Mapping personality traits to religious coping styles and struggle: Evidence from Malay Muslim undergraduates in Brunei

Abstract

The current research explores religious struggle, aiming to assess personality traits as predictors and testing the mediating effects of religious coping styles. Using existing cross-sectional data, we used structural equation modeling to analyze data of 277 Malay Muslim undergraduates. The six-factor personality model HEXACO explained 14.2 % and 6.6 % of the variances for positive and negative religious coping styles respectively, with the addition of the two styles in the same model further explaining 19.5 % of the variances in religious struggle. Findings suggest significant relationships between various personality traits and religious coping styles, predictive of the level of religious struggle experienced by them. Extraversion and agreeableness positively predicted the use of positive religious coping style. Additionally, the same two traits with honesty-humility inversely predicted the use of negative religious coping style. Toward religious struggle, honesty-humility had a negative relation, contrasting with openness to experience having a positive relationship. Between the two religious coping styles, only positive style was observed to negatively predict religious struggle. Four mediation effects were observed. Findings provide valuable insights into the complex dynamics of religious struggle. These insights could inform future research and the development of targeted interventions to mitigate religious struggle.