A comparison of extreme religious and political ideologies: Similar worldviews but different grievances

Abstract

People can polarize into various ideologies, including tendencies towards political left- and right-wing extremism, and religious fundamentalism. Here we compare polarization in these different ideologies in a US online sample (N = 424). Building on significance quest theory, we specifically investigate how individual tendencies towards political extremism and religious fundamentalism are associated with grievance and worldview variables within the same study. As grievance variables we measured personal and fraternal deprivation, and socio-economic fear. As worldview variables we measured belief significance, dogmatic intolerance, and parochial altruism. Results revealed that political extremism and religious fundamentalism were similarly associated with the worldview variables but not with the grievance variables. We conclude that independent of content, ideological polarization is associated with a common worldview characterized by the feeling that one supports a meaningful cause, intolerance of alternative ideologies, and a willingness to make personal sacrifices for one's ideals.