Religiosity and attitudes towards homosexuality: could the link be - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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 cross- country 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 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”

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

• 6th wave of World values survey (2010-

2012)

• Multilevel regression modeling with

interaction effects

Countries

• Algeria
• Azerbaijan
• Argentina
• Australia
• Bahrain (dropped)
• Armenia
• Brazil
• Belarus
• Chile
• China
• Taiwan
• Colombia
• Cyprus
• Ecuador
• Egypt (dropped)
• Estonia
• Palestine
• Germany
• Ghana
• Hong Kong
• 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)

Main Variables

Type of religiosity Description Believing and belonging High church attendance (once a month or more

• ften)

High importance of God (from 8 to 10) Believing & not belonging Low church attendance (less than once a year) High importance of God (from 8 to 10) Belonging & not believing High church attendance (once a month or more

• ften)

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).

Homosexuality: justifiable (across countries)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

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

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)