Some people don’t believe in any beings or forces that are beyond the laws of nature. They reject the ideas of a God or gods, of souls or spirits, of miracles or magic powers. But other people are utterly certain of their beliefs in supernatural forces, and these beliefs may pervade almost every aspect of their lives.
The topic of this chapter is religiosity. We’ll consider the role of personality in explaining which people will be religious and how they will express their religiosity. We’ll also examine how religions encourage the expression of certain personality characteristics.
But we should begin by explaining why religiosity is not itself a personality characteristic. First of all, a person’s religiosity depends ultimately on his or her beliefs about the supernatural or spiritual world; by contrast, a person’s level of a personality disposition doesn’t depend on any particular set of beliefs. Also, religiosity often involves following a way of life that is meant to achieve harmony with some higher power—typically God, or the universe itself. A religious way of life involves a wide range of behaviours that wouldn’t otherwise go together—for example, a given religion may prescribe various rules about what to eat or when to work or whom to marry.1 By contrast, the behaviours associated with a given personality disposition usually share some obvious similarities; for example, the X factor of personality involves behaviours such as leading, entertaining, and socializing with others.
So, who believes in the supernatural, and who doesn’t? In modern countries, personality characteristics give us only vague hints as to which people will be believers. There is a weak tendency for people who are nicer or more soft-hearted to be more likely to believe in some supernatural forces. In a study we conducted with our graduate student Babatunde Ogunfowora, we found that belief in the supernatural was modestly associated with higher levels of the H, A, and E factors.2 One potential reason for these associations is that nicer, more soft-hearted people like to believe there is something more to life than mere physical existence. For example, they like the idea that people have souls that will survive their bodies, and they like the idea that people who are separated by death will meet in an afterlife. By contrast, people who are lower in H, A, and E—people who are not quite so nice, or a bit less soft-hearted—may lack this motivation to believe in an afterlife and may even take some satisfaction from rejecting those comforting beliefs. Still, the relations between personality and supernatural beliefs are rather weak. (In case you’d like some numbers, the correlations of H and A and E with belief in the supernatural are only in the .20s.) This means that many people don’t fit the trend: you can find a lot of very nice, soft-hearted people who reject any belief in the supernatural, and a lot of not-so-nice, hard-hearted people who accept such beliefs quite decidedly.
The link between soft-heartedness and supernatural beliefs comes from our own data, but other researchers have found similar results. In a review of over 60 previous studies, Vassilis Saroglou found that, on average, religious people are slightly more soft-hearted than non-religious people.3
Now, given that personality and religiosity are related, you might wonder which one influences the other. Do personality traits influence religiosity, or do religious beliefs influence personality? So far, the evidence is very limited, but it mostly favours the former direction of influence. When researchers have followed people over many years, they’ve found that personality traits early in life predict religiosity later in life, more than the other way around.4
One other hint that personality influences religious beliefs comes from the pattern of sex differences in these variables. On average, women are somewhat more soft-hearted than men and slightly more likely to believe in the supernatural. If we control for the sex difference in soft-heartedness, the sex difference in supernatural beliefs is reduced by about half. But if we instead control for the sex difference in supernatural beliefs, the sex difference in soft-heartedness is diminished only slightly. This pattern of results suggests that women are somewhat more strongly attracted to supernatural beliefs by virtue of being somewhat more soft-hearted than men.5
The idea that religious people tend to be soft-hearted is partly consistent—but only partly—with some claims from a 2006 book by the social scientist Arthur Brooks.6 He noted the results of a survey that indicated that religious Americans (i.e., those who go to their house of worship nearly every week) donated three-and-a-half times more money to charities than did non-religious Americans ($2,210 versus $642). He also stated that the greater generosity of religious Americans persists even when one considers only those donations that were made to non-religious charities. Technically, this statement is true, but the gap between religious and non-religious Americans in secular giving, as reported by Brooks, is quite small: religious Americans donated only about 10% more than did non-religious Americans to secular charities ($532 to $467). So, religious Americans give more—but only slightly more—money to secular charities than do non-religious Americans. This small difference is about what you’d expect given the modest link between religiosity and soft-heartedness.7
Relatively few people reject all supernatural beliefs. Even in countries where most people don’t belong to an organized religion, most people still believe in some supernatural beings or forces. But if personality is only modestly related to belief in the supernatural, what is it that determines which people will be hard-core skeptics, rejecting all supernatural beliefs? One candidate is exposure to science. The very mission of science is to explain our surroundings—including the origins of humans, of life, of the Earth, and of the universe—in terms of laws that solely involve natural causes. So as you might expect, scientists are much more likely than other people to reject supernatural beliefs. In one study, 41% of US scientists indicated that they did not believe in God or any other higher power, as opposed to only 4% of the US general public.8 A similar study found that the proportion of disbelievers was 45% for scientists in general and a remarkably high 72% for members of the National Academy of Sciences, whose members are highly accomplished scientists.9 Of course, this still leaves many scientists—even many distinguished scientists—who do believe in the supernatural, including some who are devoutly religious. But the proportion of scientists who are skeptics is clearly very high.
The above findings leave open the question of whether it’s really the study of science that makes scientists reject belief in the supernatural. It might be instead that scientists are simply the kind of people who would have rejected supernatural beliefs even without any study of science. But the personality characteristics of scientists can’t explain their lack of religiosity. As we noted above, personality characteristics are at most only a small part of the story, and in any case scientists aren’t so much different in personality from people in general. (The data from Goldberg’s sample of Oregon community residents indicate that people with greater interest in scientific careers tend to be somewhat high in the O factor, and slightly low in the “soft-heartedness” factors of H, A, and E. But the differences are small.)
But if the skepticism shown by scientists isn’t due to their personalities, you might wonder whether it’s their intelligence that’s responsible: after all, scientists tend to be smart people. But there’s only a modest link between having a high IQ and rejecting the supernatural. One recent large-scale study of US teenagers found that the average IQ among atheists was about 5 points higher than that of the population in general. This means that although atheists are somewhat smarter on average than non-atheists, the difference is not large; for example, more than one-third of non-atheists would have a higher IQ than the average atheist. (In the same study, by the way, agnostics averaged about 3 IQ points higher than the general population. Jews and Anglicans or Episcopalians had average IQs 1 or 2 points higher than those of the atheists, and the average IQ among Catholics was about equal to that of the general population. The more “liberal” Protestant denominations were slightly above average, and the more “dogmatic” Protestant denominations somewhat below average.)10
Taken together, all of the above findings suggest that scientists’ individual characteristics—their levels of IQ and the major personality factors—aren’t the main reasons for their lack of supernatural beliefs. Instead, their skepticism about the supernatural is probably due mostly to their intensive study of science and their commitment to the scientific method.
Now let’s move on to our second question about religion and personality. Among people who do believe in the supernatural, how does personality relate to the style or form of their beliefs—to the way they express their religiosity or spirituality? Here it’s the O factor that plays the most important role.
The O factor doesn’t tell us much about whether or not a person will believe in the supernatural. People who deny the existence of any and all supernatural forces or beings—people who don’t believe in God or souls or spirits or magic or anything outside the natural world—are about equally likely to be high or low in O. What the O factor can tell us, however, is what kind of supernatural beliefs people are likely to hold.
On the one hand, low-O people who believe in the supernatural tend to have traditional religious beliefs. Low-O persons prefer strict adherence to the beliefs and practices of the mainstream religious community. For example, in societies having a Christian religious tradition, low-O persons (or at least those low-O persons raised in religious households) are inclined to accept the literal truth of the Bible—to believe in the creation story as given in Genesis, in the existence of God and Satan and heaven and hell, and in the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As you might expect, these low-O believers are very socially conservative.
On the other hand, high-O people who believe in the supernatural tend to have what we call mystically spiritual beliefs. For example, in Western societies, high-O persons are inclined to adopt a variety of magical, occult, or paranormal beliefs, including beliefs in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extrasensory perception, and psychokinesis. They’re also inclined to adopt teachings from Eastern religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism or from the spiritual traditions of Native American peoples. In general, high-O persons are attracted to new religious movements that emphasize spiritual searching by the individual. These high-O believers, unlike the traditionally religious low-O believers, are inclined to be slightly liberal on social issues.
The O factor thus has moderately strong—and opposite—links with these two forms of supernatural beliefs. In one large-scale study, Gerard Saucier and Katarzyna Skrzypińska found that O correlated about –.25 with traditional religiosity and about .40 with mystical spirituality.11 So even though O can’t tell us whether a person will accept or reject the existence of supernatural beings or forces, it can give us some clues as to which kinds of supernatural beliefs he or she would be more inclined to hold.12
The links between O and religious or spiritual beliefs give an interesting insight about the history of religious movements. People who start a new religion or who become its enthusiastic early converts are likely to be high in O. People who maintain an established religion or who become its most devout defenders are likely to be low in O.
We’ve explained how it’s the O factor of personality that plays the biggest role in explaining the style or form of people’s beliefs in the supernatural—whether people will be religious traditionalists or spiritual mystics. But the H factor also plays a part in the domain of religion. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, high-H people are slightly more likely than low-H people to be religious. And as we mentioned earlier in this chapter, a likely reason for this link (and for the similar links of the A and E factors with religiosity) is that soft-hearted, sympathetic people tend to favour the ideas that people have souls that will survive their bodies and that people who are separated by death will meet in an afterlife.
But besides having a modest link with religious and spiritual beliefs, the H factor is involved in the reasons people have for expressing those beliefs. Consider two people who both belong to the same church or other religious group. Both of them attend religious services regularly, both of them donate money to their religious group and its causes, and both of them observe the rituals of their religion. But the two have utterly different reasons for their outward adherence to the rules of their religious community. For one of those people, these visible signs of religious commitment are genuine expressions of his or her deepest beliefs. For the other person, the same behaviours are merely for public consumption, intended simply to project an image of respectability and to make contacts with people of high status in that community. This person might believe in the tenets of his or her religion, but this belief isn’t what motivates his or her public religiosity.
Now, most people who belong to a religious community won’t be such clear-cut cases as our two examples above; instead, most will have some mixture of these two reasons for their public displays of religiosity. But some people are clearly more sincere than others in their religious observances. And as you would guess, it’s high-H people whose expressions of religious devotion are more genuine, and low-H people whose expressions are more cynical. That said, you can think of some circumstances in which it wouldn’t work this way. Imagine a highly religious and highly conformist society that essentially ostracizes people who don’t go through the motions of religious observance. In such a society, even high-H non-believers might reluctantly decide that they have no choice but to pretend to be religious.
The link between the H factor and the motivation for religious observance applies to religious leaders as well as to followers. Most people who enter the clergy are genuinely religious, and people who indicate a strong interest in religious vocations are, on average, rather high in H.13 Nevertheless, there are reasons why at least some low-H people are attracted to the career of religious leader. A religious vocation could provide a path for achieving some position of high status. For example, within a large denomination, one could hope to navigate one’s way into the top positions of the hierarchy of religious authorities. And even within small, local religious communities, there is the prospect of wielding considerable influence over one’s congregation. In the cases of very low-H people, there is also the potential for financial or sexual exploitation of one’s followers. Such cases are well known among established religions but are perhaps especially prevalent among new religious cults. And of course, low-H people with sufficient charisma and organizational skills can aspire to become the next great televangelist, soliciting donations from a vast population of unquestioning followers.
The H factor influences the expression of religiosity; conversely, religious teachings can be designed to influence the expression of the H factor. Most religions encourage the ideal of behaving as a high-H person—being honest and humble in dealings with others. Virtually every major religious tradition has its counterpart of the Golden Rule, often paraphrased from the King James Bible as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But the crucial difference among religions is in how widely this ideal is to be applied: Is everyone to be treated fairly, or only the other members of one’s own group?
Some religious teachings encourage believers to act as high-H persons toward co-religionists but as low-H persons toward outsiders. Consider the Old Testament: in the Book of Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments instruct believers not to commit murder or theft or adultery or perjury. Later chapters of Deuteronomy, however, instruct believers to commit genocide against various other religious groups. For example, “when the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations … then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:1–2, NIV). Likewise, “do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them … as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deuteronomy 20:16, NIV).14 (We should mention, by the way, that religions have no monopoly on genocide: most of the state-sponsored mass murders of the 20th century were inspired by non-religious ideologies.)
In some religious traditions, by contrast, the imperative to treat others fairly is truly universal, with no distinction drawn between co-religionists and outsiders. Consider the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers. This sect separated from the Church of England during the 17th century and subsequently spread to other areas of the world. Among the defining features of the Quaker movement are its testimonies, which provide principles for how to live. For example, the Testimony of Simplicity urges believers to avoid ostentation and materialism, and hence encourages high-H behaviours. Note that these Quaker testimonies are meant to govern one’s interactions with Quakers and non-Quakers alike. The Testimony of Integrity emphasizes telling the truth (and avoiding even indirect deceptions) as well as fair dealing: early Quakers gained reputations as honest businessmen through their practices of paying decent wages to their (non-Quaker) workers and setting fixed prices when selling goods to their (also non-Quaker) customers. The Testimony of Peace encourages pacifism and hence forbids aggression against outgroups. Among the early settlers of North America, the Quakers were known for their peaceful relations—and their scrupulous adherence to treaties—with Native Americans. The Testimony of Equality holds that all persons have equal rights and hence forbids exploitation of outgroups. As early as the 18th century, the Quakers declared their opposition to the slave trade and to slavery itself, and contemporary Quakers continue to advocate for human rights.
Why do some religions encourage high-H behaviours only within the group, whereas others encourage high-H behaviours toward everyone? It may depend in part on whether the religion is suited for high-O people or low-O people. The more dogmatic or fundamentalist movements—low in O—require obedience and conformity; they draw strong distinctions between “us” and “them,” with especially strong moral obligations toward the former but few if any toward the latter. By contrast, the more liberal or progressive movements—high in O—aren’t much concerned with obedience and conformity; they draw weaker distinctions between us and them, with moral obligations extended toward all.
As we’ve seen in this chapter, the H factor is implicated in several aspects of people’s religious beliefs. In the next chapter, we’ll consider three domains in which H is even more strongly involved: money, power, and sex.