Religiosity: psychoticism and obsessionality in Northern Irish university students

The aim of the present study was to replicate previous work which has examined the relationship between personality and religiosity in college students. One-hundred and fifty Northern Irish students completed the Francis Scale of Attitudes Towards Christianity, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), and Kline's measure of anal-obsessional personality traits (Ai3). As predicted, higher scores on the Francis scale were associated with lower scores on psychoticism and higher scores on obsessionality. It is suggested that obsessional personality can be understood as a facet of a broader psychoticism dimension and that this provides a more secure base for theoretical predictions on the personality correlates of religiosity.