What Americans Really Believe

13 Personality: Are We Hardwired for God?

101 Personality Are We Hardwired for God? 13 S ocial scientists have often speculated that there might be somethinginnateaboutindividualreligiousness.Obviously, the details of religious culture are transmitted socially, but are they rooted in an underlying biological component of the human makeup, independent of culture and society? That certainly would account for the fact that no irreligious society has ever been discovered and that even immense efforts by tyrannical states to create such a society have been such utter failures (see chapter 14). As with many genetic traits such as height and hand-eye coordination , a biological predisposition for religion could vary considerably across individuals, consistent with the observed variations in individual religiousness. That may have been what Max Weber had in mind when he noted that some individuals are simply more religiously “musical” than others and identified “religious virtuosi” in a variety of different religious traditions.1 More recently, Brian D’Onofrio and his colleagues provide very suggestive evidence that “religious attitudes and practices are moderately influenced by genetic factors.”2 While the ultimate tests of such claims must be physiological , it is possible to contribute to the discussion by examining personality characteristics to see if a plausible case can be made Stark Americans final.indd 101 9/9/08 10:06:33 AM 102 / Personality for religion as a basic component of personality. In pursuit of significant evidence, the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey included an appropriate set of questions. As will be seen in this very preliminary report, our findings strongly suggest that religiousness is a unique and important component of human personality and therefore merits closer study by psychologists as well as other scientists. Words as a Window into Personality What adjectives would you use to describe yourself, a romantic partner, or co-worker (i.e., quiet, pious, loud, obnoxious, religious, spiritual)? Would others use those same words to describe you? According to the lexical hypothesis, the most important facets of personality are encoded as trait terms in most of the world’s languages.3 That is, the words we use to describe people provide a window into human personality. By scientifically studying the words people use to describe the self and others, we can better understand personality trait structure. Gordon Allport—a Harvard psychologist who conducted early scientific studies on personality and character traits—was one of the first to simply count the many words in an unabridged English dictionary that could be used to distinguish one person from another.4 The list of “personality” words reached almost eighteen thousand.5 Could there possibly be over ten thousand personality traits? If not, how many personality traits are there? And finally, is religiousness-spirituality a basic personality trait? The recent consensus among personality psychologists is that there are five basic dimensions of personality called the Big Five, and religiousness is not one of them.6 The thousands of words people use across cultures to describe the self and others frequently fit on one of these dimensions: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness,Extroversion,Agreeableness,andNeuroticism. The mnemonic OCEAN may help you remember the Big Five personality traits. These five personality dimensions can be explained Stark Americans final.indd 102 9/9/08 10:06:33 AM Are We Hardwired for God? / 103 as follows: Openness (artistic and deep versus uncreative and shallow ); Conscientiousness (efficient and organized versus undependable and sloppy); Extroversion (talkative and active versus quiet and reserved); Agreeableness (kind and sympathetic versus critical and selfish), and Neuroticism/Emotional Stability (anxious and moody versus relaxed and calm). How about Religiousness? Beyond the Big Five personality components, researchers ponder other aspects of personality relevant to more specific aspects of our lives. For instance, people use a variety of words to describe the self and others, including words such as sexy or unattractive, feminine or masculine, perverted or chaste, religious, spiritual, pious, and so forth, yet these facets of personality are not represented on the Big Five. Due to the importance and salience of our sexual lives and identities, researchers developed a new taxonomy for sexuality description.7 We propose that religious life requires similar attention. Whilereligious-spiritualtermsoftengrouptogetherwithwords like trusting, cooperative, and sympathetic on the Agree-ableness dimension of the five-factor model, some personality theorists contend that religious-spiritual may be a sixth or seventh dimension of personality.8 In response, we examined the associations between religiousness, the Big Five, and some personal beliefs and attitudes in order to...