Specifics of religiocity and temporal perspectives by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd.

Abstract

Religiocity, being an immanent part of an individual’s personality, influences numerous aspects of psychological functioning. One of them is a temporal dimension of human existence. Being a member of a religious community in times of growing secularity encourages a reflection on motivation and specifics of religiosity of people engaged. The aim of current work is to verify the relationship between religiosity and temporal perspectives and to characterize the religiosity of young Catholics belonging to the three most popular in Poland religious communities. There were 172 participants. They filled in a questionnaire „Your religiosity”, measuring religious orientations or a „Religion Centralism” scale, which describes religion in five dimensions. Every participant also filled in a time perspective questionnaire. The analysis revealed a negative correlation between past-negative tmeporal perspective and religious engagement. An unexpected result was a positive correlation between a social aspect of religious orientation and transcendental future. Additionally, religion centralism correlated negatively with a deviant factor of temporal perspective balance. Based on the obtained results it can be suggested that among all temporal perspectives, the qualitative interpretation of one’s own past has the biggest influence on religious engagement. Another conclusion is that an important factor of religious activity is a possibility of meeting affiliation needs. Conducted analysis also allowed conclusions on the specifics of the religiosity of young Catholics.