What is it about?
In a study on 333 UK adults, we found that, agnostics, compared to atheists and Christians, are higher in neuroticism and indecisiveness in life in general. But they also "self-enhance" less: whereas high Christian identifiers think they are very prosocial and nice, and high atheist identifiers think they are more clever than people in general, high agnostic identifiers evaluate both themselves and others as nice.
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Why is it important?
In agnosticism, some sort of humility, or at least lack of narcissism, seems to go together with some sort of negative emotionality-based indecisiveness in life. This makes the category of agnostics a more complex one, from a personality perspective, compared to religious believers and convinced atheists.
Perspectives
Based on the present study and other recent work from our lab, we think that agnosticism may exemplify the following existential/moral dilemma: better to be certain, happy, and proud, or curious, uncertain, and humble?
Professor Vassilis Saroglou
Universite catholique de Louvain
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Agnosticism as a distinct type of nonbelief: the role of indecisiveness, maximization, and low self-enhancement, Self and Identity, March 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/15298868.2025.2467733.
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