Religion, fundamentalism and authoritarianism

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Religion, fundamentalism and authoritarianism
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Fundamentalism

• Religious fundamentalism can be traced back to a
  series of 80 pamphlets called The Fundamentals
  that were published in the U.S. between 1910 and
  1915.
• The notion that basic principles of the Christian
  faith exist that could never be modified goes
  back to the The Fundamentals and persons who
  preached these writings came to be called
  fundamentalists.
• Nowadays the term arises in many contexts.

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The Religious Fundamentalism Scale

• In the current context fundamentalism has been
  defined not as a particular set of doctrines but
  as an attitude about those beliefs, whatever the
  tenets may be.
• Altemeyer and Hunsberger (2004) developed a
  12-item attitude scale named the Religious
  Fundamentalism Scale (RFS).
• The scale is unidimensional and has demonstrated
  high levels of reliability.

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The religious fundamentalism scale

• Examples of items
• To lead the best, most meaningful life, one must
  belong to the one, fundamentally true religion
• When you get right down to it, there are
  basically only two kinds of people in the world
  the Righteous, who will be rewarded by God and
  the rest, who will not.

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The religious fundamentalism scale

• Three times as many fundamentalist Protestants
  appear among the high RFS scorers as one would
  expect from their proportion of the overall
  sample.
• Jews score low as a group while Muslims score
  high.
• High fundamentalists are slightly more likely to
  be females than males.
• High fundamentalists go to church much more often
  than most people do.

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Religious beliefs

• High fundamentalists scored high on belief in
  God.
• RFS scores correlated strongly with belief in
  creation science.
• Fundamentalists religious beliefs correlated
  strongly with measures of happiness, joy and
  comfort (Hunsberger Altemeyer, in press).

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Proselytizing

• 88 of highly fundamentalist parents would tell a
  teenager that atheism was wrong and that their
  religion was right.
• Only 11 of atheist parents said they would say
  religion was wrong and atheism was right.
• 94 of fundamentalist parents said that they
  wanted their own children to have the same
  religious beliefs that they have.
• Only 4 of atheists said that they wanted their
  children to be atheist (Hunsberger Altemeyer,
  in press).

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Proselytizing

• Fundamentalists are more zealous about their
  religion than others about their belief system
  such as socialists, capitalists,
  environmentalists, feminists (Altemeyer, 1996).
• 84 of fundamentalists agree that born-again
  Christianity should be taught in public school
  (Hunsberger Altemeyer, in press).
• No atheists believed that atheism should be
  taught in public school (Hunsberger Altemeyer,
  in press).

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Web Site

• Mormon Missionaries An Overview - LDS Missionary
  (http//www.youtube.com/watch?vCFdFkgdzCxs)
• Mormon Missionaries Debating A Georgia Preacher
  (http//www.youtube.com/watch?v8YPyvJacwUI)
• About Mormon Missionary (http//www.youtube.com/wa
  tch?vm7fcux74xFY)

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Dogmatism

• Dogmatism, defined as relatively unchangeable,
  unjustified certainty, is measured by 20-item DOG
  scale (Altemeyer, 1996).
• Sample item
• The things I believe in are so completely true, I
  could never doubt them.
• Most of the highly dogmatic people are religious
  fundamentalists.

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Dogmatism

• 93 of highly fundamentalist parents said that
  they would continue to believe in Jesus even if
  evidence was presented to the contrary.
• 53 of atheist parents said that they would
  continue to believe in atheism even if evidence
  was presented to the contrary.
• All fundamentalists said that they could never
  change their minds about God.
• 43 of atheists said that they could think of
  things that would make them believe in God
  (Hunsberger Altemeyer, in press).

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Relationships with prejudice

• Altemeyer (2003) measured religious ethnocentrism
  sample item
• I would be against letting some other, different
  religion use my church for its services when we
  were not using it.
• RFS scores correlated highly with religious
  ethnocentrism scores (Altemeyer, 2003).

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Relationships with prejudice

• Altemeyer (1996) developed the Attitude Toward
  Homosexuals Scale (ATHS).
• Sample item
• Homosexuals should be locked up to protect
  society
• Studies have found correlations ranging from .41
  to .61 between the ATHS and fundamentalism.
• Among Hindus, Muslims, and Jews, the higher the
  persons ATHS score the higher was their RFS score
  (Altemeyer, 1996)

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Relationships with prejudice

• Altemeyer (1996) developed the Manitoba
  Ethnocentrism Scale (MES).
• Sample item
• Black people as a rule are, by their nature, more
  violent than white people are.
• The RFS and MES correlations ranged from .17 to
  .33.

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How do people become fundamentalists

• University students RFS scores correlate about
  .50 to .65 with their parents.
• Only 64 of Canadian respondents still consider
  themselves members of the religion in which they
  were raised.
• Other faiths convert to fundamentalism.
• Fundamentalism attracts disaffected youth raised
  with no religion (Altemeyer Hunsberger, 1997).
• Some adults join fundamentalist faiths when they
  get married.
• Some join from mainstream faiths that have
  undergone liberalization.

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How do people become fundamentalists

• The percentage of religious conservatives in
  Canada has remained about 8 since 1871 (Bibby,
  2002).
• The number of Americans who called themselves
  fundamentalist as opposed to moderate or
  liberal peaked at 36 in 1987 and dropped to
  31 in 1998 and 2000 (Davis et al., 2000).

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Authoritarianism

• Two kinds of authoritarian personalities exist
  leaders (social dominators) and followers.
• Dominators do not tend to be religious.
• Followers tend to be religious fundamentalists.

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Key Book

• Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J.
  Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian
  personality. New York Harper

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Right wing authoritarianism

• Right-wing authoritarianism is defined as the
  covariation of three attitudinal clusters in a
  person - authoritarian submission, authoritarian
  aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer,
  1981).
• Right-wing, not in a political sense, but in a
  social psychological sense.
• The Right-wing Authoritarian Scale (RWAS)
  comprises 20 items (Altemeyer, 1996).
• Sample items include
• The old fashioned ways and the old fashioned
  values still show the best way to live
• There is no ONE right way to live life
  everybody has to create their own way (reverse
  scored)

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Evidence for validity

• Persons who score high on the RWAS trust and
  support established authorities stronger and
  longer than most do.
• Highly prejudiced persons turn out to be either
  social dominators or right-wing authoritarians.
• In both U.S. and Canadian legislatures RWAS
  scores almost always differentiate liberal from
  conservative caucuses (Altemeyer, 1996).

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Personal origin of right-wing authoritarianism

• Student RWA scores correlate about .40 with their
  parents scores.
• Right-wing authoritarians tend to dislike
  homosexuals but most of them have never known one
  as far as they know (Altemeyer, 1998).

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Cognitive Weaknesses

• High RWAs produce many cognitive blind spots,
  e.g., they tend to endorse slogans that
  contradict each other they would punish a hippie
  much more than they would punish an accountant
  for the same crime.
• They are susceptible to manipulators, such as
  social dominators, who tell them what they want
  to hear.

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Connection between right-wing authoritarianism
and religious fundamentalism

• Most authoritarians are fundamentalists and vice
  versa.
• Fundamentalists are more concerned with
  sentiments of submission, aggression, and
  conventionalism than one fundamentally true
  religion.
• They score highly on the RWA scale because they
  strongly tend to be right-wing authoritarians.
• Fundamentalists are brought up to believe such
  teachings as the deepest layers of hell are set
  aside for those who abandon Gods true religion
  (Altemeyer Hunsberger, 1997).

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Connection between right-wing authoritarianism
and religious fundamentalism

• Such teachings may result in fundamentalist
  children being brought up with ethnocentric
  views.
• This training could create a template for later
  racial and ethnic ethnocentrism (Altemeyer,
  2003).

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The chicken and the egg and the apprehension

• Partial correlations reveal that RFS scores
  explain variance in religious fundamentalism over
  and above RWA scores while RWA scores explain
  variance in non-religious authoritarianism over
  and above RFS scores.
• Fundamentalism can therefore usually be viewed
  as a religious manifestation of right-wing
  authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1996, p. 161).