Archive for the psychology of Religion 29 (2007) 151-175 www.brill.nl/arp © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/008467207X188711 Inward, Outward, Upward Prayer and Big Five Personality Traits Kevin L. Ladd, 1 Meleah L. Ladd, 2 Julie Harner, Ted Swanson, Tricia Metz, Kate St. Pierre, & Danielle Trnka 3 1 Indiana University South Bend 2 University of Notre Dame 3 Indiana University South Bend Abstract Personality and prayer are both conceptualized as focusing on issues of connectivity with the self and beyond. Individual participants each recruited a peer to join the study (total N = 140). Partici- pants (n = 70) rated themselves according to multi-item scales that detail ive personality factors (extraversion, intellect, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability; Abridged Big Five Circumplex). hey also responded to an instrument specifying eight foci of the inward, out- ward, and upward cognitive content of prayer (examination, tears, intercession, petition, radical, sufering, rest, and sacrament); these eight foci were reduced to three prayer themes: internal con- cerns, embracing paradox, and bold assertion. Finally, respondents reported the strength of six “basic” emotions (happiness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness) that may be experienced during their typical prayer. Using the same instruments, each peer (n = 70) rated her or his matched participant. Results reveal discrete patterns between self and peer ratings, with respect to links among prayer and personality variables. Both self and peer ratings emphasize a relation between prayer and the personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness (e.g., prayer themes of inter- nal concerns correlated with agreeableness). Several concluding points highlight the value of the present conceptualization of personality and prayer with relation to connectivity, potential diferences between personal and corporate prayers, and the potential role of sex diferences in the disclosure of prayer’s content and emotional inluence. Keywords Prayer, personality, emotion, Big Five, Five Factor Model, AB5C, FFM Inward, Outward, Upward Prayer and Big Five Personality Traits he psychology of religion and personality psychology share similar historical trajectories. With roots in the early throes of the discipline, both struggled to survive the monolithic Behaviorist paradigm, and both have recently emerged in