What Aspects of Religiosity are Associated with Values?
Corresponding Author
Philip Schwadel
Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Correspondence should be addressed to Philip Schwadel, Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 740 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324. E-mail: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Philip Schwadel
Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Correspondence should be addressed to Philip Schwadel, Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 740 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324. E-mail: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorAcknowledgments: The authors thank the Editor of JSSR and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts.
Abstract
A large body of research shows that religiosity in general is associated with values. Yet, we know little about the specific aspects of religiosity that drive this association. Using nationally representative data from a sample of young adults in the United States, we examined how various aspects of religiosity—religious tradition, service attendance, frequency of prayer, religious salience, belief in God, closeness to God, and number of religious friends—are associated with the 10 values comprising Schwartz's circle of values. Bivariate results indicate that most measures of religiosity are correlated with Schwartz's circle of values. Multivariate regression results, however, show that the relationship between religiosity and values is largely due to the positive associations between closeness to God and social focus values, the positive associations between number of religious friends and social focus values, and the negative associations between religious service attendance and personal focus values. We conclude by discussing why these aspects of religiosity appear to be most relevant to Schwartz's circle of values and by suggesting directions for future research on religiosity and values.
Open Research
STATEMENT ON DATA REPLICATION
The data are available without charge at the Association of Religion Data Archives website (www.TheARDA.com). Contact the lead author for questions about the Stata code used in the analyses.
References
- Ammerman, Nancy T. 1997. Golden rule Christianity. In Lived religion in America: Toward a history of practice, edited by D. Hall, pp. 196–216. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Bardi, Anat, Kathryn E. Buchanan, Robin Goodwin, Letitia Slabu, and Mark Robinson. 2014. Value stability and change during self-chosen life transitions: Self-selection versus socialization effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106(1): 131–47.
- Brashears, Mathew E. 2010. Anomia and the sacred canopy: Testing a network theory. Social Networks 32: 187–96.
- Calfano, Brian R., Elizabeth A. Oldmixon, and Mark Gray. 2014. Strategically prophetic priests: An analysis of competing principal influence on clergy political action. Review of Religious Research 56: 1–21.
- Cheadle, Jacob E. and Philip Schwadel. 2012. The ‘Friendship Dynamics of Religion,’ or the ‘Religious Dynamics of Friendship’? A social network analysis of adolescents who attend small schools. Social Science Research 41(5): 1198–212.
- Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction ritual chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
10.1515/9781400851744 Google Scholar
- Dalton, Hilary, David C. Dollahite, and Loren D. Marks. 2018. Transcendence matters: Do the ways family members experience God meaningfully relate to family life? Review of Religious Research 60: 23–47.
- Wim De Neys. 2018. Dual process theory 2.0. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
- Dinges, William D. and James Hitchcock. 1991. Roman Catholic traditionalism and activist conservatism in the United States. In Fundamentalisms observed, edited by M. E. Marty and R. S. Appleby, pp. 66–141. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
- Ellison, Christopher G. 1991. Religious involvement and subjective well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 32: 80–99.
- Enders, Craig K. 2001. The performance of the full information maximum likelihood estimator in multiple regression models with missing data. Educational and Psychological Measurement 61(5): 713–40.
- Fontaine, Johnny R. J., Bart Duriez, Patrick Luyten, Jozef Corveleyn, and Dirk Hutsebaut. 2005. Consequences of a multidimensional approach to religion for the relationship between religiosity and value priorities. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 15(2): 123–43.
10.1207/s15327582ijpr1502_2 Google Scholar
- Fontaine, Jonny, Patrick Luyten, and Jozef Corveleyn. 2000. Tell me what you believe and I'll tell you what you want: Empirical evidence for discriminating value patterns of five types of religiosity. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 10(2): 65–84.
10.1207/S15327582IJPR1002_01 Google Scholar
- Froese, Paul and Christopher Bader. 2008. Unraveling religious worldviews: The relationship between images of God and political ideology in a cross-cultural analysis. Sociological Quarterly 49(4): 689–718.
- Funder, David C. and Daniel J. Ozer. 2019. Evaluating effect size in psychological research: Sense and nonsense. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 2: 156–68.
- Haber, Jon Randolph, Theodore Jacob, and David J. C. Spangler. 2007. Dimensions of religion/spirituality and relevance to health research. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 17(4): 265–88.
10.1080/10508610701572770 Google Scholar
- Hadden, Jeffrey K. 1969. The gathering storm in the Churches: The widening gap between clergy and laymen. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
- Hanel, Paul, Lukas F. Litzellachner, and Gregory R. Maio. 2018. An empirical comparison of human value models. Frontiers in Psychology 9(1643). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01643.
10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01643 Google Scholar
- Hardy, Sam A., Jenae M. Nelson, Joseph P. Moore, and Pamela Ebstyne King. 2019. Processes of religious and spiritual influence in adolescence: A systematic review of 30 years of research. Journal of Research on Adolescence 29(2): 254–75.
- Jeppsen, Benjamin, Patrick Pössel, Stephanie Winkeljohn Black, Annie Bjerg, and Don Wooldridge. 2015. Closeness and control: Exploring the relationship between prayer and mental health. Counseling and Values 60: 164–85.
- Kornbrot, Diana. 2005. Point biserial correlation. In Encyclopedia of statistics in behavioral science. https://doi.org/10.1002/0470013192.bsa485.
10.1002/0470013192.bsa485 Google Scholar
- Mockabee, Stephen T., Joseph Quin Monson, and J. Tobin Grant. 2001. Measuring religious commitment among Catholics and Protestants: A new approach. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40(4): 675–90.
- Pepper, Miriam, Tim Jackson, and David Uzzell. 2010. A study of multidimensional religion constructs and values in the United Kingdom. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49(1): 127–46.
- Roccas, Sonia, Lilach Sagiv, Shalom H. Schwartz, and Ariel Knafo. 2002. The big five personality factors and personal values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(6): 789–801.
- Roccas, Sonia and Shalom H. Schwartz. 1997. Church–state relations and the association of religiosity with values: A study of Catholics in six countries. Cross-Cultural Research 31(4): 356–75.
10.1177/106939719703100404 Google Scholar
- Roccas, Sonia. 2005. Religion and value systems. Journal of Social Issues 61(4): 747–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00430.x.
- Rossi, Maurizio and Ettore Scappini. 2014. Church attendance, problems of measurement, and interpreting indicators: A study of religious practice in the United States, 1975–2010. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 53(2): 249–67.
- Sabriseilabi, Soheil and James Williams. 2020. Dimensions of religion and attitudes toward euthanasia. Death Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2020.1800863.
10.1080/07481187.2020.1800863 Google Scholar
- Sagiv, Lilach and Shalom H. Schwartz. 2000. Values priorities and subjective well-being: Direct relations and congruity effects. European Journal of Social Psychology 30: 177–98.
- Saroglou, Vassilis, Vanessa Delpierre, and Rebecca Dernelle. 2004. Values and religiosity: A meta-analysis of studies using Schwartz's model. Personality and Individual Differences 37: 721–34.
- Saroglou, Vassilis and Antonio Muñoz-García. 2008. Individual differences in religion and spirituality: An issue of personality traits and/or values. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47(1): 83–101.
- Schieman, Scott, Tetyana Pudrovska, Leonard I. Pearlin, and Christopher G. Ellison. 2006. The sense of divine control and psychological distress: Variations across race and socioeconomic status. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45: 529–49.
- Schwadel, Philip. 2018. The political implications of religious non-affiliation in emerging adulthood. Journal of Religion & Society, Supplement 17: 149–66.
- Schwadel, Philip, Jacob E. Cheadle, Sarah E. Malone, and Michael Stout. 2016. Social networks and civic participation and efficacy in two evangelical protestant churches. Review of Religious Research 58(2): 305–17.
- Schwadel, Philip, Sam A. Hardy, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, and C. Nathan DeWall. 2021. The values of religious nones, dones, and sacralized Americans: Links between changes in religious affiliation and Schwartz values. Journal of Personality 89: 867–82.
- Schwartz, Shalom H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 25: 1–65.
- Schwartz, Shalom H. 2003. A proposal for measuring value orientations across nations. In Source questionnaire development of the European social survey (chapter 7). https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/docs/methodology/core_ess_questionnaire/ESS_core_questionnaire_human_values.pdf
- Schwartz, Shalom H. 2012. Values and religion in adolescent development: Cross-national and comparative evidence. In Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development, edited by G. Tromsdorff and X. Chen, pp. 97–122. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.1017/CBO9781139013659.007 Google Scholar
- Schwartz, Shalom H. 2016. Basic individual values: Sources and consequences. In Handbook of value: Perspectives from economics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and sociology, edited by T. Brosch and D. Sander, pp. 63–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Schwartz, Shalom H. and Spike Huismans. 1995. Value priorities and religiosity in four western religions. Social Psychology Quarterly 58: 88–107.
- Smith, Christian. 1998. American evangelicalism embattled and thriving. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
10.7208/chicago/9780226229225.001.0001 Google Scholar
- Smith, Christian and Melinda L. Denton. 2008. Methodological design and procedures for the national study of youth and religion (NSYR) longitudinal telephone survey (Waves 1, 2, & 3) [Data Set]. NYSR.
- Sortheix, Florencia M. and Shalom H. Schwartz. 2017. Values that underlie and undermine well-being: Variability across countries. European Journal of Personality 31: 187–201.
- Steensland, Brian, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Robert D. Woodberry. 2000. The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art. Social Forces 79: 291–318.
- Tamir, Christine, Aidan Connaughton, and Ariana M. Salazar. 2020. The global God divide: People's thoughts on whether belief in God is necessary to be moral vary by economic development, education and age. Pew Research Center.
- Todd, Nathan R., Jaclyn D. Houston, and Charlynn A. Odahl-Ruan. 2014. Preliminary validation of the sanctification of social justice scale. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 6(3): 245–56.
- Wink, Paul and Michele Dillon. 2002. Spiritual development across the adult life course: Findings from a longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescent Development 9(1): 79–94.