Hello András. I recommend you to search the researches of Vassilis Sarouglu, from the Université catholique de Louvain. Also, you can consult the texts of Kirkpatrick about attachment and religiosity. Also, Gribbins and Vandenberg have some works. Finally, for this year Paul Bloom wrote a review for the Annual Review of Psychology called Religion, Morality and Evolution.

Hope it helps you.

Hello Mr.András. I studied the ancient Egyptian (Christians - Muslims - Jews - pagans) religion from the past to the seventh century A.D. so, explain to me what you want exactly during this Era.

Hello. I'm interested in this field too. Easier to find f.e. correlations between religiosity and personality traits. Today I can only recommend ch. 14 from "Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality", entitled: "The Role of Personality in Understanding Religious and Spiritual Constructs". There is also place for temperament measures.

Surfing Ebsco I've found only this: "Psychological type and attitude toward Christianity: A replication" from Psychological Reports, Vol 92(1), Feb, 2003. pp. 89-90.

@Krzysztof Dyga & Mijail Rojas:Thaks for the answers. I know there are numerous publicítions on personality and religion, but I guess it would be in connection with temperament (i.e. inborn core of personality). Maybe not religion per se, but how religion is lived, experienced by the individual.

Dear Mr. Anwar! Thank you for being so helpful, but I am intersted in how contemporary people live their religion. Histotry of religion might also be interesting, maybe for the next time.

Yes, I have published a lot of work examining spirituality from the context of the Five-Factor Model of personality. You can read some of my work in books by Paloutzian and Park; Pargament et al, and Lisa Miller. I have chapters in all three. I do have several peer-reviewed papers, the most fundamental is in the Journal of Personality, 1999 and in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2009.

@Ralph Piedmont: Thank you!

The Revd Canon Professor Leslie J Francis PhD DLitt ScD DD FBPsS PGCE at Warwick University, UK has done work on personality type and faith. eg assessing the role of personality in religious development and expression, drawing on personality theories proposed by Eysenck, Cattell, and Jung, as well as the Big Five Factor model.

Look up MBTI literature...They have done work e.g., Personality Type and Religious Leadership (Oswald, Kroeger), Looking at Type and Spirituality (Hirsh and Kise)...Fascinating area...Have fun / Good luck

Thank you, Eric!

I know this may sound hokey but the History Channel squared did a story on the study being done by a Dr. Newburgh (sp?) on this very topic. It aired on Christmas day something about does God exist or in search of the God gene. They did studies of the brain waves of people who were devout to a religion such as monks and nuns, he also studied the brain functions of atheists, and those who just meditate. You might want to look into that research. I can't recall the name of the hospital where they are doing the study but it looked promising!

OK, I found him. to find Dr. Newberg please follow this link http://www.andrewnewberg.com/

It is on this site you can find his study on how G-d changes your brain or not depending on you. VERY interesting! Best wishes! By the way, blessings whether it be scientific or not!

Read Paracelsus

William James, "The Will to Believe," which affected Miguel de Unamuno's "The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations." Both maintained that religion was grounded on affects.

Also see Miguel de Unamuno, "Treatise on Love of God." Here Unamuno maintains that to reach God it is necessary to love Him, since merely thinking Him, intellectualizing Him, keeps Him away from the believer. By love, Unamuno means a yearning to be the beloved without ceasing to be oneself. I translated this short little book into English for the University of Illinois Press.

I done research linking the FFM to spirituality/religiousness. I have developed a scale that measures qualities that are non-redundant with FFM. There are two interesting handbook on the psychology of religion and spirituality now out; one by Pargament and published by the APA and the other by Paloutzian and Park published by Guilford. Both have chapters that address your question. I am attaching a few papers for you.

@Ralph Piedmont - Thanks for the papers! I am somewhat familiar with your work. What inspired my question was a potential study investigating connections between religiosity and affective temperament. Are you familiar with this approach? I would be curious about your oppinion.

No research, but some interesting remarks by William James. James contrasts two sorts of people. He says that the history of philosophy is, “to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments”. He says that in reality temperament, rather than logic, determines one’s conclusions far more than objective premises do. Speaking of human temperament, and the way that it colors perspective, he states:

It (temperament) loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in dialectical ability.

James famously divides thinkers into the categories of “tender-minded” and “tough-minded”,and lists the attributes of each sort of person. Though I disagree with him, he believes that the religious are, by and large, the tender-minded. I think this contrast serves better to distinguish between realists and empiricists myself.

"Tender-minded" applied to Abraham, with his sword raised to slay Isaac (see Kierkegaard´s "leap of faith")? "Tender-minded" applied to Moses, when he slays the Egyptian taskmaster and later when he smashes the tablets of the Law? I leave the Prophet and the Mahadi to you, María, because I don´t know enough.

Bill, on Nov. 15 I connected William James to the relationship between temperament and religiosity.

I see that Nelson. I apparently hadn't read the whole string here. Maria and Nelson: We could keep on with the non-tender-minded individuals through David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Nehemiah, Daniel, and on into the New Testament. Surely Saul of Tarshish wasn't tender-minded. It I doubtful that Simon the Zealot or Stephen the Martyr were particularly tender-minded. We could move on through church history. Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards. Who amongst this sampling of figures in church history is tender-minded?

Úgy emlékszem, Horváth-Szabó Katalinnak jelent meg publikációja a Magyar Pszichológiai Szemlében, amiben a Big Five és a vallásosság összefüggését vizsgálta. (Néhány évvel ezelőtt.)

I attached slide show that may give meaning to answer your posted question. Believing depends on you. It's a choice to believe.

Best wishes.

Spirituality is expressed very differently by different individuals. I think of religion as a way of life for expressing all temperaments.  I have a paper in zygon that connects some temperaments and religious experiences.  Also, William James had much to say of this topic.