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Reflective minds and open hearts: Cognitive style and personality predict religiosity and spiritual thinking in a community sample

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 02:58 authored by Browne, M, Pennycook, G, Goodwin, B, Melinda McHenryMelinda McHenry
We examined associations between two psychological constructs, analytic cognitive style and the personality facet ‘Openness to Experience’, and several dimensions of religiosity: religious affiliation, strength of faith and spiritual epistemology. In a relatively large (N = 1093), older community sample (M = 55.4 years), analytic cognitive style was associated with a lower probability of affiliating with a religious denomination and a higher probability of possessing strong religious faith. Overall, openness was also associated with a lack of religious affiliation but was positively related to possessing a spiritual epistemology. A path-analytic model revealed that openness had a positive relationship to both faith and religious denomination that was mediated by spiritual epistemology, but negative direct relationships with religiosity after the meditational effects were taken into account. Taken together, these results extend previous findings on the effect of cognitive style on religiosity and provide a new perspective on the complex relationship between cognitive and personality factors and different dimensions of religiosity.

History

Publication title

European Journal of Social Psychology

Volume

44

Issue

7

Pagination

736-742

ISSN

0046-2772

Department/School

School of Geography, Planning and Spatial Sciences

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Place of publication

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, England, W Sussex, Po19 8Sq

Rights statement

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in psychology

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