Latent Psychological Types and Well-Being of Clergy in Taiwan: Ministry Experience as a Moderator.

Résumé

Subjective, psychological, and spiritual well-being is vital for occupational sustainability among clergy but remains underexplored in Chinese-speaking contexts. In this study, latent personality typologies and their associations with these dimensions of well-being were identified, and ministry experience was investigated as a moderating variable. This study recruited a convenience sample of clergy in Taiwan between 2020 and 2023 through multiple sampling waves (N = 799). The Clergy Psychological Type Scale and Chinese Clergy Well-Being Scale were used to assess personality traits and well-being, and psychological types were identified through K-means clustering according to outgoing and rational propensity scores. Linear regression and generalized structural equation modeling were performed to examine associations between personality types and well-being and the moderating role of ministry experience. Four distinct psychological types were identified, representing introverted feeling (IF), introverted thinking (IT), extraverted feeling (EF), and extraverted thinking (ET) orientations, and accounting for a substantial proportion of variance in personality configurations. Clergy with EF and ET profiles consistently reported higher subjective, psychological, and spiritual well-being than those with IF profiles. These differences were most pronounced during midcareer ministry, whereas well-being disparities across personality types were largely absent among late-career clergy, suggesting a buffering effect of accumulated vocational experience. Among late-career clergy, women with EF profiles reported higher subjective and spiritual well-being than men with EF profiles, and ET women reported higher psychological well-being than their male counterparts. Among IT clergy, marriage was associated with higher well-being across all domains. These findings underscore the importance of career stage-sensitive strategies and contextually tailored approaches to sustain clergy well-being.