Psychological type, religion, and culture: Further empirical perspectives

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Village

Powell

2019

Quest religious orientation among church leaders signifies a style of leadership committed to religious explorations more than to religious certainties. This study sets out to explore the extent to which quest religious orientation among religious leaders is a function of psychological predisposition (conceptualized in terms of psychological type theory) or a function of distinctive forms of religious experience (conceptualized in terms of Happold's model of mysticism) among a sample of 1,265 church leaders who participated in the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey. The data demonstrated that higher levels of mystical orientation were associated with psychological predisposition, involving extraversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. After controlling for sex, age, education, denominational groups and psychological type, higher levels of mystical orientation were also associated with higher levels of quest religious orientation. Mystical orientation partly mediated the effect of intuition on question orientation, but psychological preferences (for intuition and for perceiving) and mystical orientation seemed independently to promote quest religious orientation. Thus, church leaders committed to religious explorations rather than to religious certainties seemed to have been shaped both by psychological predisposition and by distinctive forms of religious experience.

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Quest-religious orientation among church leaders in Australia: A function of psychological predisposition or openness to mystical experience?

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Village

Powell

2019

“…These words and phrases were discussed and debated with type-literate colleagues and explored empirically in a sequence of pilot studies. Since 1996 the items have remained constant and been used in a number of studies to develop comparable data (see, for example, recent special issues of journals within the psychology of religion and the social scientific study of religion edited by Village, 2011a;Lewis, 2012Lewis, , 2015.…”

Section: Developing the Francis Psychological Type Scalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the factor structure of the Francis Psychological Type Scales among a sample of Anglican clergy in England

Mental Health, Religion & Culture

Laycock

Brewster

2017

“…Psychological type theory has become more visible within the empirical psychology of religion, as a growing body of evidence has established the power of type theory to predict individual differences in religious expression, experience, and belief (for recent reviews see Francis, 2009b;Ross, 2011). Particular contributions to this growing body of knowledge have been made by recent special issues of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (Village, 2011a) and Mental Health, Religion and Culture (Lewis, 2012(Lewis, , 2015.…”

Section: Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological type and reported religious experience: an empirical enquiry among Anglican clergy and laity

Mental Health, Religion & Culture

Village

2017