examines individual dimensions in isolation rather than as components of a greater whole. This study uses a person-centered approach to identify distinct profiles of religion and spirituality and to examine how these profiles differ across sociodemographic and psychological characteristics in a national sample of U.S. adults.

Data come from the Refresher sample of the Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS) study. Latent profile analysis was used to identify patterns of religion and spirituality across six dimensions: religious service attendance, private religious practice, religious identification, subjective spirituality, daily spiritual experience, and religious coping. Sociodemographic characteristics, personality traits, and optimism were then compared across profiles.

A six-profile solution provided the best fit, identifying groups labeled Highly Religious, Spiritually-Oriented Religious, Organizationally Religious, Moderately Engaged, Disengaged Identifiers, and Nonreligious. Profiles differed meaningfully across sociodemographic characteristics including age, race/ethnicity, gender, and education, as well as across personality traits and optimism.

These findings underscore the substantial heterogeneity in how religion and spirituality are lived and expressed. By identifying distinct constellations of religion and spirituality within individuals, this approach moves beyond variable-centered analyses and provides a more holistic framework for understanding religion and spirituality as lived configurations connected to broader psychological and social processes.