The psychological-type profile of practising British druids compared with Anglican churchgoers

This study employs psychological-type theory to profile practising British Druids and to compare their profile with that of Anglican churchgoers. A sample of 75 participants at a camp organised by The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in celebration of the Mid-Summer Festival completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Compared with the profile of 327 Anglican churchgoers previously published by Francis, Duncan, Craig and Luffman, the Druids were significantly more likely to prefer intuition and less likely to prefer sensing. The implications of these data are discussed for understanding the contemporary appeal of Druidry. Overall the Druids prefer introversion (61%), intuition (64%), feeling (56%) and judging (68%)

The Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism: development and application among British Pagans

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (and reflected in the Sahin-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Islam, the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism, and the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism) by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals

The psychological-type profile of practising British Druids compared with Anglican Churchgoers

This study employs psychological-type theory to profile practising British Druids and to compare their profile with that of Anglican churchgoers. A sample of 75 participants at a camp organised by The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in celebration of the Mid-Summer Festival completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Compared with the profile of 327 Anglican churchgoers previously published by Francis, Duncan, Craig and Luffman, the Druids were significantly more likely to prefer intuition and less likely to prefer sensing. The implications of these data are discussed for understanding the contemporary appeal of Druidry. Overall the Druids prefer introversion (61%), intuition (64%), feeling (56%) and judging (68%)

Neuroticism and intensity of religious affect among practising British pagans

The Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism (as a particularised measure of the affective dimension of religion) was completed by seventy-five participants at a Pagan camp in celebration of the Midsummer Festival, together with the abbreviated form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (including a recognised measure of neuroticism). The data demonstrated that, after controlling for sex differences (routinely found in indices of neuroticism), more positive religious affect was significantly associated with higher neuroticism scores, but was not significantly associated with extraversion scores, psychoticism scores, or lie scale scores. These findings from research conducted in a (specific) Pagan context are contrasted with the consensus from studies (employing a comparable measure of religious affect) that have tended to find that more positive religious affect was associated with lower neuroticism scores in a Christian context