Religious Fundamentalism between Traits and Values

Religious fundamentalism is a complex religious phenomenon that involves cultural and social domains. Like values, it would potentially provide a description of how human beings should be. Nevertheless, extensive research has focused on the association between traits and fundamentalism, while the link with values has so far been neglected.

We examined how traits and values might predict religious fundamentalism in a sample of 250 Italian Catholics (57.5% females).

Results partially confirmed the significant positive correlation between neuroticism and consciousness traits and religious fundamentalism, and highlighted the strong positive association with openness to change/conservative dimension value. In addition, when the overlap between traits and values was controlled for, hierarchical regression showed that values predicted fundamentalism better than traits.

These findings could support the hypothesis that religious fundamentalism can be conceptualized as a motivational-goal attitude trait more than an enduring disposition.