Conventional Religious Belief Research Articles

Religious and conspiracist? An analysis of the relationship between the dimensions of individual religiosity and belief in a big pharma conspiracy theory

AbstractIn the increasing scholars' attention to factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, religiosity has been under-investigated, at least in empirical research. This study aims to address the issue by analysing to what extent and in which forms individual religiosity is associated with conspiracy beliefs. Religion and conspiracy theories could show both similarities and dissimilarities. First, as alternative religiosity and conspiracy theories tend to spread knowledge stigmatized by the authorities, we expect that alternative religious beliefs are positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Second, as religion and conspiracy theories explain events with the agency of invisible forces and detect patterns in nature, also conventional religious beliefs are supposed to be positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Third, church attendance is hypothesized to discourage conspiracy beliefs, as exposure to religious authorities could deter the adhesion to unofficial narratives. By employing data coming from the Italian joint edition of the European Values Study–World Values Survey 2018, the paper tests the hypotheses by analysing the association between the multiple dimensions of individual religiosity and belief in a conspiracy theory on pharmaceutical companies. Results show that, after controlling for confidence in political and religious institutions and attitudes towards science, only alternative religious beliefs, here measured by belief in the reincarnation, are positively associated with belief in the big pharma conspiracy theory. Empirical evidence suggests taking caution when looking at similarities between conventional religiosity and conspiracy beliefs.

Conventional and unconventional forms of religiosity: identifying predictive factors and wellbeing outcomes

This study examines sociodemographic and wellbeing factors associated with forms of religiosity involving conventional religious belief (CRB) and daily spiritual experience (DSE), and unconventional paranormal beliefs in lifeforms (UPBL) and paranormal beliefs excluding extraordinary lifeforms (UPBEEL). Self-reported data collected from Australian Facebook users (N=760; Female: 57%) suggest that CRB was significantly higher in Christian participants and lower in those who identify as non-religious and spiritual. However, levels of unconventional religiosity involving UPBL and UPBEEL were significantly higher among Pagans and those who identify as spiritual but not religious, but lower among non-religious participants. Compared to Christian participants, being spiritual and pagan were negatively associated with the level of security. After controlling for relevant sociodemographic characteristics, conventional forms of religiosity involving DSE were positively related to life satisfaction, life security, and trust level. UPBL was also positively associated with wellbeing outcomes but UPBEEL was inversely related to all wellbeing outcomes. Further analysis reveals that religious status moderates the links between conventional and unconventional forms of religiosity, such that paranormal beliefs tended to be higher when CRB and DSE each had a unique interaction with religious status. These results show that forms of religiosity are related to wellbeing differently and suggest the influence of cognitive biases related to religious/spiritual teachings and experiences in enacting the quest for deeper spiritual, paranormal experiences. Study limitations are discussed.

Body Posture and Religious Attitudes

One hundred and twenty-seven college students were recruited for an experimental investigation of the effect of body posture on religious attitudes. Roughly half of the participants were placed in lower, contractive body postures while the other half were placed in higher, expansive body postures. After five minutes in these postures, all were asked to fill out a measure of religious attitudes. As expected, participants in the lower, contractive positions expressed more agreement with conventional religious beliefs than those in the higher, expansive positions.

Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement (attendance at religious services, praying, etc.), conventional religious beliefs (heaven, miracles, etc.) and paranormal beliefs (extrasensory perception, levitation, etc.) with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically.

Religious Involvement, Conventional Christian, and Unconventional Nonmaterialist Beliefs

This article uses a Scottish national sample to examine the relationship between church involvement, religious socialization among nonattenders, orthodox Christian beliefs, and a variety of unconventional nonmaterialist beliefs. Greater conventional religious belief is strongly associated with supposed alternatives but nonetheless, nonattenders are more likely to believe in the unconventional over and above any enduring sympathy they may hold for Christian doctrine. One group in particular stands out: belief remains high among nonattenders who once went to services regularly and seriously contemplate reengaging with organized religion. The article discusses the importance of these findings for “believing but not belonging.”

Religion and Paranormal Belief

This article uses a Canadian national sample to examine the relationship between conventional religious belief, church attendance, and belief in paranormal phenomena. Greater religious belief is strongly associated with greater paranormal belief. Church attendance (and other measures of religious participation) are only weakly associated with paranormal belief until conventional religious belief is statistically controlled; once this is done, greater church attendance is strongly associated with lowered paranormal belief. Together, these two religious variables explain about one‐quarter of the variance in paranormal belief, making them the strongest predictors that have yet to be identified.

Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations

The proportion of Americans who reported no religious preference doubled from 7 percent to 14 percent in the 1990s. This dramatic change may have resulted from demographic shifts, increasing religious skepticism, or the mix of politics and religion that characterized the 1990s. One demographic factor is the succession of generations; the percentage of adults who had been raised with no religion increased from 2 percent to 6 percent. Delayed marriage and parenthood also contributed to the increase. Religious skepticism proved to be an unlikely explanation: Most people with no preference hold conventional religious beliefs, despite their alienation from organized religion. In fact, these “unchurched believers” made up most of the increase in the “no religion” preferences. Politics, too, was a significant factor. The increase in “no religion “ responses was confined to political moderates and liberals; the religious preferences of political conservatives did not change. This political part of the increase in “nones” can be viewed as a symbolic statement against the Religious Right.

Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations

The proportion of Americans who reported no religious preference doubled from 7 percent to 14 percent in the 1990s. This dramatic change may have resulted from demographic shifts, increasing religious skepticism, or the mix of politics and religion that characterized the 1990s. One demographic factor is the succession of generations; the percentage of adults who had been raised with no religion increased from 2 percent to 6 percent. Delayed marriage and parenthood also contributed to the increase. Religious skepticism proved to be an unlikely explanation: Most people with no preference hold conventional religious beliefs, despite their alienation from organized religion. In fact, these “unchurched believers” made up most of the increase in the “no religion” preferences. Politics, too, was a significant factor. The increase in “no religion” responses was confined to political moderates and liberals; the religious preferences of political conservatives did not change. This political part of the increase in “nones” can be viewed as a symbolic statement against the Religious Right.

Mortal Losses, Vital Gains: The Role of Spirituality

Grief and its management constitute the general topic of this paper. A personal dynamic of reframing is articulated and defined as a major experiential source of human spirituality. The argument is that exercises in the comparative free association of loss activate dynamic reframing amidst mourning and its associated work of depression. Counselling that involves imagining “worse case scenarios” may invoke conventional religious belief and practice as constructive “tactics of make-believe,” ones that actually enlarge perspective and cast past losses into widening horizons of future gains. In effect, human spirituality is an individual's achieved capacity to affirm time and again that his or her great personal losses could have been far worse, in spite of the emotional turmoil and woe surrounding such events.

Authentic religious experience or insanity?

This study examined how mental health professionals make judgments about the religious authenticity and mental health of behaviors motivated by religious ideation. Participants were presented with written vignettes of religiously motivated behavior. The context of religious behavior varied on 6 dimensions and also on 3 levels of conventionality. The results indicated that the determining factor in the ratings was not dimensions of religious experience, but the degree that the experience deviated from conventional religious beliefs and practices. The more unconventional the behavior, the less religiously authentic and mentally healthy it was deemed to be.

Religious Dogmatism and Peak Experiences: A Test of Maslow's Hypothesis

Maslow (1964) hypothesized a negative relationship between adherence to conventional religious beliefs and the ability to experience peak moments. T o test this hypothesis, a sample of 110 male and female students from a southern urban, state-supported university were administered a Religious Dogma Scale (Fagan & Breed, 1970) and asked to report peak experiences. Ss, given a description of peak experiences which had been modified from Maslow's instructions, were asked to describe two such experiences, if they had had them. The two authors separately rated the validity of the experiences on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The two scores were then pooled for a score of 0 to 20. Correlation between raters' judgments was .84. Twenty-one Ss did not write descriptions and thus were not included.

Test cost minimization for reliability assessment : G. G. Naegele and D. W. Sellinschegg. Proceedings 1972 Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, San Francisco. IEEE Cat. No. 72CH0577-7R. 25–27 January (1972), p. 300

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement (attendance at religious services, praying, etc.), conventional religious beliefs (heaven, miracles, etc.) and paranormal beliefs (extrasensory perception, levitation, etc.) with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically.

Personality Differences between High and Low Dogmatism Groups of Catholic Seminarians and Religious Sisters

Catholics, especially Catholic seminarians and religious sisters, have frequently been viewed as dogmatic and closed-minded, presumably as a counterpart to their commitment to a religious community which emphasizes that certain in-group attitudes be maintained. However, even among highly ego-involved religious persons, important individual differences may exist with regard to dogmatism and its correlates. Gilmore (1969), for example, demonstrates this among Pentecostals. This study demonstrates the variability of dogmatism and the relationship between dogmatism and selected personality characteristics among a group of highly egoinvolved religious persons (i.e., Catholic seminarians and nuns). Dogmatism was assessed with Form E of Rokeach's dogmatism scale (1960), personality characteristics with the Omnibus Personality Inventory, Form F (Heist and Yonge 1968). It was predicted that the open-minded person, when compared with the closed-minded person, would be more flexible, liberal, and nonauthoritarian in his thinking, would express more skepticism of conventional religious beliefs, especially those that are orthodox and fundamentalistic, would be more tolerant of ambiguities and uncertainties, would admit to fewer behaviors and attitudes that characterize socially alienated or emotionally disturbed persons, and would more frequently admit having feelings or symptoms indicative of anxiety-i.e., score higher on the following OPI scales: complexity, autonomy, religious orientation, personal integration, and anxiety level. Instruments were mailed to 100 seminarians (Augustinian order) and religious sisters; 60 subjects (40 males and 20 females) returned completed forms. High and Low dogmatism groups were established by selecting the upper and lower quartiles (N = 15 in each group) of all dogmatism scores obtained. The means of the two groups were 147.7 and 121.6, respectively. The latter is similar to reported means of other low-dogmatism groups (Rokeach 1960:90). The mean of the high group is substantially higher than high-dogmatism college groups reported by Rokeach. The table shows that OPI scores differed in the expected direction, three of them significantly so.