"Are religious persons usually good persons?" Altemeyer and Hunsberger sought to answer this question within the context of their measures of religious fundamentalism, religious quest, prejudice, and right-wing authoritarianism. They proposed a definition of fundamentalism (see text) that allowed the development of a 20-item Religious Fundamentalism scale, including items such as "God has given mankind a complete, unfailing guide to happiness and salvation, which must be totally followed." They developed this measure, as well as a 16-item Quest scale, in several studies of university students in Manitoba and Ontario. Satisfied that their new measures were reliable and that they interrelated as expected among students, the authors then carried out an investigation of 491 Canadian parents of university students.

In addition to the Fundamentalism and Quest scales, these adults completed a 12-item Attitudes Toward Homosexuals scale (e.g., "In many ways, the AIDS disease currently killing homosexuals is just what they deserve"); a 20-item Prejudice scale (e.g., "It is a waste of time to train certain races for good jobs; they simply don't have the drive and determination it takes to learn a complicated skill"); the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale; and two additional measures of prejudice -- a Posse-Radicals survey (in which participants indicated the extent to which they would pursue radicals outlawed by the government), and a Trials measure (in which respondents "passed sentence" in three court cases involving a dope pusher, a pornographer, and someone who spit on a provincial premier). The resulting web of relatively strong and significant correlations led these authors to conclude the following about the answer to their initial question ("Are religious persons usually good persons?"):

[It] appears to be "no," if one means by "religious" a fundamentalist, nonquesting religious orientation, and by "good" the kind of nonprejudiced, compassionate, accepting attitudes espoused in the Gospels and other writings. But the answer is "yes" if one means by "religious" the nonfundamentalist, questing orientation found most often in persons belonging to no religion. Which irony gives one pause. (pp. 125-126)

The authors have cautioned against overgeneralizing these findings, since there were inevitably exceptions to the rule -- people who scored high on the fundamentalism scale and low on the Quest scale who showed nonprejudiced, accepting attitudes, or nonfundamentalist questers who were quite bigoted. But the correlations that emerged were quite strong and clear-cut. Apparently fundamentalists and nonquesters, as defined here, tend to be prejudiced in a variety of ways. The authors speculate that fundamentalist beliefs can be linked to some of the psychological sources of authoritarian aggression (e.g., fear of a dangerous world and self-righteousness), as well as the tendency for authoritarians to reduce guilt over their own misdeeds through their religion.

REFERENCES

Altmeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113-133.