Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN PHILIPPINES.

University Town, Northern Samar
Web: http://uep.edu.ph; Email: uepnsofficial@gmail.com

NAME: CASTILLO, CRISTAL JOY B. TEACHER: ANAVIL LOU BOLANON

COURSE/YEAR: BsEd Values Education 2nd year DATE: 04/26/22

ARTICLE REVIEW ABOUT THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY IN UNDERSTANDING

RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL CONSTRUCTS
Piedmont, R. L., & Wilkins, T. A. (2013). The role of personality in understanding religious and
spiritual constructs (pp. 292-311). In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.). The Handbook of the
Psychology of Religion (2nd Ed). New York, NY: Guilford. Reviewed by Castillo, Cristal Joy

In this article, Ralph Piedmont and Teresa Wilkins analyses the role of personality in
understanding religious and spiritual constructs. They argue why religious and spiritual R/S constructs
should be considered of interest to personality psychologists. Secondly, they demonstrate how the Five-
Factor Model of personality (FFM) can be a useful empirical framework for understanding what are and
are not such constructs. Finally, they overview research demonstrating the added empirical and
conceptual value that religiousness and spirituality have for the field and potential contribution they can
make to improving existing psychological model. (Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003) outlined how and why
our search for the sacred though both personal and organizational efforts was so influential in terms of
directing behavior, organizing the sense of self and contributing to ongoing growth and development.
Although interest in these variables has experienced a scientific renaissance in the past 20 years.

To address the first argument, Ralph Piedmont and Teresa Wilkins believed that the psychology
of religion is not grounded in esoteric cosmology but rather is focused on the physical implications of
spiritual and religious phenomena on the psychological health and stability of individual. Hence, R/S
constructs are not aimed at examining the nature of God or at whether or not God exists, instead, the
focus is on how perceptions of the transcendent impact the texture, tenor, direction and quality of
people’s inner lives. In addition, they presented four compelling reasons on why should such constructs
be studied in relation to personality characteristics. First, the spirituality and religiousness are qualities
that are present in every culture, age and civilization. Second, spirituality is no doubt a uniquely human
experiences. No other shares the depth of thinking and expensiveness of awareness that the numinous
affords humanity. Third and perhaps most compelling is that R/S constructs are related to so many
outcomes that are of interest to psychologists. Some of the outcomes to which spirituality and
religiousness have been linked include mental and physical health, well-being, life satisfaction,
psychological maturity, self-esteem, interpersonal style, worldview, sexual attitudes and behaviors, and
marital satisfaction. Lastly, R/S constructs should be considered important to personologists because
such variables have been overlooked in the mainstream research literature. Theoretical psychologists
have long realized that spirituality and religiousness are appropriate objects of analysis for the field and
need to be included when studying the human mind. Many of the psychologists proposed an idea about
personality development. Perhaps, the most dominant of personality theories today are those that are
trait based, arising out of Allport’s (1950) pioneering work. For him, R/S served as cardinal trait, a
quality by which the operation of one’s personality system is guided and directed. It enjoys this
important status because of its seemingly singular place within the psychic system.

The second argument goes into the role and value of the FFM for understanding R/S constructs.
Piedmont (1999b) outlined four ways that the FFM could fruitfully applied to research on R/S
constructs. In his chapter in the first edition of this Handbook, Piedmont (2005) presented a selection of
findings collated from across several different studies that have linked spiritually related scales to the
FFM personality domains. Two observations emerged from the data. First, all five personality domains
significantly correlated with various measures. In fact, many of these scales correlated with multiple
FFM domains. The association with the FFM can help anticipate the kinds of personological criteria
scores they should predict. Second, the magnitude of these associations were small to moderate in
strength, indicating that while R/S constructs have some common ground with personality, they are not
redundant with or reducible to these dimensions. Piedmont concluded “Scores on these religious scales
contain much information about people that is not accounted for by the FFM… it is ultimately what
religious constructs do not have in common with the FFM that is of the most importance.

Lastly, the spirituality and religiousness are not products of other personality dimensions because
of four reasons. First, correlation between spirituality and religiousness with the FFM shows association
but no direction. After all, correlation does not imply causation. Second, the magnitude of correlations
between personality and spirituality/ religiousness, although consistent across multiple samples, is
relatively small. Third, FFM domains of A O and C may reflect individual’s perceptions of ‘spiritual’
and ‘religious’ people, those qualities do not always match well with the personality styles of individuals
who are orthodox or conservative religion in beliefs. Finally, spirituality and religiousness have less
relevance and value as scientific constructs.

I would agree with Piedmont et.al (2009) in evaluating models whether spirituality and
religiousness were predictors of psychological growth. Also, as a component to how people organize
and frame their sense of selfhood. The growing interest of this article is supported by the increasing
number of research studies being published that continue to document the value of R/S constructs. The
empirical value of this work supports the continuing interest of this field and are being replicated across
cultures, religions and samples. This article is a great way of (1) compelling rationale for understanding
R/S constructs as psychologically important constructs; (2) data supporting the predictive and
interpretive utility of spiritual and religious measures and (3) an empirical framework for evaluating and
conducting future research in this field. Overall, this examine several different models of personality and
how they have been used to expand our understandings of spiritual constructs.