Why you are or aren't religious, or spiritual, or "other" - recent research

Vasillis Saroglou
Universite Catholique de Louvrain

There is much misunderstanding about what causes someone to become, or remain, religious, spiritual or an "other".  The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that almost half of US adults change religions at least once, and most do it before they are 24.  


Conventional wisdom is that our religious beliefs remain what our families believed.  However, as we age the impacts of those factors diminish.  As we move, make new friends, go to college/university, have experiences, see other alternatives, etc., our beliefs often change.


There is a large genetic component that many studies have shown accounts for over half of the differences in our core personality traits, which are also affected by how our environment subsequently impacts how the genes express.    


A leading model of personality traits, called the Big Five, was developed by two teams in the 70s; a) Lewis Goldberg (University of Oregon) and Warren Norman (University of Michigan) and b) Robert McCrae and Paul Costa of the National Institute of Health.  Both teams came reached the same conclusion.  This work was strengthened by the study published in 1987 by the McCrae/Costa team with thousands of subjects and "OCEANs" (upcoming clever pun) of papers.  


The Big Five, acronized as OCEAN (or CANOE), are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.  

•    Openness - open-minded, an interest in art, emotional, adventurous, new ideas and curiosity.

•    Conscientiousness - typically self-disciplined, result oriented and structured, traditional and dutiful.

•    Extraversion - high energy level, people person, extrovert and gets stimulated by being around others.

•    Agreeableness - compassionate, cooperative, ability to forgive and be pragmatic, let's get the thing done.

•    Neuroticism - sensible, vulnerable; in extreme, emotionally unstable and neurotic.

The Big Five website claims it is a direct competitor to the well-known Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which i completed several times in my work career.  (No, i don't remember my "type".)

A recent "metapaper" (overview of OCEANs of previous work) by Vasillis Saroglou at the Universite Catholique de Louvrain in Belgium (started in 1425, yes, 1425, well before whats-his-name "found" America), "Religiousness as a Cultural Adaptation of Basic Traits: A Five-Factor Model Perspective" looked at 70 previous studies linking religion to personality, involving 21,000 participants of many ages, religions and locations.  

Saroglou's paper is captured in this recent Scientific American Mind graphic.  "Religious" folk were higher in "agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" (a & c).  Fundamentalists were too, except they were low in "openness".  Spiritual folk were high in all of these three plus "extroversion".  These differences were significant and consistent across many populations, but not huge.  "Religious" folk were 60% in "a & c" as compared to 40% for "nonreligious" folk.   Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims (but no Asian religions) were studied.

Lewis Terman
Stanford University

Yes, you say, but does religion cause these behaviors, or do folk with those attributes choose religion?  A long term ("longitudinal" for academics) and famous study was done by Lewis Terman (who also invented the well-know Stanford-Binet IQ test) on high IQ kids throughout their lives.  It found that  teenagers evaluated as more "a & c" were more religious 20 years later than lower rated kids.  


After 50 years, high "a & c" folk were more likely to remain believers and to become even more religious than lower rated folk; this fits with the Big Five theory confirming that personality determines whether folk are religious or not.  High "a & c" folk were likely evolutionarily advantaged by these traits as they were more successful at being part of larger social groups with enhanced harmony, stability, and survivability.


Work in 2005 by Saroglou and Pichon looked at whether "religious" or "spiritual" folk were more willing to help others, which were defined as either a) friend, family member, or colleague, or b) unknown.  Interestingly, the more "religious" folk were, the more willing they were to help a friend or family member and the less likely they were to help strangers.  "Spiritual folk" were equally willing to help in both cases.  i have experienced this personally.  


Sargolou and Blogowska in 2011 did a similar comparison study with a) a student in need or b) a feminist student in the same situation.  Folk high on "fundamentalism" were willing to help a student in need, but not a feminist, who they perceived as a threat to their values.


Work by Koenig, et al. in "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religiousness: Findings for Retrospective and Current Religiousness Ratings" looked at twins, a great cohort to sort out genetic differences.  For adolescents, 12 % of religious identity is due to personality traits/genetics, "how they were raised (religiously)" contributed 56%, while "experiences" contributed 32%.   For adults, 44% was genetic, 18% was "how they were "raised", and "experiences" rose slightly to 38%.  Psychological/genetic traits, and life experiences ultimately win out over how religiously we were raised.  We are born inclined to be religious or not; how those genes are expressed through environment and life events largely determines the outcome.     

Ed Diener
University of Illinois

How "religious" we are is also defined by our financial well-being and culture.  A study by Ed Diener, et al. (University of Illinois) published in 2011, "The Religion Paradox: If Religion Makes People Happy, Why Are So Many Dropping Out?" which was done of 350,000 US folk had some surprising conclusions. 


There were big variations by state: in Vermont, 44% regarded religion as important, while 88% in Mississippi did.  Religion was more important where folk were living in difficult financial circumstances and had lower subjective well-being.  Religion did make them happier, but they were still less happy than residents of more affluent states. 


Particularly in the US, religion also provides social relationships, charities and similar worldviews.  Religious folk were happiest who attended most often, had close friends in the organization and who believed religion was important.  Interestingly, folk who attended regularly but had no friends in their place of worship were less happy than those who never attended. 


Societal norms were even more important than economics in other countries as a predictor of "religiosity".  Diener said "That's the eye-opener...societal forces led to religiosity more than did individual forces."  In Sweden, 16% believed that religion was important, whereas 99% of the folk in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Egypt believed so; in the US it was 66%.  Diener added, "Religion can certainly help people to be happier, but other things can do the same thing.  A peaceful, cooperative society, even in the absence of religion, seems to have the same effect."


So whether or not you are religious, or spiritual, or other, depends on many factors, including genes, environment, how and by whom you were raised, the experiences you have, who your friends were, how economically secure you are, and where you live. It's not simple.