The Relationship of Emotional Responses to Religious Music and Personality in Religiosity

Date of Award

4-20-2020

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Behavioral Sciences

First Advisor

Karl G. D. Bailey

Abstract

Are there relationships between emotional reactions to religious music, personality, and religiosity? Though an integral part of religious services, the role of religious music in religiosity has yet to be broadly explored. The music that we choose to listen to has been shown to elicit emotion and reinforce what is already believed to be true about our own personality and self-identity. If religion is part of this self-identity, then personality could mediate the relationship between emotional reactions and religiosity. Our hypotheses were that the Big Five personality traits would have moderate to strong correlations with emotional reactions, while both emotional reactions and personality traits would have moderate to strong correlations with religiosity. We surveyed 363 Adventist university students from the emerging adult population, and found emotional reactions to religious music to strongly correlate with religiosity (r = .40, p < .001). The results partially supported our hypotheses, in that personality was not found to be a mediator. Rather, they suggest more of a direct relationship between emotional reactions and religiosity.

Subject Area

Psychology, Religious; Church music; Sacred music; Personality--Religious aspects; Emotions

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/225/

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