Zależności między religijnością i prawicowym autorytaryzmem wśród młodzieży akademickiej

Abstract

According to most of the world’s major religions teachings people should respect and show concern for their fellow human beings. Nevertheless, research conducted in the field of psychology of religion has implied that religion is related to authoritarianism. The aim of this article is to closely examine relationships between religiosity and right-wing authoritarianism among university students in the context of the Polish society. It seems to be very interesting from a psychological point of view as majority of our population regard themselves as religious. The article consists of four parts divided into theoretical and empirical sections. The first part comprises theoretical analyses of the issues of religiosity and right-wing authoritarianism. Religiosity is considered to be a complex set of beliefs, experiences, and behaviour connected to human relations to transcendence (a God). Religious life is closely intertwined with social life in which a great number of interactions between religiosity and social behaviour can be found. Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is understood as a sociopolitical construct characterized by three factors: (1) conventionalism – a strict adherence to conventional norms and values, (2) authoritarian submission – an uncritical subjection to authority, (3) authoritarian aggression – hostility towards people and groups seen as violating those norms. The RWA concept was introduced by B. Altemeyer in the 80’ of XX century. Research on religiosity and right-wing authoritarianism has shown that religious fundamentalism and extrinsic religiosity are related to authoritarian attitudes, while an opening and broadminded approach to religion called Quest is not. The second part of this article presents empirical tools used in our research: the Centrality of Religiosity Scale and the RWA scale, and the plan of our research in which 236 university students were examined. Results of statistical tests i.e. a conelative analysis (Pearson r), multiple regression, and Student’s t-test are given in the third part. They revealed that four dimensions of religiosity: ideology, prayer, experience, and worship are positively correlated with authoritarianism. Further regression analyses has given us a deeper insight into the relations between the above factors and shown that the factor cognitive interest is negatively related to authoritarianism. There also occurred differences between women and men. The first turned out to be more religious, but also more authoritarian. The fourth part connects the empirical results with current literature on religiosity and authoritarianism. The final conclusions suggest that if religious behaviours are to be tolerant and unbiased they should be based on openness to religious issues. People should be also aware of what factors affect their religiosity and how to minimize negative effects of authoritarian tendencies.