Spiritual well-being and psychological type: a study among visitors to a medieval cathedral in Wales

Abstract

This study explores the theoretical and empirical connections between spiritual well-being and psychological type by drawing on Fisher's model of spiritual well-being as assessed by the Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure and Francis' classification of psychological type as generated by the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Data provided by 2339 visitors to St David's Cathedral in rural west Wales demonstrated that, when the four components of psychological type were considered independently, higher levels of spiritual well-being were associated with extraversion rather than introversion, with intuition rather than sensing, with feeling rather than thinking and with perceiving rather than judging. Further examination of these data suggested that the judging process (distinguishing between the feeling function and the thinking function) was of greatest importance in shaping individual differences in spiritual health.