An Examination of the Effects of Religious Orientation on Personality (Part 2)

An Examination of the Effects of Religious Orientation on Personality (Part 2)
Ok so I wrote this really good research paper that expands on the ideas I presented in an earlier paper which is posted here and titled A Critque of Allport's Mature Religion. For ease of reading I am breaking the paper into multiple sections so the rest will be coming.

If you want more please comment and tell me how ethusiatic you are about getting the rest of this very interesting paper!

History and Development of Scales

Earlier studies on religion and psychology were based largely on introspection and there was no way to empirically validate the ideas presented by Freud, Jung, James, and Pratt who all addressed the idea of religion correlating with psychology. It was not until 1950 when Gordon Allport published his work, “The Individual and His Religion” that any correlations between religious orientation and psychology could be examined in an empirical fashion. This is the foundation of much of today’s research on religion and psychology. Allport concluded that individuals could be religious in different ways and that these different orientations could have an effect on psychological traits (Allport 1950). Most notably Allport defined the differences between religious orientations as mature and immature and began the ground work for the classification of both as well as the correlations to professed religious orientation and actual orientation.

In 1967 Allport and J. Michael Ross conducted a study Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice. This study further examined the correlation between religion and personality explaining a distinct curvilinear relationship between immature religion and high rates of prejudice levels amongst those who professed a devout nature in their religious orientation. Those who were mature in their religiosity were less likely to maintain prejudice as well as experiencing guilt and anxiety symptoms at a lower rate. Their work defined the extrinsic motivation as having instrumental and utilitarian values while the intrinsic orientation holds values in which their needs are of less significance allowing for harmony and internalization of religious beliefs. (Allport pg. 434). Their research led to the development of the first combined extrinsic-intrinsic scale of religious orientation, and opened the doors for the future of research in religion and psychology.

In 1983 Richard Gorsuch and G. Daniel Venable published the Development of an ‘Age Universal’ I-E Scale. This study expanded on Allport's theories and developed an Age Universal I-E scale by using “the original Allport and Ross (1967) items . . . rewritten to simplify language as much as possible without changing the basic content” (Gorsuch pg. 182). “I” denotes intrinsic or mature and “E” denotes extrinsic or immature religious orientation. The researchers set out to, and succeeded in, creating a reliable and valid age universal scale that can be used with children (above 11 years old) and adults, furthering the possibilities of research in the field, especially as it pertained to children. They noted that a trend had occurred moving the emphasis away from religious behavior to the “motivation behind that behavior” (Gorsuch pg. 186).

Peter Hills, Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins published The Development of the Revised Religious Life Inventory (RLI-R) by Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis in 2005. This study was an effort to further the empirical data collection of religious orientation. They examined the data collected in order to further “explore the structure of the RLI with a substantial cross-denominational sample . . . [and] examine the statistical associations among the extrinsic, intrinsic and quest orientations of religiosity” (Hills pg. 1391). Their study eliminated numerous items from the extrinsic and quest portions of the test because they did not add any validity and in contrast hindered the accuracy of the subscales. Their study also showed that the original “three-factor scale of Batson and Ventis (1982) . . . did not meet any of the minimum fit requirements for satisfactory model” (Hills pg. 1396). They effectively whittled down the original 32 item scale to a 26 item scale which resulted in better statistical reliability.