RESEARCH ARTICLE


Religious Fundamentalism between Traits and Values



Leonardo Carlucci1, *, Armin W. Geertz2, Laura Picconi1, Michela Balsamo1
1 School of Medicine and Health Sciences, “G. d'Annunzio” University of Chieti, Pescara, Italy
2 School of Culture and Society, Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark


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Creative Commons License
© 2021 Carlucci et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, G. d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti, Italy; Tel +39 0871 355 5310; Fax +39 0871 355 5314; E-mail l.carlucci@unich.it


Abstract

Introduction:

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.

Methods:

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

Results:

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.

Conclusion:

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

Keywords: Religious fundamentalism, Values, Traits, Personality, Openness, Disposition.