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Why are women more religious than men? : testing the explanatory power of personality theory among undergraduate students in Wales
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Penny, Gemma, Francis, Leslie J. and Robbins, Mandy (2015) Why are women more religious than men? : testing the explanatory power of personality theory among undergraduate students in Wales. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 18 (6). pp. 492-502. doi:10.1080/13674676.2015.1079603
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2015.1079603
Abstract
This study tests the explanatory power of personality-based psychologically grounded theories to account for the well-established finding within the psychology of religion that within Christian and post-Christian contexts women are more religious than men. A sample of 1682 undergraduate students in Wales completed the short form of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised together with the adult form of the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity and measures of frequency of church attendance, and frequency of personal prayer. These data confirm that women record higher levels of religiosity and lower levels of psychoticism, and demonstrate that psychoticism is the strongest predictor of individual differences in religiosity. Multiple-regression analyses show that, when individual differences in personality are taken into account, biological sex adds no further impact on religiosity. This finding suggests that higher levels of religiosity among women may be interpreted as a function of basic psychological differences in levels of psychoticism rather than as a sociological function of being female.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BV Practical Theology | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Education Studies (2013- ) | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Religiousness, Women and religion, Personality | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Mental Health, Religion & Culture | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1367-4676 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 16 September 2015 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 20 September 2016 | ||||||||
| Volume: | 18 | ||||||||
| Number: | 6 | ||||||||
| Number of Pages: | 11 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 492-502 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/13674676.2015.1079603 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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