What is it about?
In a meta-analysis of 45 studies, mostly from the US but also from other countries, on the associations between the five moral foundations and religiousness (religiosity, fundamentalism, or spirituality), we found that religiosity only weakly relates to care and is unrelated to fairness, but clearly relates to the three collectivist foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity. Going "further", fundamentalism is unrelated to care, negatively related to fairness, and importantly related to the three collectivist foundations. Only spirituality relates importantly to extended prosociality (care, fairness) and still, but in a weaker way, to the three collectivist moral foundations.
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Why is it important?
It has been argued that religion implies "extended" morality, i.e., both "individualizing" (broad prosocial) and "binding" (collectivist) moral foundations (Graham & Haidt, 2010). The meta-analysis shows though that this is not accurate or needs to be importantly nuanced. Only spirituality implies "extended" morality, whereas common religion, not only fundamentalism, in both the US and other Western countries, overemphasizes a "coalitional" and "hygienic" morality.
Perspectives
There exists an internal tension in religious institutions and religious individuals between the two major domains of morality, i.e., (a) the empathy-based, other-oriented one, and (b) the self-control based and ingroup-oriented one. Today, the second morality is still predominant within religions (see also our extended review on religious morality across cultures, in Hdbk of culture and psychology 2019, ch. 22). However, spirituality, which increases in the West as a post-religious expression, underlines people's prioritization of the prosocial morality.
Professor Vassilis Saroglou
Universite catholique de Louvain
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Religious moral righteousness over care: a review and a meta-analysis, Current Opinion in Psychology, August 2021, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.09.002.
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