Meta-analysis of correlational relationships between perspectives of truth in religion and major psychological constructs.

The current meta-analysis examined the empirical linkages between (a) absolute versus conditional views of religious truth and (b) widely researched psychological constructs. Measures of religious fundamentalism typically include the notion of absolute religious truth, whereas quest measures reflect the notion of conditional religious truth. The meta-analysis represented the overall relationship between each of these truth orientations and four psychological variables (i.e., authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, militarism, and prejudice) most frequently related to the truth orientations. To accommodate our meta-analytic procedures, we included only studies reporting Pearson product–moment correlations. Participants resided in America, Canada, Korea, Northern Ireland, and England and included undergraduate and graduate students, parents of college students, members of the American Psychological Association, and members of various religious groups. Because of the relatively small number of studies (28) and the small samples used in many of those studies, we used a random effects model as the framework for calculating the average effect sizes. Overall, the psychological constructs tended to be more frequently and strongly related with religious fundamentalism than with religious quest, as well as related in opposite directions with the two perspectives of religious truth. The meta-analysis showed authoritarianism to be the psychological construct most strongly and consistently related to the religious truth orientations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)