Trait anxiety and measures of religiosity in four cultural settings

Abstract

Several measures of religious practice and religious orientation (intrinsic/extrinsic/quest) and the trait form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were employed in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural environments: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, and the USA. The results suggest that (1) the relationship between trait anxiety and religiosity substantially varies between these samples; (2) the relationship between quest religious orientation and trait anxiety was the only one to give stable (positive) unidirectional and significant correlations across the four samples; and (3) among the religious measures employed, attendance at religious services proved to be potentially the most effective anxiety-buffering mechanism within the samples.