Transactional effects between personality and religiosity.

Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity. However, no research to date has examined whether within-person changes in personality lead to subsequent changes in religiosity. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), we investigated between- and within-person associations between the Big Five personality traits and three aspects of religiosity-belief in God, service attendance, and prayer-in a sample of over 12,000 Dutch individuals across 11 annual assessments. We found between-person associations between all Big Five traits and religiosity, yet within-person associations only between agreeableness as well as extraversion and belief in God. Specifically, individuals who increased in agreeableness or extraversion reported subsequent increases in their belief in God and, in addition, individuals who increased in their belief in God showed subsequent increases in agreeableness. We further identified significant moderating effects of gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation. Overall, the present findings suggest that the associations between personality traits and religiosity primarily occur at the between-person level. However, the evidence for intraindividual associations between agreeableness, extraversion, and religious belief highlights the importance of distinguishing between-person from within-person effects to broaden the understanding of the temporal dynamics between variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Big Five personality and religiosity: Bidirectional cross-lagged effects and their moderation by culture.

OBJECTIVE: Personality has long been assumed to be a cause of religiosity, not a consequence. Yet, recent research suggests that religiosity may well cause personality change. Consequently, longitudinal research is required that examines the bi-directionality between personality and religiosity. The required research must also attend to cultural religiosity-a critical moderator in previous cross-sectional research. METHOD: We conducted four-wave, cross-lagged panel models assessing the bi-directional effects between religiosity (measured as religious attendance) and the Big Five personality traits over 12 years in 14 samples (Ntotal  = 44,485). Each sample used population-representative data from a different German federal state-states that vary widely in religiosity. RESULTS: The findings were the following: (1) Agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness were associated with changes in religiosity, with the latter two effects being culture-contingent. (2) Religiosity was associated with changes in agreeableness and openness, with the latter effect being culture-contingent. (3) The cross-lagged effects of personality on religiosity were overall stronger than the reverse effects. CONCLUSIONS: The directionality between the Big Five and religiosity seems to go both ways and culture matters for those effects. We discuss the power of religiosity to alter personality and the role of culture for this effect and for personality change more generally.

Extracting Agency and Communion From the Big Five: A Four-Way Competition.

Agency and communion are the two fundamental content dimensions in psychology. The two dimensions figure prominently in many psychological realms (personality, social, self, motivational, cross-cultural, etc.). In contemporary research, however, personality is most commonly measured within the Big Five framework. We developed novel agency and communion scales based on the items from the most popular nonpropriety measure of the Big Five-the Big Five Inventory. We compared four alternative scale-construction methods: expert rating, target scale, ant colony, and brute force. Across three samples (Ntotal = 942), all methods yielded reliable and valid agency and communion scales. Our research provides two main contributions. For psychometric theory, it extends knowledge on the four scale-construction methods and their relative convergence. For psychometric practice, it enables researchers to examine agency and communion hypotheses with extant Big Five Inventory data sets, including those collected in their own labs as well as openly accessible, large-scale data sets.

A sociocultural norm perspective on Big Five prediction.

The Big Five predict numerous preferences, decisions, and behaviors-but why? To help answer this key question, the present research develops the sociocultural norm perspective (SNP) on Big Five prediction-a critical revision and extension of the sociocultural motives perspective. The SNP states: Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness predict outcomes positively if those outcomes are socioculturally normative. Openness, by contrast, predicts outcomes negatively if they are socioculturally normative. Moreover, the SNP specifies unique mechanisms that underlie those predictions. Two mechanisms are social (social trust for Agreeableness, social attention for Extraversion) and two are cognitive (rational thought for Conscientiousness, independent thought for Openness). The present research develops the SNP by means of three large-scale experiments (Ntotal = 7,404), which used a new, tailor-made experimental paradigm-the minimal norm paradigm. Overall, the SNP provides norm-based, culture-focused, and mechanism-attentive explanations for why the Big Five predict their outcomes. The SNP also has broader relevance: It helps explain why Big Five effects vary across cultures and, thus, dispels the view that such variation threatens the validity of the Big Five. It suggests that the psychology of norms would benefit from attention to the Big Five. Finally, it helps bridge personality, social, and cross-cultural psychology by integrating their key concepts-the Big Five, conformity, and sociocultural norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Are Regional Differences in Psychological Characteristics and Their Correlates Robust? Applying Spatial-Analysis Techniques to Examine Regional Variation in Personality.

There is growing evidence that psychological characteristics are spatially clustered across geographic regions and that regionally aggregated psychological characteristics are related to important outcomes. However, much of the evidence comes from research that relied on methods that are theoretically ill-suited for working with spatial data. The validity and generalizability of this work are thus unclear. Here we address two main challenges of working with spatial data (i.e., modifiable areal unit problem and spatial dependencies) and evaluate data-analysis techniques designed to tackle those challenges. To illustrate these issues, we investigate the robustness of regional Big Five personality differences and their correlates within the United States (Study 1; N = 3,387,303) and Germany (Study 2; N = 110,029). First, we display regional personality differences using a spatial smoothing approach. Second, we account for the modifiable areal unit problem by examining the correlates of regional personality scores across multiple spatial levels. Third, we account for spatial dependencies using spatial regression models. Our results suggest that regional psychological differences are robust and can reliably be studied across countries and spatial levels. The results also show that ignoring the methodological challenges of spatial data can have serious consequences for research concerned with regional psychological differences.

National religiosity eases the psychological burden of poverty.

Lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms psychological well-being, an effect responsible for widespread human suffering. This effect has long been assumed to weaken as nations develop economically. Recent evidence, however, has contradicted this fundamental assumption, finding instead that the psychological burden of lower SES is even greater in developed nations than in developing ones. That evidence has elicited consternation because it suggests that economic development is no cure for the psychological burden of lower SES. So, why is that burden greatest in developed nations? Here, we test whether national religiosity can explain this puzzle. National religiosity is particularly low in developed nations. Consequently, developed nations lack religious norms that may ease the burden of lower SES. Drawing on three different data sets of 1,567,204, 1,493,207, and 274,393 people across 156, 85, and 92 nations, we show that low levels of national religiosity can account for the greater burden of lower SES in developed nations. This finding suggests that, as national religiosity continues to decline, lower SES will become increasingly harmful for well-being-a societal change that is socially consequential and demands political attention.

The impact of childhood lead exposure on adult personality: Evidence from the United States, Europe, and a large-scale natural experiment.

Childhood lead exposure has devastating lifelong consequences, as even low-level exposure stunts intelligence and leads to delinquent behavior. However, these consequences may be more extensive than previously thought because childhood lead exposure may adversely affect normal-range personality traits. Personality influences nearly every aspect of human functioning, from well-being to career earnings to longevity, so effects of lead exposure on personality would have far-reaching societal consequences. In a preregistered investigation, we tested this hypothesis by linking historic atmospheric lead data from 269 US counties and 37 European nations to personality questionnaire data from over 1.5 million people who grew up in these areas. Adjusting for age and socioeconomic status, US adults who grew up in counties with higher atmospheric lead levels had less adaptive personality profiles: they were less agreeable and conscientious and, among younger participants, more neurotic. Next, we utilized a natural experiment, the removal of leaded gasoline because of the 1970 Clean Air Act, to test whether lead exposure caused these personality differences. Participants born after atmospheric lead levels began to decline in their county had more mature, psychologically healthy adult personalities (higher agreeableness and conscientiousness and lower neuroticism), but these findings were not discriminable from pure cohort effects. Finally, we replicated associations in Europeans. European participants who spent their childhood in areas with more atmospheric lead were less agreeable and more neurotic in adulthood. Our findings suggest that further reduction of lead exposure is a critical public health issue.

What is the structure of perceiver effects? On the importance of global positivity and trait-specificity across personality domains and judgment contexts.

When judging others' personalities, perceivers differ in their general judgment tendencies. These perceiver effects partly reflect a response bias but are also stable and psychologically important individual differences. However, current insights into the basic structure of perceiver effects are ambiguous with previous research pointing to either a unidimensional structure (i.e., people see others as globally positive vs. negative) or a multidimensional structure (i.e., people see others as high or low on specific traits). Here we provide a large scale investigation of the structure of perceiver effects that spans more than 100,000 personality judgments across 10 studies in which a total of N = 2,199 perceivers judged others on several trait domains (i.e., the Big Five, agency & communion) and in different judgment contexts (i.e., level of involvement with targets, level of exposure to targets). Results suggest that perceiver effects are hierarchically structured such that they reflect both a global tendency to view others positively versus negativity and specific tendencies to view others as high or low with respect to trait content. The relative importance of these components varied considerably across trait domains and judgment contexts: Perceiver effects were more specific for traits higher in observability and lower in evaluativeness and in context with less personal involvement and higher exposure to targets. Overall, results provide strong evidence for the hierarchical structure of perceiver effects and suggest that their meaning systematically varies depending on trait domain and possibly the judgment context. Implications for theory and assessment are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do religious people self-enhance?

We ask if and when religious individuals self-enhance more than non-believers. First, religious individuals self-enhance on domains central to their self-concept. Specifically, they exhibit the Better-Than-Average Effect: They rate themselves as superior on attributes painting them as good Christians (e.g. traits like 'loving' or 'forgiving,' Biblical commandments) than on control attributes. Likewise, they exhibit the Overclaiming Effect: They assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g. international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations) than on control domains. Second, religious individuals self-enhance strongly in religious (than secular) cultures, which elevate religion to a social value. Finally, Christians may self-enhance in general, perhaps due to their conviction that they have a special relationship with God.

Big Five facets and religiosity: Three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive tests.

How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity better. Yet, such research has generally been sparse, monocultural, descriptive, process-inattentive, and somewhat contradictory in its results. Therefore, we conducted three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive studies. Study 1 (N = 2,277,240) used self-reports across 96 countries, Study 2 (N = 555,235) used informant-reports across 57 countries, and Study 3 (N = 1,413,982) used self-reports across 2,176 cities, 279 states, and 29 countries. Our results were highly consistent across studies. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the Big Five facets did not explain substantially more variance in religiosity than the Big Five domains. Moreover, culture was much more important than previously assumed. More specifically, the Big Five facets collectively explained little variance in religiosity in the least religious cultural contexts (4.2%) but explained substantial variance in religiosity in the most religious cultural contexts (19.5%). In conclusion, the Big Five facets are major predictors of religiosity, but only in religious cultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural religiosity: A neglected but powerful dimension of culture.

Cultural religiosity has received little attention in psychology. This is an oversight, as cultural religiosity is an impactful cross-cultural dimension. We proceed to demonstrate that cultural religiosity shapes human psychology through three paths. First, cultural religiosity influences personal religiosity, which has many personal consequences. Second, cultural religiosity engenders personal consequences, independent of personal religiosity. Finally, cultural religiosity qualifies many of the effects of personal religiosity on personal consequences. The three paths are not unique to cultural religiosity; equivalent paths exist for virtually all cross-cultural dimensions. Yet, the three paths are particularly impactful in the domain of cultural religiosity.

Structure of Dark Triad Dirty Dozen Across Eight World Regions.

The Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) has garnered intense attention over the past 15 years. We examined the structure of these traits' measure-the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (DTDD)-in a sample of 11,488 participants from three W.E.I.R.D. (i.e., North America, Oceania, Western Europe) and five non-W.E.I.R.D. (i.e., Asia, Middle East, non-Western Europe, South America, sub-Saharan Africa) world regions. The results confirmed the measurement invariance of the DTDD across participants' sex in all world regions, with men scoring higher than women on all traits (except for psychopathy in Asia, where the difference was not significant). We found evidence for metric (and partial scalar) measurement invariance within and between W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D. world regions. The results generally support the structure of the DTDD.

The Well-Being Benefits of Person-Culture Match Are Contingent on Basic Personality Traits.

People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and-as a driver of migration-carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examined whether the person-culture match effect is moderated by basic personality traits-the Big Two and Big Five. We relied on self-reports from 2,672,820 people across 102 countries and informant reports from 850,877 people across 61 countries. Communion, agreeableness, and neuroticism exacerbated the person-culture match effect, whereas agency, openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness diminished it. People who possessed low levels of communion coupled with high levels of agency evidenced no well-being benefits from person-culture match, and people who possessed low levels of agreeableness and neuroticism coupled with high levels of openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness even evidenced well-being costs. Those results have implications for theories building on the person-culture match effect, illuminate the mechanisms driving that effect, and help explain failures to replicate it.

Country-level correlates of the Dark Triad traits in 49 countries.

OBJECTIVES: The Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) capture individual differences in aversive personality to complement work on other taxonomies, such as the Big Five traits. However, the literature on the Dark Triad traits relies mostly on samples from English-speaking (i.e., Westernized) countries. We broadened the scope of this literature by sampling from a wider array of countries. METHOD: We drew on data from 49 countries (N = 11,723; 65.8% female; AgeMean  = 21.53) to examine how an extensive net of country-level variables in economic status (e.g., Human Development Index), social relations (e.g., gender equality), political orientations (e.g., democracy), and cultural values (e.g., embeddedness) relate to country-level rates of the Dark Triad traits, as well as variance in the magnitude of sex differences in them. RESULTS: Narcissism was especially sensitive to country-level variables. Countries with more embedded and hierarchical cultural systems were more narcissistic. Also, sex differences in narcissism were larger in more developed societies: Women were less likely to be narcissistic in developed (vs. less developed) countries. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the results based on evolutionary and social role models of personality and sex differences. That higher country-level narcissism was more common in less developed countries, whereas sex differences in narcissism were larger in more developed countries, is more consistent with evolutionary than social role models.

Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A gravestone analysis.

Religious people live longer than nonreligious people, according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and nonreligious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligious people. In nonreligious cultural contexts, however, religiosity conferred no such longevity benefits. Evidently, a longer life is not an inherent feature of religiosity. Instead, religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts where religiosity is valued. Our study answers a fundamental question on the nature of religiosity and showcases the scientific potential of gravestone analyses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and prosociality.

Grandiose narcissism and prosociality are important topics in personality and social psychology, but research on their interplay is lacking. We present a first large-scale, systematic, and multimethod investigation linking the two. In 2 studies (N1 = 688, N2 = 336), we assessed grandiose narcissism comprehensively (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism) and examined its relations with instantiations of prosociality, namely, objective prosociality (actual behavior in Study 1; round-robin informant-reports in a real-life setting in Study 2) and subjective prosociality (self-perceptions in Studies 1 and 2). We obtained a consistent set of results. Agentic narcissism was related to lower objective prosociality and lower subjective prosociality. Communal narcissism, by contrast, was unrelated to objective prosociality, but was related to higher subjective prosociality. Additionally, we tested for prosociality self-enhancement among agentic and communal narcissists. Agentic narcissists evinced the same (and modest) level of prosociality self-enhancement as their non-narcissistic counterparts. Communal narcissists, by contrast, evinced substantial levels of prosociality self-enhancement, whereas their non-narcissistic counterparts did not enhance their prosociality at all. We discuss implications of the findings for the literature on narcissism and antisociality, and for the concept of prosocial personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

On the Popularity of Agentic and Communal Narcissists: The Tit-for-Tat Hypothesis.

Among well-acquainted people, those high on agentic narcissism are less popular than those low on agentic narcissism. That popularity-difference figures prominently in the narcissism literature. But why are agentic narcissists less popular? We propose a novel answer-the tit-for-tat hypothesis. It states that agentic narcissists like other people less than non-narcissists do and that others reciprocate by liking agentic narcissists less in return. We also examine whether the tit-for-tat hypothesis generalizes to communal narcissism. A large round-robin study (N = 474) assessed agentic and communal narcissism (Wave 1) and included two round-robin waves (Waves 2-3). The round-robin waves assessed participants' liking for all round-robin group members (2,488 informant-reports). The tit-for-tat hypothesis applied to agentic narcissists. It also applied to communal narcissists, albeit in a different way. Compared with non-narcissists, communal narcissists liked other people more and-in return-those others liked communal narcissists more. Our results elaborate on and qualify the thriving literature on narcissists' popularity.

Self-Enhancement and Psychological Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Review.

This article advances the debate about costs and benefits of self-enhancement (the tendency to maintain unrealistically positive self-views) with a comprehensive meta-analytic review (299 samples, N = 126,916). The review considers relations between self-enhancement and personal adjustment (life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, depression), and between self-enhancement and interpersonal adjustment (informant reports of domain-general social valuation, agency, communion). Self-enhancement was positively related to personal adjustment, and this relation was robust across sex, age, cohort, and culture. Important from a causal perspective, self-enhancement had a positive longitudinal effect on personal adjustment. The relation between self-enhancement and interpersonal adjustment was nuanced. Self-enhancement was positively related to domain-general social valuation at 0, but not long, acquaintance. Communal self-enhancement was positively linked to informant judgments of communion, whereas agentic self-enhancement was linked positively to agency but negatively to communion. Overall, the results suggest that self-enhancement is beneficial for personal adjustment but a mixed blessing for interpersonal adjustment.

Individual self > relational self > collective self-But why? Processes driving the self-hierarchy in self- and person perception.

OBJECTIVE: The self has three parts: individual, relational, and collective. Typically, people personally value their individual self most, their relational self less, and their collective self least. This self-hierarchy is consequential, but underlying processes have remained unknown. Here, we propose two process accounts. The content account draws upon selves' agentic-communal content, explaining why the individual self is preferred most. The teleology account draws upon selves' instrumentality for becoming one's personal ideal, explaining why the collective self is preferred least. METHOD: In Study 1 (N = 200, 45% female, Mage = 32.9 years, 79% Caucasian), participants listed characteristics of their three selves (individual, relational, collective) and evaluated those characteristics in seven preference tasks. Additionally, we analyzed the characteristics' agentic-communal content, and participants rated their characteristics' teleological instrumentality. Study 2 (N = 396, 55% female, Mage = 34.5 years, 76% Caucasian) used identical methodology and featured an additional condition, where participants evaluated the selves of a friend. RESULTS: Study 1 reconfirmed the self-hierarchy and supported both process accounts. Study 2 replicated and extended findings. As hypothesized, when people evaluate others' selves, a different self-hierarchy emerges (relational > individual > collective). CONCLUSIONS: This research pioneers process-driven explanations for the self-hierarchy, establishing why people prefer different self-parts in themselves than in others.

Mind-Body Practices and the Self: Yoga and Meditation Do Not Quiet the Ego but Instead Boost Self-Enhancement.

Mind-body practices enjoy immense public and scientific interest. Yoga and meditation are highly popular. Purportedly, they foster well-being by curtailing self-enhancement bias. However, this "ego-quieting" effect contradicts an apparent psychological universal, the self-centrality principle. According to this principle, practicing any skill renders that skill self-central, and self-centrality breeds self-enhancement bias. We examined those opposing predictions in the first tests of mind-body practices' self-enhancement effects. In Experiment 1, we followed 93 yoga students over 15 weeks, assessing self-centrality and self-enhancement bias after yoga practice (yoga condition, n = 246) and without practice (control condition, n = 231). In Experiment 2, we followed 162 meditators over 4 weeks (meditation condition: n = 246; control condition: n = 245). Self-enhancement bias was higher in the yoga (Experiment 1) and meditation (Experiment 2) conditions, and those effects were mediated by greater self-centrality. Additionally, greater self-enhancement bias mediated mind-body practices' well-being benefits. Evidently, neither yoga nor meditation fully quiet the ego; to the contrary, they boost self-enhancement.