Religious Fundamentalism as a Predictor of Prejudice: A Two-Component Model

The present study aims to determine whether the empirical relationship between religious fundamentalism and prejudice can be accounted for in terms of the mutually opposing effects of Christian orthodoxy and right-wing authoritarianism using multiple regression. Three separate samples (total n = 320) completed measures of religious fundamentalism, right-wing authoritarianism, Christian orthodoxy, ethnic prejudice, and homosexual prejudice. Consistent with previous research, fundamentalism (1) was essentially unrelated to ethnic prejudice when considered alone; (2) was positively related to ethnic prejudice when orthodoxy was statistically controlled; and (3) was negatively related to ethnic prejudice when authoritarianism was statistically controlled. Finally, when both authoritarianism and orthodoxy were controlled simultaneously, fundamentalism was again unrelated to prejudice, whereas orthodoxy was negatively related and authoritarianism positively related. In contrast, fundamentalism was a significant positive predictor of prejudice against gays and lesbians irrespective of whether authoritarianism and/or orthodoxy were statistically controlled.     

Religious Fundamentalism,Religious Coping,and Preference for Psychological and Religious Treatment

Religion may not be simply another variable in the assessment of treatment-seeking but an alternative worldview about the nature of suffering and its appropriate treatment. This study examines the relation of religious fundamentalism and religious coping on relative preference for psychological or religious help-seeking in 142 undergraduate students. Higher levels of religious fundamentalism and deferred religious coping were found to be associated with greater preference for religious rather than psychological help-seeking. The results suggest that religious issues need to be included in the investigation of help-seeking.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Limited Prosociality as a Function of the Target

Two distinct research traditions have established that (a) religiosity implies prosocial tendencies, though limited to proximal targets, and (b) religious fundamentalism (RF) relates to prejudice, often because of underlying right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Through two studies, we investigated the idea that RF, due to underlying religiosity, also predicts prosociality that is limited to proximal rather than distal targets. Specifically, we found that RF, unlike RWA and because of religiosity, predicted prosociality towards a nonfeminist but not a feminist target in need (Experiment 1) and willingness to help friends but not unknown people in need in the same hypothetical situations (Experiment 2). Moreover, like RWA, RF implied negative attitudes towards the feminist. This limited, not extended, prosociality of people scoring high on RF was in contrast with their self‐perceptions of being universally altruistic. Fundamentalism seems to combine religiosity's qualities (in‐group prosociality) with authoritarianism's defects (out‐group derogation).     

Perceptions of Religious and Nonreligious Targets: Exploring the Effects of Perceivers' Religious Fundamentalism

While research has shown that religious individuals are perceived as being more moral than the nonreligious, the present studies suggest that these findings are affected by in‐group bias. Participants low and high in religious fundamentalism (RF) were asked to form an impression of a target's moral and social dimensions. The target's religious identity was presented either explicitly (in Studies 1 and 2) or implicitly (Study 3). Participants high in RF consistently rated the religious target more favorably than the nonreligious target on both dimensions. In contrast, LF individuals' morality ratings did not differ as a function of target religiosity across all 3 studies. Our results suggest that future research exploring the religion–morality link must control for perceiver religiosity.     

Perceived Deservingness of Outcomes as a Function of Religious Fundamentalism and Target Responsibility

We examined the perception of deserved outcomes associated with religious fundamentalism (RF). Interviews with videotaped targets varied in target's religiosity, responsibility, and outcome valence (good/bad). Participants either low (LF) or high (HF) on RF formulated an impression of how deserving a target was for a situational outcome. Participants low in RF held targets to be less deserving of a bad outcome than a good one; the HF group showed this to a lesser degree. HFs believed the target was more deserving of a bad outcome than did LFs, even when the target was not responsible for the outcome. Religious fundamentalism is related to attributing greater deservingness of bad outcomes, possibly because of a greater belief in a just world.     

Affective Arousal as Information: How Affective Arousal Influences Judgments,Learning, and Memory

The affect‐as‐information framework posits that affect is embodied information about value and importance. The valence dimension of affect provides evaluative information about stimulus objects, which plays a role in judgment and decision‐making. Affect can also provide evaluative information about one's own cognitions and response inclinations, information that guides thinking and reasoning. In particular, positive affect often promotes, and negative affect inhibits, accessible responses or dominant modes of thinking. Affect thus moderates many of the textbook phenomena in cognitive psychology. In the current review, we suggest additionally that the arousal dimension of affect amplifies reactions, leading to intensified evaluations, increased reliance on particular styles of learning, and enhanced long‐term memory for events. We conclude that whereas valenced affective cues serve as information about value, the arousal dimension provides information about urgency or importance.     

Higher Education as Moral Community: Institutional Influences on Religious Participation During College

Borrowing from the literature on religion and deviance, the concept of moral communities is applied to religious and secular postsecondary education to explain institutional influences on student religious participation. Results from nationally representative panel data indicate that students attending Catholic and mainline Protestant affiliated institutions decline in religious participation at a faster rate than students attending evangelical institutions or students attending nonreligious public colleges and universities. This finding is consistent with Catholic and mainline Protestant institutions less successfully providing a shared moral order that legitimates religious language, motive, and behavior when compared to conservative Protestant colleges. At the same time, the religious and ethnic pluralism that activates minority religious identity at nonreligious public institutions is also less likely to be present on Catholic and mainline Protestant college campuses. Additional results indicate that evangelical students' religious participation declines while attending Catholic colleges and universities, while Catholic students increase their participation while attending evangelical institutions. The religious composition of students may act to alter friendship networks, and thus participation rates, on these campuses, although further research is necessary to validate the proposed institutional mechanisms.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Responses to Mortality Salience: A Quantitative Text Analysis

Investigating an issue of critical importance for the psychology of religion and for terror management theory, this study examines the relationship between religious fundamentalism and beliefs about death as articulated during a mortality salience (MS) manipulation. Participants wrote about the emotions and events surrounding their own death (MS), or a control topic, and linguistic content in the essays was related to levels of self-reported fundamentalism of the essay authors. Higher levels of fundamentalism were associated with responses to MS that were less cognitively complex, contained more positive emotion, and were more future and socially oriented. There was virtually no relationship between fundamentalism and linguistic properties of writings about a control topic. The discussion centers on the influence of fundamentalist belief systems on attitudes toward death and suggests how the current results might aid future study of religious belief and of terror management.     

The Religious Schema Scale: Construction and Initial Validation of a Quantitative Measure for Religious Styles

This article presents the Religious Schema Scale (RSS). Its conceptual background is the model of religious styles. After a conceptual discussion of the relation between religious styles and religious schemata, the steps of scale construction are reported. Based on 822 responses from research participants in the United States and Germany to a preliminary 78-item version, we used construct-oriented iterative and factor-analytic procedures for reducing the RSS to a 15-item version that consists of three 5-item subscales with acceptable reliabilities. Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the RSS has a robust 3-factor structure, which is cross-culturally valid in both the United States and Germany. We report correlations of the RSS with the Big Five, Psychological Well-Being, Religious Fundamentalism, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism. We also present predictive characteristics of the RSS in regard to Fowler's stages of faith. Finally, we report results on the incremental validity of the RSS.     

Negative Parental Influences on Religious Conversion: Implications for Pastoral Care

This essay discusses the contribution that psychoanalytic psychology has made to research on religious conversion and asks what implications it might have for pastoral practice. Some of conversion??s most dramatic manifestations occur amid familial instability, or negative parental influences, that stand to be misinterpreted by religious leaders if their full psycho-spiritual context is not understood. The Freudian tradition has provided some context as to why people with rocky upbringings might undergo dramatic change. The data supports the conclusion that these radical conversions are much less a sign of direct supernatural influence than they are of a need for the converts to receive pastoral care in working through a ??crisis stage?? of faith development.     

Delay Discounting as a Function of Intrinsic/Extrinsic Religiousness,Religious Fundamentalism,and Regular Church Attendance

Delay discounting occurs when the subjective value of an outcome decreases because its delivery is delayed. Previous research has suggested that the rate at which some, but not all, outcomes are discounted varies as a function of regular church attendance. In the present study, 509 participants completed measures of intrinsic religiousness, extrinsic religiousness, religious fundamentalism, and whether they regularly attended church services. They then completed a delay-discounting task involving five outcomes. Although religiousness was not a significant predictor of discounting for all outcomes, participants scoring high in intrinsic religiousness tended to display less delay discounting than participants scoring low. Likewise, participants scoring high in religious fundamentalism tended to display more delay discounting than participants scoring low. These results partially replicate previous ones in showing that the process of discounting may vary as a function of religiousness. The results also provide some direction for those interested in altering how individuals discount.     

两种视觉特征提示对儿童错误记忆发展的影响

采用DRM研究范式,实验一使用示意图提示,探讨特异性视觉特征对于8岁、10岁和12岁儿童错误记忆的影响及其随年龄而产生的变化;实验二使用位置提示,探讨非特异性视觉特征对8岁、10岁和12岁儿童错误记忆的影响及其随年龄增长而产生的变化。实验结果说明:(1)特异性视觉特征提示会显著减少错误记忆,而非特异性视觉提示则会显著增加错误记忆。(2)8～12岁儿童错误记忆随着年龄的增长而增长,这可能是由于儿童随年龄增长不断地发展其形成要义痕迹表征和要义连接的能力所致。(3)特异性视觉特征提示对8岁儿童错误记忆的影响不显著,对10岁和12岁儿童有显著削弱作用,但这种影响在10岁和12岁儿童间没有显著性地增长。(4)非特异性视觉特征提示对8岁儿童错误记忆不产生显著影响,对10岁和12岁儿童有显著的增强作用,且这种影响从8岁至12岁呈显著性增长。     

Predicting Prejudice from Religious Fundamentalism and Right‐Wing Authoritarianism: A Multiple‐Regression Approach

In a study designed to investigate the respective roles of religious fundamentalism and right‐wing authoritarianism as predictors of prejudice against racial minorities and homosexuals, participants (47 males, 91 females) responded to a series of questionnaire measures of these constructs. Data were analyzed using multiple regression. Consistent with previous research, authoritarianism was a significant and strong positive predictor of both forms of prejudice. With authoritarianism statistically controlled, however, fundamentalism emerged as a significant negative predictor of racial prejudice but a positive predictor of homosexual prejudice. In a second study, we conducted parallel multiple regressions using the correlations from two previously published studies. The Study 1 results were replicated exactly, except that fundamentalism was a nonsignificant predictor of homosexual prejudice. We interpret the results as evidence that Christian fundamentalism consists of a second major component other than authoritarianism—related to Christian belief content—that is inversely related to some forms of prejudice (including racial prejudice) but not others (e.g., homosexual prejudice).     

Structuring the Religion-Environment Connection: Identifying Religious Influences on Environmental Concern and Activism

Recent research on the connection between religion and environmental concern and activism has led to divergent conclusions, with some studies finding a negative effect of religious factors, and others finding no influence or a positive effect. Using a conceptual apparatus of structuration theory, we explain how these divergent findings might be reconciled. We examine data from the 1993 General Social Survey to elaborate how religious affiliation, participation, and beliefs influence environmental concern and private and political environmental activism. Estimates from structural equation models are presented to show the sometimes competing direct and indirect effects of religious affiliation, participation, and beliefs on environmental concern and private and political environmental action .     

Religious Influences on Teenage Childbearing Among Brazilian Female Adolescents: A Research Note

Scholars have shown increasing interest in the social implications of Protestant and, specifically, Pentecostal expansion in Latin America over the past several decades. This study uses data from the National Demographic and Health Survey in Brazil to explore the influence of religious affiliation and attendance on the reproductive behavior of unmarried female adolescents (ages 15–19). Results demonstrate that religiously affiliated female adolescents are less likely to have had a child during their teen years when compared with their unaffiliated peers. These protective effects are quite robust for adolescents who claim a Pentecostal affiliation, which is consistent with the doctrine of sanctification, including norms of sexual restraint. Results also demonstrate that teens who attend worship services frequently are significantly less likely to have had a child. These findings augment prior research on religion and fertility while calling attention to the protective effects associated with emergent niches in Brazil's increasingly diversified religious economy.