An Exploratory Investigation of Differences in Personality Traits and Faith Maturity among Major Religions in Taiwan

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the effects of religion on personality traits, positive and negative facets of psychosocial development, and prosocial behaviors. To control for the extent of religiousness, we applied a four-fold typology to classify individuals into different faith types in addition to their religious affiliations. This typology distinguishes an integrated religious faith from other types of faith. We hypothesized that people of different faith types would display significantly different patterns of personality traits and prosocial behaviors, and that the differences among faith types will be greater than those seen among the self-reported religious affiliations. The Chinese versions of NEO Personality Inventory-Revised, Measures of Psychosocial Development, Prosocial Behavior Inventory, and Faith Maturity Scale were administered to 544 students from 15 colleges and universities in Taiwan. Five major religious groups were identified according to their self-reported religious affiliations: Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Taiwanese folklore follower, and No-religion. The Taiwanese folklore group consisted of those who claimed to be Taoists, I-Kuan-Dao, and those who worship deities that were originally good people as so portrayed in the Taiwanese legends. The empirical results supported our research hypotheses. Specifically, the effect of faith type surpassed the self-professed religious affiliation and faith types differed significantly with respect to profiles of their personality, psychosocial development, and prosocial behaviors. In particular, the integrated faith type showed significantly better profiles than other faith types in relation to socially desirable personality traits and prosocial behaviors.