| Conservatives and liberals hold distinct beliefs in several domains (e.g., political, economic, social/moral), and in previous studies have been reliably distinguished on measures of personality and cognitive style. Although these differences in cognitive style have been well-studied in secular domains, they have yet to be explored in the religious domain. To date, most studies have assumed all forms of conservatism-liberalism are the same, and either ignore religious conservatism-liberalism or combine it with secular forms. However, religious conservatism-liberalism appears to have some distinct features relative to secular conservatism-liberalism. To test this idea, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the fit of a three-factor model of conservatism-liberalism (personality traits and cognitive style; religious conservatism-liberalism; secular conservatism-liberalism) to data collected from 281 self-identified adult, Christian believers (66% female, 90% Caucasian), who completed online questionnaires of personality traits, cognitive styles, and secular and religious ideological beliefs. A distinctive cognitive and personality style, Need for Closure, predicted both Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism. Three components of Need for Closure, Predictability (p < .05), Discomfort with Ambiguity (p < .01), and Openness to Experience (p < .001), each made significant contributions to both Conservatism-Liberalism factors, while Need for Order and Structure and Closed-mindedness did not. Second, the Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism factors were moderately correlated but not identical (0.71, SE = 0.03), supporting the view that Religious and Secular forms of Conservatism-Liberalism are related but distinct. Third, the latent factor Need for Closure explained significant and unique variance within both Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism. Fourth, linear relations between the Need for Closure factor and both the Secular and Religious conservatism-liberalism factors supported the "rigidity-of-the-right" hypothesis found in the literature. However, an unexpected curvilinear relation between the two Conservatism-Liberalism variables indicated that, although secular conservatives were also highly likely to be religiously conservative, secular liberals were equally likely to be religiously conservative or liberal. Most importantly, these findings suggest that religious conservatism-liberalism is a discrete construct that warrants distinction from its secular counterparts in future studies of conservatism-liberalism. Future research exploring this distinction in populations of varying racial/ethnic and religious backgrounds would be beneficial. |
