Religious and Spiritual Struggles, Past and Present: Relations to the Big Five and Well-Being

The present research examined the relations between the Big Five factors of personality, religious/spiritual (r/s) struggles (tensions, conflicts, and strains pertaining to r/s life), and well-being. Participants comprised U.S. adults from an online sample (N = 1,047) and an undergraduate sample (N = 3,083). Regressions showed that people who reported higher Neuroticism and Openness, as well as lower Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, reported higher lifetime frequency of r/s struggles and a higher degree of current r/s struggles. In turn, both lifetime history of r/s struggles and current r/s struggles explained a modest amount of variance in different domains of well-being (psychological, hedonic, and social) above and beyond the Big Five. These results held when controlling for religiousness. Thus, lifetime history of r/s struggles and current r/s struggles may represent unique aspects of psychological experience with implications for well-being.