Abstract
Previous longitudinal research indicates that although religion may affect how personality traits are expressed, religion does not affect people's underlying personalities. However, such research has drawn from small North American samples and relatively short time intervals that do not include data from individuals prior to conversion. Here, we use a representative national sample of New Zealand adults over 9 years (2009–2017, N = 31,604) and piecewise latent growth models to assess longitudinal change in Big Five personality and Honesty-Humility before and after conversion to/deconversion from Christianity (N = 540 converts, N = 886 deconverts). We observed no personality changes before conversion or after deconversion. However, we observed increases in Honesty-Humility, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism following conversion. We also observed increases in Honesty-Humility and decreases in Agreeableness preceding deconversion. These findings indicate that religious conversion initiates specific changes in character, the most pronounced of which relate to increases in modesty and greed-avoidance.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
