 707
Personality and the Capacity for Religious 
and Spiritual Experience
It used to be said that religion is overlooked, 
neglected, minimized, and marginalized in 
personality psychology, despite the fact that 
religion was of great interest to the founding 
figures of the field, including Gordon Allport 
and Henry Murray. Because of the recent 
surge in empirical research on religion from 
a personological perspective (Paloutzian, 
2017) this claim is no longer convincing. 
One of the hallmarks of personality psychol -
ogy that distinguishes it from other fields is 
its focus on a comprehensive understanding 
of the person. Accordingly, personality psy -
chology should have a distinctive relation -
ship with the psychology of religion. Person -
ality psychology provides a natural home 
for the study of religion and spirituality in 
that a concern with the transcendent is an 
inherent part of what it means to be human 
(Emmons, 1999; Kirkpatrick, 1999). As 
spirituality and religiousness are profound 
aspects of people’s lives, it would seem that 
in order to know people (McAdams & Pals, 
2006), personologists must know about the 
religious side of people’s lives. Therefore, it 
is encouraging to see the increased attention 
that religious processes are commanding within personality research across cultures 
(Paloutzian, 2017; Saroglou, 2017).
Personality psychologists are said to 
provide glimpses “on what it’s like to be 
human” (Carver, 1996, p. 331). Spiritual 
or religious goals, beliefs, and practices are 
not just a distinctive component of a person, 
for many they are  the core of the personal -
ity. A national poll from late 2017 reports 
that 80% of Americans endorse belief in 
God (56% believe in God as described in 
the Bible; 23% believe in some other higher 
power/spiritual force), 9% endorse no belief 
in God but do believe in some higher power/
spiritual force, and 10% report no belief 
in any type of higher power/spiritual force 
(Pew Research Center, 2018). Moreover, a 
majority of Americans say religion is some -
what or very important in their lives (73%; 
Pew Research Center, 2019). Even among 
groups thought to be unconcerned with spir -
itual matters, such as adolescents, religious 
engagement is still present—  though steadily 
decreasing—  with 34% of American adoles -
cents attending religious services on a week -
ly basis (Twenge, Exline, Grubbs, Sastry, & 
Campbell, 2015). Looking beyond a single 
nation, as of 2012, over 7 billion people of 
the world’s populations are adherents of one 
of the major religions, and only 16% of the CHAPTER 33
Personality and  Religion
Sarah  A. Schnitker  
Robert  A. Emmons