Religious Worldviews

Human cognition and behavior are largely influenced by a person’s beliefs about life and reality, and these beliefs can shed light on many different aspects of humanity, such as faith, coping, and conflict (Koltko-Rivera, 2004). These beliefs affect and are affected by religious worldviews. While many religions teach peace and love, studies have shown that many religious people are prejudiced and discriminate against certain groups (Rowatt et al., 2006; Leak & Finken, 2011). An explanation for this relationship between religion and prejudice is terror management theory. Terror management theory states that faith in a meaningful worldview serves as “a critical anxiety-buffering function,” and this causes people to protect their worldviews in
order to keep psychological security (Greenberg & Arndt, 2012, p.403). Thus, when this constructed worldview is threatened, people react negatively to anything or anyone that has the potential to undermine it.
Greenberg and Arndt (2012) work to summarize the vastly expansive field of research that supports the theory of terror management, and the major finding connecting all of the research is that, in reminding people of their own mortality, people’s anxiety about death is roused and brought to consciousness. This anxiety is then reduced by the person strengthening their belief in their worldview, which entails a subsequent increase in defensive reactions to the threat. Studies have shown that making a person’s mortality conscious, called mortality salience, increased that person’s reliance on stereotypes, which is a major component of prejudice and discrimination (Schimel, et. al, 1999). Recent research has also shown that mortality salience also increases negative attitudes towards Islamic symbols, such as mosques, and reading about the desecration of the Quran, an Islamic religious text, helped to alleviate death-related anxieties (Cohen, Soenke, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2013).
In relation to terror management theory, Goplen and Plant (2015) developed the Religious Worldview scale in order to measure the strength of a person’s religious worldview.
They found that, in the use of the scale, strong Christian religious worldviews were positively correlated with explicit prejudice towards Hinduism, Judaism, and Atheism, as well as religious intolerance and aggression towards other religious groups and science. The study also supported the fundamental idea of terror management by confirming that other worldviews “contribute to religious prejudice because religious outgroups threaten strong RWV people’s worldview” (Goplen and Plant, 2015, p.1478). The scale was also strongly correlated to religious fundamentalism, or a belief that “there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental truth” about humanity and the ultimate good and evil (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992, p.118). The study, however, did not use mortality salience as a way of increasing religious worldview, and also did not correspond with prejudice towards race (Goplen & Plant,
2015).
Though religious worldview is not correlated to racial prejudice, religious fundamentalism is positively correlated to racial prejudice, as well as Islamic and sexual orientation prejudice, with sexual orientation prejudice being the strongest correlation (Leak & Finken, 2011).
In another study, religious fundamentalism was even the strongest predictor of sexual orientation prejudice compared to other measures of religiosity (i.e. right-wing authoritarianism and orthodox Christianity; Rowatt, et al., 2006). Leak and Finken (2011) suggested that the increased strength of the correlation between sexual orientation prejudice and fundamentalism is due to the cultural prevalence of rhetoric surrounding same-sex relationships during the time of the study. Further, religious fundamentalism is also positively correlated with transphobia (Nagoshi et al.,
2008).
In summation, research has shown that religion and prejudice are often correlated. Terror management theory states that this is due to threats to religious worldviews, which are used in order to alleviate anxiety. The creation of a religious worldview scale supports this idea. However, the religious worldview scale was not generalizable to forms of prejudice outside of Christian prejudice towards other religions, even though it was positively correlated to religious fundamentalism, which is strongly correlated to a variety of prejudices. The purpose of this study is to see if manipulating mortality salience will strengthen religious worldviews and religious fundamentalism, and subsequently, transphobia. Transphobia is currently very culturally salient topic, with high amounts of discussion in regards to transgender rights, which is expected to give significant results.