Healing Those Who Need Healing: How Religious Practice Interacts with Personality to Affect Social Belonging
Abstract
Religion affects social cognition but does personality matter? We extracted information about church attendance and personality from a representative national survey (n= 1,483 New Zealand Christians). We found that frequency of church attendance affects felt belongingness but this relationship depends on levels of neuroticism. Christians who scored low in neuroticism experienced similar levels of felt belongingness, regardless of church attendance. Christians who scored high in neuroticism experienced the greatest social belonging, through frequent religious practice. Modelling these interactions revealed that those high in neuroticism would need to attend church 17.15 times each month to experience the felt belongingness of those low in neuroticism who did not attend church. Rates of religious attendance affect social cognition, but not for all Christians equally. Neuroticism matters. Those who wish to promote religion for social belonging would be wise to consider personality differences.
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Religion improves social belonging.
“Against dysfunctional theories, numerous studies have found that religion improves health, facilitates coping, [42], [43] and improves social belonging [44].”
From Faith after an Earthquake: A Longitudinal Study of Religion and Perceived Health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake (2012) · cites this paper as [44]
Religious groups provide exceptionally strong levels of emotional support.
“At a community level, religious groups have been found to provide exceptionally strong levels of emotional support [44], [66].”
From Faith after an Earthquake: A Longitudinal Study of Religion and Perceived Health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake (2012) · cites this paper as [44]
Those high in neuroticism feel more social belonging from religious attendance.
“Further variability has been found for the effects of religious practice on different personality types – those high in neuroticism feel more social belonging from religious attendance [44].”
From Faith after an Earthquake: A Longitudinal Study of Religion and Perceived Health before and after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake (2012) · cites this paper as [44]
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Sibley, C. G., & Bulbulia, J. (2012) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049648 · Cited by 194 · see citing works
“At a community level, religious groups have been found to provide exceptionally strong levels of emotional support [44,66].”
BackgroundSelf-citation
- Authors
- Sibley, C. G., & Bulbulia, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Auckland (NZ)
- Victoria University (AU)
- Venue
- Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion
- Publisher
- Equinox Publishing
- Published
- 2012-08-13
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 29-45
- ISSN
- 2049-7555 (ISSN-L)
- 2049-7563
- OpenAlex
- W2092580030
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 2.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Religion and Society Interactions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Keywords
- church attendance, religious practice, social belonging, neuroticism, personality, social cognition, religion and personality, Christians, interaction effects
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