Religiosity or ideology? On the individual differences predictors of sexism

Abstract

The present set of studies investigated the role of both religiosity and socialideological attitudes in the prediction of various forms of sexist and gender-related attitudes. Hierarchical regression analyses on data collected in three countries (i.e., two heterogeneous adult samples from Turkey and the Netherlands, and two student samples from Belgium; combined N = 964) revealed that although individual differences in religiosity did predict traditional gender role beliefs and sexism (towards both women and men), its impact was limited compared to the impact of individual differences in social-ideological attitudes (i.e., social dominance orientation and particularly authoritarianism). In the discussion, we argue that sexism primarily relates to individual differences in peoples' perspective on the social world, and that religiosity explains little additional variance.

Genesis or Evolution of Gender Differences? Worldview-Based Dilemmas in The Processing of Scientific Information

“…We also replicated the long-standing strong negative association between religiosity and acceptance of evolution (e.g., Ecklund, Scheitle, Peifer, & Bolger, 2017;Tom, 2018) and the modest negative association between religiosity and analytic thinking (i.e., CRT performance) reported previously (Jack, Friedman, Boyatzis, & Taylor, 2016;Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012;Stagnaro, Ross, Pennycook, & Rand, 2019). Likewise, the correlations between religiosity and the gender constructs (e.g., Table 5) are consistent with previous reports that religiosity predicts sexism (Van Assche et al, 2019). Our results go beyond previous findings because our scales did not probe discriminatory sexism but the origin of presumed gender differences.…”

“…Conservatives, by contrast, reject this possibility and may therefore be more likely to find genders to be ineluctably unequal. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis comes from a large body of literature that has found strong associations between conservatism and sexism (e.g., Hodson & MacInnis, 2017), and between other indicators of rightwing politics such as Rightwing Authoritarianism or social dominance orientation and sexism (e.g., Hellmer, Stenson, & Jylhä, 2018;Van Assche, Koç, & Roets, 2019). However, we know of no work that has examined conservatives' beliefs concerning the origins of gender differences.…”

The pseudoscientist ‘priest’: religiously selling nanotechnology

“…As Western 'science grew up in a Christian tradition' (Coulson, 1966, p. 22), it is not uncommon for scientists to embed themselves with religion, even positioning themselves akin to priests (Harris, 2017;Jackelén, 2008), when perceived as advantageous (Van Assche et al, 2019). Such aspects do of course breach secular-materialism and objectivism (Flower, 1995;Harris, 2017), and the mandate 'to be .…”

“…Looking at the religious concepts raised by Caius, we see the story of Christianity being mixed with science to weave a new cosmic sales-based journey, albeit with the scientist no longer serving, but ruling science. While quasi-spectral beliefs in science as a methodological deity would certainly be at odds with the foundations of present-day science (Gilbert & Mulkay, 2009), participant talk frequently stepped beyond secular-materialism, and indicated deeper forms of religious thinking (Van Assche et al, 2019). Trying to unpack this issue suggested a complex mix of beliefs and metaphysical contradictions, wrapped up in an ongoing attempt to form a new religion of science through scientism.…”

Ethnic Diversity, Ideological Climates, and Intergroup Relations: A Person × Context Approach

“…Psychology has often addressed this question from an individual differences framework, investigating the role of personality traits (e.g., Hodson, Hogg, & MacInnis, 2009; Sibley & Duckitt, 2008), cognitive styles and motivated cognition (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011), and social-ideological attitudes (e.g., Duckitt & Sibley, 2007; Whitley, 1999; Van Assche, Koç, & Roets, 2019). This last category of individual differences has proven to be among the most robust and reliable predictors of prejudice and outgroup attitudes (see Duckitt & Sibley, 2009).…”