Racial Limitations on the Gender, Risk, Religion, and Politics Model

Abstract

Risk aversion dampens political participation and heightens religiosity, with concentrated effects among women. Yet, little is known about how intersecting identities moderate these psychological correlates of religiosity and political engagement. In this paper, we theorize that the risk-religion-politics relationship is gendered and racialized. Using a nationally representative survey, we show that political participation is more strongly correlated with risk for Black women than for any other race-gender group. For religiosity, however, we find little evidence that risk is related to religiosity among Black women, while highly correlated with white women's religious engagement. For men—whether Black or white—risk exhibits a modest, positive relationship with their religiosity. Our results speak to the importance of considering intersectionality and race-gender identities in evaluations of religious and political activities in the United States.

Race, Gender, and the Relationship Between Religious Factors and Verbal Ability: An Intersectional Approach

“…Henderson, Walsemann, and Ailshire (2022) harness the intersectional nature of religion by race and gender to explore how religious involvement has differential effects on cognitive ability among the elderly. Intersectional approaches to religion and race have highlighted how religious factors differ in their predictive direction and capacity across racial groups and by gender for a variety of outcomes, including beliefs about same‐sex marriage (Sherkat 2010, Sherkat 2017), beliefs about science (Noy and O'Brian 2018), sexual identities (Yip and Page 2016), political attitudes and behaviors (Friesen and Holman 2021; Sherkat 2014), and stratification outcomes (Glass and Jacobs 2005; Keister 2011). In the case of cognitive abilities, the intersectional approach also enables interrogation of the dominant psychological view of the negative association between religiosity and cognitive functioning.…”