The Social Psychology of Christianity 4

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

John Lennon, cited by J Jost

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 22 April 2002
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Abstract

A Survey of Factors

Jost, et al, surveyed 88 different studies from 1958 to 2002. Correlations ranging from +0.18 to +0.27 were obtained for conservatism and variables of uncertainty avoidance, integrative complexity, need for order, structure, and closure, and fear of threat in general. Though not large correlations, they are significant because of the extent of the samples. To understand conservative attitudes in relation to others, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, and social dominance orientation (SDO) were relevant. Stronger correlations were observed for conservatism and dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, openness to experience, fear of death, and system instability (+0.32 to +0.50). Priming thoughts of death increases intolerance, out group derogation, punitive aggression, veneration of authority figures, and system justification, all traits dominant in people inclined towards the right. It explains the absurd attitude of the neocon governments of the world to the so-called War on Terror. It is a deliberate socio-psychological ploy to pressurize the voter to the right, as if they were not already right wing enough. Social and economic threats also increase authoritarian and right wing responses. In summary, political conservatism is predictable on these hypotheses:

1. mental rigidity and closedmindedness
   • dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
   • reducing cognitive complexity
   • reducing openness to experience
   • avoiding uncertainty
   • a need for order and structure
   • a need for cognitive closure
2. lowered self esteem
3. fear, anger, and aggression
4. pessimism, disgust and contempt
5. loss prevention
6. fear of death
7. threat arising from social and economic deprivation
8. threat to the stability of the social system.

Dogmatism and Intolerance of Ambiguity. Even when dogmatism is measured in an ideologically neutral way, it correlates consistently with authoritarianism, political-economic conservatism, and the holding of right wing opinions. Ideologically neutral statements that are typically picked by the right, but not the left are like these:

A man who does not believe in some great cause has not really lived.

Of all the different philosophies which exist in this world there is probably only one which is correct.

To compromise with our political opponents is dangerous because it usually leads to the betrayal of our own side.

The evidence is that both dogmatism and authoritarianism are of negligible use in identifying liberals and lefties.

Intolerance of ambiguity correlates positively with ethnocentrism, authoritarianism and with political conservatism. President George W Bush told a British reporter: “Look, my job isn’t to try to nuance… My job is to tell people what I think”. At an international conference of world leaders in Italy, Bush said: “I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right”. Intolerance of complexity of thought and intolerance of ambiguity amounts to simplistic thinking, and Bush is a prime example of how it is typical of the right.

Reducing Cognitive Complexity. In the UK, MPs were negatively correlated between integrative complexity and conservatism (-0.30). Some findings suggested that a relationship holds between cognitive complexity and conservatism, and some even suggested that extreme leftists show less cognitive complexity than moderate leftists. But the most integratively complex politicians were moderate socialists, who scored significantly higher on complexity than conservatives and extreme socialists. Overall, liberals in the studies have the highest levels of integrative complexity and flexibility.

Conservatives score lower on measures of extraversion than other groups. Scores on the CScale showed a negative correlation with scores on a scale of openness to experience (-0.38). Other research, from widely different sources, shows conservatives are less likely than others to value broad mindedness, imagination, and “having an exciting life”. Conservatives valued job security over task variety at work. Separate studies show conservatives have a preference for simple over complex paintings, simple poems over complex poems, familiar over unfamiliar music, and unambiguous over ambiguous literary texts. Is it any wonder that conservative politicians always seem to want to cut public funding for the arts. Generally, conservatives eschew ambiguity, novelty, and uncertainty.

Positive correlations were obtained between need for closure (NFC) and conservatism (+0.26). In the strongest cases, NFC was correlated with scales of social conservatism (+0.70), economic conservatism (+0.72), and religious and nationalist conservatism (+0.82). NFC scores correlate positively with authoritarianism, and increase monotonically from left wing to right wing party membership. Increased need for cognitive closure were associated with membership in right wing organizations. A positive correlation was obtained between need for closure and endorsement of capital punishment (+0.47). Advocates of the death penalty, who tend to be politically conservative in general, frequently argue that state executions are beneficial because they allow victims and observers to finally “experience closure”. Thus, personal needs for order, structure, and closure appear to be especially well satisfied by right wing political contents.

Threats to self Esteem. Authoritarianism relates to lack of self esteem in the sense of personal success, but the studies show nothing particularly significant (-0.09).

Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse.

George F Will, Bunts, 1998, cited by J Jost

Fear, Anger, and Aggression. High RWA’s are scared. They see the world as a dangerous place, as society, they think, teeters on the brink of self destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. RWAs are self righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others—a self perception assisted by self deception, their religious training, and some very efficient guilt evaporators (such as church attendance and confession). This self righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out their fear induced hostilities. A study of the dream lives of politicos in the US (Bulkeley, 2001) found Republicans reporting three times as many nightmares as Democrats, suggesting that fear, danger, threat, and aggression may figure more prominently in the unconscious motivations of conservatives than liberals. If conservatives are more susceptible to fear, it perhaps explains why military defense and national security spending are backed by conservative leaders. Fear and threat are related to political conservatism (+0.30).

Fear and Prevention of Loss. Authoritarians respond more to threatening or negative persuasive messages than to positive ones, whereas low authoritarians respond slightly more to reward messages than to threats. A prevention orientation focusing on potential threats and losses inclines people to conservatism.

Fear of Death. Theories of uncertainty avoidance and theories of terror management suggest that anything reminding people of their mortality increases conservatism. The present emphasis on terrorism simultaneously increases awareness of mortality and the appeal of the right. Conservatism measured on the CScale correlates positively (+0.54) with scores on a Fear of Death Scale. Consciousness of mortality leads people to defend culturally valued norms more strongly, and to distance themselves from, and run down, out group members more. Conservatives’ preferences for tradition, law and order, and strict parental and legal punishment, including the death penalty, are related to feelings of fear and threat including fear of death. Fear of death made conservatives more intolerant, but made liberals more tolerant presumably because of the centrality of tolerance to them.

Threat to the Stability of the Social System. A threat to the stability of the social system, such as that felt in the aftermath of 11 September, 2001, increases conservatism. During times of social crisis, people are more likely to turn to authoritarian leaders and institutions for security, stability, and structure.

When the foundations of society are threatened, the conservative ideology reminds men of the necessity of some institutions and desirability of the existing ones.

S Huntington, APSR 51, 1957

During the depression years of 1930-1939, plainly a period of economic threat, people more readily joined authoritarian churches, such as Southern Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist ones, whereas in the Jazz Age, relatively prosperous years of 1920-1930 they were more likely to join nonauthoritarian churches, such as Northern Baptist and Episcopalian. This phenomenon has been noted widely. After the attacks of 11 September, 2001, right wing populism increased in Belgium, Holland, France, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, and Portugal. Literary and popular culture themes during the 1930s were significantly more conservative and authoritarian than during the 1920s. So, threats to the stability of the social system do increase conservative inclinations (+0.47).

Criticisms

The psychological study of conservatism is openly disliked by conservatives. Their reaction to it is to complain it shows conservatives as pathological, as false, irrational and unprincipled. Psychologists must therefore be wrong, and the reason is their liberal bias. The psychologists who have done these tests must all be themselves lefties or liberals who are simply confirming their own prejudices. Yet, not all of the scientists doing the studies were left wing. Some studies were done by right wing scientists precisely to confirm, or, they hoped otherwise, the findings. Whoever does the work does not materially alter the outcome. These studies are not opinion, but are necessarily comparative and empirical.

Anyone’s conservatism is legitimately held in their own circumstances as they judge by their observations, values, beliefs, and premises. In short, it is how they are, but they object because it is not how they think they are. They end up being the ones making the accusations of falsehood. Believing they hold a principled position, they hate the empirical demonstration that they hold their views for psychological not rational reasons. These underlying causes are not consciously accessible to them and so they cannot comprehend or refuse to comprehend the science. The right wing response becomes additional evidence of the findings, of their fear, dogmatism and intolerance.

Another criticism is that the correlations are circular, because some of the items used to judge a trait are political items. Attitude to foreigners is used as a measure of openness, but it is also a measure of conservatism, so the two scales are not independent—the correlation is built in. It is circular. The psychologists accept the protest, but argue in their defence that they have checked the findings with questionnaires that omit controversial items but the results did not change enough to matter.

Some psychologists have argued that the work is unbalanced, and dogmatism, intolerance, closedmindedness, and cognitive simplicity are not restricted to the right but are left characteristics too, though quite how they could have successfully picked out conservatives from the crowd in real world samples if this were true is hard to understand. W F Stone (1980) concluded that there was little evidence for left wing authoritarianism. Rigidity and closed mindedness truly were conservative thinking styles, and more recent work has confirmed it. Professed lefties can obviously be dogmatic, but the studies are not looking for what people can be, but for what they typically are, and whereas conservatives are typically dogmatic, liberals and socialists are not.

Finally, if political opinion is genetic, then politics must be a sham. Well, the basic stance of people might be determined, but the stance is most often a relative one. Europeans are amazed by how off center US politics is. The right in the US consider liberals as dangerous radicals, whereas liberals are considered undecided centrists in many European countries. The US is heavily biased to the right because of the policies of fear that US right wing politicians have engendered over the years. They have supported gun laws which make everyday life in the US mortally dangerous, and over the last sixty years they have built up successive external monsters as dangerous threats to the existence of the US, first communists, and now Moslem terrorists. The dangers were never as bad as the right wing made out, and most people elsewhere slept soundly enough.

Security, threats, openness and so on are relative, and the fears people have are relative to the social norm. As the US moved rightwards over the last sixty years, the norm moved right too. Those who were once moderate centrists are now dangerous lefties, or even demons! The voters need to be aware when neocon politicians, whose averred policy it is, deliberately manufacture scares to move or keep people in fear and on the right. The right in the US are virtually fascist. The liberals are moderate centrists if not conservatives themselves by European standards. Socialists and communists in the US are extinct. The UK under Blair and Brown have dashed headlong after Bush, and the UK is now almost as bad. It has no left wing party. The so-called Labour party has been hijacked by neocons led by Blair and now is itself crypto-fascist, bringing in more and more unused repressive laws that eventually will find an unwanted use. Meanwhile the Tory party is obsessed with trivia and takes the Blair route, and the liberal party hasn't a liberal principle among all ists members, being a conglomeration of independents. We are heading into anti-democratic holes, and no one seems to notice as long as we have faith schools!

Christianity and the Religious Right

Religiosity is consistently correlated with political conservatism. A simple example is that two measures of religiosity showed Goldwater supporters more religious than Johnson supporters in the 1964 Presidential election. At the same time in the UK, two thirds of Tory voters confessed to attending church sometimes while only a third of Labour voters did. A variety of studies show that Christian religious observance correlated with anti-Communism. Jews are consistently found to be liberal thinkers, making it all the more surprising that they remained silent about the Butcher of Jenin, but perhaps this shows that even liberals become fascistic in fear of group censure. Oddly enough, P M Blau in a 1954 study of college students found that Jews favoured co-operation rather than power in international relations. Times have changed!

Conservatives in religion are also more militaristic. One wonders what conception these conservative Christians have of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”. They obviously reject it in favour of a Rambo Jesus, but it is hard to know how they can say in one breath that the bible is God’s own holy word, and in the next talk about nuking Arabs, Argies or Commies, as the case might be, if Jesus is God incarnated. It does not do to expect anything at all rational in Christian belief.

Students from non-religious colleges are more opposed to warfare than students from Catholic colleges. Catholic students demonstrated for military involvement in Vietnam while non-religious students and Quakers demonstrated against. The really devout believers admittedly do seem to align themselves against war, but the bulk of religious people favour it. In fact studies in the Korean and the Vietnamese wars show that Protestant believers were most in favour, and Jews the least supportive.

Religious people are less likely to be militant over civil rights issues. Even church attenders who favoured integration did not think it was anything to do with their church or religion. Religious people, and particularly Catholics, are less tolerant of homosexuals, communists, single mothers, and conscentious objectors. Church attenders were more likely to say that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves, and were less likely to favour government action to help them.

Religious activity is consistently higher among US Blacks than among US Whites, and they tend to belong to all-Black congregations. In a 1970 survey, one in four Whites never attended church but only one in twelve Blacks. Similarly, one in three Whites considered religion not very important to them but only one in six Blacks. The Baylor survey confirms it today. The most religious people are blacks and poor white trash.

Christianity for US Black minorities serves to keep them in their place. The frustrations suffered by the oppressed minority are sublimated in religious devotion, and keep the minority from direct or political action to relieve their oppression. The Black Christian is conservative and passive, which is why many Blacks turned to Islam since the 60s. Praying for social change is as militant as the Black Christian will get, and, needless to say, no one among right wing Christian groups is concerned that the prayers will be answered. The acceptance of God’s will for Christian Blacks is the acceptance of White supremacy.

Studies in the US widely confirm that church members are more racially prejudiced than non-members, and prejudice against Blacks varies with denomination whereas prejudice against Jews is fairly consistent across denominations. Working class churchgoers are most prejudiced, but again, for the few people who attend church most frequently, prejudice falls off. It seems that deeply religious Christians are less prejudiced than the majority who profess Christianity but practice it opportunistically.

This has been explained by classifying Christians as extrinsic types and intrinsic types. G W Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (1954), observed:

The role of religion is paradoxical. It makes prejudice and it unmakes prejudice. While the creeds of the great religions are universalistic, all stressing brotherhood, the practice of these creeds is frequently divisive and brutal. The sublimity of religious ideals is offset by the horrors of persecution in the name of these same ideals… Churchgoers are more prejudiced than the average; they are also less prejudiced than the average.

The intrinsic Christian believes as a principle of life or morality, whereas extrinsic Christians believe for some real or apparent benefit such as social standing or a perceived insurance against misfortune. Much research suggests that extrinsic religiousness is positively correlated with racism, but intrinsic religiousness is not correlated with racism (M J Donahue 1985).

Extrinsic Christians, needless to say, are the large majority of Christians and are the prejudiced ones. The minority are intrinsic Christians who are more inclined to worship and pray privately, feel their lives are meaningful, are sure of their beliefs and tend to trust people. These are not often racist. Christians are fond of talking about “real” Christians, and this minority of intrinsic Christians might be the basis of the distinction. Real or not, they do not tell the extrinsic ones that they are not “real” Christians for holding racist views, nor do they censure them for holding any of the other disgusting views that Christians do hold. In practice therefore, there seems to be little to choose between them, and some social psychologists think the distinction is an artifact.

B Altemeyer and B Hunsberger (1992) say there is a consistent positive relationship between religious fundamentalism (RF), characterized by an aggressive belief system, a sense of one absolute truth, and a sense of a special relationship with God, and both racism and homosexual prejudice. An explanation offered is that it is a result of right wing authoritarianism (RWA)—authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism (B Altemeyer, Enemies of freedom: Understanding Right Wing Authoritarianism, 1988). right wing authoritarianism is strongly associated with prejudice, and fundamentalism and authoritarianism are strongly correlated with each other (L Wylie and J Forest, 1992).

In a study of over 300 college students by B Laythe, D C Finkel, R G Bringle and L A Kirkpatrick, authoritarianism, orthodoxy, and fundamentalism were all strongly intercorrelated with one another (+0.51 to +0.72) and the correlation between fundamentalism and RWA was high in all samples (+0.72). Altemeyer and Hunsberger (1992) found that statistically controlling for RWA using partial correlation techniques reduced fundamentalism-prejudice correlations to nonsignificant levels, but not vice-versa.

These findings (Fundamentalism regressed on RWA, beta = 0.571, on Christian orthodoxy, beta = 0.296, R² 0.581) suggest that RWA is responsible for the positive association between fundamentalism and ethnic prejudice, and explain Allport’s paradox. Religious fundamentalism specifically appears to both “make and un-make” prejudice—right wing authoritarianism, “makes” prejudice, but the influence of orthodox Christian teaching simultaneously “unmakes” prejudice. RWA is effectively the extrinsic factor and basic Christian morality the intrinsic one.

B Hunsberger, in Journal of Social Issues 51(2) (1995), concluded that religious fundamentalism, in connection with the more general trait of right wing authoritarianism, is a much more useful construct than intrinsic-extrinsic religious orientation for understanding religion’s relationship to prejudice. Hunsberger seems correct in his conclusion that “fundamentalism might be viewed as a religious manifestation of right wing authoritarianism”

Kirkpatrick, et al, say Allport was closer to the answer to the religion-prejudice riddle in 1954, before his formalization of intrinsic versus extrinsic dimensions of religious orientation. In The Nature of Prejudice, he wrote:

Belonging to a church because it is a safe, powerful, in-group is likely to be the mark of an authoritarian character and to be linked to prejudice. Belonging to a church because its basic creed of brotherhood expresses the ideals one sincerely believes in, is associated with tolerance. Thus, the “institutionalized” religious outlook and the “interiorized” religious outlook have opposite effects in the personality.

One reason for prejudice is that religion is exclusive and promotes hostility to those not in the group. Sigmund Freud wrote:

A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it… Cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.

Another reason specific to Christianity is that it is anti-Jewish at its core. C Y Glock and R Shank found that 86% of Southern Baptists agreed with the statement: “Jews can never be forgiven for crucifying Christ”. 60% of other Protestants and 46% of Catholics agreed too. Anti-Jewishness is therefore basic in the teaching of Christian religion. The Mormon Church is openly prejudiced against Afro-Americans holding office. Religions are also expressions of conservatism and conformity, as we have seen, in the US, with the secular Christian religion that US Christianity amounts to. When the society is prejudiced such a church is necessarily prejudiced too, and serves to uphold the nation’s social prejudices.

The clergy of the larger sects are generally more liberal than their flocks probably because they are better educated, but they do not seem to help to relieve their sheep of their prejuduces. “Love thy neighbour” does not extend for the average US Christian to humanity at large. The teaching of Christianity is largely supernatural, and does not emphasize in any serious way how people should behave in the world, and particularly to other humans. In the end, even liberal clergy end up associating with the prejudices of their parishioners so as not to lose them to rival sects.

Another aspect is that Christians have difficulty coping with ambiguity. They like things to be clear-cut, which they rarely are in practice. There are no shades of grey in the Christian view of the world, so there can only be Black and White. This is only slightly facetious. Christians categorize things as Evil, with evil things seen as black or dark, and Good, with good things seen as white or light. This dualism in Christianity lends itself to the racist categorization of Blacks as evil. The Reagan-Bush simpleton’s categorization of foreign cultures as “evil empires” is based on the same outlook. Conversely, non-Christians are consistently found to be less racially prejudiced than Christians, so how is Christianity spreading the idea of the fellowship of man?

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Jesus is a Myth | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History

Page Tags: Social Science, Psychology, Purpose, Conversion, Fear of Death, Christianity and Class, Race, Politics, Mental Illness, Religion, Americans, Authoritarian, Beliefs, Believe, Believers, Christian, Christianity, Christians, Church, Faith, God, Prejudice, Religion, Religious, Social, Women, World

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