Personality correlates of religiosity among adults in the Republic of Ireland

This study examined the relationship between measures of personal religiosity (religious attitude, frequency of personal prayer), a measure of public religiosity (church attendance), and the Abbreviated form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire among 216 adults in the Republic of Ireland. A significant negative correlation was found between scores on psychoticism and on the three measures of religiosity among men (religious attitude, -.36; frequency of personal prayer, -.40; and frequency of church attendance, -.30) and among women (religious attitude, -.40; frequency of personal prayer, -.47; and frequency of church attendance, -.31). No significant relationship was found between any of the religiosity measures and the other measures contained within the Eysenck scores. A further analysis of the data suggests that the relationship for measures of public religiosity with low psychoticism is only a facet of the relationship between public and personal religiosity. These findings add to a growing body of research which locates religiosity within the psychoticism dimension of Eysenck's model of personality and adds to Frier suggestions that this approach is applicable only to personal aspects of religiosity.