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paranormal, despite some strong empirical evidence (Thalbourne, 1997).  

However, many of the phenomena associated with traditional religion (in 

this case Christianity) such as miracles, resurrection, souls etc. also violate 

the basic limiting principles of science and therefore some authors suggested 

that they fit the stated definition of paranormality (e.g. Tobayck and 

Pirittila-Backman, 1992).  Hence, it is clear that further research will be 

necessary to explore and verify the limited and mixed findings that have 

been produced so far. 

 

 

1.2. RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PERSONALITY 

 

Paradoxically, while the major religions proclaim brotherly love, history has 

shown that religion has often been used as a justification for violence and 

prejudices – e.g. the Spanish Inquisition (1478 – 1834) in Europe

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 (Eliade, 

1990).  This, amongst other reasons, has been a spur for researchers to shed 

light on the personality-religiosity relationship.   

 

Initial attempts to measure religiosity were performed by calculating the 

frequency of church attendance and the belief in the existence of a 

transcendent reality

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.  This has slowly made way towards more sophisticated 

measurement methods and the use of personality theories to inform the 

research.   

 

Early research with regard to personality and religiosity used Eysenck’s 

three-dimensional model of personality, based on the underlying factors of 

Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism (PEN) (Eysenck and Eysenck, 

1968, 1985).   Eysenck and Eysenck (1968; 1985) confirmed that in a very 

                                                 

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 The Spanish Inquisition was used for both political and religious reasons. Spain is a 

nation-state that was born out of religious struggle between numerous different belief 

systems including Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Judaism. Following the Crusades 

and the Reconquest of Spain by the Christian Spaniards the leaders of Spain needed a way 

to unify the country into a strong nation. Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unite 

Spain and in 1478 asked permission of the pope to begin the Spanish Inquisition to purify 

the people of Spain. They began by driving out Jews, Protestants and other non-believers. 

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 Transcendence is effectively the belief of having existence outside of the created, physical 

world.  

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limited way, different kinds of religiosity correspond to differences in 

personality traits, although some other studies failed to find any link 

between religious attitudes and personality (e.g. Chau, Johnson, Bowers, 

Darvill and Danko, 1990; D’Onofrio, Eaves, Murrelle, Maes and Spilka, 

1995; Heaven, 1990; Robinson, 1990).  However, in general a series of 

studies across cultures and denominations converged on the opinion that 

religious people tend to score lower on Psychoticism (Francis, 1992a, 

1992b, 1993; Francis and Katz, 1992; Francis and Pearson, 1993; Lewis and 

Joseph, 1994; Lewis and Maltby, 1995, 1996; Maltby, 1999a, 1999b).  As 

for the other two factors, different studies produced different results and 

these inconsistencies lead researchers to believe that these factors are 

unrelated to religiosity (Eysenck, 1998; Francis, 1992b). 

 

Studies using the Five-Factor Model of personality produced a slightly 

different result. In many studies (Saroglou, 2002; Kosek, 1999, 2000; Taylor 

& McDonald, 1999), religiousness is positively related to Agreeableness and 

Conscientiousness, although these correlations are low (Saroglou, 2002) or 

sometimes even absent (Streyffeler & McNally, 1998; Saucier & Goldberg, 

1998). This also confirms the hypothesis of the low correlation between 

Psychoticism and religion in the Three Factor Model. Although in most of 

the studies no significant relation between religion and other factors of the 

Five Factor Model (Saroglou, 2002) has been found, other studies suggest 

that religious people should be situated high on some of the other factors as 

well (Duriez, 2002; McCrae, 1999; Taylor & MacDonald, 1999). Religiosity 

was weakly correlated with Extraversion, and there was a small but 

significant effect size regarding Openness to Experience (Saroglou, 2002). 

Saroglou (2002) as well McCrae (1996; 1999) mentioned the complex but 

clear pattern of relation between religion and Openness to Experience. 

Participants who have high scores on Openness to Experience are associated 

with “open and mature religion” (Saroglou, 2002). Saroglou (2002) also 

mentioned the striking result that religious fundamentalists are associated 

with low Openness to Experience. This factor has to be examined in further 

research. However, one should take into consideration that most of the 

above-mentioned results have been found in studies in which researchers 

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have been working with a uni-dimensional model. The innovative aspect of 

the Post-Critical Belief Scale is the proposed two-dimensional structure of 

religiosity. Although in line with previous research, where none of the five 

factors of personality correlate significantly with religiosity as it was 

measured by the Literal vs. Symbolic dimension, a significant correlation 

with Openness to Experience was found. This is in line with Duriez, 

Soenens, & Beyers (2003), McCrae (1996, 1999), McCrae, Zimmermann, 

Costa, & Bond, (1996), and Saroglou (2002) Duriez, Luyten, Snauwaert, 

Hutsebaut (2002), who expected Openness to Experience to be crucial in 

order to understand the relation between religiosity and personality. 

 

In a similar approach to paranormal beliefs, Openness to Experience has 

been suggested as an important factor that might lead to a better 

understanding of religiosity (McCrae, 1999), as individuals high in this 

factor are thought to be characterised by a particularly permeable structure 

of consciousness.  This has been supported by a study by Streyffeler and 

McNally (1998), who found liberal and fundamentalist Protestants to differ 

with respect to this factor, but not to any other factor of the FFM.  This 

factor, given its definition, is hypothesised to be highly relevant for the way 

in which religious issues are interpreted and processed. 

 

To this end, Wulff (1991, 1997) has recently constructed a comprehensive 

framework based on the theory of Paul Ricoeur to identify the various 

possible approaches to religion (Peeters, 2003a & 2003b, Ricoeur1970 & 

1990, Wallace, 1990).  It attempts to arrange the approaches in two 

orthogonal bipolar dimensions. The vertical axis -Exclusion versus Inclusion 

of Transcendence- specifies whether or not objects of religious interest are 

granted participation in a transcendent reality, and as such this gives an 

indication whether or not an individual is religious/spiritual.  The horizontal 

axis -the Literal versus Symbolic dimension- refers to the ways of 

interpreting religious expression, i.e. an individual can interpret things in a 

literal or symbolic way.  Thus, this dimension can be seen as a form of 

cognitive comprehension in the way that religious material is processed.  As 

a result four quadrants can be formulated (Figure 1), each representing a 

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