Religious Conservatism in a Quasi-Longitudinal Perspective

Abstract

College freshmen personality inventories and a mail survey were used to study correlates of current and retrospective (college freshmen) conservatism among 142 former students of a religiously conservative college. A content-free aspect of conservatism, reflected by authoritarian and dogmatic personality traits, was identified, but it had greater salience for racial than for religious or legalistic attitudes. The latter attitudes were inferred to depend more on content-based aspects of conservatism — religious institutional influences made salient by an individual's intrinsic religious orientation. College freshmen religious conservatism was related to more subsequent education, but further education was strongly related to increasing liberalism of religious attitudes.