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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
Transactional Effects Between Personality and Religiosity
Madeline R. Lenhausen1, Ted Schwaba2, Jochen E. Gebauer3,4,
Theresa M. Entringer5, & Wiebke Bleidorn6
1University of California, Davis
2University of Texas at Austin
3University of Mannheim
4University of Copenhagen
5Socio-Economic Panel, German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin
6University of Zurich
© 2023, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may
not exactly replicate the final, authoritative version of the article. Please do not copy or cite
without authors' permission. The final article will be available, upon publication, via its
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000466
E-mail: lenhausen14@gmail.com
Please cite this article in press as:
Lenhausen, M. R., Schwaba, T., Gebauer, J.E., Entringer, T.M., & Bleidorn, W., (2023).
Transactional effects between personality and religiosity. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology.
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Abstract
Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede
changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality
and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict
subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity. However, no research to date has
examined whether within-person changes in personality lead to subsequent changes in
religiosity. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), we investigated
between- and within-person associations between the Big Five personality traits and three
aspects of religiosity – belief in God, service attendance, and prayer – in a sample of over 12,000
Dutch individuals across 11 annual assessments. We found between-person associations between
all Big Five traits and religiosity, yet within-person associations only between agreeableness as
well as extraversion and belief in God. Specifically, individuals who increased in agreeableness
or extraversion reported subsequent increases in their belief in God and, in addition, individuals
who increased in their belief in God showed subsequent increases in agreeableness. We further
identified significant moderating effects of gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation.
Overall, the present findings suggest that the associations between personality traits and
religiosity primarily occur at the between-person level. However, the evidence for intraindividual
associations between agreeableness, extraversion, and religious belief highlights the importance
of distinguishing between-person from within-person effects to broaden the understanding of the
temporal dynamics between variables.
Keywords: Big Five Personality, Religiosity, Longitudinal, Cross-Lagged Effects, Within-
Person Associations.
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The link between personality traits and religiosity, an individual’s degree of sacred
connectedness to some transcendent reality or being (Hill & Wood, 1999), has been the content
of ongoing theoretical debates (Allport, 1950; Saroglou, 2010; Schnitker et al., 2020) and
research endeavors (Gebauer et al., 2014; Kandler & Riemann, 2013; Stronge et al., 2021).
Cross-sectional associations between personality traits – especially agreeableness and
conscientiousness – and religiosity have been well established, often marked by small-to-
moderate positive associations (Ashton & Lee, 2021; Entringer et al., 2021; Saroglou, 2010).
Less attention has been given to the longitudinal associations between personality traits and
religiosity over time. Moreover, most existing studies – longitudinal and cross-sectional – have
focused on the association between personality and religiosity at the between-person level
(Entringer et al., 2022; Huuskes et al., 2013; Wink et al., 2007). These studies have contributed
to our understanding of the ways in which religious and non-religious people differ in their
personality traits. However, little is known about the association between personality and
religiosity at the within-person level, leaving it unknown whether people who undergo
personality change also experience change in their religious involvement, and vice versa.
The purpose of the current study was to address this question. To this end, we examined
the reciprocal within-person effects between the Big Five personality traits (emotional stability,
extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; John et al., 2008) and religiosity
(belief in God, service attendance, and prayer; Saroglou, 2010) across 11 annual assessments in a
nationally representative sample of over 12,000 Dutch adults. Consistent with previous research
on personality and religiosity, we further examined if the longitudinal associations between
personality and religiosity were moderated by age, gender, or religious upbringing (Bengtson et
al., 2015; Bleidorn et al., in press; Costa et al., 2001; McCullough et al., 2003; Stark, 2002).
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Cross-Sectional Links Between Personality and Religiosity
Theory and existing research suggested links between personality and religiosity because
most religious practices and communities afford people to express and embrace certain
personality traits (Allport, 1950; see also, Eck & Gebauer, 2021; Gebauer et al., 2014). Of the
Big Five traits, agreeableness and conscientiousness have been theorized to have the strongest
and most consistent associations with religiosity (Saroglou, 2010). Agreeable people may be
particularly drawn to religious ideas and institutions because all major religions praise prosocial
behavior and frown upon antisocial behavior (e.g., the 10 Commandments and Parable of the
Good Samaritan in Christianity; Zakat (tithing) in Islam; Dharma in Hinduism, The Eightfold
Path in Buddhism) and devoting oneself to religion may, in turn, also act to increase
agreeableness. Conscientious people may be drawn to religion because many religions encourage
self-discipline and self-control within their followers which may also serve to increase
conscientiousness (Koole et al., 2010; McCullough & Willoughby, 2009). Moreover,
conscientious people may find it easier to adhere to religious norms and practices, whereas
people who are low in conscientiousness may find it difficult to abide by a religious routine
(Maslow, 1964; McCullough et al., 2005).
Existing evidence supports these theoretical predictions, reporting that agreeableness and
conscientiousness are positively correlated with different indicators of religiosity including
religious interest, religious orientation, belief in God, participation in religious rituals and
services, Bible reading, and support for religious instruction (Aghababaei, 2014; Cerasa et al.,
2016; Kosek, 1999; Löckenhoff et al., 2009; Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007; McCullough et al.,
2003; McCullough & Willoughby, 2009; Saroglou, 2010). These links were particularly strong
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in religious communities and societies compared to more secular ones (Ashton & Lee, 2019;
Gebauer et al., 2014).
Evidence for links between religiosity with openness, extraversion, and emotional
stability, on the other hand, is more mixed (Saroglou, 2002). First, the link between openness and
religiosity appears to depend most strongly on people’s cultural background, such that people
who are high in openness tend to be more attracted to religious ideas and communities in secular
but not in religious societies (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Gebauer et al., 2014; Ludeke & Carey, 2015),
potentially because they tend to embrace novelty and uniqueness and, thus, oppose sociocultural
norms (Eck & Gebauer, 2021; Entringer et al., 2021). Second, the link between extraversion and
religiosity appears to also depend on the measure of religiosity, with stronger links between
measures that emphasize the social aspects of the religious experience, such as service
attendance or religious belongingness (Ashton et al., 2021; Löckenhoff et al., 2009). Third, there
generally have been mixed results for the links between emotional stability and religiosity
(Aguilar-Vafaie & Moghanloo, 2009; Saroglou, 2002; Saroglou & Muñoz-garcía, 2008; Taylor
& MacDonald, 1999).
Overall, there is cross-sectional evidence that the Big Five personality traits – particularly
agreeableness and conscientiousness – are associated with religiosity. However, cross-sectional
evidence provides no information about the temporal dynamics between personality and
religiosity, leaving it open whether changes in these traits would lead to changes in religiosity
and vice versa.
Longitudinal Associations between Personality and Religiosity
Both, personality traits and religiosity have been found to change across the lifespan
(Bengtson et al., 2015; Bleidorn et al., 2022, in press; McCullough et al., 2005), in response to
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major life events (Bleidorn et al., 2018; Paloutzian et al., 1999; Streib et al., 2009; Trevino et al.,
2019; Ter Kuile & Ehring, 2014), situational changes (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Chan et al., 2015;
Hood et al., 2009; Saroglou, 2010), and even purposeful interventions (Stieger et al., 2021;
Schnitker et al., 2014). Changes in both personality and religiosity may unfold slowly over years
and decades (e.g., Damian et al.,2019; Hayward & Krause, 2013), but may also occur more
rapidly over months (Hudson & Fraley, 2015; Stoppa & Lefkowitz, 2010) or weeks (Piedmont,
2001; Balkaya-Ince et al., 2020).
The large body of evidence for temporal variation in personality trajectories as well as in
religiosity trajectories raises questions about the ways in which personality and religiosity
transact over time. Just as people’s personality may predispose them to be drawn toward religion,
ascribing to a religious lifestyle may foster the development of certain personality traits toward
patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that align more with religious themes (Entringer et
al., 2022; Schnitker et al., 2021; Stronge et al., 2021). These links may be transactional; that is,
changes in certain personality traits may evoke intraindividual changes in religiosity, which may,
in turn, evoke subsequent changes in personality traits, thereby creating a “runaway process.”
For example, a person who is high in agreeableness may initially gravitate toward religion to
self-select into a social context that appreciates their prosocial inclinations (cf. Allport, 1950;
Bakan, 1966) and because many people in their community participate in religious practices
(Entringer et al., 2021; Gebauer et al., 2014). In turn, investing in religious activities and
institutions may further reinforce and increase that person’s agreeableness (relative to their stable
level of agreeableness), which may, then, motivate them to participate even more in religious
activities (Entringer et al., 2022).
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Previous longitudinal research provided some evidence for longitudinal links between
personality traits and religiosity (e.g., Entringer et al., 2022; Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2007;
McCullough et al., 2003). However, the majority of these studies examined whether personality
traits predict subsequent changes in religiosity, and all existing studies focused on the links
between personality and religion at the between-person level. Consistent with cross-sectional
research, these studies found that baseline levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and/or
openness predicted individual differences in changes in religiosity when controlling for prior
levels of religiosity. Specifically, higher levels of these traits in adolescence or early adulthood
relative to other people predicted greater relative increases in religiosity over time (Gebauer et
al., 2014; McCullough et al., 2005; Streib et al., 2021). Although these studies indicated that
personality traits predict changes in religiosity, design restrictions limited their conclusions about
change in religiosity and precluded an examination of reciprocal effects between personality and
religiosity.
The few existing studies that focused on the reciprocal links between personality traits
and religiosity over time (Entringer et al., 2022; Huuskes et al., 2013; Wink et al., 2007) relied
on cross-lagged panel models (CLPM; Rogosa, 1980) to assess whether between-person
differences in one measure predict subsequent change at the between-person level in another
(Krauss et al., 2020). For example, Wink et al. (2007) examined the reciprocal effects between
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness with religiosity (a single composite score
calculated from the average level of belief in God, belief in afterlife, prayer, and service
attendance) in a 2-wave study across a period of nearly 60 years (N = 209). They found that
higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness in adolescence predicted higher levels of
religiosity in older adulthood (Mage = 69 years), controlling for adolescent levels of religiosity.
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The findings for the reverse effects were more mixed; higher levels of religiosity predicted
higher levels of agreeableness later in life for women but not for men. Huuskes et al. (2013)
examined the links between the Big Five and religiosity (a single composite score of religious
values calculated from participants adherence to being saved from sins and at peace with God,
being at one with God or the universe, and following religious faith conscientiously) in 410 high
school students across two annual assessments. They found that higher levels of religious values
relative to others predicted higher subsequent levels of agreeableness but no effects of
agreeableness on subsequent levels of religiosity nor any effects for conscientiousness. Finally,
Entringer et al. (2022) found evidence for reciprocal effects between the Big Five and religious
service attendance across 12 years in a 4-wave study of over 44,000 German adults. Higher
levels of agreeableness relative to others predicted higher subsequent levels of religiosity and
higher levels of religiosity relative to others predicted higher subsequent levels of agreeableness.
Moreover, they found that religiosity predicted decreases in openness, but only in religious
contexts. Similar to Huuskes et al. (2013), they found only limited evidence for prospective
effects between conscientiousness and religiosity.
In summary, existing findings have provided some evidence for positive longitudinal
associations between personality and religiosity, particularly for agreeableness and, to a lesser
degree, for conscientiousness and openness. These associations were, however, not always
consistent, and none of these studies examined whether the observed associations between
personality and religiosity held when modeled at the within-person level. A major critique of the
CLPM used in previous studies is that it confounds stable between-person variance with
intraindividual differences (Hamaker et al., 2015; Lucas, 2022). To examine the links between
personality and religiosity at the within-person level, multi-wave, short-interval longitudinal
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designs are needed that control for the stable trait variance in personality and religiosity whilst
modeling intraindividual associations between personality and religiosity.
Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM; Hamaker et al., 2015) allow
researchers to examine the transactional effects between personality and religiosity while
accounting for associations between stable individual differences in these constructs over time.
The RI-CLPM extends the CLPM by including random intercept factors into the model for each
variable of interest (e.g., agreeableness and religious service attendance), which are allowed to
correlate with one another. The random intercept is a latent trait factor estimated from the
observed variables that captures stable between-person variance in these variables across
assessment waves. Here, these random intercepts capture individual differences in people’s
stable levels of both personality and religiosity scores over time. The autoregressive and cross-
lagged paths are then modeled from the residuals of the observed variables, reflecting temporal
associations at the within-person level. That is, in the RI-CLPM, the cross-lags represent
prospective effects between people’s deviations from their average levels of personality and
religiosity.
Moderators of the Associations between Personality and Religiosity
The intraindividual links between personality and religiosity may differ across
individuals. To the degree that individual differences in within-person links are systematic, they
must be a function of moderator variables that shape the degree to which changes in personality
are linked to changes in religiosity, and vice versa. In the present study, we examined the
moderating effects of four demographic variables – age, gender, religious upbringing, and
religious affiliation – on the intraindividual links between the Big Five and religiosity.
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First, the links between the Big Five and religiosity may wax and wane across the
lifespan. Indeed, cross-sectional research found stronger positive associations between
agreeableness as well as extraversion and religiosity in middle adulthood, and stronger negative
associations between openness and religiosity in adolescence (Saroglou, 2010). It remains an
open question whether these effects hold at the within-person level. Here, we explore whether
the associations between the Big Five and religiosity differed across three age groups: young
(16-35 years), middle-aged (36-64 years), and older adults (65+ years).
Second, gender differences in average levels of personality traits and religiosity have
been well established (Schnabel, 2015; Weisberg et al., 2011). For example, compared to men,
women tend to report lower levels of emotional stability, higher levels of agreeableness, and
higher levels of religiosity (Costa et al., 2001; Stark, 2002). Yet, little is known about the role of
gender in the association between personality and religiosity (Lace et al., 2020). While some
research indicated stronger associations between personality and religiosity in women (Abdel-
Khalek, 2013; Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2007; Lace et al., 2020; Saroglou, 2002; Taylor &
MacDonald, 1999; Wink et al., 2007), other research found no gender differences in the links
between personality traits and religiosity (Huuskes, 2013; Saroglou, 2010), or reported stronger
such links in men (Egan et al., 2004; Lace et al., 2020; Maltby & Day, 2001; Taylor &
MacDonald, 1999). Given the inconsistent pattern of evidence, we refrained from specific
hypotheses but explored the effects of gender on the longitudinal links between personality traits
and religiosity.
Third, some research indicated that the association between personality traits and
religiosity may be stronger for people who grew up in religious households (McCullough et al.,
2003). This effect may reflect transactional processes, such that people who grew up in a
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religious environment may have been exposed to religious practice and encouraged to engage in
religious behaviors, which, in turn, influenced their degree to which they continue to engage in
religious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For people raised in more secular households,
questions and influences of religiosity may have been less pressing and impactful.
A similar argumentation can be applied to our fourth moderator – religious affiliation.
The majority of participants in the present sample (67.07%) are not affiliated with any church.
Even though affiliation with a religious institution is only moderately correlated with religious
beliefs and behavior (Van Tongeren et al., 2021), it stands to reason that there may be less
variance in religious beliefs and behaviors among people who have no affiliation or contact with
a church. As such, we explored whether there are differences in the links between personality
traits and religiosity among people with and without religious affiliation.
The Present Study
In this study, we used RI-CLPMs to examine the within-person links between the Big
Five personality traits and three aspects of religiosity (belief in God, service attendance, prayer)
across 11 annual assessments in a nationally representative sample of Dutch individuals.
Although religiosity can be understood as a single dimension and has often been assessed with
single-item measures (Entringer et al., 2022; Gebauer et al., 2013; Inglehart et al., 2014),
researchers have emphasized the multifaceted nature of religiosity and advocated the use of
multidimensional assessments to capture individual differences in religiosity (e.g., religious
beliefs, practices, and affiliation; King & Boyatzis, 2004; Saroglou, 2011; Stoppa & Lefkowitz,
2010). Here, we focus on three central and often used indicators of religiosity: belief in God,
service attendance, and prayer (Berkessel et al., 2021; Koenig et al, 1997). Those three capture
cognitive (belief in God, prayer), behavioral (service attendance, prayer), and emotional (prayer)
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aspects of an individual’s religious experience (Saroglou, 2011; Saroglou et al., 2020). In
addition to capturing multiple aspects of an individual’s religious experience, there are three
reasons to suggest that these indicators are similar yet distinctive enough to test both the
robustness and specificity of associations across the variables, respectively. First, evidence from
a previous study indicated that these three indicators follow similar yet distinguishable
trajectories across the lifespan ([reference blinded for review]). Second, the correlations between
these indicators ranged from .60 ≤ r ≤ .72, indicating strong but imperfect links between these
measures (Table S4). Third, our present analyses revealed non-trivial complexity in people’s
religious beliefs and practice as shown in Table S6 (e.g., ~25% of participants believed in God,
yet were not religious, did not pray, and did not attend religious service).
There were three aims to this study. Our first aim was to replicate the cross-sectional
associations between Big Five personality traits and three aspects of religiosity (belief in God,
service attendance, prayer). Consistent with theory and existing studies (Allport, 1950; Saroglou
et al., 2010), we expected positive cross-sectional correlations between agreeableness and
conscientiousness with religiosity at baseline. Specifically, we predicted that agreeableness
would be positively associated with all three aspects of religiosity. We also predicted that
conscientiousness would be positively associated with service attendance and prayer but not with
belief in God. We further predicted that higher levels of extraversion would be associated with
more frequent service attendance. We explored the links between emotional stability and
openness and the three aspects of religiosity.
The second aim of the study was to examine the within-person associations between
personality and religiosity. Specifically, we used RI-CLPMs to test whether an individual’s
deviation from their average level of personality (religiosity) predicted a subsequent deviation
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from their average level of religiosity (personality). We hypothesized that within-person
associations would resemble established between-person associations between personality and
religiosity. Specifically, we expected higher levels of agreeableness to predict higher levels of
each religiosity aspect and higher levels of each religiosity aspect to predict higher levels of
agreeableness at a later time point relative to their usual levels of these variables.
The third aim of our study was to examine the potential effects of four moderator
variables on both the between-person and within-person associations between personality and
religiosity: age group, gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation. First, we examined
whether the within-person associations between personality and religiosity differed across young
(16-35 years), middle-aged (36-64 years), and older adults (65+ years) using multiple-group
models, similar to past research that has studied age-group differences using the LISS dataset
(Schwaba & Bleidorn, 2022). We also explored the moderating effects of gender (men vs.
women), religious upbringing (yes vs. no), and religious affiliation (yes vs. no).
Method
Transparency and Openness
We report how we determined our sample size, data exclusions, and all measures in the
study. We analyzed the data using R, version 4.0.4 (R Core Team, 2021) and the package lavaan,
version 0.6-8 (Rosseel, 2012). All data, code, and supplementary material are available at https://
osf.io/68fxg/?view_only=53b21cc3b868465c8bac2984017140d4. This study used data from the
Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. LISS is a publicly available,
de-identified dataset exempt from Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. Other research has
used this data; an overview is provided at https://www.dataarchive.lissdata.nl/publications. We
have used this data previously to investigate religiosity development across the lifespan
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([reference blinded for review]). No previous research has used this data to examine the
reciprocal relations between personality and religiosity, which is the primary goal of the current
study. This study was not formally pre-registered, but hypotheses, the design process, and the
analytic strategy were developed and approved by a dissertation committee following a formal
dissertation proposal prior to data analyses.
Sample
The LISS panel is a true probability sample of Dutch individuals drawn from the
population register of the Netherlands (Scherpenzeel et al., 2010). To account for attrition and to
maintain the target of 5,000 households, the panel is updated every two years by recruiting a
refreshment sample, thus maintaining a total sample of ~20,000 participants. Participants
completed an array of monthly surveys every year starting in 2007. We used data from all
participants who responded to at least one personality assessment and at least one religiosity
assessment of the eleven assessment waves from 2008 to 2019.1 These selection criteria resulted
in a total sample of N = 12,940 individuals, ranging from 16 to 100 years of age (54% female,
Mage = 45.78 years, SDage = 16.20 in 2008; the average participant had the Netherlands-equivalent
of a high school diploma). In the total sample, 67% of participants did not identify with a church,
33% did identify with a church (27.16% Christianity, 1.91% Hinduism, 1.26% Buddhism, 0.13%
other Eastern religion, 0.10% Judaism, 0.99% Islam / Muslim, 0.03% Humanism, 1.35% other
non-Christian religion).
Measures
Personality
1 Within each assessment wave, religiosity was assessed approximately four months prior to personality. Thus,
assessments of religiosity are from 2008-2018, whereas assessments of personality are from 2008-2019 with a
‘missing’ 2016 assessment. This is simply an artifact of religiosity being assessed at the end of 2016, thus
personality was not assessed until the beginning of 2017. Despite the difference in year of assessment, the time
separation between their assessments is the same and as such, they still fall under the same wave of assessment.
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At each assessment wave, participants responded to the 50-item International Personality
Item Pool Big Five questionnaire (IPIP; Goldberg, 1992) with 10 items per Big Five domain.
Responses were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very inaccurate) to 5 (very
accurate). We averaged item responses to obtain a composite trait score for each participant at
each assessment wave. At the first assessment, internal consistency ranged from
ωt
= .81,
α
= .77
(conscientiousness) to
ωt
= .90,
α
= .88 (emotional stability).
Religiosity
At each assessment wave, participants responded to a variety of questions pertaining to
their religiosity. We used three items from this collection assessed at each wave that captured
participants’ belief in God, service attendance, and prayer. The first item, “Which of the
following statements best matches your idea of God?”, was measured on a 6-point Likert scale
ranging from 1 (I do not believe in God) to 6 (I believe without any doubt that God exists). The
second item, “Aside from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, how often do you
attend religious gatherings nowadays?”, and third item, “Aside from when you attend religious
gatherings, how often do you pray?”, were measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1
(never) to 7 (every day).
We also assessed religious upbringing as a moderator of the associations, which was
measured with the item: “When you were 15 years old, did your parents consider themselves
member of a certain religion or church community? (yes/no)” and religious affiliation: “Do you
consider yourself a member of a certain religion or church community?” (yes/no, see Table 1).
Analyses
For all analyses, we interpreted effects with a p-value < .01 as significant and,
accordingly, reported 99% confidence intervals. We used Holm’s correction (Holm, 1979) to
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account for multiple testing when calculating the baseline correlations between the Big Five
traits and each religiosity aspect. We used Full Information Maximum Likelihood to account for
missing data. We determined absolute fit using RMSEA and CFI with RMSEA .08 and CFI .95
indicating good model fit (Cheung & Rensvold, 2002) and used χ2 difference tests for all nested
model comparisons, with p < .01 indicating a significant difference in model fit. We estimated
models for each combination of religiosity measure and Big Five trait, resulting in 15 RI-CLPMs
(Figure 1).2 All within-person autoregressions, cross-lags, and correlations were constrained to
equality across waves, respective to each variable (i.e., religiosity aspect and Big Five trait) in
order to avoid overfitting and to estimate parsimonious models.
Aim 1: Replicate prior research
To replicate the cross-sectional associations between the Big Five traits and religiosity
observed in previous research, we first calculated the correlations between each Big Five trait
and each religiosity aspect at participants’ baseline assessment.
Aim 2: Intraindividual associations
To examine the intraindividual associations between personality and religiosity, we next
estimated RI-CLPMs for each Big Five trait and religiosity aspect.3 This allowed us to
investigate both between-person effects and the within-person reciprocal effects over time. The
intercepts in the RI-CLPM represent stable interindividual differences in each variable over time.
Thus, the correlated intercepts in the RI-CLPM represent associations between the average levels
of a select personality trait and religiosity aspect, relative to others. The cross-lags in the RI-
2We additionally estimated 15 CLPMs, however, we refrained from interpreting the results given our focus on
within-person associations. For meta-scientific purposes, we report all information regarding CLPMs in the
supplementary materials (see Tables S1-S3).
3We additionally estimated latent curve models with structured residuals (LCM-SR; Curran et al., 2014) to examine
the associations between these variables whilst accounting for a slope factor. Results did not differ from the RI-
CLPM in terms of intercept correlations or cross-lags, and the slope correlations were not significant.
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CLPM indicate whether a deviation from an individual’s average levels of religiosity predicts a
subsequent deviation in their average levels of a personality trait, and vice versa.
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Figure 1
RI-CLPM Path Diagram
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In addition to testing within-person cross-lagged effects, which were the main focus of our
analyses, we also estimated within-person wave-specific associations between personality traits
and religiosity. These analyses allowed us to examine whether participants’ deviations from their
average personality trait score in a wave were associated with deviations from their average
religiosity score in that same wave.
Aim 3: Moderators of associations
We examined whether age, gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation4
moderated the association between personality and religiosity. In the RI-CLPMs, we used χ2-
model comparison tests in a multiple group model framework to examine whether groups
significantly differed in their random intercept correlations and/or cross-lags. Specifically, we
tested whether sequentially freeing the equality constraints on intercept correlations and cross-
lags across groups resulted in a significant change in model fit. A significant difference in model
fit would suggest the groups differed in their intercept correlations and/or cross-lags.
Results
Descriptives
Distributions, means, and standard deviations for each religiosity item by religious
affiliation are listed in Table 1. Sample sizes, means, and standard deviations for all study
variables from 2008-2019 are listed in Table 2.
Using intraclass coefficients (ICC), we examined the between- vs within-person variance
in the three religiosity indicators. As expected, the majority of variance in the three items was
explained by between-person differences in belief in God (ICC = .82), service attendance (ICC
=.85), and prayer (ICC = .80). Notably, we found differences in the ICCs across people who
4 The analysis for religious affiliation was requested in review and, as such, we did not preregister predictions for
this moderator.
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were affiliated vs. not affiliated with a church. While ICCs for belief in God were similar in the
groups with (.68) and without religious affiliation (.69), there were differences in the ICCs for
service attendance (.83 among people with religious affiliation vs. .57 among people without
religious affiliation) and prayer (.70 among people with religious affiliation vs. .60 among people
without religious affiliation).
Table 1
Descriptives of Religiosity Aspects by Religious Affiliation
% Belief in God Service Attendance Prayer
Not religious 67.07 2.89 (1.49) 1.62 (0.67) 2.13 (1.45)
Christian 27.16 4.66 (1.38) 3.01 (1.44) 4.41 (2.36)
Buddhism 1.26 5.45 (1.07) 4.95 (1.35) 5.84 (1.87)
Hinduism 1.91 5.53 (0.98) 4.51 (1.65) 6.18 (1.80)
Humanism 0.03 4.75 (1.58) 2.88 (1.81) 4.63 (2.33)
Islam / Muslim 0.99 5.00 (1.50) 2.33 (1.89) 5.00 (2.22)
Judaism 0.10 4.57 (1.51) 2.67 (1.21) 5.43 (1.90)
Other Eastern religion 0.13 5.50 (1.68) 2.56 (0.70) 5.20 (2.48)
Other non-Christian religion 1.35 5.87 (0.52) 3.18 (1.61) 5.31 (2.34)
Note. Belief in God was measured on a scale from 1-6; service attendance and prayer were measured on a
scale from 1-7.
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Table 2
Sample Sizes, Means, and Standard Deviations for Big Five and Religiosity Variables Across Assessment Years
Personality Religiosity
Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Emotional Stability Openness Belief in God Service Attendance
N M (SD)M (SD)M (SD)M (SD)M (SD)N M (SD)N M (SD)N
2008 6686 3.30 (0.63) 3.90 (0.49) 3.72 (0.52) 3.41 (0.68) 3.51 (0.50) 6716 3.47 (1.82) 6701 2.08 (1.48) 6683
2009 5587 3.28 (0.63) 3.88 (0.49) 3.69 (0.53) 3.42 (0.66) 3.49 (0.49) 5714 3.46 (1.83) 5690 2.12 (1.51) 5664
2010 1318 3.28 (0.63) 3.88 (0.49) 3.68 (0.55) 3.38 (0.66) 3.47 (0.49) 6081 3.40 (1.84) 6041 2.08 (1.52) 6017
2011 5270 3.25 (0.63) 3.85 (0.49) 3.69 (0.53) 3.46 (0.67) 3.46 (0.49) 5604 3.37 (1.83) 5547 2.07 (1.52) 5535
2012 1430 3.31 (0.66) 3.87 (0.48) 3.66 (0.55) 3.41 (0.68) 3.49 (0.50) 6028 3.28 (1.83) 5979 2.01 (1.49) 5952
2013 5121 3.24 (0.65) 3.85 (0.51) 3.71 (0.53) 3.49 (0.69) 3.45 (0.50) 5857 3.18 (1.83) 5805 2.00 (1.49) 5788
2014 6311 3.24 (0.66) 3.88 (0.51) 3.73 (0.53) 3.46 (0.70) 3.48 (0.50) 5937 3.15 (1.82) 5882 1.96 (1.46) 5870
2015 488 3.27 (0.65) 3.85 (0.55) 3.53 (0.58) 3.36 (0.73) 3.58 (0.52) 6057 3.14 (1.83) 6029 1.97 (1.46) 6014
2016/7 5896 3.24 (0.67) 3.88 (0.52) 3.74 (0.53) 3.46 (0.70) 3.51 (0.51) 5557 3.10 (1.83) 5507 1.93 (1.44) 5495
2017/8 772 3.23 (0.68) 3.84 (0.54) 3.64 (0.54) 3.35 (0.71) 3.55 (0.53) 6150 3.08 (1.84) 6098 1.94 (1.45) 6092
2018/9 4950 3.20 (0.66) 3.84 (0.52) 3.73 (0.52) 3.48 (0.71) 3.48 (0.50) 5527 3.06 (1.83) 5482 1.90 (1.41) 5476
Note. The final 3 assessment occurred in different years for personality and religiosity, with religiosity preceding personality (e.g., 2016 religiosity and 2017 personality).
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Replication of cross-sectional associations between personality and religiosity
Table 3 shows the correlations between the Big Five personality traits and each of the
three religiosity aspects at baseline. The absolute magnitude of effect sizes was small, ranging
from r = -.03 (emotional stability with prayer) to r = .12 (agreeableness with belief in God).
Agreeableness had the strongest associations with religiosity relative to the other Big Five traits.
With regard to religiosity, we found the fewest number of and smallest effect sizes for
associations between service attendance and personality traits.
Table 3
Baseline Correlations Between Big Five Personality Traits and Religiosity
Belief in God Service Attendance Prayer
r p 99% CI r p 99% CI r p 99% CI
Emotional Stability -.043 < .001 [-.074, -.011] -.005 .653 [-.030, .021] -.034 .004 [-.065, -.003]
Extraversion -.014 .342 [-.042, .014] -.021 .129 [-.050, .009] -.022 .129 [-.052, .009]
Openness -.085 < .001 [-.119, -.051] -.073 < .001 [-.106, -.039] -.054 < .001 [-.087, -.022]
Agreeableness .120 < .001 [.086, .154] .060 < .001 [.027, .093] .107 < .001 [.073, .141]
Conscientiousness .082 < .001 [.049, .116] .049 < .001 [.017, .081] .083 < .001 [.050, .117]
Note. Holm’s correction was used to account for multiple testing.
Bolded values indicate p < .01.
Intraindividual associations
Fit statistics for all RI-CLPMs are presented in Table S1 of the supplementary material.
Overall, all RI-CLPMs had excellent fit with CFIs > .95 and RMSEAs < .08. The standardized
within-person autoregressive estimates are listed in Table S5 of the supplementary material. The
standardized within-person cross-lagged estimates as well as random intercept correlations from
the RI-CLPMs are shown in Table 4 and depicted in Figure 2. Paths did not vary in magnitude
across time, and thus only one estimate per each variable is listed in the table for each model
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(e.g., personality predicting religiosity and vice versa). This reflects our assumption that
associations would be consistent across measurement waves and also aggregates our power
across cross-lagged paths in order to estimate associations with greater precision.
The within-person autoregressions were moderate in effect size and significant across all
Big Five traits and religiosity aspects (ranging from
β=¿
.16 .46). This illustrated that, for
example, individuals who reported being less emotionally stable than their average levels of
emotional stability subsequently reported being less emotionally stable again in the following
year. These autoregressive effects were, on average, largest for emotional stability and smallest
for belief in God.
A comparison between the intercept correlations and cross-lagged effects in the RI-
CLPMs highlights that the significant associations between personality and religiosity
predominately occurred at the between-person level, as illustrated in Table 4. For these stable
between-person associations, the absolute magnitude of effect sizes was small, ranging from r =
-.026 (extraversion with service attendance) to r = .131 (agreeableness with belief in God).
Again, we found the strongest effects for agreeableness relative to the other Big Five
traits and the weakest effects for service attendance relative to the other religiosity aspects. With
regard to the intraindividual associations between personality and religiosity, we observed
significant effects for only two of the five personality traits and only one of the three religiosity
aspects. Specifically, both agreeableness and extraversion were associated with belief in God at
the within-person level. For agreeableness, we found positive reciprocal within-person
associations with belief in God, indicating that individuals who reported higher levels of
agreeableness relative to their average levels of agreeableness subsequently reported higher
levels of belief in God relative to their average levels of belief in God, and vice versa. For
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
extraversion, we found a positive prospective within-person effect on belief in God, indicating
that individuals who reported being more extraverted than their average levels of extraversion
subsequently reported believing in God more strongly compared to their average levels of belief.
We also explored the within-person wave-specific correlations between personality traits
and religiosity. These associations indicated whether participants’ deviations from their average
personality trait score in one year were associated with deviations from their average religiosity
score in that same year. Notably, because personality and religiosity were assessed in separate
surveys, measurements within the same wave were on average four months
apart from one another, rather than concurrent (see Limitations section for further details). None
of the 15 within-person wave-specific associations (5 Big Five traits × 3 religiosity aspects) were
significant at p < .01.
Table 4
Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model Results
Belief in God Service Attendance Prayer
Estimate p99% CI Estimate p99% CI Estimate p
Emotional Stability
Intercept Correlation -.053 < .001 [-.080, -.027] .006 .561 [-.020, .032] -.023 .025
Religiosity Trait -.006 .368 [-.024, .011] -.004 .555 [-.022, .014] -.002 .772
Trait Religiosity -.016 .020 [-.033, .002] .003 .669 [-.014, .020] -.012 .065
Extraversion
Intercept Correlation -.037 < .001 [-.063, -.011] -.026 .008 [-.052, -.001] -.040 < .001
Religiosity Trait .007 .328 [-.011, .025] -.004 .564 [-.022, .014] -.004 .568
Trait Religiosity .018 .009 [.000, .036] -.011 .105 [-.029, .006] .002 .713
Openness
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Intercept Correlation -.121 < .001 [-.147, -.096] -.079 < .001 [-.105, -.053] -.081 < .001
Religiosity Trait .001 .909 [-.018, .020] .001 .858 [-.017, .020] .014 .078
Trait Religiosity .009 .189 [-.009, .027] -.009 .179 [-.026, .008] .001 .845
Agreeableness
Intercept Correlation .131 < .001 [.105, .158] .072 < .001 [.046, .099] .114 < .001
Religiosity Trait .021 .003 [.003, .040] .008 .277 [-.011, .026] .010 .198
Trait Religiosity .027 < .001 [.010, .045] -.002 .809 [-.019, .016] .013 .038
Conscientiousness
Intercept Correlation .085 < .001 [.058, .111] .057 < .001 [.031, .083] .093 < .001
Religiosity Trait .004 .525 [-.014, .023] -.003 .671 [-.021, .015] -.012 .101
Trait Religiosity .010 .160 [-.008, .028] .004 .532 [-.013, .022] .001 .860
Note. Bolded values indicate p < .01.
Belief.1 Belief.2 Belief.11
B5.1 B5.2 B5.11
Belief
Int
B5
Int
[…]
[…]
ESEO AC
[…]
Attend.1 Attend.2 Attend.11
B5.1 B5.2 B5.11
Attend
Int
B5
Int
[…]
[…]
EO AC
[…]
Pray.1 Pray.2 Pray.11
B5.1 B5.2 B5.11
Pray
Int
B5
Int
[…]
[…]
[…]
Service attendanceBelief in God Prayer
EA
A
++
EO AC
+
+
+
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
Note. Significant effects across intercept correlations and cross-lags are depicted between the Big Five traits emotional stability (ES),
extraversion (E), openness (O), agreeableness (A), and conscientiousness (C) and each religiosity indicator. Positive (+) and negative (-)
symbols indicate direction of the effect.
Figure 2
Significant Effects of the RI-CLPM
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
Moderators of associations
To address the third study aim, we examined the moderating effects of age, gender, and
religious upbringing on both the intercept correlations and the cross-lagged effects in the RI-
CLPM. Constraining intercept correlations and cross-lags to be equal across age groups did not
produce significantly worse fitting models compared to the free models, suggesting no age
differences in the associations between personality traits and religiosity.
Constraining intercept correlations to be equal across men and women produced
significantly worse fitting models for extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, as
shown in Table 5. For extraversion, we observed significant negative intercept correlations with
all three religiosity aspects among women and no significant correlations among men.
Additionally, this model also fit worse when constraining cross-lags to be equal across the two
genders. However, no cross-lags met our alpha level for significance (e.g., for women, deviations
in extraversion negatively predicted subsequent service attendance with r = -.022, but p = .016).
For agreeableness, we observed significant positive intercept correlations with all three
religiosity aspects in men and no significant links in women. Finally, we found a stronger
positive correlation between conscientiousness and belief in God in men than in women.
Table 5
RI-CLPM Intercept Correlations by Gender
Belief in God Service Attendance Prayer
r p 99% CI r p 99% CI r p
Extraversion
Men -.002 .873 [-.040, .036] -.007 .640 [-.044, .031] -.011 .460
Women -.071 < .001 [-.105, -.036] -.043 .001 [-.078, -.009] -.066 < .001
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Agreeableness
Men .159 < .001 [.121, .198] .124 < .001 [.085, .163] .150 < .001
Women .031 .032 [-.006, .068] .005 .711 [-.031, .042] .028 .046
Conscientiousness
Men .114 < .001 [.076, .153] - - - - -
Women .040 .004 [.004, .076] - - - - -
Note. Estimates for conscientiousness with service attendance and prayer are not listed as models did not fit significantly
worse when men and women were constrained to be equal across parameters.
Bolded values indicate p < .01.
We also found an effect of participants’ religious upbringing on the links between
openness and religiosity. Specifically, the negative correlations between openness and all three
religiosity aspects were significantly more pronounced among participants who grew up in a
religious family compared to those who grew up in a non-religious family. Compared to
participants who grew up in a non-religious family, participants who grew up in a religious
family had a stronger negative association between openness and belief in God (r = -.138, p
< .001; r = -.044, p = .009), service attendance (r = -.082, p < .001; r = .009, p = .590), and
prayer (r = -.093, p = < .001; r = .016, p = .339).
Lastly, we examined the moderating effects of religious affiliation on the associations
between personality and religiosity in religiously affiliated (n = 3,633) and non-religious (n =
7,245) samples. For five pairs of personality and religiosity variables, constraining intercept
associations to be equal across groups produced significantly worse fitting models (see Table
S7). Compared to non-religious participants, participants who belonged to a formal religious
group had more strongly negative associations between emotional stability and belief in God (r =
-.110, p < .001, 99% CI [-.148, -.073] vs r = -.025, p = .209, 99% CI [-.077, .027]) and service
attendance (r = -.044, p = .007, 99% CI [-.086, -.002] vs r = .041, p = .036, 99% CI
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
[-.009, .090]). Participants who belonged to a formal religious group also evidenced a positive
association between agreeableness and belief in God (r = .158, p < .001, 99% CI [.121, .195]),
whereas non-religious participants did not evidence a significant association (r = .014, p = .508,
99% CI [-.039, .067]). Finally, although we found no association between conscientiousness and
prayer in participants who belonged to a formal religious group (r = .006, p = .700, 99% CI
[-.032, .044]), we found such an association among participants who did not belong to a formal
religious group (r = .060, p = .002, 99% CI [.010, .110]). Only one cross-lagged association
differed across the two groups. In the model containing extraversion and prayer, freeing the
cross-lags significantly improved the fit of the model. Specifically, prayer negatively predicted
later levels of extraversion (
β=¿
-.041, p = .003, CI [-.076, -.005]) among participants who did
not belong to a formal religious group, whereas this longitudinal effect was absent among
participants who did belong to a formal religious group.
Discussion
The present study examined the reciprocal links between personality and religiosity at the
within-person level, using 11-wave longitudinal data collected in a nationally representative
sample of over 12,000 Dutch adults. Consistent with theory and previous between-person
research, we found the strongest links between agreeableness and religiosity, both at the
between-person and within-person level. We further found that most associations between
personality and religiosity occurred at the between-person level, indicating mostly stable
associations between personality dispositions and religious involvement.
Replication of cross-sectional associations between personality and religiosity
Cross-sectional associations between personality traits and religiosity largely replicated
the results of prior research. Four findings stand out.
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First, we found positive associations between the three religiosity aspects and
agreeableness and conscientiousness (Ashton & Lee, 2021; Saroglou, 2010), albeit smaller in
magnitude than previous studies (r = .06 – .12 for agreeableness; r = .05 – .08 for
conscientiousness). Overall, the observed associations support the hypothesis that people who
are more agreeable and conscientious than others may be more drawn to religious ideas and
practices because these provide an ideal platform to express those traits (Allport, 1950). The
slightly smaller correlations may be partly explained by the secular context of this study. The
Netherlands is among the most secular countries in the world (Joshanloo & Gebauer, 2020) with
decreasing rates of religious involvement across the population (Bleidorn et al., 2022).
Consistent with existing research that found a similar pattern of decreasing religiosity links with
agreeableness and conscientiousness as sociocultural religiosity decreases (Entringer et al., 2021;
Gebauer et al., 2014), we also found stronger correlations in participants who belonged to a
religious group or affiliation compared to participants who were not affiliated with a church,
with one exception. Specifically, we found no association between conscientiousness and prayer
in participants who belonged to a formal religious group, yet there was a positive association
between these two variables in participants who did not belong to a formal religious group.
Second, unlike some previous studies, we found negative associations between openness
and all aspects of religiosity, indicating that people who were more open than others tended to be
less religious (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Gebauer et al., 2014). This finding is inconsistent with
research suggesting that the association between openness and religiosity becomes more positive
with decreasing sociocultural religiosity (but see, Furnham & Cheng, 2015). This negative
association may be partly explained by differences in the measures used to assess openness in
this and previous studies. Previous studies measured openness with instruments that focused
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strongly on open-mindedness and curiosity (Gebauer et al., 2014). In the present study, we used
a measure that was more tuned towards the intellect aspects of openness (Schwaba et al., 2018).
Several previous studies and meta-analytic research found that intellect and education tend to be
negatively associated with religiosity (Bleidorn et al., 2022; Dürlinger & Pietschnig, 2022;
Schwadel, 2015; Zuckerman et al., 2013). Another explanation for this finding may have to do
with our findings on religious upbringing, indicating that being raised in a religious household
may spark an intellectual skepticism about religion, leading to higher levels of openness but
lower levels of religiosity later in life.
Third, contrary to our prediction, we found no significant between-person links between
extraversion and religiosity. This finding supports prior research that found no association
between extraversion and traditional religiosity in secular countries like the Netherlands
(Gebauer et al., 2014). Nonetheless, null associations between religious service attendance and
extraversion were somewhat surprising, given the former’s status as an outgoing, sociable
behavior.
Fourth, unlike previous studies, we found negative associations between emotional
stability and two religiosity aspects – belief in God and prayer – suggesting that people who
were less emotionally stable than others tended to believe in God more strongly and engage in
prayer more often than others. These negative effects were stronger in people with a religious
affiliation and may reflect a person-culture mismatch effect (Fulmer et al., 2010). Specifically,
prior research found that the association between psychological adjustment and religiosity is
contingent on the sociocultural religiosity of the nation, such that religious people are better
adjusted only to the extent they reside in a religious society (Gebauer et al., 2017; Stavrova et al.,
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2013). The negative links between emotional stability and religiosity observed here may, thus, be
reflective of such a mismatch between religious individuals residing in a secular country.
Longitudinal links between personality and religiosity
Our second and main goal was to investigate whether the between-person links found
between personality and religiosity translate to the within-person level using RI-CLPM. To
achieve this goal, we separated the stable between-person links between the Big Five traits and
religiosity from their intraindividual associations across 11 annual assessments.
A majority of the between-person associations did not emerge at the within-person level,
demonstrating the importance of accounting for stable trait-like variance in the RI-CLPM when
interpreting cross-lagged effects between two variables. We found no significant within-person
wave-specific correlations between personality and religiosity. This indicated that, for example,
in years where participants were more agreeable than usual, they did not believe more strongly
than usual in God. Rather, only prospective effects of one wave on the next were significant
within-person, suggesting a process with greater time-lagged effects. Of the 30 tested cross-
lagged associations, we observed significant cross-lagged effects only in three cases, restricted to
the traits of agreeableness and extraversion and the religious aspect belief in God.
Contrary to our predictions, we only found reciprocal associations between agreeableness
and one aspect of religiosity: belief in God. Specifically, individuals who were more agreeable
compared to their average levels of agreeableness tended to believe more strongly in God at the
next measurement occasion. Likewise, individuals who increased in their belief in God compared
to their average levels of belief in God tended to be more agreeable at the next measurement
occasion, compared to their average levels of agreeableness. This reciprocal effect might reflect
transactional effects between agreeableness and religiosity. For example, a shift in agreeableness
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may lead a person to strengthen their belief in a higher being who preaches compassion and
prosocial behavior, thus allowing this person to express their agreeableness, and the practices
encouraged by the religious deity reflect and, in turn, may further reinforce traits subsumed by
agreeableness, e.g., prosociality, sympathy, generosity (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017). Put simply, this
agreeable person started to believe more strongly in God, and the agreeableness-promoting
nature of religion may have served to foster their agreeableness. An open question for future
research is to test whether changes in religiosity elicit later changes in people’s behavioral
component of personality (e.g., agreeable behavior), their self-concept component of personality
(e.g., agreeable self-perceptions), or both. Regarding agreeableness, the extant literature suggests
that behavioral and self-concept components are both affected, with the latter being affected
more strongly than the former: religiosity is associated with more prosocial behavior (Purzycki et
al., 2016) and it is even more strongly associated with a more prosocial self-concept
(Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), a discrepancy suggestive of prosocial self-enhancement among
religious people (Gebauer et al., 2017).
Additionally, we found a positive effect of extraversion on belief in God at the within-
person level, indicating that individuals who were more extraverted compared to their average
levels of extraversion subsequently believed more strongly in God, relative to their average
levels of belief. Notably, this finding contrasts with the between-person associations of both the
null correlations at baseline and negative intercept correlations between extraversion and all
religiosity aspects. Taken together, these findings may highlight an important distinction in
between- vs. within-person effects. On average, we found that people who were more extraverted
than others tended to engage less in religious practices compared to their introverted
counterparts. At the same time, individuals who were more extraverted compared to their usual
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
levels of extraversion (regardless of how their extraversion compared to others), appeared to
increase in their belief in God compared to their average levels of belief. Future research should
further explore this between- vs. within-person discrepancy with a wider range of religiosity
measures to assess whether it replicates across multiple areas of religiosity.
In addition to the within-person effects, we also examined the associations between the
stable between-person correlations between the Big Five traits and religiosity in the RI-CLPM.
With one exception, results mirrored research and the cross-sectional results. Unlike previous
research and in contrast to our cross-sectional results, we found negative associations between
the stable individual differences in extraversion and all three religiosity aspects. That is, people
who were more extraverted than others across the 11-year study period were also less religious
across all assessment waves.
The overall pattern of effects at the between- and within-person level leads to two
broader conclusions about research on personality and religiosity. First, the associations between
personality traits and religiosity occurred primarily at the between-person (as opposed to within-
person) level, as indicated by a comparison of the intercept correlations and cross-lagged effects
in the RI-CLPMs. This finding emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between-person
from within-person effects to gain a better understanding of the developmental associations
between variables. Between-person differences are often theorized to be the result of aggregated
within-person processes (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017), but the two are sometimes discrepant, as we
found in this study. These discrepancies may also provide insights into the causal link between
personality and religiosity. For example, the significant corresponsive associations between
agreeableness and religiosity suggest that either of these variables could be plausible causal
factors in the development of the other. On the other hand, the lack of within-person associations
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
with openness and conscientiousness suggest that the between-person links between these traits
and religiosity may emerge through more complex or noncausal processes, potentially involving
contextual third variables (e.g., Osborne & Sibley, 2020). For example, both conscientiousness
and religiosity have been found to change after the experience of traumatic events (Blackie &
Hudson, 2022; Ter Kuile & Ehring, 2014). Other research has found that openness decreases
following bereavement, while people may turn to religion as a coping mechanism during this
time (Asselmann & Specht, 2020; Currier et al., 2013).
Second, the association between personality traits and religiosity was not consistent
across all three religiosity variables. We found more significant and more pronounced effects for
belief in God, especially at the within-person level. Moreover, we found the weakest associations
for service attendance with the personality traits, which is notable given the common usage of
service attendance as the sole indicator of religiosity in prior research (Entringer et al., 2022;
Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). This finding highlights the value of using a multi-faceted
approach when assessing people’s religiosity (Chan et al., 2015).
The role of age, gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation
The third aim of our study was to examine the moderating effects of age, gender,
religious upbringing, and religious affiliation on the associations between personality traits and
religiosity. We did not find a significant moderating effect of age group on any of the between-
or within-person effects in the RI-CLPMs. This finding suggests robust associations between
personality traits and religiosity across the lifespan. That is, despite age differences in both
personality and religiosity, their association with one another persists above and beyond people’s
age group.
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Gender moderated the association between personality and religiosity at the between-
person level for extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Specifically, we observed
significant negative associations between levels of extraversion and each of the three religiosity
aspects in women but not in men. In contrast, we observed significant positive associations
between levels of agreeableness and each religiosity aspect in men but not in women – contrary
to our predictions. This finding is noteworthy given established evidence that women tend to be
more agreeable and religious than men (Costa et al., 2001; Stark, 2002), however, recent
research suggests religious women may indeed be less agreeable than religious men (Lace et al.,
2020). One explanation for this finding may be that the Netherlands tends to be one of the most
modern countries in Europe with regard to gender norms (Inglehart, 2008), and as such, the
gendered expectation that women should be both more agreeable and more religious than men
may not carry as much weight in the Netherlands. Lastly, men evidenced a stronger positive
association between conscientiousness and belief in God than women. This indicated that people
who were more conscientious than others also believed in God more strongly than others, but the
intensity of this effect was more pronounced in men than in women. These differences may be
attributed to established gender differences in religiosity and illustrates the importance of
investigating associations between personality and religiosity across different groups.
Religious upbringing significantly moderated the association between openness and all
three religiosity aspects at the between-person level. Specifically, people who grew up in a
religious family had a stronger negative association between levels of openness and belief in
God, service attendance, and prayer. This indicated that people who were more open than others
were also less religious than others, and the intensity of this effect was more pronounced in
people who grew up in a religious family versus those who did not. Indeed, prior research has
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shown that people who grew up in religious families yet became non-religious in adulthood have
high levels of openness (Ashton & Lee, 2019). This negative association between openness and
religious upbringing has been connected to the finding that the motivating force behind students
becoming non-religious after being raised religious was an intellectual skepticism about their
family religion (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1997). This finding may further point to transactional
effects that occur perhaps earlier in life, leading to stable between-person differences in the
absence of significant within-person effects.
Finally, religious affiliation moderated the associations between emotional stability,
extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness with religiosity, primarily at the between-
person level. Overall, we found stronger links in participants who affiliated with a church
compared to participants who were not affiliated with a church, which may reflect a stronger
intertwinement between personality differences and religious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in
people who are affiliated with a church compared to people who have no religious affiliation.
This intertwinement may represent consistent and enduring beliefs about the personality
characteristics of people who are affiliated with a church. For example, both religious and non-
religious individuals expect religiously affiliated people to be higher in agreeable behavior
(Pichon, 2002), and religiously affiliated individuals themselves believe others perceive them as
more agreeable (Saroglou et al., 2011) compared to people who are not religiously affiliated.
Possibly, these expectations persist when religiously affiliated individuals report on their
personalities. It is also worth noting that participants who were affiliated with a church were
more consistent in their religious behaviors compared to participants who were not affiliated
with a church. Specifically, while both groups were fairly stable in their belief in God,
individuals affiliated with a church were more stable in their service attendance and prayer
38
PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
compared to non-affiliated individuals. One reason why non-affiliated participants may fluctuate
more over time in their scores is because religiosity is not central to their identity and thus there
is more error in their response patterns. They may also fluctuate more because there may be
more state-like variance in their religious behavior. On the other hand, the higher ICCs for
religiosity variables among church-affiliated participants may be due to the centrality of religion
to their identity – church-affiliated individuals likely spend more time thinking about how much
they pray and their service attendance, and thus respond consistently to this question. They have
also developed religious habits, which maximizes stable trait-like aspects of religious behavior.
Limitations
The present study had several strengths that allowed us to replicate and extend on prior
research, thus further exploring the nature of the associations between personality and religiosity.
Nonetheless, there were also limitations. First, as is common in large-scale panel studies, the
assessments were not exactly concurrent and perfectly equidistant. Instead, there was
approximately a four-month gap between assessments of personality and religiosity at each
wave, with religiosity assessments preceding assessment of personality traits. Notably, the RI-
CLPM is relatively robust to such variations and also allowed us to test whether the variation in
assessment intervals affected our results. Specifically, we tested models with constrained vs.
freed assessments with varying intervals but found no change in the fits of models, suggesting
that these gaps in assessments did not affect the results.
Second, we initially attempted to model age as a continuous moderator variable using
Local Structural Equation Modeling (LSEM; Hildebrandt et al., 2016). However, these models
did not converge. To the best of our knowledge, no study to date has examined continuous
moderator effects in a RI-CLPM. We thus followed the recommendations by Mulder and
39
PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
Hamaker (2021) and used multiple-group modeling techniques to examine the effects of
categorical variables.5 A moderating effect of age may be more nuanced in a way that is not
detectable when clustering age into three separate groups. Further research examining age as a
continuous moderator may uncover differences in these associations across age.
Third, our data came from participants residing in the Netherlands which is a particularly
secular nation and religious variables were skewed in favor of low religiosity, thus restricting the
generalizability of our findings. Specifically, 67% of participants in the sample were not
affiliated with a church, resulting in relatively low mean-levels of each of the three religiosity
indicators in this sample. Moreover, the remaining third of participants predominately identified
with some form of Christianity, further limiting the generalizability of these findings. Future
research would benefit from investigating the association between personality and religiosity in
samples from different cultures.
Fourth, the present RI-CLPMs provide information about how within-person deviations
from stable levels in religiosity are linked to within-person deviations from stable levels in
personality traits. Future research may examine different types of co-development in personality
and religiosity. For example, a critical question concerns the degree to which the conversion to
or deconversion from a religious group may be associated with changes in personality (Stronge
et al., 2021).
Fifth, even though we expanded on prior research by using a multifaceted approach to
measure religiosity, we did not capture all aspects of the religious experience. Future research
may benefit from including measures that capture additional aspects of religiosity, including
5 LSEM requires sufficient sample size for each level of the moderator variable as well as values for the moderator
variable for each model estimation, thus working best with full or missing at random data. Though we had a
sufficient sample size for each level of age, the pattern of survey distribution in the LISS created instances of
missingness that were not completely random and, as such, the models failed to converge.
40
PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
people’s religious motivation, identity, belongingness, attitudes, commitment, worldviews, or
community participation (Saroglou, 2011; Stoppa & Lefkowitz, 2010).
Sixth, we were limited by the measures distributed in the panel study, and as such were
not able to test these associations using the HEXACO framework of personality. The HEXACO
model is a commonly used metric when examining associations between personality and
religiosity particularly because it decomposes agreeableness into two dimensions (agreeableness
and honesty-humility), and thus future research may benefit from exploring intraindividual
associations using this model (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Sibley et al., 2011; Stronge et al., 2021).
Finally, we did not examine the impact that social or contextual factors have on these
associations. Future research may explore the possibility that factors such as major life events
and culture have on the links between personality and religiosity.
Conclusion
We expanded on prior research on personality and religiosity by investigating their
associations at the within-person level. Specifically, we examined both the between- and within-
person reciprocal effects between the Big Five personality traits and three aspects of religiosity:
belief in God, service attendance, and prayer. Cross-sectional and longitudinal between-person
analyses mostly replicated prior research with positive associations between agreeableness and
conscientiousness with religiosity. Importantly, we also observed significant within-person
associations between personality and religiosity, though associations were less pervasive than at
the between-person level. Specifically, deviations from individuals’ stable levels of
agreeableness positively predicted subsequent deviations from their average levels of belief in
God and vice versa. Likewise, deviations from individuals’ stable levels of extraversion
positively predicted subsequent deviations from their average levels of belief in God. People who
41
PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
pray, attend religious services, and believe in God are slightly different personality-wise from
those who do not, and this study refines our understanding of the within-person transactions that
may give rise to these differences over time. The next critical step will be to replicate whether
these developmental associations are specific to belief in God, extraversion, and agreeableness,
and to identify the causal factors that initiate and shape them.
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PERSONALITY-RELIGIOSITY TRANSACTIONS
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