WISE RELIGIOSITY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOSITY AND WISDOM MODERATED BY PERSONALITY TRAITS

Aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between religiosity based on Wulff’s theory (1991, 1997) and wisdom as defined and operationalized by Ardelt (2003, 2004). The sample consisted of 125 university students aged between 17 and 29 year with the mean age 23.5 years and standard deviation 2.6 years. Men formed 69.6 percent (n = 87) and women 30.4 percent (n = 38) of the sample. Religiosity was measured by the Post-Critical Belief Scale PCBS (Duriez et al., 2000), wisdom was measured by the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale 3D-WS (Ardelt, 2003), and NEO FFI (Costa, McCrae, 1992) was used to measure personality traits. It was found that orthodoxy positively correlates with cognitive and reflective dimensions of wisdom. External critique correlates positively with affective dimension of wisdom. When testing the moderation hypothesis, we found that openness moderates the relationships between orthodoxy and cognitive as well as reflective dimensions of wisdom and between second naivetè and cognitive dimension of wisdom. Conscientiousness moderates the relationship between external critique and cognitive dimension of wisdom and between relativism and affective dimension of wisdom. The results are discussed with the existing literature.