Five-factor personality traits in priests

Several studies have demonstrated that religiosity is associated with specific personality traits, such as high Agreeableness/Conscientiousness or low Psychoticism. However, this evidence emerged by investigating active churchgoers with high religious practice or clerical individuals using Eysenck's taxonomy. This study explores, for the first time, personality profiles in Priests ordained by the Roman Catholic Church (N = 200) using the Five-Factor Model of personality in an Italian population. Priests were compared with demographically matched non-clerical with high religious practices (HRP, N = 301) and non-religious men (NR, N = 213). Analysis of variance demonstrated that both Priests and HPR men shared similar personality traits, such as higher Agreeableness, lower Extraversion-excitement seeking and Openness, with respect to NR. However, Priests have distinct traits, such as the highest values of Agreeableness and the lowest Neuroticism sub-facets of angry hostility and impulsiveness, in comparison with other groups. Finally, although high Conscientiousness characterized both the Priest and HRP groups, surprisingly, we found that this psychological trait was only more evident in the latter group. Differences in religious order would seem to influence this trait.