Person. indilid. Di[]i Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. ~ I I _ I ~. 1983 0191-8869 83'020211-02S03.00 0 Printed in Grezlt Britain. All rights reserved Copyright {', 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd

Are introverts still m o r e religious'?

LliSLlt J. FRAN('IS, 1 PAUL R. Pt!ARS()N 2 and WILLIAM K. KA'/3

ICulham College Institute, The Malthouse, Abingdon, O.von OX 14 5EB: 2Derbyshire Area Health Authority, Pastures Hospital, Mickleover, Derby and

3Department of Education, The University ~f Southampton, Southampton S09 5NH, England

(Reeeived 1 June 1982)

Summary--The JEPQ and a religious attitude scale, ASC 4B, were completed by 1715 school children aged 11 17 yrs. Attitude to religion was found to decline across the age range, girls were found to be more religious than boys, and introverts more religious than extraverts. The relationship between introversion and religiosity is consistent with previous research and the present study adds substance to this relationship with the use of a more recent E scale on an extended age range.

INTRODUCTION

Francis et al. (1981)reported a negative correlation between extraversion and attitude towards religion among 1088 4th- and 5th-year secondary-school pupils. This finding supports Eysenck's more general theory which relates intro- version to tenderminded social attitudes and extraversion to toughminded social attitudes (Eysenck, 1954), and which locates religion within the domain of tenderminded attitudes (Siegmam 1963).

Three problems are associated with the generalizability of these findings. First, the results need to be seen against the discrepant findings of other studies in the area. While Wilson and Brazendale (1973) and Chlewinski (1981) also find negative relationships, Siegman (1963) and Powell and Stewart (1978) have found positive relationships, and Pearson and Sheffield (1976) found no relationship at all. Second, the results were based only on 4th- and 5th-year secondary-school children. Not only is this a limited age range, but it is a crucial one in relationship both to the way in which the deterioration in adolescent attitudes towards religion accelerates at this age (Francis, 1980), and to the way in which Extraversion scores reach a peak at around the age of 14 and then fall slightly (Crookes et al., 1981). Third, the results were obtained in relationship to the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory (JEPI: Eysenck. 1965), and there has been some suggestion that the change in the operational definition of extraversion in the more recent Eysenck personality scales (Pearson, 1979; Rocklin and Revelle, 1981) means that it is now psychoticism rather than extraversion that is fundamental to toughmindedness (Eysenck and Wilson. 19781.

Against this background, a further attempt has been made to test the hypothesis that introverts are more religious than extraverts on a sample of more than 171)0 English school children, over an extended age range of I I 17 yrs and using the more recent Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (JEPQ: Eysenck and EysencK, 1975).

METHOD

The Ss, 1715 English schoolchildren, age range I 1 17 yrs, completed the JEPQ (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) and the Francis Scale of Attitude Towards Religion Form ASC4B (Francis, 1978). The data were amdysed by the SPSS subroutine regression (Nieet aL, 1975), using the stepwise multiple regression facility, with Attitude Towards Religion as the dependent wtriable, and Age, Sex and Extraversion (E) as predictor w~riables, entered into the equation in that order.

RESULTS

From Table 1, the negative correlation bctween Age and Attitudc Towards Religion demonstrates that there is a decrease in religiosity across the age range, while the positive correlation between Sex and Attitude Toward Religion demonstrates that girls are more religious than boys. Both of these findings are wholly consistent with previous research (Francis, 1979). The negative correlation between E and Attitude Towards Religion (using the more reccnt E scale) demonstrates that introverts are still more religious over the wider age range. Moreover, the three two-way interaction terms, between Age and Sex, between Sex and E and between Age and E, do not significantly increase the proportion of variance explained by thc multiple regression cquation IF(dr 3. 1708) 1.84, NS]. This means that the negative relationship between extraversion and religiosity is consistent for both sexes throughout the age range 11 17yr.

D I S C U S S I O N

The resulting significant negative correlation betwecn E and Attitude Towards Religion confirms the previous findings of Francis et al. (1981) and furnishes two additional pieces of information. First, it demonstrates that

Table 1. Multiple regression signilicancc tests

lllcre~ts¢ Pred i c to r R: in R 2 Simple r Beta F - r a t i o d! P <

Age 0 t1116~5 I) 00635 - ( 1 0 7 9 7 t I - I I 0 7 q 4 4 1[).[)41 1 , 1 7 1 1 01)1 Sex 0 0 7 6 3 2 0 0 7 0 1 7 +1).26657 +11266116 1~1.7~5 1.1711 0001 E 00812X 0 0 0 4 7 6 0.06525 - (I.t16903 HS7~ 1,1711 001

21~

212 N( ) IkS '\NI) SH()R11R ( '( )MMI N I('ATIONS

int rover ts arc cons is ten t ly more rel igious th;in ex t raver t s over a wider age range. Second. it demons t r a t e s thai , ex'ei~ when ext ravcrs ion is measured by the more recent ope ra t iona l i za t ion of the cons t ruc t in the ,IEPQ, in t rover ts are still more religious.

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