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Abstract
Affective or emotional aspects of religiousness are considered to be crucial in the association between religiousness and well-being, especially in later life. Such affective aspects can be understood as pertaining to the God–object relationship, corresponding to feelings of trust towards God or to religious discontent. Personality characteristics, such as those defined by the Five-Factor Model of Personality, are expected to correspond with God image. A small sample of older mainline church members in Sassenheim, The Netherlands (n = 53), aged 68–93, filled out a questionnaire, including 120 items of the NEO-PI-R, the Questionnaire God Image, frequency of prayer, church attendance, and depressive symptoms. Neuroticism was associated with feelings of anxiety towards God as well as discontent towards God. Agreeableness was associated with perceiving God as supportive and with prayer. These findings persisted after adjustment for depressive symptoms. For the other three personality factors, no clear patterns emerged. Results were compared with those from studies of God image and the Five-Factor Model of personality among younger people.
Acknowledgements
The data reported on were collected in the context of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, which is financed primarily by the Netherlands Ministry of Welfare, Health and Sports. The study of religious resources and common mental disorders was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZON-MW grant 2003-05769).