Anxiety has correlated both positively and negatively with religion in past research. We suggest this is because undifferentiated measures of both religion and anxiety have been used. When intrinsic and extrinsic scales were correlated with Cattell's factors of trait anxiety, intrinsics were less anxious than non-intrinsics, and extrinsics were more anxious than non-extrinsics on some but not all components of trait anxiety. Studies using a general measure of religiousness will find a positive correlation with anxiety if the sample contains more extrinsics than intrinsics, and a negative one if the sample contains more intrinsics than extrinsics, or no relationship if an inappropriate component of anxiety is measured.
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