Spiritual Intelligence and Personality

Abstract

This study quantifies the relationship between measures of spiritual intelligence and personality traits. A random sample of 240 undergraduate students from a mid-sized private Christian university in the West South-Central United States were administered both the SISRI-24 survey instrument for spiritual intelligence as well as the Pathway U survey for HEXACO personality traits. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between critical existential thinking and openness to experience; personal meaning production and extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; transcendental awareness and extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness; and conscious state expansion and extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. Statistically significant negative correlations were found between negative emotionality and personal meaning production, transcendental awareness, and conscious state expansion. Interestingly, honesty- humility was found to be significantly negatively correlated with overall SI-score, personal meaning production, transcendental awareness, and conscious state expansion in a multi linear regression analysis but was not a significant factor when taken alone. These results inform those who wish to develop spiritual intelligence by taking individual personality traits into account.