A New Approach to Religious Orientation: The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex

238 Pages·2013·1.681 MB·English

by  Stephen W. Krauss, Ralph W. Hood Jr

A New Approach
to Religious Orientation
INTERNATIONAL SERIES
IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
16
Edited by
J.A. Belzen
Consulting Editors
B. Beit-Hallahmi (Haifa) J.W. Jones (New Brunswick)
D.S. Browning (Chicago) W.W. Meissner (Boston)
D.E. Capps (Princeton) H. Müller-Pozzi (Zürich)
H. Grzymała-Moszczyńska (Cracow) H. Newton Malony (Pasadena)
N.G. Holm (Åbo) A. Uleyn (Nijmegen)
R.W. Hood Jr. (Chattanooga) A. Vergote (Leuven)
D. Hutsebaut (Leuven) O. Wikström (Uppsala)
J.M. Jaspard (Louvain-la-Neuve) D.W. Wulff (Norton)
A New Approach to
Religious Orientation
The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex
Stephen W. Krauss & Ralph W. Hood, Jr.
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013
Cover photo and object: © Harm Hollestelle, Traces of Threads
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3713-7
E-book ISBN: 978-94-012-0969-4
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents

Foreword 4

Chapter1: Definitions 7

Chapter 2: Religious Orientation 23

Chapter 3: The Search for New Religious Orientations 49
and the Development of the CROI

Chapter 4: Model Testing 98

Chapter 5: Traditional Approaches to Religious Orientation 124

Chapter 6: Religious Orientation and Prejudice 174

Chapter 7: Religious Orientation, Mental Health, 185
Personality Traits, and Ideology

Chapter 8: Summary and Discussion 206

Appendix: The Recommended Version of the CROI 232
Foreword

Overview of the Book

People approach religion in many different ways. Each of these
different religious orientations makes a unique contribution to a
(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:182)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:73)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:86)(cid:82)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:90)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:17)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:37)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:68)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:80)(cid:83)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)
religious orientation, researchers have long struggled with how to best
think about and measure religious orientation. Through the years,
many theoretical and methodological issues have continued to plague
the field. This book is an attempt to clarify those theoretical issues
and remove the mythological hindrances that have shackled the field.
By shining a light on what was previously unknown, this book
attempts to simultaneously demonstrate the importance of religious
orientation and also demonstrate that much about religious orientation
is still unknown.
This book attempts to make many important contributions to
the psychology of religion. Starting with a re-examination of the
traditional Allportian models of religious orientation, conceptual
issues and misunderstandings are addressed (Chapters 1 and 2).
Chapter 3 attempts to address these problems and show new potentials
by starting over and empirically building up to an overall model of
religious orientation. In this process, new religious orientations are
discovered, including an orientation that closely resembles the Mature
Religiosity Gordon Allport predicted almost 60 years ago. From an
examination of how these religious orientations relate in both
Romania and America, a new model of religious orientation is
proposed: the Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex (Chapter 4).
The book then attempts to demonstrate that the Commitment-
Reflectivity Circumplex an accurate way of looking at religious
orientation and that the new model can also incorporate past models of
religious orientation (Chapter 5). In so doing, the Commitment-
Reflectivity Circumplex helps clarify findings regarding other
(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3) (cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:3) (cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3) (cid:86)(cid:88)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:3) (cid:39)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:3) (cid:37)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:182)(cid:86)(cid:3) (cid:52)(cid:88)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:3)
orientation. In addition, examination of the Commitment-Reflectivity
Circumplex demonstrates that the field has almost completely missed
important kinds of religious orientations.
The Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex 5

Chapters 6 and 7 show that the Commitment-Reflectivity
Circumplex can reveal much more information than traditional
approaches about how religious orientation relates to important non-
religious variables, such as prejudice, mental health, personality and
ideology. In all of these domains, religious orientation is shown to be
an important predictor, with the measures designed to capture the
Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex showing greater utility than
traditional approaches to religious orientation.
In short, that the Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex
expands and clarifies the previous research on religious orientation
itself a(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:90)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:182)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:69)(cid:76)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:82)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:80)(cid:83)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:81)-
religious variables, such as health status and prejudice. This book is
an initial attempt at laying a theoretical and empirical foundation that
can improve our understanding of religious orientation. However, a
good deal of future research is needed to capitalize on the innovations
outlined in this book.

Methods in the Book

Writing this book at the appropriate level of technical detail was
extremely difficult. The audience for this book differs widely in their
thirst for technical details. As a result, this book has received
requests for more technical details and statistics and also requests for
less technical details and statistics. As these requests frequently
involve the same areas of the book, we have tried hard to find a
balance between simplicity and technical detail. For example, this
book contains a great deal fewer tables than would be required in most
psychology journals. In addition, to simplify things as much as
possible, we have tried to de-emphasize aspects of the results that do
not significantly relate to the primary hypotheses of the book. This
might mean that we have missed commenting on a finding that might
be interesting to you. If this occurs, we strongly invite you to contact
us so that we could discuss the particular aspect that is of interest to
you.

Religion as a Meaning Structure

Religious beliefs have meaning to people. Throughout this book, we
have struggled to make sure that we have respected the (cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:182)(cid:86)(cid:3)
6 Stephen W. Krauss and Ralph W. Hood, Jr.

beliefs (as measured by questionnaire items). As will be shown in
Chapters 3 through 7, this book provides a large amount of evidence
for a structural model of religious orientation called the Commitment-
Reflectivity Circumplex model. Like all structural models, the
Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex model provides a way of
understanding how religious orientations are related to each other. In
particular the Commitment-Reflectivity Circumplex model identifies
two dimensions on which religious orientations vary. The
intersection of these two dimensions forms four different quadrants,
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We believe that these dimensions and quadrants are the most
important findings presented in the book. Noticing this, readers have
asked us why we simply did not focus solely on the dimensions and/or
quadrants, and eliminate the discussion of all the individual
orientations. There are several basic reasons we took the approach we
did. Our approach was to treat the orientations as the basic unit of
analysis and the dimensions and quadrants as the method of
organizing the results (for more discussion of this topic, see Chapter
4). We believe that as this book is the first attempt at making an
empirically based structural model of religious orientation in general,
we feel it would be premature to eliminate units of analysis, such as
the orientations, in favor of more global measures of the dimensions
and/or quadrants. We also did not make measures of the quadrants
because each quadrant contains orientations with distinct meanings for
people, which means that the orientations might have distinctive
relationships with other variables. In short, we erred on the side of
inclusiveness to give future researchers a solid base on which to do
their own work.
Chapter 1

Definitions

The diversity and complexity of human piety is so great that any
definition is likely to reflect only a limited view and set of interests
(Batson, Schoenrade & Ventis, 1993; Hill et al., 2000). However,
definitions are necessary for any field of study and therefore scholars
have spent large amounts of time defining various aspects of religion
under the common assumption that religion is a multidimensional
construct. We concur with this and for now we will simply speak of
piety as we explore the reasoning for what will become our definition
of religion for this book.
(cid:37)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:68)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:182)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:83)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:91)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:3)
made in an effort to clarify and simply the issue. First, there is the
distinction between religion and spirituality. Second, there is the
distinction between an external (institutional) and an internal
(personal) view of piety. Third, there is the distinction between a
functional and substantive understanding of piety.

The Distinction between Religion and Spirituality.

The first distinction that scholars and layman have made is the
distinction between religion and spirituality. This distinction is
probably relatively familiar to most lay people. Scholars, in contrast,
have classically not distinguished between religion and spirituality,
and only within the last 10 to 15 years has this distinction entered use.
Before this time, social scientists almost exclusively used the term
(cid:179)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:180)(cid:3)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:74)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:71)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)e area or type of piety they were studying.
(cid:55)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:91)(cid:70)(cid:79)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:76)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:179)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:180)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:79)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:86)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:90)(cid:75)(cid:92)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)
social scientific study of piety is still called the social scientific study
of religion (Pargament, 1999) and the study of different forms of piety
is still called the study of religious orientation (see Chapter 2).
Despite the use of this distinction by laymen and scholars
alike, it is often difficult to know exactly what is meant by the terms
(cid:179)(cid:85)(cid:72)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:180)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:179)(cid:86)(cid:83)(cid:76)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:88)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:180)(cid:3)(cid:11)(cid:54)(cid:83)(cid:76)(cid:79)(cid:78)(cid:68)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:20)(cid:28)(cid:28)(cid:22)(cid:12)(cid:17)(cid:3) Perhaps an examination