Bruce Hunsberger

RESEARCH: A Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale: The Short and Sweet of It

Despite its relatively good psychometric properties and empirical validity, the 20-item Religious Fundamentalism scale developed by the authors has several problems. It does not measure all of the aspects of fundamentalism, as defined, as well as it might. And it could stand to be shorter. An item development program led to a 12-statement revision that is more internally consistent despite having broader coverage. As well, it is as reliable as the longer original scale, despite being 40% shorter, and at least as empirically valid.

Social Support Relations to Coping and Adjustment During the Transition to University in the People’s Republic of China

Life transitions, such as university attendance, entail the reconstruction of relations between the individual and the environment. This study aimed to explore how perceptions of social support changed across time during the first semester of university, and how social support, coping strategies, and adjustment were interrelated among 390 first-year students in Beijing, China. Results indicated that overall levels of social support among students did not change significantly across the first term, but that support from different sources (parents, peers, teachers, siblings) showed distinctive patterns of change. Support was positively related to adjustment and to coping skills in a dynamic way, and an integrative structural equations model showed that the role of social support operated both directly in relation to adjustment and indirectly through its relations to coping styles. These findings were related both to previous research on the transition to university in the West and to unique factors within the Chinese context.

Cognitive Complexity of Expectations and Adjustment to University in the First Year

Expectations about university and subsequent adjustment in the first year were examined in a longitudinal study of the transition to university. Two hundred and twenty-six students (158 females and 68 males) completed a preuniversity questionnaire in the summer prior to beginning university, and another questionnaire in February of their first year. The preuniversity questionnaire contained measures that assessed perceived stress and the amount and sources of information students had about university, as well as open-ended questions concerning their expectations about university. Responses to the open-ended questions were coded for integrative complexity of thought. The February questionnaire contained measures of adjustment to university. Results indicated that students with more complex expectations about university tended to adjust better to stressful circumstances than did students who had simpler expectations. The stress-buffering properties of complex expectations are discussed, as are some of the factors that may contribute to more complex thinking about university.

A Unidimensional Measure of Christian Orthodoxy

The conceptualization, development and cross-validation of a 24-item Christian Orthodoxy Scale is described. Eight different studies are involved, which include samples of Canadian high school students, university students, and the parents of university students, as well as a sample of Australian university students. Evidence is presented that the scale is unidimensional, reliable and valid. Factor analyses have consistently revealed a single factor which accounts for a large portion of the total test variance (ranging from 58% to 74%). Mean inter-item correlations have remained high across samples (typically between .60 and .70), Cronbachs alpha was .98, and the 24 items comprising the scale loaded (usually considerably) higher than .61 on the single factor in the various studies. It is concluded that the scale constitutes a useful general purpose measure of one dimension of Christian religiousness Christian orthodoxy.

An intergroup perspective on religion and prejudice

Based on the reasoning that religious groups evidence intergroup processes that can create prejudice, two studies examined the relation between religiosity and attitudes toward religious and non-religious others. In both studies, among more religious individuals, attitudes toward religious others were very positive and attitudes toward non-religious others were quite negative. These relations emerged on all measures of traditional religiosity used. Some prejudice against religious others existed among less religious individuals, but it was less pronounced and less pervasive than the prejudice of more religious people. It is suggested that intergroup processes such as competition between religious groups for resources or value promotion likely foster prejudice against religious outgroup members, perhaps irrespective of personal religious orientation.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Personal Values Socialization: Correlates of a Moral Self‐ Ideal in Late Adolescence

There has been considerable study of the development of moral reasoning in adolescence within the cognitive–developmental paradigm, but less empirical attention to the development of moral valuing and motivation. In a two-year longitudinal study, we examined the correlates of high-school students’ endorsement of explicitly moral values as ideals for the self. Those who reported being involved in community helping activities at age 17 were subsequently more likely to increase their relative emphasis on the importance of prosocial moral values for themselves. As predicted, an authoritative family parenting style was associated with more parent–adolescent value agreement in general (regarding both moral and non-moral values). Particularly for males, reports of greater parent monitoring and strictness were associated with more emphasis on moral values for the self. This relation between parental strictness and males’ self-ideals was mediated over time by perceived stronger emphases on moral values by both parents and friends. These findings suggest the potential utility of studying moral motivation to help understand prosocial development in adolescence.

A Short Version of the Christian Orthodoxy Scale

This study describes the development of a short (6-item) version of the 24-item Christian Orthodoxy scale (Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982). Data from five studies, involving 1,725 participants, indicate that the Short Christian Orthodoxy (SCO) scale has strong psychometric properties which approach those of the longer original version of the scale. The SCO is apparently relatively unidimensional, with Cronbachs alpha of about .94, and inter-item correlations range from .69 to .74 across different samples. It is noted, however, that the SCO does sacrifice breadth of coverage of basic Christian tenets.

A Longitudinal Study of Religious Doubts in High School and Beyond: Relationships, Stability, and Searching for Answers

This questionnaire study of 939 senior high school students, and a follow-up of 336 of these people two years later, investigated a variety of issues related to religious doubts and their implications for adolescents’ lives. Although average doubt levels were “mild” as measured by the Religious Doubts scale, the greatest doubts were expressed based on religion’s failure to make people “better,” the claimed infallibility of scriptures, and pressures to accept religious teachings. Doubting was consistently related to decreased personal religiousness, and doubt levels remained relatively stable over the two years of this study. Greater doubting was linked with more problematic family environments, and less parental warmth and strictness. There was mixed evidence that doubt was associated with poorer personal adjustment, and when these relationships were investigated within major denominational subgroupings, only (some) associations for mainstream Protestants were significant. Doubting was also associated with an inclination to consult anti-religious sources of information (rather than pro-religious sources), and these styles of consultation also predicted levels of future religiousness.

Religious fundamentalism and integrative complexity of thought: a relationship for existential content only?

Do religious people think about their lives and the world around them in ways that differ from less religious or nonreligious persons? This paper explores the possibility that religiousness may be related to one particular structural aspect of information processing, the integrative complexity of peoples thinking about various issues. Integrative Complexity. Recent conceptualizations of integrative complexity (IC) of information processing have emphasized the role of both dispositional and situational determinants, and their interaction (e.g., Tetlock 1985; Walker 1987). Here, we follow up recent work in further exploring religiousness, as well as specific dispositional (authoritarianism, dogmatism, need for cognition) and situational (content domain, familiarity with issues, and extent to which complexity is prodded) variables related to IC of thought, with a particular focus on religious fundamentalism and content domains.

Four pathways in the analysis of adult development and aging: comparing analyses of reasoning about personal-life dilemmas.

Four systems for analyzing thinking about 2 personal-life dilemmas, as discussed by 29 men and 35 women (ages 35-85), were compared. Kohlbergs (1976) moral judgment stages, Kegans (1982) ego-development stages, Gilligans (1982) moral orientation system, and Suedfeld and Tetlocks (1977) integrative complexity scoring were used. Subjects completed Kohlbergs (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987) standard moral judgment measure, a self-concept description, and several questionnaires. The Kohlberg, Kegan, and integrative complexity codings of the dilemmas were positively related to each other and to the standard Kohlberg moral stage scores. There were no age-group differences and few gender differences on the measures. However, education, role-taking skills, and greater sensitivity to age changes in the self positively predicted higher stage scores across maturity.