Received: 28 August 2018 

|   Revised: 18 December 2018 

|
  Accepted: 20 January 2019

DOI: 10.1111/jopy.12459

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Religiousness and the HEXACO personality factors and facets in

a large online sample

Michael C. Ashton1   | Kibeom Lee2

1
Department of Psychology, Brock
University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
2
Department of Psychology, University of
Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Correspondence
Michael C. Ashton, Department of
Psychology, Brock University, St.
Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada.
Email: mashton@brocku.ca
Abstract
Objective: To examine the associations of religiousness with personality
characteristics.
Method: We obtained self‐ratings of religiousness along with self‐reports on the
HEXACO Personality Inventory—Revised in a sample of nearly 200,000 online re-
spondents. Respondents also indicated their religious affiliation, religiousness of up-
bringing, and political orientation; a subset of the respondents also indicated attitudes
about immigration and foreign aid.
Results: Religiousness showed weak associations (|r|s < 0.15) with several
HEXACO factors but somewhat stronger associations with the Fairness and Altruism
facets (both rs > 0.20). On those facets, participants with the highest religiousness
self‐rating (7 on a 1‐to‐7 scale) averaged about 1 SD higher than did participants with
the lowest religiousness self‐rating. In addition, religiousness was negatively related
to the Unconventionality facet among persons whose upbringing was very religious,
but not among persons whose upbringing was very nonreligious. Religiousness/per-
sonality associations were generally quite similar within different religious affilia-
tions (Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and several branches of Christianity)
but were stronger within relatively religious countries than within nonreligious coun-
tries. Despite the positive association of religiousness with the Altruism facet, reli-
giousness was uncorrelated with pro‐out‐group attitudes (i.e., favoring multicultural
immigration and foreign aid).
Conclusion: The findings advance our understanding of religiousness/personality
associations.

1  |   IN T RO D U C T ION 1.1  |  Links of religiousness with

The purpose of the present report is to examine the associa-
tions of self‐rated religiousness with self‐report personality
characteristics. Although this topic has been investigated in
many previous studies, the present research has the advan-
tages of combining (a) a very large sample containing many
participants from each of several major religions with (b) a
differentiated assessment of personality, examining many
narrow facet‐level traits organized within six broad HEXACO
dimensions.
personality factors
Religiousness can be viewed as a psychological individual
difference characteristic that differs conceptually from per-
sonality characteristics in several ways. One useful deline-
ation of the features of religion—features not shared with
personality traits—is Saroglou’s (2011) list of four dimen-
sions. According to Saroglou’s model, religiousness involves
believing in some external transcendence or supernatural
agents; bonding with some transcendent reality, usually

Journal of Personality. 2019;1–16. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jopy © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     1 |

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2       ASHTON and LEE
through a public or private ritual; behaving according to
some specified set of norms or values; and belonging to a
community of believers. But the conceptual differences be-
tween religiousness and personality traits do not rule out the
possibility of empirical associations, and such associations
have been examined in many previous investigations.
Meta‐analyses of previous studies on religiousness and
personality (e.g., Saroglou, 2010; see also Saroglou, 2017)
have shown that self‐rated religiousness is modestly related
to the Big Five personality dimensions of Conscientiousness
and Agreeableness. Other work based on the HEXACO
model of personality has also found religiousness to be
modestly related to Conscientiousness as well as to three
HEXACO dimensions (Agreeableness, Honesty‐Humility,
and Emotionality) that are independently related to Big Five
Agreeableness (see review in Ashton & Lee, 2014). Other
personality dimensions are not consistently related to reli-
giousness, but the Openness to Experience dimension (both
Big Five and HEXACO) does relate to what could be called
the style of religious expression: high Openness persons tend
to adopt a mystical, spiritual form of religiousness, whereas
low Openness persons tend to adopt a traditional, even fun-
damentalist form of religiousness (Saroglou, 2010; Saucier &
Skrzypińska, 2006).
1.2  |  Personality/religiousness associations
across religions and countries
The meta‐analytic findings reported by Saroglou (2010)
were mainly based on samples from Western countries and
in which most participants were of Christian religious back-
ground. However, the few non‐Western, non‐Christian sam-
ples of Saroglou’s meta‐analysis did not differ much from
the other samples in their patterns of personality/religious-
ness associations. More recently, several investigations have
shown that the links between personality and religiousness
are rather similar across countries, including non‐Western,
majority non‐Christian countries. For example, in a series of
studies, Aghababaei and colleagues (Aghababaei et al., 2016;
Aghababaei, Wasserman, & Nannini, 2014) have found that
HEXACO personality/religiousness associations in mainly
Muslim countries (Iran and Malaysia) were similar to those
in mainly Christian countries (Poland and USA). Also, in a
very large sample study of personality and religiousness in 66
countries representing every continent, Gebauer et al. (2014)
found that Big Five Agreeableness and Conscientiousness
were positively related to religiousness (with beta‐weights
of 0.15 and 0.10, respectively, across the full international
sample). Consistent with the predictions of their “sociocul-
tural motives perspective,” Gebauer et al. also found some
tendency for the correlations to be stronger within the na-
tional samples having higher mean levels of religiousness.
In another worldwide study based on a similarly diverse set
of 56 countries, Schmitt and Fuller (2015) obtained a simi-
lar pattern of personality/religiousness correlations, with
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness correlating 0.16 and
0.13, respectively, with religiousness in their overall sample.
Note that the results of Gebauer et al. and of Schmitt and
Fuller were reported separately by country or by world region
but not by religion, and we are not aware of any study that
has undertaken a large sample comparison of personality/re-
ligiousness associations across several major religions.
1.3  |  Links of religiousness with
personality facets
Most research on personality/religiousness relations has fo-
cused on broad dimensions of personality, particularly the
Big Five or more recently the HEXACO factors. However,
there are certain narrower personality traits—commonly
called facet‐level traits—that might be expected to be par-
ticularly relevant to religiousness. For example, religions
(and religious communities) generally seem to encourage
their members to have ethical integrity, to be forgiving of
others, and to act altruistically, at least in their dealings with
other in‐group members. These tendencies might lead one
to expect relatively strong associations of religiousness with
certain HEXACO facets, such as Fairness (a facet of Honesty‐
Humility assessing ethical integrity), Forgivingness (a facet
of Agreeableness), and Altruism (an “interstitial” facet that
divides its loadings across Honesty‐Humility, Agreeableness,
and Emotionality).1 As another example, the tendency to re-
ject religious beliefs might be more likely among persons
who are nonconforming, unconventional “free thinkers”
or who are highly intellectually curious, and therefore one
might expect religiousness to correlate negatively with the
HEXACO facets of Unconventionality (a facet of Openness)
and Inquisitiveness (also a facet of Openness, and assessing
intellectual curiosity), particularly among persons whose up-
bringing was religious.
1.4  |  Interpreting personality/religiousness
associations
The data to be examined in the present research are based
entirely on self‐reports, and this situation raises the possibil-
ity that any personality/religiousness associations could be
due to biases shared between personality and religiousness
self‐reports. For example, if persons who consider them-
selves very religious are also inclined to overestimate their
own prosociality—whether through hypocrisy or through
genuine misperception—then this could produce an artifac-
tual association between measures of religiousness and of
those prosocial personality traits. Although we think that this
scenario is plausibly responsible for at least some part of any
correlations based on self‐reports, we think it is not the chief
ASHTON and LEE
source of such correlations. Two lines of evidence instead
suggest that the associations are in large part due to a real
substantive association between religiousness and prosoci-
ality. First, several previous studies have shown (self‐rated)
religiousness to be associated not only with self‐reports of
prosocial traits but also with observer reports of those same
traits as provided by (for example) family members, teachers,
or colleagues (see review by Saroglou, 2010). Second, reli-
giousness has been found to be associated with actual charita-
ble giving (even, to some extent, to secular causes) and with
actual prosocial behaviours as observed in laboratory studies
(see reviews by Saroglou, 2010, 2012).
1.5  | Personality/religiousness
associations and religious upbringing
Considerable research has examined personality/religious-
ness relations, but less attention has been focused on the pos-
sibility that those relations may differ as a function of the
religiousness of one’s upbringing: that is, the personality
traits associated with religiousness among people raised in
nonreligious households may differ from those among people
raised in religious households. One prominent exception is
the work of McCullough, Tsang, and Brion (2003), who in
a longitudinal study of gifted children found that religious-
ness in adulthood was related to religiousness of upbringing
but that the association was stronger for persons lower in
emotional stability. Another exception is that of Altemeyer
and Hunsberger (1997), who conducted a series of interviews
among university students who had (a) abandoned their family
religion or (b) converted to a religion after having been raised
without a religion. They reported that the former students
(whom they called “amazing apostates”) had abandoned their
religions mainly because of intellectual skepticism, whereas
the latter students (whom they called “amazing believers”)
had joined religions mainly because of personal crisis (e.g.,
death of a loved one, substance abuse problems).
1.6  |  Religiousness and pro‐out‐
group attitudes
To the extent that religious persons really do tend to be more
prosocial in their personality characteristics, this prosociality
is not necessarily expected to be universal in its application.
Instead, religiousness might promote prosociality toward
in‐group members in good standing while simultaneously
limiting prosociality toward out‐group members and toward
lapsed in‐group members. As Saroglou (2013, p. 446) has put
it, religion’s “coalitional dimension (community and shared
normative beliefs and practices) emphasizes the in‐group ver-
sus out‐group barriers, thereby limiting the extent of proso-
ciality apparently inherent in the very nature of religion.”
To investigate this possibility, we examined participants’
  
|
   3
political orientation (left‐vs.‐right) and, in a subset of our
sample, participants’ endorsement of two pro‐out‐group at-
titudes, specifically, favorability toward giving of foreign
aid by one’s country and toward worldwide immigration into
one’s country. We have noted previously that religiousness is
associated positively both with prosocial personality traits—
particularly Altruism—and also with right‐wing political ori-
entation, despite the negative association between right‐wing
political orientation and Altruism (Lee, Ashton, Griep, &
Edmonds, 2018). We expected that the endorsement of pro‐
out‐group attitudes would be roughly uncorrelated with reli-
giousness, given the positive links of religiousness with both
Altruism and right‐wing political orientation, which would
be expected to show opposing associations with the pro‐out‐
group attitudes.
1.7  | Summary
To summarize, our plan for the present research was as fol-
lows: (1) to examine the associations of self‐rated religious-
ness with self‐reports on the factor‐ and facet‐level scales of
the HEXACO‐PI‐R, both in the entire participant sample and
in subsamples representing different religious affiliations or
different countries; (2) to examine the associations of reli-
giousness with personality as a function of (self‐rated) reli-
giousness of upbringing; and (3) to examine the associations
of religiousness with some pro‐out‐group attitudes, to find
out whether any links between religiousness and prosocial
personality characteristics would carry over to this intergroup
expression of prosociality.
2  |  M ETHOD
2.1  | Participants
Participants completed the questionnaires of the present
research at an online survey site (http://hexaco.org) be-
tween the dates of October 19, 2014 and October 18, 2017.
Respondents were not directly recruited but instead visited
the website and completed the questionnaires for self‐explo-
ration purposes. We screened participants’ responses to the
items of the personality questionnaire (HEXACO‐100; see
below) on the basis of the following criteria: (1) completion
of all items; (2) correct responses to three “attention‐check”
items; and (3) two other response quality checks (i.e., coher-
ence of responses and use of varied response options; for de-
tails see Lee & Ashton, 2018). The screening thresholds in
criterion (3) were set conservatively so that only obviously
nonpurposeful responses were removed; fewer than 1% of
the respondents who passed the first two screening criteria
were eliminated by the third. For the purpose of the present
research, we examined only those participants who passed all
of the screening criteria listed above and who also responded
 |
4       ASHTON and LEE
to each of the sex, age, and religiousness self‐rating items
(described below) with a response other than “prefer not to
answer.” The resulting sample size was 195,279; of these par-
ticipants, 46% were women and the mean age was 32.2 years
(SD = 13.8).
2.2  | Measures
2.2.1  | Personality
The English language version of the HEXACO‐100 (Lee &
Ashton, 2018) was used to assess the HEXACO personality
factors. The order of the items in the online survey is the
same as that of the paper‐and‐pencil version of the question-
naire, and each item was presented one at a time. As men-
tioned above, three attentiveness check items were embedded
evenly throughout the questionnaire (e.g., “This is an atten-
tiveness check; please indicate ‘neutral’.”). Responses were
made on a 5‐point scale with anchors ranging from strongly
disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).
2.2.2  |  Religiousness and other
relevant variables
After completing the HEXACO‐100 and a few attitude
questions (see below), participants responded to a series
of demographic questions, including questions asking
about age, sex, nationality, ethnic origin, and educational
level. The question about religious affiliation was phrased
as “What is your religious background?” and included
the response options Sikh, Hindu, Christian, Muslim,
Jewish, Buddhist, Other East Asian religious traditions,
Aboriginal/Native religious traditions, Other, No reli-
gious background, and Prefer not to answer. Beginning in
August 2015, we also added a follow‐up question to find
the denominational category of participants who indicated
a Christian religious background, asking “If you indicated
Christian to the above question, which of the following
describes your background?” and providing the response
options Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Other, and
Prefer not to answer. We thereby obtained denominational
information for almost 40% of our participants who indi-
cated a Christian religious background.
We also included among the demographic questions a sin-
gle 7‐point item each for religiousness (“How religious do
you consider yourself to be?” 1 = not at all to 7 = extremely),
for political orientation (“How would you describe your po-
litical orientation?” 1 = very left‐wing to 7 = very right‐
wing), and (in the second and third years) for religiousness of
upbringing (“How religious was your upbringing?” 1 = not
at all to 7 = extremely). Each item also included the response
option of “prefer not to answer,” coded as missing data for
our analyses.
2.2.3  |  Pro‐out‐group attitudes
After completing the HEXACO‐100 self‐report and before
completing the demographic questions, most participants
completed a set of several additional personality or atti-
tude questions. (The particular set of questions differed
across participants according to the date when they com-
pleted the questionnaires because we replaced a given set
of questions every few months with some other set.) For
the purpose of the present report, we focus on one such set
of questions administered to a subsample of 7,119 partici-
pants, specifically, a set of four questions assessing out‐
group‐related attitudes, two of which are of interest for the
present report:
My country’s government should be generous in
helping poor people in other countries
My country should admit immigrants from
countries all around the world
Each of these items was administered using a 7‐point re-
sponse scale (1 = very strongly disagree to 7 = very strongly
agree). The two items correlated 0.56 with each other, and we
averaged them to form an overall pro‐out‐group attitude score.
3  |  RESULTS
3.1  |  Religious affiliations
Table 1 shows the number of respondents who indicated each
religious affiliation. As seen in the table, about two‐thirds of
the respondents indicated Christianity as their religion, and
as noted in the Methods section, we obtained the denomina-
tional category of nearly 40% of those Christian participants.
Among those Christians for whom denominational informa-
tion was available, nearly 40% were Catholics, nearly 30%
were Protestants, over 20% were “Other” Christians, and
about 5% were Eastern Orthodox Christians. (We suspect
that many of the “Other” Christians are unaware that their
denomination actually belongs to the Protestant category,
but we cannot differentiate those persons from those whose
denomination is really non‐Protestant.) Although the large
majority of the sample was Christian, there were also sub-
stantial numbers of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists,
each representing between 1.5% and 3% of the entire sample;
samples for other religions were smaller and are not reported
in the table. About 20% of the respondents indicated no reli-
gious affiliation.
We also considered that our Buddhist sample could con-
sist partly of Asian‐origin participants, most of whom would
have been raised as Buddhists, but partly of non‐Asian‐or-
igin participants, most of whom would have converted to
Buddhism. We therefore report results for the Buddhist
T A B L E 1   Means, standard deviations, and correlations of demographic and personality variables with religiousness
Total (N = 195,279) Religion Total (N = 139,640) Hindu (N = 4,450) Muslim (N = 6,956) Jewish (N = 3,224) Buddhist (N = 3,658)

M SD r α M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r
ASHTON and LEE

Religiousness 2.82 1.83 – 3.19 1.84 – 3.26 1.74 – 3.80 1.72 – 2.64 1.64 – 3.20 1.57 –
Sex 0.46 0.50 0.07 0.45 0.50 0.09 0.34 0.47 0.10 0.39 0.49 0.06 0.45 0.50 0.11 0.47 0.50 0.03
Age 32.24 13.80 0.05 33.26 14.24 0.00 27.33 9.72 0.16 25.69 8.77 −0.03 35.43 16.21 −0.02 30.34 12.22 0.18
Honesty‐Humility (H) 3.29 0.73 0.13 0.88 3.31 0.73 0.15 3.15 0.75 0.10 3.19 0.74 0.21 3.28 0.72 0.06 3.35 0.70 0.08
Emotionality (E) 3.11 0.64 0.11 0.84 3.12 0.63 0.12 3.12 0.60 0.22 3.10 0.61 0.11 3.23 0.64 0.11 3.17 0.58 0.06
Extraversion (X) 3.22 0.67 0.11 0.87 3.25 0.67 0.10 3.24 0.67 0.11 3.24 0.66 0.05 3.37 0.68 0.06 3.20 0.64 0.09
Agreeableness (A) 2.89 0.65 0.11 0.87 2.89 0.64 0.12 2.84 0.64 0.05 2.90 0.64 0.11 2.82 0.65 0.04 2.97 0.65 0.03
Conscientiousness (C) 3.52 0.58 0.09 0.83 3.53 0.57 0.09 3.46 0.58 0.08 3.47 0.59 0.08 3.56 0.58 0.07 3.48 0.57 0.04
Openness (O) 3.70 0.58 −0.03 0.82 3.70 0.57 −0.07 3.68 0.57 −0.11 3.66 0.58 −0.13 3.78 0.57 −0.05 3.76 0.57 0.06
H: Sincerity 3.26 0.90 0.08 0.76 3.27 0.89 0.08 3.31 0.94 0.09 3.29 0.94 0.11 3.16 0.89 0.02 3.36 0.89 0.06
H: Fairness 3.51 1.06 0.24 0.82 3.58 1.05 0.24 3.55 1.06 0.19 3.61 1.08 0.31 3.62 1.05 0.17 3.59 1.01 0.11
H: Greed Avoidance 2.96 1.03 0.02 0.84 2.95 1.02 0.03 2.70 1.04 −0.02 2.69 1.03 0.08 2.99 1.03 −0.04 3.06 1.02 0.03
H: Modesty 3.44 0.88 0.06 0.77 3.43 0.88 0.08 3.03 0.90 0.02 3.18 0.91 0.12 3.34 0.89 0.02 3.40 0.85 0.04
E: Fearfulness 2.80 0.85 0.07 0.69 2.81 0.85 0.07 2.86 0.82 0.11 2.83 0.84 0.06 2.90 0.87 0.04 2.91 0.83 0.01
E: Anxiety 3.51 0.89 0.01 0.73 3.50 0.88 0.02 3.50 0.81 0.06 3.49 0.84 0.02 3.60 0.88 0.06 3.51 0.84 −0.01
E: Dependency 2.85 0.90 0.09 0.76 2.86 0.90 0.10 2.85 0.93 0.18 2.80 0.91 0.08 3.04 0.90 0.07 2.93 0.88 0.05
E: Sentimentality 3.28 0.87 0.15 0.73 3.30 0.86 0.15 3.27 0.86 0.26 3.27 0.86 0.15 3.37 0.85 0.15 3.35 0.81 0.11
X: Social Self‐Esteem 3.54 0.79 0.06 0.70 3.57 0.78 0.05 3.48 0.81 0.06 3.46 0.81 0.04 3.67 0.79 0.02 3.50 0.77 0.06
X: Social Boldness 3.02 0.90 0.04 0.73 3.04 0.89 0.03 2.98 0.88 0.05 3.03 0.86 −0.02 3.27 0.89 0.01 2.93 0.84 0.06
X: Sociability 3.05 0.92 0.11 0.78 3.08 0.91 0.11 3.21 0.91 0.14 3.22 0.89 0.07 3.20 0.91 0.06 3.09 0.88 0.06
X: Liveliness 3.27 0.87 0.12 0.80 3.30 0.86 0.11 3.30 0.87 0.10 3.25 0.87 0.07 3.35 0.89 0.08 3.28 0.83 0.10
A: Forgivingness 2.53 0.86 0.15 0.78 2.55 0.86 0.16 2.48 0.87 0.09 2.57 0.88 0.14 2.47 0.83 0.03 2.63 0.86 0.07
A: Gentleness 3.06 0.82 0.09 0.72 3.06 0.81 0.10 3.03 0.80 0.08 3.11 0.80 0.11 2.93 0.85 0.07 3.14 0.81 0.05
A: Flexibility 2.80 0.77 0.07 0.65 2.80 0.77 0.07 2.82 0.75 0.07 2.83 0.78 0.07 2.75 0.79 0.04 2.95 0.75 0.02
A: Patience 3.16 0.93 0.03 0.81 3.16 0.92 0.03 3.02 0.93 −0.07 3.10 0.95 0.02 3.15 0.92 0.00 3.17 0.93 −0.03
C: Organization 3.33 0.91 0.07 0.74 3.35 0.90 0.07 3.29 0.90 0.12 3.28 0.91 0.09 3.31 0.95 0.07 3.31 0.87 0.03
C: Diligence 3.78 0.76 0.10 0.72 3.81 0.74 0.09 3.72 0.75 0.06 3.73 0.77 0.06 3.92 0.74 0.07 3.75 0.74 0.03
C: Perfectionism 3.57 0.76 0.05 0.69 3.57 0.76 0.06 3.55 0.76 0.06 3.56 0.76 0.02 3.58 0.78 0.02 3.55 0.77 0.03
C: Prudence 3.38 0.77 0.04 0.71 3.40 0.76 0.04 3.26 0.80 −0.02 3.30 0.80 0.05 3.45 0.76 0.03 3.32 0.76 0.02
O: Esthetic Appreciation 3.54 0.84 0.06 0.66 3.55 0.83 0.03 3.42 0.83 −0.01 3.43 0.85 −0.07 3.54 0.85 0.04 3.67 0.78 0.09
O: Inquisitiveness 3.75 0.85 −0.08 0.71 3.76 0.84 −0.12 3.78 0.82 −0.10 3.73 0.85 −0.08 3.85 0.83 −0.05 3.72 0.81 0.02
O: Creativity 3.76 0.85 0.01 0.73 3.75 0.84 −0.01 3.75 0.82 −0.03 3.75 0.83 −0.07 3.86 0.83 −0.03 3.78 0.84 0.06
O: Unconventionality 3.75 0.67 −0.10 0.58 3.73 0.66 −0.13 3.79 0.66 −0.19 3.73 0.66 −0.18 3.86 0.64 −0.13 3.85 0.66 0.00
  

Interstitial: Altruism 3.77 0.74 0.23 0.65 3.81 0.72 0.23 3.77 0.74 0.22 3.84 0.73 0.23 3.90 0.72 0.15 3.84 0.69 0.16
|   5

(Continued)
T A B L E 1   Continued
|
Buddhist Asian Buddhist Non‐Asian All Christian Christian: Roman Christian: Protestant Christian: Eastern Other Christian No Religion
(N = 2,310) (N = 1,333) (N = 121,352) Catholic (N = 19,615) (N = 13,281) Orthodox (N = 2,426) (N = 9,615) (N = 37,332)
6      

M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD r M SD

Religiousness 3.04 1.53 – 3.46 1.60 – 3.17 1.85 – 2.95 1.71 – 3.45 2.00 – 3.04 1.73 – 3.95 1.88 – 1.34 0.80
Sex 0.49 0.50 0.06 0.45 0.50 −0.01 0.46 0.50 0.09 0.40 0.49 0.07 0.44 0.50 0.08 0.42 0.49 0.11 0.46 0.50 0.06 0.44 0.50
Age 27.66 9.64 0.12 34.92 14.60 0.18 33.94 14.44 0.01 27.63 11.51 −0.01 31.37 13.89 −0.03 26.86 9.35 0.09 27.04 1.46 −0.03 28.76 11.64
Honesty‐Humility (H) 3.27 0.68 0.05 3.48 0.72 0.09 3.32 0.72 0.15 3.27 0.72 0.08 3.41 0.73 0.16 3.18 0.72 0.08 3.37 0.69 0.15 3.23 0.75
Emotionality (E) 3.21 0.56 0.10 3.11 0.60 0.03 3.11 0.63 0.12 3.09 0.64 0.12 3.11 0.67 0.10 3.10 0.63 0.15 3.13 0.65 0.09 3.06 0.67
Extraversion (X) 3.17 0.62 0.11 3.26 0.66 0.05 3.24 0.67 0.10 3.25 0.70 0.17 3.21 0.70 0.11 3.22 0.68 0.13 3.26 0.71 0.12 3.12 0.70
Agreeableness (A) 2.93 0.64 0.01 3.05 0.67 0.05 2.89 0.64 0.12 2.98 0.65 0.10 2.98 0.65 0.13 2.89 0.64 0.06 3.09 0.64 0.13 2.85 0.67
Conscientiousness (C) 3.45 0.56 0.06 3.53 0.57 −0.02 3.54 0.57 0.10 3.54 0.59 0.12 3.53 0.60 0.09 3.53 0.60 0.07 3.57 0.59 0.07 3.46 0.60
Openness (O) 3.60 0.55 −0.04 4.03 0.50 0.11 3.70 0.57 −0.07 3.71 0.58 −0.06 3.76 0.58 −0.09 3.78 0.54 −0.04 3.65 0.60 −0.10 3.67 0.60
H: Sincerity 3.32 0.87 0.04 3.43 0.90 0.07 3.26 0.89 0.08 3.26 0.88 0.04 3.28 0.89 0.07 3.36 0.91 0.01 3.35 0.87 0.07 3.22 0.92
H: Fairness 3.56 0.99 0.13 3.63 1.05 0.07 3.57 1.05 0.25 3.50 1.04 0.20 3.69 1.04 0.27 3.37 1.06 0.21 3.65 1.01 0.25 3.28 1.07
H: Greed Avoidance 2.93 0.98 −0.03 3.28 1.03 0.07 2.97 1.02 0.03 2.88 1.04 −0.04 3.11 1.03 0.04 2.81 1.03 −0.03 2.88 1.04 0.04 2.98 1.04
H: Modesty 3.28 0.83 −0.01 3.59 0.86 0.06 3.46 0.87 0.09 3.43 0.88 0.03 3.54 0.87 0.08 3.16 0.90 0.06 3.58 0.84 0.07 3.44 0.91
E: Fearfulness 3.05 0.79 0.05 2.67 0.85 0.01 2.80 0.85 0.08 2.79 0.85 0.07 2.77 0.87 0.05 2.80 0.81 0.09 2.78 0.87 0.06 2.77 0.86
E: Anxiety 3.54 0.80 0.01 3.45 0.91 −0.02 3.50 0.89 0.02 3.47 0.90 0.03 3.45 0.93 −0.01 3.43 0.86 0.08 3.50 0.92 −0.02 3.51 0.93
E: Dependency 2.97 0.87 0.08 2.87 0.88 0.03 2.86 0.89 0.10 2.85 0.91 0.11 2.90 0.93 0.12 2.91 0.92 0.09 2.89 0.91 0.09 2.78 0.93
E: Sentimentality 3.29 0.79 0.14 3.43 0.83 0.06 3.30 0.86 0.15 3.26 0.89 0.15 3.30 0.90 0.13 3.26 0.87 0.18 3.35 0.87 0.14 3.16 0.92
X: Social Self‐Esteem 3.46 0.76 0.05 3.57 0.78 0.06 3.57 0.78 0.06 3.55 0.81 0.10 3.56 0.80 0.08 3.51 0.78 0.09 3.55 0.80 0.07 3.46 0.83
X: Social Boldness 2.83 0.81 0.04 3.12 0.87 0.04 3.04 0.89 0.03 3.00 0.91 0.08 3.01 0.92 0.05 2.99 0.83 0.03 2.98 0.94 0.05 2.94 0.92
X: Sociability 3.15 0.86 0.11 2.99 0.90 0.01 3.06 0.91 0.11 3.12 0.94 0.19 3.00 0.96 0.11 3.11 0.92 0.16 3.12 0.94 0.13 2.94 0.93
X: Liveliness 3.23 0.81 0.12 3.36 0.86 0.04 3.31 0.86 0.12 3.33 0.89 0.16 3.26 0.89 0.11 3.27 0.91 0.12 3.39 0.89 0.14 3.15 0.90
A: Forgivingness 2.56 0.84 0.06 2.74 0.88 0.06 2.56 0.85 0.17 2.64 0.86 0.13 2.68 0.87 0.20 2.62 0.87 0.09 2.80 0.87 0.18 2.45 0.86
A: Gentleness 3.11 0.81 0.03 3.19 0.82 0.08 3.05 0.81 0.10 3.14 0.81 0.10 3.12 0.83 0.08 3.05 0.78 0.08 3.27 0.80 0.11 3.03 0.85
A: Flexibility 2.96 0.73 0.03 2.95 0.80 0.02 2.80 0.77 0.07 2.87 0.79 0.08 2.80 0.79 0.05 2.74 0.78 0.03 2.94 0.78 0.06 2.75 0.79
A: Patience 3.09 0.91 −0.08 3.31 0.95 0.00 3.17 0.91 0.04 3.25 0.93 0.00 3.33 0.92 0.07 3.15 0.92 −0.02 3.36 0.92 0.05 3.17 0.96
C: Organization 3.32 0.85 0.06 3.30 0.90 −0.01 3.35 0.90 0.08 3.34 0.93 0.11 3.27 0.93 0.08 3.33 0.91 0.08 3.39 0.93 0.06 3.28 0.93
C: Diligence 3.70 0.73 0.04 3.85 0.75 −0.02 3.82 0.74 0.10 3.82 0.77 0.14 3.81 0.77 0.10 3.79 0.77 0.07 3.85 0.76 0.09 3.69 0.79
C: Perfectionism 3.51 0.76 0.04 3.62 0.77 −0.02 3.57 0.76 0.06 3.61 0.76 0.08 3.58 0.78 0.04 3.64 0.78 0.02 3.64 0.74 0.03 3.55 0.78
C: Prudence 3.29 0.76 0.03 3.37 0.77 −0.02 3.41 0.76 0.05 3.39 0.78 0.02 3.44 0.78 0.05 3.38 0.81 0.03 3.39 0.78 0.04 3.33 0.79
O: Esthetic 3.51 0.77 0.04 3.95 0.72 0.09 3.56 0.82 0.04 3.57 0.83 0.03 3.60 0.83 0.02 3.61 0.82 0.04 3.57 0.84 0.00 3.44 0.87
Appreciation
O: Inquisitiveness 3.59 0.80 −0.05 3.94 0.77 0.08 3.76 0.84 −0.12 3.71 0.86 −0.09 3.82 0.84 −0.15 3.82 0.81 −0.06 3.47 0.91 −0.15 3.72 0.86
O: Creativity 3.58 0.84 0.00 4.12 0.72 0.06 3.75 0.84 −0.01 3.77 0.85 −0.02 3.79 0.85 −0.01 3.89 0.81 −0.01 3.80 0.86 −0.01 3.73 0.87
O: Unconventionality 3.70 0.65 −0.11 4.10 0.60 0.07 3.72 0.66 −0.12 3.78 0.65 −0.13 3.82 0.66 −0.15 3.82 0.62 −0.11 3.76 0.66 −0.15 3.80 0.67
Interstitial Altruism 3.75 0.68 0.16 3.99 0.69 0.12 3.81 0.72 0.23 3.77 0.73 0.21 3.86 0.74 0.24 3.69 0.74 0.23 3.93 0.69 0.24 3.62 0.79
ASHTON and LEE

Notes. Sex coded as male = 0, female = 1. Denominational category obtained for under 40% of Christian respondents (see text). Religiousness item on a 1‐to‐7 scale; personality variables on a 1‐to‐5 scale.
ASHTON and LEE
sample as a whole as well as Buddhist subsamples consisting
of persons reporting an Asian ethnic background and of per-
sons reporting a non‐Asian ethnic background.
3.2  |  Descriptive statistics
Also given in Table 1 is the mean level of religiousness for
the sample as a whole and for each of the religion categories.
For the sample as a whole, the mean level of religiousness
was 2.82 (SD = 1.83). Overall, nearly 40% of the respondents
indicated the lowest level of religiousness (i.e., a 1 on the
1‐to‐7 scale, indicating “not religious at all”). As would be
expected, this lowest level was indicated by the large major-
ity of persons indicating “none” as their religious affiliation,
and among all persons who indicated “none,” the mean level
of religiousness was very low (M = 1.33, SD = 0.79). In the
entire sample, only about 5% of the respondents indicated the
highest level of religiousness (i.e., a 7 on the 1‐to‐7 scale,
indicating “extremely religious”). For respondents who indi-
cated one of the religious affiliations considered here, mean
religiousness ranged from 2.64 (SD = 1.64) for Jewish re-
spondents to 3.80 (SD = 1.72) for Muslim respondents.
Table 1 also shows, for the full sample of respondents
who answered the religiousness item, the means and stan-
dard deviations for sex (coded as male = 0, female = 1), age,
and the 6 factor‐level scales and 25 facet‐level scales of the
HEXACO‐100 (see http://hexaco.org/scaledescriptions for
scale descriptions). Recall that religiousness was assessed
with a single item using a 1‐to‐7 response scale, whereas the
HEXACO scale scores are computed as means across items
using a 1‐to‐5 response scale. Alpha reliabilities are also re-
ported for the HEXACO scales; because religiousness was
assessed by a single item, an alpha reliability cannot be cal-
culated for that variable.2
3.3  |  Religiousness/personality associations
for the full sample and by religious affiliation
In the full sample, correlations of religiousness with person-
ality characteristics (see Table 1) were mainly very weak:
among the six factor‐level scales, Openness was roughly
uncorrelated with religiousness, and the other five factors
showed small positive correlations ranging from 0.09 to 0.13.
Most of the 25 facet‐level scales also showed near‐zero or
weak associations with religiousness, but religiousness did
correlate 0.24 with Fairness (a facet of Honesty‐Humility)
and 0.23 with Altruism (an “interstitial” facet intended
to load jointly on Honesty‐Humility, Emotionality, and
Agreeableness). The only other facets whose correlations
with religiousness exceeded those yielded by every factor‐
level scale were Sentimentality (a facet of Emotionality as-
sessing interpersonal sensitivity and empathy; r = 0.15) and
Forgivingness (a facet of Agreeableness; r = 0.15).3,4
  
   7
|
We also examined (see Table 1) the associations of reli-
giousness with the personality variables within the various
religions of our sample (Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist,
and Christian) and within the denominational categories of
Christianity (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox,
and Other). (Recall that we assessed the denominations within
Christianity only after August 2015, so the Christian denom-
inational category is available for under 40% of the Christian
participants.) As seen in Table 1, there was some modest ten-
dency for associations to be weaker among the Jewish and
Buddhist (particularly non‐Asian Buddhist) subsamples than
among the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian subsamples; how-
ever, the general trends are similar across all of the religions
and all of the Christian denominational categories.
One small but interesting difference between the person-
ality/religiousness associations for Buddhists of non‐Asian
ethnic background and for all other religious groupings in-
volved the Openness to Experience scale: whereas Openness
generally showed very small negative correlations with re-
ligiousness in the various religious groups (rs ranging from
−0.04 to −0.14), it actually showed a positive correlation
with religiousness (r = 0.11) among Buddhists of non‐Asian
ethnic background. This result is consistent with the possi-
bility that Buddhism tends to attract high-Openness converts
from persons in whose cultures Buddhism is not a widely
observed religion. In the present sample, the mean level of
Openness for Buddhists of non‐Asian background (M = 4.03,
SD = 0.50) was considerably higher than that of the full sam-
ple (M = 3.70, SD = 0.58) and of any other religious group.
Other mean‐level personality differences between religious
groups were generally small and can be attributed in part to
differences between those groups in their age and sex dis-
tributions within our sample (for age and sex differences in
HEXACO‐PI‐R scale scores, see Ashton & Lee, 2016; Lee
& Ashton, 2018, respectively). We caution readers against
interpreting any small differences that might remain, as our
religious group samples may not be equally representative of
their respective populations.
We now return to the results based on the entire sample.
Even the larger facet‐scale correlations with religiousness
correspond to effect sizes between the conventional thresh-
olds for “small” and “medium” effects. However, even these
modest associations reflect rather large differences in these
personality variables between the least and most religious
respondents. Table 2 shows the mean scores for Fairness,
Altruism, Sentimentality, and Forgivingness for respondents
at each of the seven levels of religiousness. As seen in the
table, each of these scales showed monotonically increasing
means with higher religiousness. In the case of Fairness, the
difference in mean scores between persons at the highest and
lowest religiousness levels (M = 4.27 [SD = 0.85] versus
M = 3.30 [SD = 1.09]) was about a full standard deviation
unit. The corresponding difference for Altruism was nearly as
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8       ASHTON and LEE

large (M = 4.22 [SD = 0.63]) versus M = 3.61 [SD = 0.80]).
For Forgivingness, the corresponding difference was slightly
more than half of a standard deviation unit (M = 2.97 [SD =
0.90]) versus M = 2.42 [SD = 0.86]), and for Sentimentality,
it was slightly less than half of a standard deviation unit
(M = 3.54 [SD = 0.86] versus M = 3.11 [SD = 0.92]).
3.4  |  Religiousness/personality associations
by country
We also investigated the religiousness/personality cor-
relations within each country to find out whether there are
meaningful cross‐national variations in such relationships,
and whether any such cross‐national variations are related
to national‐level religiousness. We operationalized national‐
level religiousness as the mean religiousness self‐rating by
participants within each country of our sample. This kind of
mean score has been found to be highly correlated with a na-
tional‐level religiousness index externally derived from rep-
resentative independent samples (Gebauer et al., 2014; Lee
et al., 2018).
We report the correlations of religiousness with person-
ality variables for each country of our sample in Table 3, in-
cluding only those countries that had at least 300 participants
in our sample. Religiousness correlations are reported for the
six factor‐level scales as well as a set of five selected facet
scales. Specifically, Table 3 includes the four facet scales dis-
cussed earlier in this section and also the Unconventionality
scale, which showed some interesting cross‐national variation
in its association with religiousness (as well as an interesting
interaction with religious upbringing, to be discussed in the
next subsection). In addition, the correlations of national‐
level religiousness means with the personality/religiousness
correlations are shown in the bottom row of Table 3.
In general, the personality/religiousness relationships
tended to be stronger in the more religious countries than in
the less religious countries. As an example, Honesty‐Humility
showed correlations of 0.09, 0.03, 0.02, −0.02, −0.01, and
0.08 for the least religious countries in the present data set
(Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Spain, and Denmark,
respectively), whereas it showed correlations of 0.25, 0.24,
0.28, 0.24, 0.10, and 0.14 for the most religious countries
(Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and USA,
respectively). As another example, the corresponding cor-
relations for Altruism were 0.17, 0.14, 0.13, 0.14, 0.14, and
0.18 for the least religious countries, and 0.25, 0.39, 0.33,
0.30, 0.24, and 0.22 for the most religious countries. It thus
appears that prosociality differs more strongly as a function
of religiousness within relatively religious countries than
within relatively nonreligious countries.
Although Openness to Experience showed a near‐zero
correlation with religiousness in the full sample (r = −0.03),
it tended to show somewhat negative correlations in religious
countries. For example, Openness/religiousness correlations
were 0.02, 0.06, 0.01, 0.03, −0.01, and 0.00 for the least re-
ligious countries, whereas those correlations were −0.08,
−0.11, −0.12, −0.06, −0.17, and −0.09 for the most religious
countries. This pattern of results was even more pronounced
for one of the Openness facets, namely Unconventionality
(which showed religiousness correlations of −0.04, 0.00,
−0.04, −0.03, −0.08, and −0.01 for the least religious coun-
tries vs. −0.14, −0.26, −0.15, −0.15, −0.24, and −0.17 for
the more religious countries). It thus appears that people high
in Unconventionality (and in Openness, to a lesser degree)
tend to be less religious only in countries that are relatively
religious.5
3.5  |  Religious upbringing,
religiousness, and personality
We also examined the associations of religious upbringing
with the personality variables. Religious upbringing was
largely unrelated to personality, showing absolute correla-
tions of 0.10 or above with only two of the HEXACO‐PI‐R
facets—Fairness (r = 0.11) and Altruism (r = 0.13). Overall,
religious upbringing correlated with the personality variables

T A B L E 2   Means and standard

Fairness Sentimentality Forgivingness Altruism
deviations of scores on four HEXACO‐PI‐R How religious
facet scales by responses on the are you? N M SD M SD M SD M SD
religiousness scale
1 (Not at all) 76,447 3.30 1.09 3.11 0.92 2.42 0.86 3.61 0.80
2 26,995 3.40 1.02 3.28 0.84 2.49 0.81 3.73 0.70
3 17,917 3.45 1.01 3.32 0.83 2.51 0.83 3.77 0.69
4 37,344 3.59 1.01 3.38 0.82 2.55 0.84 3.85 0.68
5 21,170 3.79 0.96 3.42 0.81 2.67 0.84 3.96 0.65
6 13,254 4.06 0.88 3.47 0.81 2.80 0.85 4.09 0.62
7 (Extremely 6,076 4.27 0.85 3.54 0.86 2.97 0.90 4.22 0.63
religious)
Note. Personality variables are computed as means across items having a 1‐to‐5 response scale.
ASHTON and LEE
about half as strongly as religiousness did; this fact, in con-
junction with the fairly high correlation between religious
upbringing and religiousness (r = 0.47), suggests that reli-
gious upbringing has little association with personality inde-
pendent of religiousness itself.
To illustrate this situation, we conducted a two‐way
ANOVA using religiousness and religious upbringing as in-
dependent variables and the HEXACO‐PI‐R factor and facet
scales as dependent variables. The results of this analysis
showed that religious upbringing had little independent as-
sociation with the personality variables, with no η2 values
exceeding 0.001. By contrast, religiousness showed much
stronger independent associations with the personality vari-
ables, with the η2 values reaching 0.030 for Altruism and
0.034 for Fairness. (Note that, because of the very large sam-
ple size, even an η2 value of 0.002 reaches statistical signifi-
cance at the 0.001 level.)
This analysis also allows an examination of the interac-
tion between religiousness and religious upbringing in rela-
tion to the personality variables. Recall that if there are any
personality features that characterize persons of the “amaz-
ing believer” or “amazing apostate” categories, then this
should be revealed in nontrivial interaction effects. We found
that the interaction between religiousness and religious up-
bringing was essentially zero for most personality factors
and facets (η2 values below 0.003) but that there were con-
siderable interaction effects for the Openness to Experience
factor (η2 = 0.011) and for all four of its facets, particularly
Unconventionality (η2 = 0.013). (Note that the interaction
for the Unconventionality scale was not driven by any single
item; the four items of that scale separately showed η2 values
ranging from 0.003 to 0.009.)
The interaction between religiousness and religious up-
bringing in relation to Unconventionality is illustrated by
Figure 1, which shows the mean Unconventionality scores
of persons having each combination of religiousness levels
and religious upbringing levels. Persons having the lowest
level of religiousness despite the highest level of religious
upbringing had a mean Unconventionality score of 4.11
(SD = 0.63), which was considerably higher than that ob-
served for persons having the lowest religiousness and low-
est religious upbringing (M = 3.79, SD = 0.68), the highest
religiousness and lowest religious upbringing (M = 3.84,
SD = 0.68), and (especially) the highest religiousness and
highest religious upbringing (M = 3.62, SD = 0.75). In other
words, religiousness and Unconventionality were negatively
related among persons whose upbringing was very religious,
but were roughly unrelated among persons whose upbringing
was very nonreligious.
As another way of examining the associations among
Unconventionality, religiousness, and religious upbringing,
we compared the subsamples of persons scoring low and
high in Unconventionality in terms of the correlation between
  
|
   9
religiousness and religiousness‐of‐upbringing. When we com-
puted these correlations separately among persons who were
(a) more than 0.5 SD above the sample mean and (b) more
than 0.5 SD below the sample mean on Unconventionality,
the obtained values were 0.37 and 0.60, respectively. That
is, religiousness was better predicted by religiousness of
upbringing among persons low in Unconventionality than
among persons high in Unconventionality.6
We also conducted some analyses in relation to the find-
ing by McCullough et al. (2003) that religious upbringing
was more strongly associated with religiousness among less
emotionally stable persons, in their sample of adults who
had been identified during childhood as intellectually gifted.
We began by computing an ad hoc HEXACO Neuroticism
(vs. Emotional Stability) composite scale using a combina-
tion of facet scales according to the formula given in Lee
and Ashton (2013). This variable did not show any appre-
ciable religiousness‐by‐religious upbringing interactions
(η2 < 0.001). When we compared the correlations of reli-
giousness with religiousness‐of‐upbringing between partici-
pants who were (a) more than 0.5 SD units above the sample
mean and (b) more than 0.5 SD units below the sample mean
on this Neuroticism composite, the obtained values were
very similar (r = 0.46 and r = 0.48, respectively; cf. r = 0.56
vs. r = 0.33 in McCullough et al., 2003). Thus, the finding by
McCullough et al. (2003) that religious upbringing was more
strongly associated with religiousness among more neurotic
(i.e., less emotionally stable) persons was not well replicated
in our sample.
3.6  |  Religiousness and pro‐out‐
group attitudes
The positive association of religiousness with Altruism might
suggest that religiousness should be related to political at-
titudes that are associated with Altruism; however, it is also
known that religiousness correlates with a right‐wing politi-
cal orientation, which is actually negatively correlated with
Altruism (Lee et al., 2018). To the extent that political at-
titudes associated positively with Altruism might also be as-
sociated negatively with right‐wing political orientation, we
might expect religiousness to be roughly uncorrelated with
such attitudes.
Table 4 shows the correlations of pro‐out‐group attitudes
with right‐wing political orientation, religiousness, Altruism,
and the six HEXACO factor scales. As seen in that table,
pro‐out‐group attitudes were correlated negatively with right‐
wing political orientation (r = −0.49) and positively with
altruism (r = 0.43). Religiousness, which was positively cor-
related with both right‐wing political orientation and altru-
ism (in this subsample, r = 0.24 and r = 0.23, respectively),
was virtually uncorrelated with pro‐out‐group attitudes
(r = −0.02).
T A B L E 3   Religiousness descriptive statistics and correlations with HEXACO‐PI‐R factor‐ and (selected) facet‐level scales, by country
|

Religiousness
10      

N M SD H E X A C O H‐Fair E‐Sent A‐Forg O‐Unco Altruism

Pakistan 366 4.27 1.40 0.25 0.00 0.17 0.17 0.16 −0.08 0.31 0.10 0.16 −0.14 0.25
Philippines 1739 4.08 1.64 0.24 0.18 0.30 0.25 0.22 −0.11 0.35 0.25 0.29 −0.26 0.39
Indonesia 407 4.03 1.46 0.28 0.22 0.22 0.23 0.17 −0.12 0.49 0.32 0.22 −0.15 0.33
Malaysia 613 3.57 1.64 0.24 0.21 0.06 0.16 0.11 −0.06 0.36 0.24 0.16 −0.15 0.30
India 2,503 3.45 1.80 0.10 0.26 0.13 0.09 0.02 −0.17 0.20 0.29 0.13 −0.24 0.24
US 84,438 3.20 1.91 0.14 0.09 0.14 0.10 0.09 −0.09 0.24 0.14 0.15 −0.17 0.22
Greece 2,643 3.14 1.78 0.10 0.18 0.11 0.07 0.08 −0.09 0.24 0.21 0.10 −0.15 0.25
Singapore 2,147 3.10 1.72 0.14 0.15 0.11 0.08 0.03 −0.06 0.22 0.17 0.14 −0.15 0.25
Romania 1,040 2.89 1.69 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.06 0.11 −0.04 0.22 0.18 0.11 −0.13 0.22
Slovakia 481 2.81 1.70 0.08 0.12 0.04 0.12 0.04 0.12 0.15 0.10 0.18 −0.03 0.18
Serbia 426 2.79 1.69 0.04 0.22 0.06 −0.10 0.02 0.01 0.16 0.16 −0.02 −0.05 0.15
Mexico 735 2.74 1.72 0.04 0.10 0.15 0.06 0.08 −0.06 0.11 0.19 0.12 −0.14 0.22
Canada 12,774 2.64 1.77 0.10 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.05 −0.05 0.19 0.13 0.13 −0.10 0.21
Hungary 297 2.64 1.73 0.08 0.24 0.16 0.01 −0.02 −0.01 0.16 0.32 0.14 −0.15 0.27
Poland 664 2.61 1.66 0.05 0.14 0.05 0.09 0.01 0.05 0.16 0.15 0.13 0.00 0.18
Croatia 379 2.60 1.67 −0.05 0.03 0.19 −0.04 0.01 −0.05 0.07 0.08 0.00 −0.07 0.19
Brazil 921 2.59 1.73 0.11 0.13 0.17 0.08 −0.03 −0.05 0.19 0.21 0.10 −0.12 0.18
Ireland 1986 2.53 1.62 0.09 0.13 0.14 0.11 0.08 −0.06 0.18 0.12 0.11 −0.10 0.21
New Zealand 2,725 2.50 1.70 0.11 0.09 0.05 0.04 0.06 −0.01 0.19 0.11 0.09 −0.08 0.19
Australia 10,824 2.48 1.71 0.10 0.11 0.06 0.09 0.05 0.01 0.18 0.13 0.11 −0.05 0.18
Italy 1908 2.44 1.64 0.01 0.11 0.12 0.07 0.07 0.02 0.14 0.12 0.10 −0.02 0.14
Japan 309 2.43 1.53 0.10 0.05 0.10 0.03 0.10 0.14 0.09 0.14 0.03 −0.01 0.04
Austria 599 2.38 1.58 0.03 0.11 0.11 −0.01 0.06 0.05 0.17 0.12 0.00 −0.04 0.12
France 1801 2.36 1.60 −0.02 0.06 0.11 0.05 0.06 0.04 0.14 0.09 0.06 0.00 0.15
Czech 340 2.36 1.58 0.07 0.14 0.16 0.05 0.03 0.12 0.13 0.27 0.10 −0.07 0.20
Switzerland 768 2.33 1.58 0.02 0.14 0.04 0.02 0.10 0.03 0.14 0.14 0.05 −0.08 0.13
Portugal 649 2.30 1.61 0.12 0.11 0.14 0.06 0.06 −0.01 0.26 0.13 0.15 −0.10 0.22
UK 40,340 2.30 1.60 0.10 0.11 0.08 0.09 0.06 0.02 0.19 0.13 0.11 −0.03 0.19
Germany 3,331 2.29 1.56 0.06 0.13 0.10 0.06 0.04 0.05 0.19 0.16 0.09 −0.02 0.20
Netherlands 3,771 2.19 1.58 0.10 0.11 0.03 0.07 0.04 0.04 0.17 0.13 0.08 −0.03 0.20
(Continued)
ASHTON and LEE
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|
   11

Notes. Countries are listed in descending order of mean religiousness. H‐Fair = Honesty‐Humility: Fairness; E‐Sent = Emotionality: Sentimentality; A‐Forg = Agreeableness: Forgivingness; O‐Unco = Openness: Unconventionality.
Altruism
0.18
0.14
0.14
0.13
0.14
0.17
0.76
4.20

4.10
O‐Unco

4.00
−0.01
−0.08
−0.03
−0.04

−0.04
−0.77
0.00

Unconventionality
3.90

3.80

3.70
A‐Forg
0.07
0.06
0.03
0.09
0.00
0.08
0.68 3.60

3.50

Religious Upbringing
7
3.40
E‐Sent

5
0.12
0.18
0.08
0.09
0.10
0.15
0.49

3.30 3
1 2 3 4 1
5 6 7
Religiousness
H‐Fair
0.18
0.09
0.05
0.08
0.14
0.16
0.78

F I G U R E 1   Interaction between religousness and religious

upbringing: unconventionality
−0.01

−0.67
0.00

0.03
0.01
0.06
0.02

The pattern of the correlations described above appears

O

to suggest that religiousness has two different, opposing

paths in influencing pro‐out‐group attitudes, which to-
−0.01

−0.11
0.05
0.11

0.06
0.09
0.57

gether produce a near‐zero association between religious-

C

ness and pro‐out‐group attitudes. To examine this aspect

of the results, we assessed the direct and indirect effects
−0.01

−0.02
0.11
0.00

0.04

0.08
0.67

of religiousness on pro‐out‐group attitudes in a path model

A

where religiousness was set to influence pro‐out‐group at-

titudes via two mediators, namely, right‐wing political ori-
entation and Altruism. The indirect effects of religiousness
0.03
0.15

0.55
0.08
0.06
0.03
0.12
X

were −0.102 via right‐wing political orientation and 0.079

via Altruism; the direct path coefficient was 0.005. Thus,
these results suggest the possibility that religiousness influ-
0.12
0.12
0.09
0.10
0.07
0.12
0.30
E

ences both Altruism and right‐wing political orientation,

which in turn have opposing influences on pro‐out‐group
attitudes, leaving religiousness approximately uncorrelated
−0.01
−0.02
0.08

0.02
0.03
0.09
0.78
H

with those attitudes.

4  |  DISCUSSION
1.46
1.53
1.50
1.41
1.48
1.42
Religiousness

SD

religiousness and personality/religiousness

4.1  |  Comparisons with previous findings

Religiousness item has a 1-to-7 response scale.
2.15
2.15
2.14
2.08
2.05
1.98
M

The sizes of the associations observed in this study between

Correlations between country‐level

religiousness and the broad personality factors were gener-

ally similar to those reported by Gebauer et al. (2014) and
1,262
972
990
882
645

955
T A B L E 3   Continued

Schmitt and Fuller (2015) in their worldwide surveys. For

N

example, we found a zero‐order correlation of 0.09 between

HEXACO Conscientiousness and religiousness, whereas
for Big Five Conscientiousness the correlation was 0.13 in
Schmitt and Fuller (2015) and the beta weight (with other Big
relations
Denmark

Belgium

Norway
Sweden
Finland

Five factors also included as predictors) was 0.10 in Gebauer

Spain

et al. (2014). Likewise, we found that the HEXACO factors

 |
12       ASHTON and LEE

related to Big Five Agreeableness—namely, Agreeableness,
Honesty‐Humility, and Emotionality—all correlated mod-
estly with religiousness (rs of 0.11, 0.13, and 0.11, respec-
tively), whereas for Big Five Agreeableness the correlation
was 0.16 in Schmitt and Fuller and the corresponding beta
weight was 0.15 in Gebauer et al. (2014). (Moreover, if
we derive a HEXACO‐based approximation to Big Five
Agreeableness, the resulting scale correlates 0.18 with reli-
giousness in this sample.)7 The present results, and also those
of Gebauer et al. and of Schmitt and Fuller, are thus similar to
those of Saroglou’s (2010) meta‐analysis for the associations
of (Big Five) Agreeableness with religiousness (meta‐ana-
lytic r = 0.19). However, Saroglou’s meta‐analysis showed
a somewhat stronger Conscientiousness/religiousness corre-
lation (r = 0.16) than that found in the present study and in
Gebauer et al.’s study, with the Schmitt and Fuller results
intermediate. We do not know the reasons for the latter dif-
ferences, but even those differences are rather small.
As noted at the beginning of this report, one novel feature
of the present research is that it combined a very large in-
ternational sample with personality assessment of narrower,
facet‐level traits as well as broader, factor‐level traits. Our
results showed considerable heterogeneity of personality/
religiousness associations involving facets belonging to
the same broad factor. Most notably, the Fairness facet (of
Honesty‐Humility) correlated 0.24 with religiousness even
though the corresponding correlations for the other three
facets of Honesty‐Humility ranged only from 0.02 to 0.08,
with the overall Honesty‐Humility factor scale yielding a
correlation of 0.13. Likewise, the Altruism facet—which
occupies an “interstitial” location, loading moderately on
Honesty‐Humility, on Agreeableness, and on Emotionality—
correlated 0.23 with religiousness even though only 3 of the
12 facets assigned to those 3 factors correlated above 0.10
with religiousness. This latter result suggests that the previ-
ous findings of associations between Big Five Agreeableness
and religiousness might be driven largely by the specifically
“altruistic” content (and perhaps to a lesser extent the spe-
cifically “forgiving” content) of the Big Five Agreeableness
scales.
4.2  |  The origins of religiousness/personality
associations
The data of this report were based entirely on self‐reports,
and therefore cannot resolve the issue of whether the associa-
tions between religiousness and prosociality represent a real
trait difference, such that religious persons truly tend to be
more prosocial, as opposed to a difference in self‐report bi-
ases, such that religious persons systematically tend to over-
estimate their own prosociality. As noted in the Introduction,
however, previous research evidence—as based on cross‐
source, self/observer designs and on objectively recorded
behavior—suggests that such results do reflect, at least in
considerable part, a real trait difference. In addition, we note
that the procedure of our data collection is unlikely to have
induced an artifactual association of the kind that could occur
if the religiousness self‐ratings would induce prosocial per-
sonality self‐reports, or vice versa: specifically, we obtained
the religiousness self‐rating in the middle of a demographic
questionnaire that was administered after the omnibus self‐
report personality questionnaire. Therefore, there was no
“priming” of religious identity prior to the personality self‐re-
ports, and there is little prospect that participants’ responses
to the prosocial personality items would have substantially
influenced their subsequent religiousness self‐ratings.
To the extent that there is some real association between
religiousness and prosocial personality traits, this association

T A B L E 4   Correlations among pro‐out‐group attitudes, religiousness, political orientation, and personality characteristics

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Pro‐out‐group 4.92 1.48
attitude
2. Religiousness 2.80 1.81 −0.02
3. Right‐wing political 3.64 1.33 −0.49 0.24
orientation
4. Altruism 3.80 0.74 0.43 0.23 −0.19
5. Honesty‐Humility 3.32 0.70 0.25 0.11 −0.13 0.46
6. Emotionality 3.16 0.67 0.22 0.10 −0.19 0.35 0.11
7. Extraversion 3.19 0.73 0.10 0.16 0.05 0.25 −0.01 −0.14
8. Agreeableness 2.99 0.65 0.18 0.11 −0.03 0.41 0.37 −0.11 0.22
9. Conscientiousness 3.50 0.62 0.03 0.13 0.08 0.17 0.17 −0.06 0.26 0.11
10. Openness 3.61 0.63 0.16 −0.03 −0.17 0.15 0.14 −0.09 0.09 0.12 0.08
Notes. N = 7,119. Pro‐out‐group attitude variable is computed as mean across two items having a 1‐to‐7 response scale. Religiousness and right‐wing political orientation
items have a 1‐to‐7 response scale. Personality variables are computed as means across items having a 1‐to‐5 response scale.
ASHTON and LEE
could result from (a) a tendency for religiousness to promote
prosociality, or (b) a tendency for prosocial personality traits
to predispose persons to be religious. Previous reviews of
longitudinal research (e.g., Saroglou, 2010; see also Ashton
& Lee, 2014) have tended to favor the latter explanation.
However, some features of the present results seem to be at
least as consistent with the former explanation as with the
latter. In particular, we found that religiousness was associ-
ated specifically with the Fairness facet scale (r = 0.24) but
much less so with any of the other three facet scales within
Honesty‐Humility (rs ranging from 0.02 to 0.08). This pat-
tern of results suggests that religiousness is mainly associated
with the specific variance of Fairness, that is, the variance not
attributable to a common Honesty‐Humility dimension (or
any other broad dimension). We think that the most plausible
explanation of these findings is that religiousness tends to
increase persons’ levels of the specific variance of Fairness,
insofar as the more religious persons would internalize more
strongly their religions’ norms against behaviors such as
stealing and cheating. (This account is consistent with experi-
mental evidence suggesting that religious priming can induce
some forms of prosocial behavior among religious persons;
see review by Preston, Salomon, & Ritter, 2014.)
It is also possible that persons who are strongly predis-
posed toward adhering to prosocial norms are consequently
motivated to become or to remain religious. However, if
this were entirely responsible for the observed correlation
between religiousness and Fairness, then one would expect
the correlations of religiousness with the other Honesty‐
Humility facet scales to be larger than those observed here,
because the shared as well as the unique variance of Fairness
would be implicated.8 Nevertheless, it remains plausible that
Fairness has at least some role in predisposing persons to-
ward religiousness. (Similar observations regarding possible
directions of influence would also apply to the religiousness/
Altruism correlations.)
4.3  |  Religiousness, prosocial
personality, and pro‐out‐group attitudes
An additional issue involves the extent to which any real
association between religiousness and prosocial personal-
ity traits would be manifested in the endorsement of al-
truistic actions at the intergroup level. We addressed this
issue by examining the associations of religiousness and of
prosocial personality traits with attitudes toward foreign aid
and toward multicultural immigration. We found that even
though religiousness correlated positively with Altruism,
which in turn correlated positively with these pro‐out‐
group attitudes, religiousness was uncorrelated with those
attitudes. This near‐zero correlation can be understood by
considering additionally our finding that religiousness also
correlated positively with right‐wing political orientation,
  
|
   13
which correlated negatively with pro‐out‐group attitudes
(and also with Altruism). That is, religiousness was cor-
related positively with both Altruism and right‐wing po-
litical orientation, despite the negative correlation between
those two variables, and the near‐zero association of reli-
giousness with pro‐out‐group attitudes fell about halfway
in between the associations shown by Altruism (positive)
and right‐wing political orientation (negative) with those
attitudes. Presumably, religions generally encourage their
adherents to behave altruistically, but to direct this altru-
ism toward in‐group members in good standing rather than
toward out‐group members. In this way, the altruistic in-
clinations of religious persons are neutralized when inter-
group altruism is considered (recall the earlier citation to
Saroglou, 2013, p. 446).
4.4  |  Religiousness/personality associations
across religious affiliations and countries
A noteworthy feature of our results was that the personal-
ity correlates of religiousness were broadly similar across the
various religious groups. In particular, religiousness showed
small‐to‐medium positive correlations with two “prosocial”
facet‐level traits—Fairness and Altruism—within each of
those groups. In keeping with our suggested interpretation
above, we interpret this finding as suggesting that all of the
religions considered here share a common tendency to pro-
mote these prosocial tendencies in their adherents, presum-
ably through some combination of scriptures, sermons, and
broader social norms. Alternatively, it is also possible that
the various religions share a common tendency to attract and
retain prosocial persons as adherents.
The strength of the associations between these person-
ality variables and religiousness did differ somewhat across
religions, but the interpretation of those differences is not
obvious. For example, the Fairness/religiousness link was
stronger in Muslims (r = 0.31), in Protestant Christians (r
= 0.27), and in “Other” Christians (r = 0.25) than in Asian
Buddhists (r = 0.13) and especially non‐Asian Buddhists (r
= 0.07). In the case of non‐Asian Buddhists, we suspect that
for this group more than the others, high levels of self‐rated
religiousness tend to reflect intense personal religious striv-
ings rather than intense commitment to religious teachings
concerning morality.
Another modest difference in personality/religiousness
relations across religions involved the Forgivingness facet:
the Forgivingness/religiousness correlation was higher in
Christians (r = 0.17; except for Eastern Orthodox Christians,
r = 0.09) and in Muslims (r = 0.14) than in the other religious
groupings (all rs < 0.10). The somewhat higher correlations
for Christians might be interpreted in terms of the emphasis
in Christianity on unconditional forgiveness (as opposed to
forgiveness contingent upon contrition), but this would not
 |
14       ASHTON and LEE
explain the similarly high correlations for Muslims or the
lower correlation for Eastern Orthodox Christians.
With regard to national‐level differences in the person-
ality/religiousness relations, our results showed consistently
stronger associations in the more religious countries than in
the less religious countries. In particular, within relatively reli-
gious countries, the more religious persons tended to be more
“prosocial” (i.e., higher Fairness, Altruism, Forgivingness,
Sentimentality) and to some extent more “conforming” (i.e.,
lower Unconventionality) than did the less religious persons,
but these tendencies were greatly attenuated within nonreli-
gious countries. These results thus replicate those of Gebauer
et al. (2014), with even sharper differences between coun-
tries, and are consistent with the “sociocultural motives per-
spective” of those authors.
4.5  |  Personality and religiousness as a
function of religious upbringing
As reported above, self‐rated religiousness was correlated
rather strongly (r = 0.47) with self‐rated religiousness of up-
bringing. For most personality characteristics, religiousness
showed stronger associations than did religiousness of up-
bringing, which was not independently associated with those
characteristics. These results are consistent with the possibil-
ity that certain personality traits predispose people to develop
a higher or lower level of religiousness than that of their up-
bringing (as considered in the subsection on The Origins of
Religiousness/Personality Associations). Moreover, these
results also suggest that any influence of religious upbring-
ing on personality trait levels does not long outlast any later
abandonment of religion.
For most personality characteristics, the associations
with religiousness did not vary as a function of religious
upbringing. However, for Openness to Experience and its
facets—especially Unconventionality—the associations
with religiousness did depend on religious upbringing. In
particular, the associations of Openness (and especially
Unconventionality) with religiousness were clearly nega-
tive for persons whose upbringing was very religious, but
close to zero for persons whose upbringing was very non-
religious. (Framed another way, the correlations of reli-
giousness with religious upbringing were stronger among
persons lower in Unconventionality than among persons
higher in Unconventionality.) That is, the “amazing apos-
tates” (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1997) as a group appear
to be characterized by Unconventionality and Openness,
especially in comparison with their counterparts who have
maintained the high religiousness of their upbringing. We
suggest that the most plausible interpretation of this result
is that a predisposition to be unconventional makes people
who are raised to be very religious less likely to maintain
that religiousness in adulthood.
In contrast to our results for “amazing apostates,” above,
we did not find any personality variables that predicted re-
ligiousness only for persons whose upbringing was nonreli-
gious. We suggest that the process of religious conversion
among persons of nonreligious background operates largely
independently of personality, and instead depends on a va-
riety of personal situations such as those documented by
Altemeyer and Hunsberger (e.g., death of a loved one, sub-
stance abuse problems, etc.). In other words, “amazing be-
lievers” might emerge as a function of their circumstances
rather than of their personalities. Nevertheless, it would be
interesting to examine whether religious conversion among
persons of nonreligious background could be predicted by
other individual difference variables not considered here. For
example, one might expect that such “amazing conversions”
would be much less likely among persons who firmly disbe-
lieve in the existence of any supernatural phenomena.
An additional result of this study is the non‐replication
of McCullough et al.’s (2003) finding that religiousness
was more strongly predicted by religious upbringing among
less emotionally stable persons than among more emotion-
ally stable persons. Given that the interaction reported by
McCullough et al. was based on a large participant sample
and therefore seems unlikely to be a chance result, we spec-
ulate that it might be specific to the particular population
investigated (i.e., 20th‐century US adults who had been iden-
tified as intellectually gifted during childhood).
4.6  | Limitations
Several limitations of the present research should be noted.
For example, the participants in our study who belong to a
particular religious group will not be representative of the
population of members of that religious group. Also, the
(rather small) differences between religious groups observed
in this study will be confounded somewhat with differences
between countries. In addition, our reliance on a single reli-
giousness item will somewhat attenuate the personality/reli-
giousness associations (recall footnote 2) and also precludes
any further exploration of the contrasts between a spiritual,
mystical style of religion and a traditional, fundamental-
ist style of religion (see, e.g., Saroglou, 2010; Saucier &
Skrzypińska, 2006).
5  |  CONCLUSIONS
Our study of personality and religiousness in a large online
sample suggests that personality/religiousness associations,
as assessed through self‐reports, tend to be rather modest.
The strongest associations involve facet‐level personal-
ity variables associated with prosocial tendencies, particu-
larly Fairness and Altruism, on which the most religious
ASHTON and LEE
participants averaged about 1 SD higher than did the least
religious participants. Also, among persons whose upbring-
ing was very religious, religiousness was negatively related
to Unconventionality, a result not observed among persons
whose upbringing was very nonreligious. Religiousness/
personality associations showed little variation between reli-
gious affiliations (Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and
several branches of Christianity) but did tend to be stronger
within countries having higher average levels of religious-
ness. Despite the positive association of religiousness with
Altruism, religiousness was not associated with pro‐out‐
group attitudes (i.e., support for multicultural immigration
and for foreign aid).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank Mike Edmonds for assistance with online
data collection.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
The authors have received royalties for the nonacademic use
of the HEXACO‐PI‐R.
ENDNOTES
1
Considerable research has examined the associations of (trait) forgiv-
ingness with religiousness, typically outside the context of general
personality/religiousness associations. This line of research has shown
self‐rated religiousness to be correlated with self‐reported forgivingness
(Davis, Worthington, Hook, & Hill, 2013), though not necessarily to
self‐reported forgivingness for specific past transgressions. This contrast,
sometimes referred to as a “forgiveness‐religion discrepancy,” seems to
be attributable in large part to the psychometric limitations of single‐
transgression measures of forgivingness (McCullough & Worthington,
1999; Tsang, McCullough, & Hoyt, 2005).
2
We expect that the reliabilities of this single item would likely be at least
0.70, given the findings of previous research. For example, Saucier &
Skrzypińska (2006) reported that a single‐item religiousness measure (a
self‐rating on the adjective, “religious”) correlated 0.78 with a multi‐item
religiousness measure that was administered nine years later.
3 Gebauer, J. E., Bleidorn, W., Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., Lamb, M.
When we regressed religiousness on the 6 factor‐level scales and on the 25
facet‐level scales, the squared multiple correlation achieved by the facet‐
level scales was noticeably larger than that achieved by the factor‐level
scales (0.115 vs. 0.053).
4
Correlations of the HEXACO‐100 items with religiousness are provided
in the Supplementary Table.
5
At the request of an anonymous reviewer, we conducted a series of mod-
erated multiple regression analyses in which religiousness was predicted
by a personality variable, by dummy variables representing countries,
and by their interaction terms (i.e., dummy variables × personality).
The ΔR2 associated with the interaction term block was largest for the
Unconventionality facet (0.005), followed by the Openness factor and
the Fairness facet (both 0.003), with all the others falling below 0.002.
  
   15
|
6
An anonymous reviewer suggested conducting a moderated multiple
regression analysis regressing religiousness on religious upbringing,
unconventionality, and their cross‐product term. The interaction term
increased the squared multiple correlation from 0.233 to 0.243 (i.e.,
ΔR2 = 0.010). See the Supplementary Analysis for the full results,
including a figure.
7
We computed this variable as the unit‐weighted sum of the four fac-
ets from Honesty‐Humility, the four facets from Agreeableness, the
Sentimentality facet from Emotionality, and the Altruism interstitial
facet.
8
In this sample, Fairness correlated 0.45 with Sincerity, 0.39 with Greed
Avoidance, and 0.41 with Modesty, but the correlations of religious-
ness with those latter three facets were only 33%, 7%, and 25% as large
as the correlation of religiousness with Fairness.
ORCID
Michael C. Ashton  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4711-8199
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SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in
the Supporting Information section at the end of the article.  
How to cite this article: Ashton MC, Lee K.
Religiousness and the HEXACO personality factors
and facets in a large online sample. Journal of
Personality. 2019;00:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/
jopy.12459