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Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice: Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Lev
Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice: Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Lev
spurious? Can it be due, for example, to the clergy in our own South. These lives, along
factor of educational level? Many studies with the work of many religious bodies, coun-
show that people with high education tend cils, and service organizations would seem
to be appreciably less prejudiced than people to indicate that religion as such unmakes
with low education. Perhaps it is the former prejudice. A paradox indeed.
group that less often goes to church. The
reasoning is false. Sociological evidence has THE CURVILINEAR RELATIONSHIP
shown conclusively that frequent church at- If religion as such made only for prejudice,
tendance is associated with high socioeco- we would expect that churchgoers who expose
nomic status and with college education themselves most constantly to its influence
(Demerath, 1965). Furthermore, Stouffer's would, as a result, be more prejudiced than
study found that the intolerant tendency those who seldom attend. Such is not the
among churchgoers existed only when educa- case.
tional level was held constant. Struening Many studies show that frequent attenders
(1963), using as subjects only faculty mem- are less prejudiced than infrequent attenders
bers of a large state university (all highly and often less prejudiced even than non-
educated), discovered that nonattenders were attenders. Let us cite one illustrative study
on the average less prejudiced than attenders. by Struening (1963). The curvilinear trend
These studies assure us that the association is immediately apparent in Table 1. In this
between churchgoing and prejudice is not particular study nonattenders had lower
merely a spurious product of low education. prejudice scores than any group, save only
Turning to the theoretical implications of those devotees who managed to attend 11 or
these findings, shall we say that religion in more times a month. Without employing
and of itself makes for prejudice and intoler- such fine time intervals other studies have
ance? There are some arguments in favor of shown the same curvilinear trend. Thus, in
such a conclusion, especially when we recall The Authoritarian Personality (p. 212) we
that certain powerful theological positions learned that in 12 out of 15 groups "regular"
those emphasizing revelation, election (chosen attenders (like nonattenders) were less preju-
people), and theocracy (Allport, 1959, 1966) diced than "seldom" or "often" attenders.
have throughout history turned one religion Employing a 26-item Desegregation Scale in
against another. And among sociological fac- three separate studies, Holtzman (1956)
tors in religion we find many that make for found the same trend as shown in Table 2.
bigotry. One thinks of the narrow composi- If more evidence for the curvilinear rela-
tion of many religious groups in terms of tionship is needed, it will be found in com-
ethnic and class membership, of their pres- munity studies made in New Jersey (Fried-
sure toward conformity, and of the competi- richs, 1959), North Carolina (Tumin, 1958),
tion between them (see Demerath, 1965; New England (Pettigrew, 1959), and Ohio
Lenski, 1961). It does seem that religion as
such makes for prejudice. TABLE 1
And yet it is here that we encounter the CHURCH ATTENDANCE AND PREJUDICE AMONG
FACULTY MEMBERS OF A MIDWESTERN
grand paradox. One may not overlook the UNIVERSITY
teachings of equality and brotherhood, of
compassion and humanheartedness, that mark Frequency of
attendance N Prejudice score
all the great world religions. Nor may one (times per mo.)
overlook the precept and example of great 0 261 14.7
figures whose labors in behalf of tolerance i 143 25.0
were and are religiously motivatedsuch as 2 103 26.0
3 84 23.8
Christ himself, Tertullian, Pope Gelasius I, 4 157 22.0
St. Ambrose, Cardinal Cusa, Sebastian Cas- 5-7 94 19.9
8-10 26 16.3
tellio, Schwenckfeld, Roger Williams, Ma- 11 or more 21 11.7
hatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and
many others, including the recently martyred Note.From Struening (1957).
434 GORDON W. ALLPOET AND J. MICHAEL Ross
status) and those who are "associational" an exclusionist, self-centered, extrinsic, re-
(seeking the deeper values of their faith). ligious orientation and may dispose him to
These authors see the significance of their a stereotyped, fearful image of Jews. This
classifications for the study of prejudice, fact does not in the least affect the func-
Fichter has found less prejudice among devout tional relationship between the religious and
(nuclear) Catholics than among others (see the prejudiced outlooks. It is a common error
Allport, 1954, p. 421), Lenski (1961, p. 173) for investigators to "control for" demographic
reported that among Detroit Catholics 59% factors without considering the danger in-
of those with a predominantly "communal" volved in doing so. In so doing they are often
involvement favored segregated schools, obscuring and not illuminating the functional
whereas among those with predominantly an (i.e., psychological) relationships that obtain
"associational" involvement only 27% favored (see Allport, 1950).
segregation. The same trend held for Detroit Following Wilson the task of direct meas-
Protestants. urement was taken up by Feagin (1964) who
The first published study relating the used a more developed scaleone designed
extrinsic-intrinsic dimension directly to ethnic to measure not only extrinsic orientation but
prejudice was that of Wilson (1960). Limit- also the intrinsic, His scales are essentially
ing himself to a IS-item scale measuring the same as those discussed in a later sec-
an extrinsic (utilitarian-institutional) orienta- tion of this paper. In his study of Southern
tion, Wilson found in 10 religious groups a Baptists Feagin reached four conclusions:
median correlation of .65 between his scale (a) Contrary to expectation, extrinsic and
and anti-Semitism, In general these correla- intrinsic items did not fall on a unidimen-
tions were higher than he obtained between sional scale but represented two independent
anti-Semitism and the Religious-Convention- dimensions; (b] only the extrinsic orienta-
alism Scale (Levinson, 19S4). From this find- tion was related to intolerance toward Ne-
ing Wilson concluded that orthodoxy or groes; (c) orthodoxy as such was not related
fundamentalism is a less important factor to the extrinsic or intrinsic orientation;
than extrinsicness of orientation. (d) greater orthodoxy (fundamentalism of
Certain weaknesses may be pointed out in belief) did, however, relate positively to
this pioneer study. Wilson did not attempt prejudice.
to measure intrinsicness of orientation, but Taking all these studies together we are
assumed without warrant that it was equiva- justified in assuming that the inner experi-
lent to a low score on the extrinsic measures. ence of religion (what it means to the indi-
Further, since the items were worded in a vidual) is an important causal factor in
unidirectional way there may be an error of developing a tolerant or a prejudiced outlook
response set. Again, Wilson dealt only with on life.
Jews as a target of prejudice, and so the Yet, additional evidence is always in place,
generality of his finding is not known. and new insights can be gained by a closer
Finally, the factor of educational level inspection of the rather coarse relationships
plays a part. Wilson used the California that have been established up to now.
Anti-Semitism scale, and we know that high
scores on this scale go with low education THE PKESENT STUDY
(Christie, 1954; Pettigrew, 1959; Titus & We wished to employ an improved and
Hollander, 1957; Williams, 1964). Further, broader measure of prejudice than had pre-
in our own study the extrinsic subscale is viously been used. And since direct measures
negatively correlated with degree of educa- of prejudice (naming the target groups) have
tion (r = .32). To an appreciable extent, become too sensitive for wide use, we wished
therefore, Wilson's high correlations may be to try some abbreviated indirect measures.
"ascribed" to educational level. Further, we wished to make use of an im-
At this point, however, an important theo- proved Extrinsic-Intrinsic scale, one that
retical observation must be made. Low educa- would give reliable measures of both extrinsic
tion may indeed predispose a person toward and intrinsic tendencies in a person's reli-
436 GORDON W. ALLPORT AND J. MICHAEL Ross
gious life. For these reasons the following once again illustrate the well-established fact
instruments were adopted. that ethnic prejudice tends to be a broadly
generalized disposition in personality.
Social Problems Questionnaire
This scale, devised by Harding and Schu- Religious Orientation Measure
man (unpublished 1 ; see also Schuman & The full scale, entitled "Religious Orienta-
Harding, 1963, 1964), is a subtly worded tion," is available from ADI. 2 It separates
instrument containing 12 anti-Negro, 11 anti- the intrinsically worded items from the ex-
Jewish, and 10 anti-other items (pertaining trinsic, gives score values for each item, and
to Orientals, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans). reports on item reliabilities. In all cases a
The wording is varied so as to avoid an score of 1 indicates the most intrinsic re-
agreement response set. sponse, a score of 5, the most extrinsic. While
it is possible to use all 20 items as one
Indirect Prejudice Measures continuous scale, it will soon become apparent
Six items were taken from Gilbert and that it is often wise to treat the two sub-
Levmson's (19S6) Custodial Mental Illness scales separately. A sample item from the
Ideology Scale (CMI). Example: "We should extrinsic subscale follows: "What religion
be sympathetic with mental patients, but we offers me most is comfort when sorrows and
cannot expect to understand their odd behav- misfortune strike, a) I definitely disagree, 1.
ior, a) I definitely disagree, b) I tend to b) I tend to disagree, 2. c) I tend to agree,
disagree, c) I tend to agree, d) I definitely 4. d) I definitely agree, 5." A sample item
agree." from the intrinsic subscale: "My religious
Four items are related to a "jungle" phi- beliefs are what really lie behind my whole
losophy of life, suggesting a generalized approach to life, a) this is definitely not so, 5.
suspiciousness and distrust. Example: "The b) probably not so, 4. c) probably so, 2.
world is a hazardous place in which men are d) definitely so, 1.
basically evil and dangerous, a) I definitely
disagree, b) I tend to disagree, c) I tend to SAMPLE
agree, d) I definitely agree." While our sample of six groups of churchgoers
shows some diversity of denomination and region,
In all cases the most prejudiced response it is in no sense representative. Graduate-student
receives a score of 5 and the least prejudiced members of a seminar collected the 309 cases from
response, 1. No response was scored 3. the following church groups: Group A, 94 Roman
From Table 3 we see that while the in- Catholic (Massachusetts); Group B, SS Lutheran
direct measures have a positive correlation (New York State) ; Group C, 44 Nazarene (South
Carolina); Group D, 53 Presbyterian (Pennsyl-
with each other and with direct measures vania) ; Group E, 3S Methodist (Tennessee); Group
the relationship is scarcely high enough to F, 28 Baptist (Massachusetts).
warrant the substitution of the indirect for We labeled the groups alphabetically since such
the direct. The high correlations between small subsamples could not possibly lead to valid
generalizations concerning denominations as a whole.
prejudice for the three ethnic target groups All subjects knew that they were invited to partici-
1
J. Harding and H. Schuman, "Social Problems pate as members of a religious group, and this fact
Questionnaire," Cornell University. may well have introduced a "proreligious" bias.
TABLE 6 TABLE 7
FODK PATTERNS OF RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION PERCENTAGE or EACH RELIGIOUS TYPE IN
EACH SUBSAMPLE
Agrees with Disagrees with
intrinsic choice intrinsic choice Religious Consistently Consistently Indiscriminately
group N intrinsic extrinsic proreligious
Agrees with .Indiscriminately Consistently
extrinsic proreligious extrinsic in A (94) 36 34 30
choice type B (55) 35 36 29
Disagrees with Consistently Indiscriminately C (44) 36 39 25
extrinsic intrinsic in antireligious or D (53) 32 30 38
choice type nonreligious" E (35) 31 29 40
F (28) 39 39 22
fl
Not found in present sample.
*p > .10.
**p > .05.
***# > .01.
RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION 441
disposition. We recall likewise that the in- nately proreligious. A relatively small number
consistent cases have a lower level of formal of people show an equally consistent cogni-
education than the consistent cases. This tive style in their simultaneous commitment
factor also is relevant to the formation and to religion as a dominant, intrinsic value and
holding of overwide categories. to ethnic tolerance.
But why should such a disposition, what- One final word: our research argues
ever its source, be so strongly related to strongly that social scientists who employ
prejudice, in such a way that the more the variable "religion" or "religiosity" in the
undifferentiated, the more prejudicedas future will do well to keep in mind the
Table 9 shows? crucial distinction between religious attitudes
The answer is that prejudice itself is a that are intrinsic, extrinsic, and indiscrimi-
matter of stereotyped overgeneralization, a nately pro. To know that a person is in some
failure to distinguish members of a minority sense "religious" is not as important as to
group as individuals (Allport, 19S4, Chaps. know the role religion plays in the economy
2, 10). It goes without saying that if cate- of his life. (The categories of nonreligious
gories are overwide the accompanying feeling and indiscriminately antireliglous will also for
tone will be undifferentiated. Thus, religion some purposes be of central significance,
as a whole is good; a minority group as a although the present research, confined as it
whole is bad. is to churchgoers, does not employ them.)
It seems probable that people with un-
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