The Role of Personality In Moving Encounters with Sacred Art

In a lab designed to evoke a holy site, 90 Christians in Canada and Greece viewed and rated Latin and Byzantine icons. Attachment style, imaginativeness, and traditional versus mystical dispositions predicted how moved people felt by the sacred art. A secure, mystically oriented perceiver was most resonant with the icons. Those with more structured religious lives tended toward a personality profile favoring logical problem-solving. The study offers a replicable methodology for investigating individual differences in moving aesthetic-religious experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the material world is understood to contain access points to the transcendent. An icon may move the awestruck believer to emotional engagement and reflection on moral and religious themes. Personality dispositions potentiating the experience of being moved in religious aesthetic contexts have not been thoroughly studied. The present article describes the development and testing of a cross-sectional study into potential belief and personality-related predictors of being moved by sacred art in a lab environment evocative of a holy site. Ninety (90) Christians in Canada and Greece completed personality measures and viewed and rated thematically matched Latin and Byzantine icons. Findings suggest impacts of attachment, imaginativeness, and traditional vs. mystical dispositions in resonance with sacred art, and point to a secure, mystically oriented perceiver. Those who tended towards structured religious lives also presented with a personality profile favouring logical problemsolving. The paradigm applied the social psychological tradition of an evocative lab situation and use of psychometric tests to pressing questions in aesthetics and transpersonal psychology. This study offers a replicable methodology, inviting further empirical inquiry into the experiential texture of being moved and predictive relationships among individual differences at play in moving encounters.