The Relationship between Personality Dimensions and Religious Orientation Hadi Bahrami Ehsan 1+ , Said Pournaghash-Tehrani 1 1 Psychology Department, University of Tehran Tehran, Iran Keywords: Personality; Religious Orientation; Neuroticism; Psychoticism; Religious Pretentiousness; Religious Disorganization 1. Introduction Although the relationship between personality traits and religiosity has been examined by many studies its exact nature has not been fully understood and requires further examination. For example, it has been shown that there is a negative relationship between psychoticism [1] and religiosity [2]; nevertheless, there is no clear evidence confirming such relationship [3; 4 and 5]. Two distinct types of religious orientation have been reported [2]. According to these orientations religion can have an intrinsic orientation which emphasizes a personal religion. Also, it can sometimes emphasize on membership in a powerful group providing security, obtaining social status as well as being defined as a defensive mechanism. In this case, religion can have an extrinsic orientation [2; 6 and 7]. While Eysenk’s description in the relationship between psychoticism and religiosity is more significant in relation to extraversion and neuroticism; the majority of studies performed using religious orientation scale [2] has failed to provide evidence verifying a significant relationship between low scores in psychoticism and intrinsic or extrinsic orientation [8]. Yet, some studies show a negative relationship between psychoticism and intrinsic orientation towards religion [9]. Even in these studies no significant relationship between extrinsic orientation and neuroticism has been reported. In explaining these inconsistencies, it has been asserted that most of the studies which do not show a negative relation between psychoticism and religious orientation are do carried out on student samples [5]. Also, it has been shown that university students, in comparison with others, are less likely to maintain religious views [3]. There is evidence showing that the results of measurements performed on intrinsic- extrinsic religious orientation in non-religious societies lack validity [10; 3 and 11]. As such, there is no clear and correct construct of religious orientation among these samples. + Corresponding author. E-mail address: hbahrami@ut.ac.ir. 263 2012 2nd International Conference on Social Science and Humanity IPEDR vol.31 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore Abstract. Aim: The aim of the present study was to determine the relationship between personality, according to Eysenck's theory, and different aspects of religious orientation. Methods: To do so, a short form of Eysenck's personality questionnaire was administered to 80 randomly chosen subjects (40 men and 40 women). To determine various aspects of religious orientation, an author-made questionnaire was used. Such scale measures 4 different religious orientations including religiosity, religious disorganization, hedonism and religious pretentiousness. Results: The results of the present study showed that there was a significant difference between men and women in the subscales of neuroticism, psychoticism and religious disorganization. Also, an inverse relationship between religious orientation, psychoticism and neuroticism was observed. Furthermore, our results showed demographic variables as predictive variables, along with neuroticism and psychoticism, did not predict religious orientation. Regression analysis indicated that psychoticism and neuroticism were negatively related to religious orientation regardless of the presence of demographic variables. Conclusion: It seems that religiosity basically has a negative relation with psychoticism and neuroticism, and demographics variable do not play a mediating role in this equation.