Personality, Spirituality, and Religiosity as Predictors of Quality of Life and Affect in a Cancer Population

The main aim of this dissertation was to determine if religiosity and spirituality would predict quality of life and affect over and above personality in a cancer population. Data was collected in an outpatient cancer clinic in New York City. A diverse sample with a wide age range was collected. Multiple regressions were conducted to determine if optimism, extraversion and neuroticism were associated with quality of life and positive and negative affect. Religious coping, church attendance and daily spiritual experiences were added in subsequent steps in the regressions to see if they were associated with mood and quality of life after the personality variables were included. Neuroticism was inversely associated with quality of life and optimism was positively associated with quality of life. The personality traits of optimism and extraversion predicted positive affect. Neuroticism predicted negative affect. Also, the religiosity variables of negative religious coping predicted negative affect over and above personality. An unexpected finding was uncovered such that daily spiritual experiences predicted negative affect over and above personality. A discussion of research findings and implications for future research are also presented