Religiosity and attitudes towards homosexuality: could the link be explained by fundamentalism? Natalia Soboleva Irina Vartanova Anna Almakaeva LCSR regular seminar, Moscow, Russia, December 3, 2015
Research problem Diversification of different spheres of lives resulted in the decrease of influence of religions on attitudes and values (Norris, Inglehart, 2004; Inglehart, Welzel, 2005). Religiosity in modernized countries is moving from public to private sphere and changing its nature (Prutskova 2013). IS THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIONS IS CHANGING? Culture is deeply rooted in religion Religiosity still influences attitudes and behavior including attitudes towards homosexuality.
Tolerance towards homosexuality Tolerance towards homosexuality is one of the key aspects of self-expression values (Inglehart, Welzel 2005) Even in countries that are considered to be quite tolerant, homosexuality is still largely disapproved, for instance, in US (Herek, McLemore 2013) Homosexuals face more health and mental problems compared to heterosexuals (Patrick et al. 2013)
Theoretical approaches towards homosexuality Homosexuality is treated as (Herek, McLemore 2013): cultural stigma individual pathology societal problem (discrimination of minority group)
Objective Objective - to reveal the interplay between religiosity and fundamentalism and its impact on attitudes towards homosexuality across the globe Contribution: Impact of fundamentalism Taking different aspects of religion separately Cross-country perspective and multilevel approach
Previous studies Most studies: negative attitudes Religiosity leads to more negative attitudes towards homosexuality (Adamczyk and Pitt 2009; Van Den Akker et al. 2013) The degree of religiosity in the country leads to less tolerant attitudes towards homosexuality although the main religious denomination in the country (Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox) does not affect attitudes towards homosexuality in Europe (Van Den Akker et al. 2013) Some studies: insignificant Halman and van Ingen (2015) used attending religious services as a proxy for religiosity and found that decreasing church attendance does not influence attitudes towards homosexuality
Measuring religiosity THIS INCONSISTENCY OF RESULTS IS LARGELY DUE TO THE MEASURE OF RELIGIOSITY Different approaches to the nature of religiosity Glock (1967) five dimensions of religiosity experiential religious feeling, experience ideological expectations of sharing some beliefs ritualistic religious practices intellectual knowledge about tenets, faith consequential effect of religion on secular behaviour (mostly criticized) Hill (2005) dispositional religiosity if the person is religious on the whole functional religiosity the specific way of experiencing religiosity (including both believing in God and attending religious practices) Zhirkov (2013) used MG SEM to measure of religiosity as a latent variable in crosscountry research using WVS
3 meanings of religious congruence (Chaves 2010) individuals religious ideas constitute a tight, logically connected, integrated network of internally consistent beliefs and values religious and other practices and actions follow directly from those beliefs and values the religious beliefs and values that individuals express in certain, mainly religious, contexts are consistently held and chronically accessible across contexts, situations, and life domains
Religiosity and prejudice Allport and Ross (1967) Extrinsic motivation attending church Intrinsic motivation believing in God Extrinsic motivation leads to more prejudice Prutskova (2013) showed that the tolerance of nonstandard behavior is lower for those who have consistent level of religiosity compared to non-religious individuals in Europe. At the same time it is even higher for belonging not believing and believing not belonging groups
Hypothesis 1 Previous research has shown that religious fundamentalism leads to lower tolerance toward different types of human behavior (for instance, towards representatives of other religions and immigrants) (Doebler 2014). Herek and McLemore (2013) showed that fundamentalism largely explained prejudice towards homosexuals in US H1. Fundamentalism should strengthen the effect of believing in God and attending religious services upon the tolerance towards homosexuals
Hypothesis 2 Tolerance of non-standard behavior is lower for those who have consistent level of religiosity compared to non-religious individuals in Europe. At the same time it is even higher for belonging not believing and believing not belonging groups (Prutskova 2013). H2. Those individuals who have consistent religious attitudes have more negative attitudes towards homosexuality compared to non-religious individuals, whereas those individuals who suffer religious congruence fallacy do not differ significantly. However, religious fundamentalism should make the significant effect for religious inconsistent groups
Previous studies: country-level In countries with higher GDP per capita social class is associated with more tolerance towards homosexuality (managers and professionals have more positive attitudes), whereas in countries with lower GDP the acceptance of homosexuality is rather low across all social classes (Anderson and Fetner 2008) Religiosity has lower effect on attitudes towards homosexuality in countries with higher level of self-expression values (Adamczyk & Pitt 2009) Van Den Akker et al. studied the factors influencing homosexuality across 20 European countries. Support of conventionalism and traditions negatively influences support towards homosexuality (Van Den Akker et al. 2013) Halman and van Ingen (2015) showed that there is almost no effect of attending religious services in post-communist countries on tolerance to different forms of behavior.
Hypotheses 3 and 4 As it was shown that country characteristics (the degree of religiosity and educational level) affect attitudes towards homosexuality (Van Den Akker et al. 2013), we argue that more specific characteristics of religion. It is likely in countries where not one religion is spread attitudes there is less religious fundamentalism and attitudes towards homosexuality are more tolerant. H3. On the country level the attitudes towards homosexuality could be to a large extent explained by the religious diversity index (RDI) H4: Dominant religion can also have an impact upon the level of fundamentalism in the country and attitudes towards homosexuality.
Dataset and method 6 th wave of World values survey (2010-2012) Multilevel regression modeling with interaction effects
Algeria Azerbaijan Argentina Australia Bahrain (dropped) Armenia Brazil Belarus Chile China Taiwan Colombia Cyprus Ecuador Egypt (dropped) Estonia Palestine Germany Ghana Hong Kong Countries India (dropped) Iraq Japan Kazakhstan Jordan South Korea Kuwait (dropped) Kyrgyzstan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Mexico Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Pakistan Peru Philippines Poland Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Singapore Slovenia South Africa Zimbabwe Spain Sweden Thailand Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Yemen
Main Variables Dep. Var. Tolerance towards homosexuality measured through justification of homosexuality (scale from 1-10). dummy variable (0-never justified, 1 - justified) Ind. Var. Fundamentalism. Averaged index covering two questions (4-point scales): Whenever science and religion conflict, religion is always right The only acceptable religion is my religion Religiosity. Two questions Importance of God (10-point scale, recoded into 3-point scale for types construction) Church attendance (7-point scale, recoded into 3 point scale for types construction)
Type of religiosity Believing and belonging Believing & not belonging Belonging & not believing Main Variables Description High church attendance (once a month or more often) High importance of God (from 8 to 10) Low church attendance (less than once a year) High importance of God (from 8 to 10) High church attendance (once a month or more often) Low importance of God (from 1 to 3) Not believing & not belonging Low church attendance (less than once a year) Low importance of God (from 1 to 3) Moderate religiosity Either moderate level of church attendance (special holy days, once a year) Either moderate importance of God (from 4 to 7)
Control Variables Individual level Age Female gender Educational level Income (subjective) Universalism from Schwartz`s values. Closely related to postmaterialistic and emancipative values (Welzel, 2013).
Pakistan Iraq Bahrain Rwanda Jordan Azerbaijan Morocco Armenia Palestine Nigeria Qatar Ukraine Ghana Zimbabwe Malaysia Tunisia Lebanon Turkey Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Yemen Belarus Kyrgyzstan Russia Trinidad and Tobago Ecuador Singapore China South Korea Thailand Algeria Romania Libya India South Africa Estonia Peru Hong Kong Colombia Taiwan Cyprus Poland Mexico Japan Philippines Argentina Brazil Chile United States Slovenia Germany New Zealand Uruguay Spain Australia Netherlands Sweden Homosexuality: justifiable (across countries) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Never justifiable 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Always justifiable
Share of people who never justify homosexuality (across countries)
Whenever science and religion conflict, religion is always right (across countries)
The only acceptable religion is my religion (across countries)
Religion is always right and tolerance towards homosexuality
The only acceptable religion is my religion and tolerance towards homosexuality
Church attendance and tolerance towards homosexuality
Importance of God and tolerance towards homosexuality
Preliminary results (linear models) justification of homosexuality (1) (2) believing and belonging -0.032 * -0.035 * believing, not belonging 0.008 0.007 belonging, not believing 0.093 * 0.075 religiousmoderate 0.016 0.011 fundament -0.036 *** -0.038 *** Universalism 0.018 *** believing and belonging:fundament -0.034 *** -0.029 *** believing, not belonging:fundament -0.038 *** -0.034 *** belonging, not believing:fundament -0.032-0.023 moderate:fundament -0.018 * -0.015 Constant 0.640 *** 0.589 *** Observations 64,578 64,020 Log Likelihood -38,275.210-37,888.860 Akaike Inf. Crit. 76,584.420 75,813.730 Bayesian Inf. Crit. 76,738.700 75,976.930
Preliminary findings Those who are consistently religious and fundamentalists have negative attitudes towards religiosity. For believing, not belonging group there is no significant effect Belonging, not believing tend to have even more positive attitudes towards homosexuality Religious fundamentalism strengthens the effect for those who are not religious
Points to consider Latent class analysis for classification of religiosity and fundamentalism How to take into account individual religiosity?
Thank you for your attention!
The only acceptable religion is my religion (across denominations)