Religiosity and Modern Prejudice

The current study examines the effect of religious orientation, social dominance orientation, right wing authoritarianism, and group socialization on the degree to which covert prejudice beliefs are endorsed. This study is novel in that individual and intergroup factors are simultaneously considered. Unlike much of the existing research, the study measures all six types of religious orientation for a nuanced examination of the different approaches to religion and the effect this has on attitude formation and maintenance. The study also demonstrates higher levels of generalizability in that questionnaires were distributed to a diverse sample and also considered many forms of discrimination (racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism). Additionally, relevant prejudice measures that better represent covert, modern day prejudice are used in the current study. Social dominance orientation (SDO) was strongly and positively correlated with all four types of subtle prejudice. In hierarchical regression modeling, right wing authoritarianism was the strongest predictor variable for all prejudice outcome variables. SDO was the second strongest predictor for all variables except for benevolent sexism. Demographic and religious orientation predictors varied by prejudice outcome variable. Only immanence and intrinsic emerged as significant religious orientations predictors. Multiple regression models with only religious orientation predictors were also conducted to examine the relationship of each religious orientation to each prejudice when the other religious orientations were held constant. Different trends for different prejudice attitudes were found for intrinsic and immanence orientations. Quest orientation was negatively correlated with prejudice and extrinsic religious orientation was positively correlated with prejudice for all prejudice outcome variables. Increasing intolerance with more indiscriminately pro- or anti-religious responding was not elicited. Instead a pattern of increasing pro-religiosity was related to higher prejudice scores. Progressive congregational factors correlated with lower colorblind racial attitudes, benevolent sexism, classism, and homonegativity among congregants.