Abstract
People often assume that moral and religious convictions are functionally the same thing. But are they? We report on 19 studies (N = 12,284) that tested whether people’s perceptions that their attitudes are reflections of their moral and religious convictions across 30 different issues were functionally the same (the equivalence hypothesis) or different constructs (the distinct constructs hypothesis), and whether the relationship between these constructs was conditional on political orientation (the political asymmetry hypothesis). Seven of these studies (N = 5,561, and 22 issues) also had data that allowed us to test whether moral and religious conviction are only closely related for those who are more rather than less religious (the secularization hypothesis), and a narrower form of the political asymmetry and secularization hypotheses, that is, that people’s moral and religious convictions may be tightly connected constructs only for religious conservatives. Meta-analytic tests of each of these hypotheses yielded weak support for the secularization hypothesis, no support for the equivalence or political asymmetry hypotheses, and the strongest support for the distinct constructs hypothesis.
Highlights
People’s attitudes can be shaped by a number of different factors, including their preferences and tastes (“I hate licorice”), group norms or fads (“X is the new black”), or prudence (“look before you leap”)
Participants from each study were included in analyses if they provided data for at least two of the key variables of interest
We first calculated the bivariate correlations between moral conviction, religious conviction, political orientation, and religiosity for each issue to test the equivalence and distinct construct hypotheses
Summary
People’s attitudes can be shaped by a number of different factors, including their preferences and tastes (“I hate licorice”), group norms or fads (“X is the new black”), or prudence (“look before you leap”). Some attitudes are shaped or explained in terms of people’s religious beliefs. Forty-seven percent of a national sample of Americans who opposed same-sex marriage, for example, explained their opposition by referring to their religious beliefs and/or the bible [1]. The idea that people’s position on issues are sometimes based on or justified by religious belief is inherent in the number of times Congress and various state legislatures have introduced legislation that makes exceptions based on the religious and moral convictions of the perceiver. . .based on the religious and moral convictions of the issuer” [2].
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