Fundamentalism as dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, and strong groupness across cultures: Dimensionality, underlying components, and related interreligious prejudice
(2022) Psychology of Religion and Spirituality — Vol. 14, n° 4, p. 558-571 (2022)
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- Is fundamentalism universal across religious cultures? We investigated this issue by focusing on three questions: (1) the dimensionality of fundamentalism, as measured by the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004); (2) the very nature of fundamentalism as denoting dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, or strong groupness; and (3) interreligious prejudice as predicted uniquely, additively, or interactively by religiousness and socio-cognitive rigidity. We collected data from 14 countries of Catholic, Protestant, Christian Orthodox, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim tradition, regrouped in seven cultural-religious zones (N = 3,218 young adults). We measured fundamentalism, the four dimensions of religiousness (believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging), authoritarianism, existential quest, and interreligious prejudice—negative and discriminatory attitudes toward various religious outgroups and atheists. Across religious cultures, we found that: (1) the scale is unidimensional; (2) fundamentalism is best conceptualized as a combination of dogmatic belief (believing and low existential quest) and moral rigorism (behaving and authoritarianism), and occasionally as strong groupness (belonging and authoritarianism); (3) religious dimensions, additively to and interactively with, authoritarianism and low existential quest predict interreligious prejudice (in monotheistic cultures); and (4) anti-Muslim attitudes were the highest, but fundamentalism and religiousness related most strongly to anti-atheist sentiments.
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Saroglou, V., Clobert, M., Cohen, A. B., Johnson, K. A., Ladd, K. L., Brandt, P.-Y., & et al. (2022). Fundamentalism as dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, and strong groupness across cultures: Dimensionality, underlying components, and related interreligious prejudice. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 14(4), 558-571. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000339 (Original work published 2022)