FUNDAMENTALISTS AND LIBERALS - PERSONALITY-CHARACTERISTICS OF PROTESTANT CHRISTIANS

Little is known about the personality characteristics of liberal and f undamentalist Protestant Christians. To investigate this issue, we ask ed attendees of a liberal church and of a fundamentalist church to com plete the NEO-FFI. Results indicated that the groups scored similarly on the dimensions of neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and extraversion. Bu: fundamentalists scored significantly lower than lib erals on the dimension of openness to experience (P < 0.001; effect si ze: r = 0.68), and did so for each item of this subscale. These data s uggest a connection between conservative religious beliefs and a gener al avoidance of novel ideas and experiences. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.