RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS.

This study examines the relationship between attendance Catholic schools and the religious attitudes of Catholic populations, and, at the same time, identifies personality correlates of religious attitudes among Catholic subjects. The total sample comprised four groups of female Catholic students nearing completion of their last semester in college. Participation in the study was voluntary. Mean scores on the attitude scale revealed that those students who had no Catholic school education scored significantly lower than the other groups. Mean scores on the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey for all groups in the present sample were within one-half standard deviation from the norm for 289 college women. Intergroup comparisons of group means on the 10 subscales pointed up interesting similarities and differences in group personality profiles. In so far as other factors, such as home influences, were comparable the positive effect of a Catholic school environment on religious attitudes can be observed in the higher mean scores obtained by those groups of women who had attended this type of school. In general, there was evidence that those indi-viduals who express mature religious attitudes are more tolerant, more opti-mistic, more restrained, and less egoistic than those with less mature religious attitudes.