Religion and Socio-economic Human Rights: An Empirical Enquiry Among Adolescents in England and Wales

Abstract

This study explores the association between attitudes toward socio-economic human rights and three dimensions of religion (religious practice, religiosity, and self-assigned religious affiliation), after taking into account personal factors (age and sex) and psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) among a sample of 987 students between the ages of 14 and 18 years in England and Wales. Religious practice was assessed by two factors, personal prayer and worship attendance. Religiosity was assessed by three factors, thinking about religious issues, reconsidering religious issues, and belief in God. Self-assigned religious affiliation distinguished among four groups, Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians, Muslims, and religiously unaffiliated. The data demonstrated the importance of personal factors, with females and older students holding more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights, and the importance of psychological factors, with higher neuroticism scores and lower psychoticism scores being associated with more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights. Among the dimension of religion, religiosity provided stronger prediction of individual differences in attitudes toward socio-economic human rights than either religious practice or self-assigned religious affiliation. In particular, adolescents who often gave thought to religious issues held more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights.