Extrinsic religion correlates with higher prejudice than intrinsic religion across diverse measures

Evidence

Extrinsic religion involves using one’s religion as an instrumental means to the self-serving ends of gaining social status and personal security. Intrinsic religion involves pursuing one’s religion as an end in itself, a master motive in life. Allport (1966) claimed that, “both prejudice and religion are subjective formulations within the personal life. One of these formulations (the extrinsic) is entirely compatible with prejudice; the other (the intrinsic) rules out enmity, contempt, and bigotry” (p. 456). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2535

Whereas people have various motives for attending religious services, church membership and frequency of religious involvement are not the most reliable indicators of religious motivation. Some people who appear to internalize Christian teachings, for example, have other personal or social motives for appearing to be religiously devout. According to Donahue’s (1985) meta-analysis of data from 1,891 participants, extrinsic religious orientation correlated positively with various measures of explicit racial prejudice (r = .34), but intrinsic religious orientation did not (r = –.05). The quest orientation toward religion correlated negatively with self-report and behavioral measures of prejudice (Batson, Flink, Schoenrade, Fultz, & Pych, 1986; Batson, Naifeh, & Pate, 1978). — Wade C. Rowatt and Lewis M. Franklin, Christian Orthodoxy, Religious…, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s theme of divergence between professed conviction and measured bias, and to sacrificial/performative religiosity vs. internalized faith in the writing corpus. — connects to: Religious conviction type rather than strength predicts measured racism — Deborah L. Hall and David C. Matz and Wendy Wood, Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A…, 42; Neither intrinsic nor social religion predicts measured implicit racial bias — Wade C. Rowatt and Lewis M. Franklin, Christian Orthodoxy, Religious…, 73; Extrinsic religiosity correlates with racism through social conformity, not personal values. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 18 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Only explicit (self-report) prejudice was measured here in Donahue’s meta-analysis — does the extrinsic/intrinsic distinction hold for IMPLICIT measures, the reader’s stated priority?
• SEED: Angle: false religion as social capital — how ‘appearing devout’ for social credit maps onto today’s performative virtue signaling and its divergent relationship to real conviction.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2535; Wade C. Rowatt and Lewis M. Franklin, Christian Orthodoxy, Religious…, 18