For over a hundred years, psychologists have sought to understand the role of spirituality in human behavior and experience, and how it might relate to features of personality. This study considered personal narration of spiritual experience and how it relates to the personality traits of Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Over 400 narrative accounts of spiritual experiences given by mid-life adults (approximately half of whom were white and half African American) were analyzed and coded for themes of (1) Narrator Agency (NA), which tracks how participants describe their own efficacy and responsibility; (2) Spiritual Action/Intent (SA), which tracks how much participants attribute agency to spiritual beings; and (3) Spiritual Proximity (SP), which tracks how much participants view spiritual forces as omnipresent and accessible. Openness was positively associated with themes of NA, and negatively associated with SA. Gender and race proved to be strong predictors of narrative themes, with men showing higher scores on narrative agency (NA) than women and African American adults scoring higher on spiritual action/intent (SA) and spiritual proximity (SP) than white adults. After controlling for demographics, Extraversion predicted greater NA while lower Openness was associated with higher SA. Furthermore, themes of NA and SA were inversely related, which has implications for the importance of spiritual paradigms in understanding how people narrate their lives.

Last modified

• 06/30/2021

Creator

• Simpson, Ahmadu

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-da6a-7q93

Keyword

• Spirituality
• Race
• Personality

Date created

• 2021

Resource type

• Conference Proceeding

Rights statement

• In Copyright