'For The Bible Tells Me So': A Theoretical and Empirical Test of Intratextual Fundamentalism Theory

Religious fundamentalism is a hotly discussed issue in today's society; however, researchers disagree about the specific definition of it. Psychological definitions such as the religious fundamentalism construct developed by Altemeyer and Hunsberger (1992, 2004) fall short of describing a psychological process and conflate fundamentalism with violence. A new definition, termed intratextual fundamentalism (ITF), was proposed which describes fundamentalism as a process of belief and specifically distinguishes the process from the content of belief. To date, no empirical studies have been conducted to test the basic attitudinal assumptions of the theory. The present research, in three studies, begins to do this validation work. Studies 1 and 2 confirmed a basic mechanism proposed by ITF theory: fundamentalists are motivated to protect their perception of their sacred text vis-a-vis other sources of knowledge. Importantly, this motivation surpasses any motivation that would be predicted by other social psychological or personality theories. Study 3 sought to broaden the scope of research on fundamentalism by exploring positive correlates of intratextual fundamentalism. Intratextual fundamentalism was shown to correlate with religiosity, religious identity, gratitude, and empathic disposition while correlating less with authoritarianism than the more commonly used measure of religious fundamentalism developed by Altemeyer and Hunsberger (2004). Taken together, the results of these studies show that intratextual fundamentalism is a unique construct that needs to be studied as separate from other "basic" psychological processes.