Big Five facets and religiosity: Three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive tests.

Abstract

How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity better. Yet, such research has generally been sparse, monocultural, descriptive, process-inattentive, and somewhat contradictory in its results. Therefore, we conducted three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive studies. Study 1 (N ϭ 2,277,240) used self-reports across 96 countries, Study 2 (N ϭ 555,235) used informant-reports across 57 countries, and Study 3 (N ϭ 1,413,982) used self-reports across 2,176 cities, 279 states, and 29 countries. Our results were highly consistent across studies. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the Big Five facets did not explain substantially more variance in religiosity than the Big Five domains. Moreover, culture was much more important than previously assumed. More specifically, the Big Five facets collectively explained little variance in religiosity in the least religious cultural contexts (4.2%) but explained substantial variance in religiosity in the most religious cultural contexts (19.5%). In conclusion, the Big Five facets are major predictors of religiosity, but only in religious cultural contexts.

The Well-Being Benefits of Person-Culture Match Are Contingent on Basic Personality Traits

“…Third, we expected basic personality traits (Big Two and Big Five) to moderate the person-culture match effect because those basic traits elicit motives to assimilate to and contrast from ambient norms (Big Two: Gebauer, Leary, & Neberich, 2012; Gebauer et al, 2013; Gebauer, Sedikides, et al, 2014; Big Five: Ashton & Lee, 2019; Entringer et al, in press; Gebauer, Bleidorn, et al, 2014). Yet empirical research is scarce on why basic personality traits elicit assimilation and contrast motives.…”

“…The GPIPP Single-Item Religiosity Scale (SIRS; Entringer et al, in press) is “I see myself as someone who is very religious.” The SIRS’s retest reliability is high ( r = .92), and the SIRS possesses near-perfect dissattenuated correlations with extant multi-item measures of global religiosity (.96 ≤ r ≤ .98; Entringer et al, in press).…”

“…We averaged participants’ SIRS scores within each country—the standard approach to assess country-level religiosity (Diener et al, 2011; Entringer et al, in press; Gebauer et al, 2017). That average correlated strongly with an external index of country-level religiosity based on Gallup World Poll data, r (94) = .86, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [.80, .91] (Joshanloo & Gebauer, 2020).…”

“…Achieving personal strivings increases well-being (Emmons, 1986), so people high in agreeableness and conscientiousness in particular should benefit from person-culture match. Openness to experience motivates contrast from sociocultural norms and, thus, should elicit strivings for low person-culture match (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Entringer et al, in press; Gebauer, Bleidorn, et al, 2014). Failing to achieve personal strivings decreases well-being (Emmons, 1986), so people high in openness to experience in particular should benefit little from person-culture match (but they may still benefit somewhat because they, too, should benefit from consequences that apply to everyone, such as higher social support).…”

“…Regarding the Big Five, agreeableness and conscientiousness motivate assimilation to sociocultural norms (Ashton & Lee, 2019; Entringer et al, in press; Gebauer, Bleidorn, et al, 2014) and, thus, should elicit strivings for high person-culture match. Achieving personal strivings increases well-being (Emmons, 1986), so people high in agreeableness and conscientiousness in particular should benefit from person-culture match.…”