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Religion as Culture: Religious Individualism and

Collectivism Among American Catholics, Jews, and

Protestants

Adam B. Cohen1 and Peter C. Hill2

1Arizona State University and University of California, Berkeley

2Biola University

ABSTRACT We propose the theory that religious cultures vary in in-

dividualistic and collectivistic aspects of religiousness and spirituality.

Study 1 showed that religion for Jews is about community and biologicaldescent but about personal beliefs for Protestants. Intrinsic and extrinsicreligiosity were intercorrelated and endorsed differently by Jews, Catho-

lics, and Protestants in a pattern that supports the theory that intrinsic

religiosity relates to personal religion, whereas extrinsic religiosity stresses

community and ritual (Studies 2 and 3). Important life experiences were

likely to be social for Jews but focused on God for Protestants, with

Catholics in between (Study 4). We conclude with three perspectives in

understanding the complex relationships between religion and culture.

The attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is

not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be

Address correspondence to: Adam Cohen, Department of Psychology, Arizona State

University, PO Box 871104, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104. E-mail: [email protected].

Adam B. Cohen, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, and Institute

of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley. Peter C. Hill,

Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University.

Some data from Study 1 and Study 2 were presented at the seventh annual confer-

ence of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, Palm Springs, CA.

Both Adam Cohen and Peter Hill gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spir-

itual Transformation Scientific Research program, sponsored by the Metanexus In-

stitute on Religion and Science, with the generous support of the John Templeton

Foundation. Adam Cohen also thankfully acknowledges the support of a Templeton

Advanced Research Program grant from the Metanexus Institute. We would like to

thank Michelle V. Flythe and Elizabeth J. Horberg for assisting with narrative coding

in Study 4.

Journal of Personality 75:4, August 2007r 2007, Copyright the AuthorsJournal compilation r 2007, Blackwell Publishing, Inc.DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2007.00454.x



no religion in particular. . . . Thus every living and healthy religion

has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and

surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to

life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it propounds are anotherworld to live in; and another world to live in—whether we expect

ever to pass wholly into it or no—is what we mean by having a

religion.

George Santayana, Reason in Religion (1905/1982, pp. 5–6)

American culture is highly individualistic relative to other countries.

Many interrelated factors could have promoted the high level of in-

dividualism in America (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman,

Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Triandis, 1995). Influences on Amer-

ican individualism have been theorized to include, for example, the

political philosophies of the American founding fathers, the empha-

sis on individual rights and freedom, limited government, the Amer-

ican market economy, and American frontier life (Oyserman et al.,

2002). While not disputing these other factors, we wish to focus on

the rich theoretical tradition that attributes American individualism

to Protestant religion. As Oyserman and colleagues (2002) pointedout, ‘‘Researchers assume that these processes led to a Western cul-

tural focus on individualism that is more salient in countries and

ethnic groups with a Protestant heritage, applying the idea of West-

ern individualism to both cross-regional and within-country com-

parisons of ethnic groups with different cultural heritages’’ (p. 4).

It has long been noted that Protestant religion was formatively

related to American culture in general and, more specifically, to

American individualism (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tip-ton, 1985). In his classic work, Democracy in America, the French

political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1835/1969) famously

claimed, ‘‘I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained

in the first puritan who landed on those shores, as that of the whole

human race in the first man’’ (p. 279). de Tocqueville further re-

marked on the great influence that Christianity had on American

culture, noting that Protestantism had a tendency to make people

independent. As such, Protestantism can be seen as individualistic

because the Protestant Reformation promoted the view that salva-

tion occurs as a process between an individual and God and is not

mediated by the Church (as in Catholicism, for example).

710 Cohen & Hill



In the American context, an individual-centered construal of re-

ligion seems to have become even more individualistic because of the

history of the church-state relationship. Religion in the United States

was not always viewed as being entirely personal and private, as it istoday. Because the First Amendment only prohibits federally sanc-

tioned religion, for much of early American history there was an

established religion (though other religions were tolerated), and this

continued until well after the Revolutionary War. Following the

disestablishment of religion, which was complete in 1833 when Mas-

sachusetts gave up established religion, religion became more of a

private matter (Bellah et al., 1985). By the 1850s, ‘‘For religion to

have emphasized the public order in the old sense of deference and

obedience to external authorities would no longer have made sense.

Religion did not cease to be concerned with moral order, but it

operated with a new emphasis on the individual and the voluntary

association. Moral teaching came to emphasize self-control rather

than deference’’ (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 222), and sermons became less

doctrinal and ‘‘more emotional and sentimental’’ (p. 223). Perhaps

another factor that made Protestantism increasingly focused on

emotion was the scientific revolution, which encouraged religion to

focus on subjective emotions and be independent of a more ration-ally based, natural science (reviewed in Cohen, Hall, Koenig, &

Meador, 2005).

The Protestant influence on American culture might be one key

reason why American theories of religious identity and motivation

are particularly centered on the individual. Clearly, the dominant

theoretical model in the scientific study of religion has been Gordon

Allport’s distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religion (Allport,

1950, 1958; Allport & Ross, 1967). Originally conceived by Allportas mature (i.e., intrinsic) and immature (i.e., extrinsic) religion, the

intrinsic/extrinsic distinction has been, by and large, maintained by

psychologists of religion for 50 years. Extrinsic religion was con-

ceived by Allport as an orientation where religion is ‘‘used’’ for in-

strumental purposes, including for social integration. Because

American Protestant religion focuses strongly on personal relation-

ship with God, Americans by and large do not resonate with religion

that is based on community affiliation, social relationships, tradi-

tion, and ritual (Bellah et al., 1985; Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005; Snibbe

& Markus, 2003). Hence, certain extrinsic items on the Allport

and Ross (1967) scale such as ‘‘One reason for my being a church

Religion as Culture 711



member is that such membership helps to establish a person in the

community’’ seem to have a particular negative connotation and

nonnormative valence within American, individualistic, Protestant

religions.

Religious Cultural Differences in Individualism and

Collectivism

We claim that considerable light can be shed on individualism and

collectivism by explicating differences among religious groups in in-

dividualistic and collectivistic processes (see Hill, 1999; McCrae,

1999; Tarakeshwar, Stanton, & Pargament, 2003, for discussions of

how the study of religion can benefit many areas of psychology).

Snibbe and Markus concluded that ‘‘cultural models are sets of as-

sumptions that are widely (though not universally) shared by a

group of people, existing both in individual minds and in public ar-

tifacts, institutions, and practices. At the individual level, these cul-

tural models provide implicit blueprints of how to think, feel, and

act. When people act according to these blueprints, they reproduce

the public models, thereby perpetuating the cultural context from

which both were derived’’ (Snibbe & Markus, 2005, p. 704). Sub-scribing to this view of culture, we claim that groups of people that

share religious identity can be meaningfully viewed as sharing cul-

tural models and indeed as members of different cultures.

There are many facets to both individualism and collectivism that

carry implications for many domains of psychological functioning,

such as well-being, attributional style, self-concept, and relationality.

As Oyserman et al. (2002) pointed out, the core of individualism is a

worldview that stresses personal goals, uniqueness, and personalcontrol. In contrast, the ‘‘core element of collectivism is the assump-

tion that groups bind and mutually obligate individuals’’ (p. 5). With

so many domains to individualism and collectivism, it is necessary

for us to specify in what sense we will be discussing individualism

and collectivism as they have an impact on religious and spiritual

identity and motivation.

We propose that many American Protestant religious groups are

individualistic in the sense that all of religious and spiritual experi-

ence is seen as a process that occurs uniquely between an individual

and God. As such, religious identity and motivation are seen as

revolving around personal faith and the salience of religion to the

712 Cohen & Hill



individual. As a consequence, religious motivations that are socially

centered can be seen as detracting from individualistic, intrinsic re-

ligious identity.

In contrast, like the collectivistic cultures that are more oftenstudied (e.g., Hindu India and several East Asian countries), certain

religious cultures value social connections as an integral element of

religious life, and group affiliations are seen as important, even de-

fining, parts of religious identity. In collectivistic religious cultures,

people are seen as fundamentally connected with each other and

their communities. Exemplars of such religions include Judaism,

Catholicism, certain branches of non-Catholic Christianity (such as

Episcopalianism or the Amish), and Hinduism (reviewed in Cohen,

Hall, et al., 2005).

Furthermore, we propose that, in collectivistic religious cultures,

people’s religious and spiritual behavior may be tightly regulated

through ritual and tradition. Rabbi Neil Gilman (1990) explained,

‘‘Rituals, like verbal languages, confer identity. That’s how they cre-

ate communities, for who we are depends in large measure on where

we belong. They garb the social experiences of everyday life in the

distinctive values of a particular group. In the process, a group ac-

quires a distinctive identity, separate from others’’ (p. 229). Thisemphasis on ritual, to us, goes hand-in-hand with a more obligation-

based view of religion among collectivistic religious groups. Collec-

tivism is often seen as relying on obligation and on overcoming one’s

internal desires for the good of the collective (Markus & Kitayama,

1991; Triandis, 1995). We theorize that a similar set of processes

could characterize the experience of collectivistic religions. For ex-

ample, there are several clear justifications within Jewish teaching

concerning reasons to perform religious duties even when not in-trinsically motivated. It is often seen as praiseworthy to place the

religious requirement above one’s own private desire (Cohen, Hall,

et al., 2005).

We theorize that differences in religious individualism and collec-

tivism among religious cultures may be partly attributable to wheth-

er religious membership is defined by heredity or by beliefs. Judaism

is a religion of ‘‘descent’’ (Morris, 1997), where religion is first de-

fined in hereditary terms—traditionally, a person is first a Jew be-

cause that person is born of a Jewish mother (or parent of either sex

in more liberal strains of Judaism). Perhaps as a consequence of this

strong collective identity, members of descent religions may be more




likely to downplay the importance of what constitutes appropriate

religious dogma—evident perhaps in a lesser expectation that relig-

ious behavior expresses internal beliefs, as well as allowing more

latitude in what constitutes appropriate religious beliefs. Gilman(1990) wrote, ‘‘In the final analysis, the suspicion that seems to have

haunted Jewish philosophy most throughout its history stems from

an almost intuitive feeling that the philosopher’s preoccupation with

clarifying and systematizing what Jews are supposed to believe is

simply not as intrinsically important to Judaism, as it is for Chris-

tianity. . . . Most Jews, even the most authentic among us, have never

given much thought to clarifying just what we believe about God,

nor do we feel that our religiosity is any the worse for it. The ‘re-

ligious’ among us observe the Sabbath, the dietary laws, the Festi-

vals, thrice-daily prayer, and the ethical teachings of the tradition’’

(preface, p. xx). In contrast, Protestant Christianity, as a set of

religions of ‘‘assent’’ to shared beliefs and values, is more likely to

focus on internal motivations and states (Morris, 1997).

Current Goals

Despite these theoretical differences among religious cultures, therehas been little empirical work on cultural differences in what people

mean when they claim to be religious or spiritual or on the processes

related to their religious and spiritual identities and motivation. Co-

hen, Siegel, and Rozin (2003) found that Jews and Protestants have

similar views on the importance of practice in being religious but

that Protestants place greater importance on religious belief. Other

initial support for our argument is evident in recent work by Cohen,

Pierce, et al. (2005), who demonstrated that intrinsic and extrinsicreligiosity were correlated negatively among Protestants. However,

extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity were positively (but weakly) corre-

lated among Catholics. Cohen, Pierce, et al. suggested these moder-

ator effects could be due to the differing value that Catholicism and

Protestantism place on certain components of intrinsic and extrinsic

religiosity, particularly on social aspects of religious identity and

motivation. They furthermore claimed that the individualistic slant

of the intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales applied better to Prot-

estants than Catholics.

Our intent is to provide systematic evidence for differing religious

collectivistic and individualistic identity and motivation among three

714 Cohen & Hill



religious cultural groups (Catholics, Jews, and Protestants) in the

United States. As we have stated, we consider individualistic relig-

ious identity and motivation as an expression of individual feelings

and faith and personal relationship with God. Collectivistic religiousand spirituality identity and motivation are conceptualized as em-

phasizing social integration, ritual, and tradition. Of course, it is too

simplistic to suggest that either religious tradition fully embraces

only one orientation to the exclusion of the other. Rather, we claim

that religious cultures reflect different emphases—just as cultural

psychologists propose not that America fully embraces individual-

ism whereas certain other cultures solely embrace collectivism but

that cultures contain both individualistic and collectivistic notions,

yet differentially emphasize individualistic and collectivistic aspects

of self-construal, identity, and motivation (Markus & Kitayama,

1991; Oyserman et al., 2002).

Much cross-cultural work on individualism and collectivism con-

founds country of origin and religion, such as in studies of Amer-

ican–Hindu Indian differences in moral reasoning (e.g., Miller &

Bersoff, 1994; Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997). There-

fore, we restrict our focus to religious cultural groups within one

country, the United States. Because religious values persist throughthe process of modernization in cultures (Inglehart & Baker, 2000),

we hypothesize that religious values concerning individualistic and

collectivistic identity and motivation will be evident in contemporary

American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants.

Early work on related topics, such as moral judgment, forgive-

ness, well-being, and religiosity, has focused primarily on Jewish–

Protestant differences (e.g., Cohen, 2002, 2003; Cohen, Malka,

Rozin, & Cherfas, 2006; Cohen & Rankin, 2004; Cohen & Rozin,2001; Cohen et al., 2003). And indeed, Sampson (2000) contrasted

the collectivistic worldview of traditional Judaism with the individ-

ualistic viewpoint of certain Christian religious groups. Unfortu-

nately, much prior work has neglected to include Roman Catholics,

who are perhaps in a unique position. On the one hand, Catholics

are Christian, with a belief structure that has considerable overlap

with that of Protestants. On the other hand, Catholics seem more

collective, compared to Protestants, as reflected in placing greater

importance on religious symbols, corporate worship, and communal

religious identity (Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005). In three of the four

studies reported here, Catholics are included in the analyses.




In Study 1, a preliminary study on community samples of Jews

and Protestants, we investigated whether Jews and Protestants differ

on whether religion relies on assent to beliefs versus biological de-

scent, as well as some related constructs (Morris, 1997).In Study 2, using a large undergraduate sample, we investigated

interrelationships between religiousness, spirituality, salience of re-

ligious identity, and Allport and Ross’s (1967) intrinsic and extrinsic

religiosity scales. We present data from Catholics, Jews, and Prot-

estants.

In Study 3, participants rated intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity

items for the degree to which they were seen as appropriate moti-

vations for religion.

In Study 4, an Internet sample of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants

described meaningful experiences. We investigated the involvement

of God and social relationships in these experiences. We also exam-

ined whether these social and God experiences correlated with in-

trinsic and extrinsic religiosity in divergent patterns.

STUDY 1

In this preliminary study, we investigated whether Jews and Protes-tants would differ on whether religion relies on assent to beliefs ver-

sus biological descent, feelings of connection to coreligionists, views

about the controllability of religious beliefs, and views of ritual.

These are all factors that Morris (1997) has theorized would be re-

lated to assent- and descent-based religious membership. If we can

produce evidence related to these goals, we will begin to bolster our

theoretical perspective that Protestants endorse what we have the-

orized to be religiously individualistic processes of identity, whereasJews are more religiously collectivistic.

Method

Participants. Religious leaders from churches and synagogues in central

Pennsylvania were asked to distribute questionnaires to congregants.

They were not told in detail about the purpose of the questionnaire. No

compensation was given.

The Jewish sample (n5

88) consisted of 35 Orthodox Jews, 24 Con-servative Jews, 24 Reform Jews, and 5 Reconstructionist Jews. Sixty-five

were married, 13 single, 7 widowed, 2 separated or divorced, and 2 did not

provide marital status. Fifty-three participants were women, 34 were men,

716 Cohen & Hill



and 2 did not indicate sex. Seventy-five were White and 10 did not provide

racial or ethnic information.

The Protestant sample (n5 72) consisted of 39 Methodists, 16 Baptists,

and 13 Presbyterians. Four participants were from a nondenominational,

fundamentalist church. Most (n5 59) were married, 6 single, 3 separated

or divorced, 3 widowed, and 1 did not provide marital status. This

sample was also predominantly female (45 women, 26 men, and 1 did not

provide sex). Sixty-seven were White, 3 were Black, and 1 did not provide

race.

Demographic measures. Participants indicated their age, education from

1 (elementary school ) to 5 (graduate degree), and self-rated levels of re-

ligiousness and spirituality, which were rated on separate 0 (not at all ) to 5

(extremely) scales.

Assent, descent, ritual, community, and belief controllability. Thirteen

items tapped people’s beliefs about assent versus descent membership in

their religion, community obligations, ritual emphasis, and controllability

of religious beliefs (Table 1). Responses were from À 7 (strongly disagree)

to 17 (strongly agree).

Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses. Jews (M 5 55.3, SD5 17.0) were slightly old-

er than Protestants (M 5 50.2, SD5 14.0; t (146)5 2.0, po.05). Jews

(M 5 4.1, SD5 1.0) were also more educated than Protestants

(M 5 3.8, SD5 1.0; t (156)5 2.0, po.05). Protestants (M 5 3.6,

SD5 0.8) rated themselves more religious than did Jews (M 5 2.6,

SD5 1.0; t (156)5 6.7, po.001). Protestants (M 5 3.6, SD5 1.0)

also rated themselves more spiritual than Jews did (M 5 2.7,

SD5 1.2; t (156)5 5.0, po.001).

Assent, descent, ritual, community, and controllability of religious be-

liefs. The pool of 13 items was subjected to an exploratory Prin-

cipal Components Analysis with Varimax rotation, which generated

a clear five-factor solution (Table 1). Three items were averaged to

create an ‘‘assent factor’’ (Factor 1). Two items were combined to

make a ‘‘belief controllability factor’’ (Factor 2). Three items were

combined to create a ‘‘ritual factor’’ (Factor 3). Three items werecombined to create a ‘‘descent factor’’ (Factor 4). Two items

were averaged to create a ‘‘community responsibility factor’’ (Factor 5).




Ta

ble1

VarimaxRotate

dFactorLoadingsfrom

PrincipalComponentsA

nalysisinStudy1

Item

LoadingonFactor

1

2

3

4

5

Factor1:

Assent

Beingamemberofmyreligion/fa

ithisa

matter

ofwhatapersonbelievesinhisor

herhea

rt.

.83

.03

À

.08

À

.15

À

.08

Myreligionorfaithmostlycares

about

whata

personbelievesinhisheart.

.83

.09

.02

À

.19

.05

Myreligionorfaithismostlyfoc

usedon

anindividual’srelationshipwithGod.

.77

À

.17

À

.27

.05

.07

Factor2:

Beliefcontrollability

Myreligionorfaithteachesthat

a

person’sreligiousbeliefscannotb

e

controlled.

.03

.90

.04

À

.02

.08

Myreligionorfaithteachesthat

a

person’sreligiousbeliefscanbe

controlled.

.04

À

.88

.05

.02

.06

Factor3:

Ritual

Myreligionorfaithhasaveryle

galistic

traditio

n.

À

.23

.00

.80

.19

.16

Myreligionorfaithisverystructured.

.01

À

.23

.69

.33

.00

Myreligionorfaithcaresmostly

abouta

person’sbehavior.

À

.07

.12

.68

À

.11

.10



Factor4:

Descent(Instructions:Ima

gineapersonwhowasbornintoadifferentreligion/faithfromyoubutthenwas

adoptedas

aninfant

intoafamilyofyourreligion/faith.Thispersondoesn

otknowthathewasadoptedandbelievesfullyintheteachingsof

yourreligion.)

Inorderforthispersontobeatrue

membe

rofmyreligionorfaith,t

hey

would

havetoundergoaformal

conversion.

.10

À

.01

.07

.76

.15

Thispersonisasmuchamemberofmy

religionorfaithasanyoneelse.

.29

.03

.01

À

.75

À

.07

IfIwanttoknowwhetherapersonreally

belongstomyreligion/faith,Iha

veto

knowwhatreligiontheirbiologic

al

parentsare.

À

.28

.00

.24

.61

À

.27

Factor5:

CommunityResponsibility

Asam

emberofmyreligionorfaith,Iam

insomesenseresponsibleforother

membe

rsofmyreligionorfaith.

.04

À

.04

.00

.11

.87

Myreligionorfaithisfocusedmostlyon

commu

nitylife.

À

.03

.07

.38

À

.05

.66

Percentoftotalvarianceexplained

16.9

12.9

14.3

13.5

10.3

Eigenvalu

e

3.1

1.8

1.7

1.2

1.0

Note:Salientfactorloadingsareinbold.



Jews were expected to express greater endorsement of the descent,

community responsibility, and ritual scales, whereas Protestants were

expected to score higher on the assent scale and on the belief controll-

ability scale (Morris, 1997). Jews and Protestants differed strongly in

scores for the assent, descent, and ritual scales, and Jews scored higher

on the community responsibility scale (Table 2). Means for belief con-

trollability were in the predicted directions but were not significantlydifferent.

We next investigated whether these differences would survive con-

trolling for sex, religiousness, spirituality, age, and education. Jewish

was coded as 1, and Protestant was coded as 0. For the descent scale

(b5 .49, po.001), the ritual scale (b5 .57, po.001), and the assent

scale (b5 À .46, po.001), the effect of religious group was still

highly significant (bs are the effects of religion). The effect of religion

on the community responsibility scale was reduced to marginal

significance (b5 .19, p5 .09). These results suggest that for Jews,

religious identity is more related to biological descent and ritual

than for Protestants—a religiously collectivistic viewpoint. For

Table 2Means for Jews and Protestants on Demographics, Assent, Descent,

Belief Controllability, Ritual, and Community Responsibility Scales in

Study 1

Jews Protestants Significance

M SD M SD df t

Demographics

Religiousness 2.6 1.0 3.6 0.8 156 6.7nnn

Spirituality 2.7 1.2 3.6 1.0 156 5.0nnn

Age 55.3 17.0 50.2 14.0 146 2.0n

Education 4.1 1.0 3.8 1.0 156 2.0n

Scale Scores

Assent 2.1 3.5 5.2 2.3 149 6.2nnn

Belief control 1.7 3.9 2.4 4.2 121 1.0

Ritual 3.7 2.3 0.5 3.1 130 6.9nnn

Descent À 2.3 3.8 À 4.9 2.6 143 4.6nnn

Community responsibility 3.0 3.0 1.8 2.9 130 2.2n

Notes: np .05. nnnp .001.

720 Cohen & Hill



Protestants, religion is related to personal assent to religious beliefs, a

religiously individualistic outlook.

STUDY 2

In this study, we investigated, in a large student sample of Catholics,

Jews, and Protestants, responses to Allport and Ross’s (1967)

intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales. Of importance, our goal

was not to use these scales to examine the religious orientation of our

participants per se but to demonstrate that religious cultural group

moderates patterns of responses to these items in ways that are con-

sistent with differences in religious individualism and collectivism.

We predicted that for all three groups, intrinsic religiosity would

be positively correlated with self-ratings of religiousness and spiri-

tuality. All of these religious communities consider it important to

have religion be personally salient and internalized. Because many

extrinsic religiosity items tap social and ritual elements of religion,

we expected extrinsic religiosity to be positively related to religious-

ness and spirituality for Jews and Catholics. We expected extrinsic

religiosity to relate negatively to religiousness and spirituality forProtestants.

In drawing our distinction between social and individualistic re-

ligious motivation and identity in the context of Allport’s notion of

intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness, we note that prior investigators

have devoted considerable attention to the factor structure of the

Allport and Ross (1967) intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales, as

well as derivative scales. For example, some evidence has emerged

(Kirkpatrick, 1989) that extrinsic religiosity can be further subdi-vided into a three-item, extrinsic-personal subscale (sample item:

‘‘The primary purpose of prayer is to gain relief and protection’’)

and a three-item, extrinsic-social subscale (sample item: ‘‘A primary

reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a congenial

social activity’’). Perhaps, then, for our purposes, the best strategy

would be to explore differences in endorsement of extrinsic-social

versus extrinsic-personal items.

However, we agree with Cohen, Hall, et al. (2005) that there are

implicit social aspects to many extrinsic items, even those that do not

explicitly reference social considerations (Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005).

For example, the extrinsic item from Allport and Ross (1967) of




‘‘I pray chiefly because I have been taught to pray’’ may not explic-

itly have a social nature to it. But Cohen, Hall, et al. (2005) observed

that, in religions that focus on ritual and tradition, prayer is a skill

that requires practice. Hence, people are taught to pray in a certain,ritualized way from a young age, which could result in more en-

dorsement of ‘‘praying because one has been taught to pray.’’ For

these reasons, we did not strongly hypothesize that the greater value

placed on social motivation and identity among Catholics and Jews

would be evident only in extrinsic-social items. Therefore, we present

data for the intrinsic and extrinsic scales, as well as exploratory an-

alyses for the extrinsic-social and extrinsic-personal subscales.

Method

Participants. A total of 1,364 students at the University of California,

Berkeley, filled out a questionnaire packet for course credit. Data were

analyzed from all people who identified themselves as Catholic (N 5 164;

62 men and 102 women), Jewish (N 5 42; 21 men, 21 women), or Prot-

estant (N 5 214, 79 men, 135 women). The sex ratios did not significantly

differ among the samples, w2 (2)5 2.60, p5 .27.

Measures. Measures included the intrinsic and extrinsic subscales of

Allport and Ross’s (1967) religious orientation scale, separate single-item

self-ratings of religiousness and spirituality, and two items designed to tap

salience of religious identity: (a) ‘‘How important a part of your identity is

your religion or faith to you?’’ and (b) ‘‘If someone wanted to understand

who you are as a person, how important is your religion or faith in that?’’

These two items were combined into an ‘‘identity’’ scale (a5 .93). The

intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales and the two religious salience items

were responded to on 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scales.

Self-ratings of religiousness and spirituality were responded to on 0 (not

at all ) to 5 (deeply) scales.

The intrinsic religiosity subscale consists of nine items, originally con-

ceptualized to measure mature religiosity and the extent to which religion

is the master motive in one’s life (Allport & Ross, 1967). Sample items are

‘‘I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings in life’’ and

‘‘My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to

life.’’

The extrinsic religiosity subscale consists of 11 items, proposed by

Allport and Ross to tap the immature, instrumental use of religion. Sam-

ple items are ‘‘It doesn’t matter so much what I believe so long as I lead a

722 Cohen & Hill



moral life’’ and ‘‘A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my

church is a congenial social activity.’’

Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity items were adapted to be more

inclusive. For example, the extrinsic item, ‘‘One reason for my being a

church member is that such membership helps to establish a person in thecommunity’’ was changed slightly to read ‘‘One reason for my being a

church member (or other religious institution, such as synagogue,

mosque, etc.) is that such membership helps to establish a person in the

community.’’


Mean differences. Mean differences for the scales were explored

via one-way ANOVA (Table 3). There was a significant effect of religious culture on intrinsic religiosity, F (2, 419)5 34.60,

MSE 5 168.79, po.001. Bonferroni tests showed that all three

groups differed, with Protestants scoring highest, then Catholics,

with Jews showing the lowest scores ( pso.001).

For extrinsic religiosity, there was a significant effect of religious

culture, F (2, 416)5 10.94, MSE 5 115.45, po.001. The scores for

Catholics were higher than those of Protestants (po.001), but Jews

did not differ significantly from Catholics (p5 .50) or Protestants

(p5 .49).

On the identity scale, all three groups significantly differed, F (2,

419)5 14.70, MSE 5 15.19, p .001, with Protestants scoring

Table 3Mean Differences Among Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in Study 2

Item or scale

Catholics Jews Protestants Significance

M SD M SD M SD F

Religiousness 2.38A 1.29 1.66B 1.20 2.94C 1.43 18.96nnn

Spirituality 2.85A 1.320 2.02B 1.21 3.24C 1.25 16.92nnn

Intrinsic religiosity 33.37A 11.59 22.95B 10.05 39.99C 14.43 34.60nnn

Extrinsic religiosity 42.17A 9.49 39.55AB 12.01 36.97BC 11.39 10.94nnn

Identity 8.24A 3.72 6.57B 3.85 9.73C 4.04 14.70nnn

Notes: df error for analyses range from 413 to 419. The between-subject df is 2 for all

analyses. Means that do not share a subscript within a row differ significantly by

post-hoc Bonferroni test.nnnp .001.




higher than Catholics (p5 .001) and Jews, (p .001), and Catholics

scoring higher than Jews (p5 .04).

Religious cultural groups also differed in mean levels of self-rated

religiousness, F (2, 413)5 18.96, MSE 5 1.83, po.001. Post-hocBonferroni tests indicated significant differences between the three

groups, with Protestants scoring higher than Catholics and Jews

Table 4Correlations of Items and Scales in Study 2

Catholics (ns range from 160 to 165)

Religious Spiritual Identity Intrinsic religiosity

Spiritual .56nnn

Identity .68nnn .48nnn

Intrinsic religiosity .71nnn .56nnn .82nnn

Extrinsic religiosity .05 .13 .06 .07

Extrinsic religiosity–social .19n .14w .27nnn .32nnn

Extrinsic religiosity–personal .29nnn .30nnn .32nnn .32nnn

Jews (ns range from 38 to 42)


Spiritual .57nnn

Identity .79nnn .38nn

Intrinsic religiosity .58nnn .41nn .69nnn

Extrinsic religiosity .46nn .25 .58nnn .60nnn

Extrinsic religiosity–social .33n

.11 .41nn

.44nn

Extrinsic religiosity–personal .39n .29w .57nnn .58nnn

Protestants (ns range from 212 to 215)


Spiritual .61nnn

Identity .76nnn .55nnn

Intrinsic religiosity .79nnn .60nnn .91nnn

Extrinsic religiosity À .32nnn À .26nnn À .33nnn À .34nnn

Extrinsic religiosity–social .10 .02 .15n .16n

Extrinsic religiosity–personal .00 À .07 À .02 À .02

Notes: wpo.10. np .05. nnp .01. nnnp .001.

724 Cohen & Hill



Catholics, as compared to Protestants, with religious identity

(b5 .18, p .001), self-rated religiousness (b5 .17, p .001), self-

rated spirituality (b5 .18, p .001), and intrinsic religiosity (b5 .18,

p .001). We similarly compared correlations among Jews andCatholics and discovered significant differences for correlations of

extrinsic religiosity with religious identity (b5 .19, p .01), intrinsic

religiosity (b5 .16, p5 .02), a marginal difference for self-rated re-

ligiousness (b5 .13, p5 .06), and no significant difference in corre-

lations for self-rated spirituality (b5 .03, ns).

One interpretation of these differing correlations is group differ-

ences in global religiousness, though we believe these analyses should

be interpreted with caution because self-rated religiosity and intrinsic

religiosity are highly correlated and may tap similar underlying con-

structs for members of these religious groups. However, the Jewish-

Protestant difference in correlations between intrinsic religiosity and

extrinsic religiosity was still significant when controlling for self-rat-

ed religiousness (b5 .09, p5 .03). The Jewish-Protestant difference

in correlations between extrinsic religiosity and identity also re-

mained significant when controlling for self-rated religiousness

(b5 .13, p5 .003). Similar results emerged for Catholic–Protestant

differences in correlations. The difference in correlations betweenintrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales among Catholics and Prot-

estants, controlling for religiousness, was marginally significant

(b5 .06, p5 .11). For the extrinsic religiosity-identity difference in

correlations, partialling out religiousness also reduced the effect

somewhat (b5 .05, p5 .18). For Catholics and Jews, controlling

for religiosity left a significant difference in correlations between ex-

trinsic religiosity and identity, (b5 .11, p5 .04) and a marginal dif-

ference in correlations between extrinsic religiosity and intrinsicreligiosity (b5 .08, p5 .11).

Summary. We interpret these results to be consistent with our the-

orizing regarding differences in individualistic and collectivistic pro-

cesses among American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. For

Protestants, the individualistic aspects of religious identity that are

contained in the intrinsic religiosity scale seem to resonate more than

they did with either Catholics or Jews, as reflected in the higher mean

scores for Protestants. Conversely, the items in the community-ori-

ented extrinsic religiosity scale were endorsed more by Catholics and

Jews than by Protestants. Moreover, for Protestants, but not for

726 Cohen & Hill



Catholics or Jews, extrinsic motivations are incompatible with in-

trinsic motivations insofar as extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity are

negatively correlated with each other. For Jews, for whom intrinsic

and extrinsic religiosity are positive intercorrelated, both individu-alistic (intrinsic) and community (extrinsic) aspects of religion may

be mutually reinforcing. The correlations of extrinsic religiosity with

other variables among Catholics were intermediate in magnitude

between those of Jews and Protestants, suggesting perhaps that

Catholics may entertain some combination of these outlooks.

STUDY 3

The goal of Study 3 was to provide converging evidence that relig-

ious motivations are viewed differently by members of different re-

ligious cultural groups. We asked participants to rate how

appropriate each intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity item would be as

a religious motivation instead of asking how participants personally

endorsed each item.

Method

Participants and procedures. Procedures were the same as in Study 2. We

present data from a separate University of California, Berkeley, sample of

62 Jews, 151 Protestants, and 121 Catholics. Participants were provided

with the intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity items and were given the fol-

lowing instructions: ‘‘For each of the following statements, imagine that

this is a statement by a person who is explaining their motivations or

feelings about religion. Please rate each of the following statements in

terms of how appropriate they would be as motivations for religious be-

havior—not how much each one describes you, but how appropriate eachone is in your view.’’ Ratings were made on 1 (not at all appropriate) to 7

(very appropriate) scales. In addition, we obtained single-item self-ratings

of religiousness and spirituality on 1 (not at all ) to 5 (deeply) scales. We

neglected to solicit the two-item religious identity scale in this study.

Results

Mean differences. There was a significant effect of religious cultural

group on religiousness self-ratings (F (2, 330)5 24.02, MSE 5 1.06,po.001). Protestants (M 5 3.5, SD5 1.1) and Catholics (M 5 3.2,

SD5 0.9) rated themselves more religious than did Jews (M 5 2.4,




Ta

ble5

EstimatedMarg

inalMeans(Controlling

forReligiosityandSpirituality)inStudy3

Catholics

Jews

Protestants

Significance

M

SE

M

SE

M

SE

F

Intrinsicreligiosity

4.9AB

0.11

4.4A

0.16

5.1B

0.10

6.76nnn

Extrinsic

religiosity

3.9A

0.08

4.0A

0.12

3.4B

0.08

15.15nnn

Extrinsic

religiosity–social

3.7AB

0.12

4.0A

0.18

3.4B

0.11

3.63n

Extrinsic

religiosity–personal

4.6A

0.12

4.1AB

0.17

4.1B

0.11

5.36nn

Notes:dferrorforanalysesrangefrom32

6to327.Thebetween-subjectdfis2forallanalyses.Meansthatdonotshareasubscriptwithinarow

differsign

ificantlybypost-hocBonferr

onitest.

np

.05.nnp

.01.nnnp

.001.



SD5 0.9; pso.001). Protestants also rated themselves marginally

more religious than did Catholics (p5 .07). There was also a signif-

icant effect of religious cultural group on spirituality self-ratings

(F (2, 329)5

7.92, MSE 5

1.24, po

.001). Protestants (M 5

3.6,SD5 1.1) and Catholics (M 5 3.4, SD5 1.0) were higher than

Jews (M 5 2.9, SD5 1.2; po.001 and p5 .009, respectively). Prot-

estants and Catholics were not different (p5 .83).

We analyzed the following scales: intrinsic religiosity (9 items,

a5 .92), extrinsic religiosity (11 items, a5 .81), extrinsic-social

(3 items, a5 .71), and extrinsic-personal (3 items, a5 .69). We con-

ducted analyses with and without controlling for self-ratings of re-

ligiousness and spirituality, and since results were extremely similar,

we present results for analyses that controlled for religiousness and

spirituality self-ratings.

Religious culture had a significant effect on appropriateness rat-

ings of the general extrinsic religiosity scale (Table 5), and post-hoc

Bonferroni tests indicated that Protestants were lower than both

Catholics and Jews (pso.001), who did not differ. Protestants were

significantly higher on intrinsic religiousness than were Jews,

p5 .001. Catholics did not significantly differ from Jews (p5 .10)

or Protestants (p5 .16).We also conducted exploratory analyses on the extrinsic-social

and extrinsic-personal subscales. There was a significant effect of

religious cultural group on the extrinsic-social subscale, such that

Jews differed from Protestants (p5 .02). On the extrinsic-personal

subscale, there was also a significant effect of religious cultural

group, and Catholics and Protestants differed significantly

(p5 .005).

Correlational and moderator analyses. To follow up on the findings

in the prior study, we focused on the differing correlations of the

extrinsic religiosity scale with intrinsic religiosity, self-rated religious-

ness, and self-rated spirituality. For Protestants, ratings of the nor-

mativeness of extrinsic religiosity were negatively correlated with

ratings of the normativeness of intrinsic religiosity (r5 À .36,

po.001), with self-ratings of religiousness (r5 À .36, po.001),

and spirituality (r5 À .30, po.001). For Catholics, ratings of the

normativeness of extrinsic religiosity were not significantly cor-

related with ratings of the normativeness of intrinsic religiosity

(r5 .10, p5 .26) but were negatively correlated with self-ratings of




religiousness (r5 À .31, p5 .001) and spirituality (r5 À .16,

p5 .09). For Jews, ratings of the normativeness of extrinsic religi-

osity were strongly and positively correlated with ratings of the nor-

mativeness of intrinsic religiosity (r5

.47, po

.001) and positively,but more weakly, with self-ratings of religiousness (r5 .15, p5 .26)

and spirituality (r5 .16, p5 .21). Our exploratory analysis of pat-

terns for the extrinsic-social and extrinsic-personal scales followed

similar patterns as the global extrinsic scale.

Using moderated regressions, we compared the differences in cor-

relations as we did in Study 2. Comparing Catholics to Jews, the

differences in correlations between extrinsic and intrinsic normative-

ness ratings (b5 .20, p5 .004), self-ratings of religiousness (b5 .21,

p5 .002), and self-ratings of spirituality (b5 .15, p5 .04) were all

significant. Comparing Jews to Protestants, the differences in corre-

lations between extrinsic and intrinsic normativeness ratings

(b5 .40, po.001), self-ratings of religiousness (b5 .23, po.001),

and self-ratings of spirituality (b5 .22, p5 .002) were also all sig-

nificant. Comparing Catholics to Protestants, the difference in cor-

relations between extrinsic and intrinsic normativeness ratings was

significant (b5 .22, po.001). However, the differences in correla-

tions of extrinsic religiosity normativeness ratings and self-ratings of religiousness (b5 .05, p5 .43) or between extrinsic religiosity nor-

mativeness ratings and self-ratings of spirituality (b5 .07, p5 .24)

were not significant.

We next explored whether controlling for self-rated religiosity

would explain the group differences in correlations between the

normativeness of extrinsic religiosity and intrinsic religiosity. The

Catholic–Protestant difference (b5 .21, po.001), the Jewish–

Protestant difference (b5

.32, po

.001), and the Catholic–Jewishdifference (b5 .15, p5 .03) in correlations were all still significant

when controlling for self-rated religiosity.

Summary. As we proposed in Study 2, we believe that the greater

endorsement among Protestants of intrinsic religiosity items reflects

a greater emphasis on the personal salience of religious identity. For

Catholics and Jews, religious identity seems collectivistically ground-

ed in that extrinsic religiosity items are more strongly endorsed.Furthermore, as in Study 2, we replicated here the finding that ex-

trinsic (collectivistic) religious motivations are antithetical to the

730 Cohen & Hill



more individualistic, intrinsic motivations for Protestants but not for

Catholics and Jews.

STUDY 4

In this study, we obtained participants’ open-ended, narrative de-

scriptions of important experiences in their lives. Our goal was to

determine whether differences in social versus individualistic aspects

of religious identity would emerge in this less-structured format. In

addition to speaking to the differing salience of individualistic and

collectivistic aspects of religion, these data also document some ef-

fects of religious cultural norms on emotional and meaningful ex-

periences. We hypothesized that such experiences for Protestantswould commonly involve a personal encounter with God. For Cath-

olics, and especially Jews, we hypothesized that such experiences

would commonly be social. We also predicted that the likelihood of

having an experience involving God would correlate positively with

intrinsic religiosity, whereas having a social experience would be

positively correlated with extrinsic religiosity.

Method

Participants and procedures. The data being analyzed here come from a

project that focused primarily on forgiveness (Cohen, et al., 2006). Most

participants were students at an East Coast or West Coast research uni-

versity. Most participants were women (n5 91), with 35 men. The age

range of the sample was 17 to 58 (M 5 23.0, SD5 7.04). Education was

coded from 1 (elementary school ) t o 5 (graduate degree), M 5 3.4,

SD5 0.85.

Measures. We asked participants to describe life-changing experiences

as follows: ‘‘Have you ever had an experience that significantly changed

the way you approach life or the world? If not, just say you haven’t. If so,

please tell us about the experience in a few sentences: Where were you?

What was the experience like? What emotions did you experience? How

did the experience change you?’’ Participants also completed the intrinsic

religiosity (a5 .88) and extrinsic religiosity scales (a5 .81), and the two-

item identity scale (a5 .93).


Sample narratives. There was a very wide range of experiences re-

ported. Some resembled the prototypical, spiritually transformative,




born-again experience described by Starbuck (1900) and James

(1902/1997). One participant described his or her experience as

follows:

The most important experience in my life was the moment that I

first accepted that Jesus Christ really was God Himself. I remem-

ber sitting in my bedroom crying because I was deeply upset and

angry. If Jesus Christ was who he said he was then there weren’t

an infinite number of ways to God; there was One. Then every-

thing I’d believed before, all of the vague nebulous self-conceived

ideas I’d had about God, were simply wrong. Here was a God who

was real, concrete, and infinitely loving. And I was angry because I

knew that I wouldn’t be able to go on living however I wanted

with God consigned to some ethereal realm of ideals. Here was a

God who had created me and knew me completely, a God who

suffered and died for me. He wasn’t an idea, He was a reality. I

couldn’t just treat Him as I treated an idea or a philosophy, fol-

lowing it when it was easy and abandoning it when it interfered

with what I wanted. I would have to give Him my life. That night,

in spite of all my anger and frustration, I put my trust in Him for

the first time.

Table 6Correlations of Social and God Codes With Demographics and

Religiosity Scales in Study 4

Code

Social God

God code À .21n

Intrinsic religiosity À .21n .31nnn

Extrinsic religiosity .10 À .25nn

Identity À .11 .32nnn

Sex .11 À .01

Age .10 À .21n

Education .07 À .16w

Notes: For both the social code and the God code, yes was coded as 1 and no was

coded as 0. For sex, male was coded as 1 and female as 0.wp .10. np .05. nnp .01. nnnp .001.

732 Cohen & Hill



Other participants’ descriptions were focused on connections to

other people, often in a religious context:

When my brother died my father started attending minyan [theparticipant is referring to daily Jewish services] every day. He said

it comforted him greatly. I was aware that it was the rituals and

other men there that made him feel better—not any idea that God

had intended this—he used religion as a subverbal tool to connect

him with other people now as well as forward and backward in

time in his mourning. I understood then that my human relation-

ships were all that gave meaning to my life but that the humans

that I related to were a much larger group than the people I would

meet during my lifetime.

Narrative coding. The sample of 126 essays were separated from

the rest of the data and coded by two independent coders (blind to

condition and hypotheses) on a binary scale (yes/no) whether the

experiences importantly involved God and connection to other peo-

ple. These codes were not designed to be mutually exclusive. Initially,

coding reliabilities were at acceptable levels. For the God code, 44essays were coded no by both coders, and 61 were coded yes, with 13

disagreements (K 5 .65, po.001). For the social code, 69 essays were

coded no by both coders, and 40 were coded yes. There were 15 dis-

agreements (K 5 .70, po.001). The two coders then got together

with an author to discuss discrepancies. Revised decisions were

reached, as follows: For the social code, 68 were coded no by both

coders, and 53 were coded yes. There remained five disagreements

(K 5

.92, po

.001). For the God code, after discussion, 48 essayswere coded no by both coders, 71 coded were yes by both coders, and

there were 7 disagreements (K 5 .89, po.001). Remaining disagree-

ments were decided by an author. Finally, for the social code, 68

essays were coded yes, and 58 no. Fifty-one essays received yes for

the God code, and 75 no.

Correlational analyses. We correlated God and social codes with

gender, age, education, intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, and the re-

ligious identity scale (Table 6). For each category (God or social),

yes was coded as 1, and no was coded as 0. The God and social code

were modestly and negatively correlated with each other. Intrinsic




religiosity predicted a lower likelihood of a yes on the social code,

but a greater likelihood of a yes for the God code. Extrinsic religi-

osity was not significantly related to the social code, but was neg-

atively correlated with the God code. The two-item religious identityscale was not significantly related to the social code but was posi-

tively correlated with the God code.

Religious differences. For the following analyses, we present data

from the subset of participants who were Catholic (n5 33), Jewish

(n5 22), or Protestant (n5 45). The ages of the three religious

groups (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant) did show some significant dif-

ferences, F (2, 97)5 5.55, MSE 5 50.02, p5 .005. By post-hoc Bon-

ferroni tests, Jews (M 5 27.3, SD5 12.94) were older than Catholics

(M 5 22.4, SD5 5.14; p5 .005) and Protestants (M 5 21.0,

SD5 2.35; p5 .03). And there were some differences in education

levels between the religious cultural groups, F (2, 97)5 3.64,

MSE 5 0.68, p5 .03. The only significant difference was between

Jews (M 5 3.6, SD5 1.05) and Protestants (M 5 3.4, SD5 0.84;

p5 .04). Catholics (M 5 3.1, SD5 0.61) did not significantly differ

from either of the other groups. As in prior studies, there were sig-

nificant differences on intrinsic religiosity, F (2, 97)5 15.55,MSE 5 0.43, po.001. Jews (M 5 3.4, SD5 0.76) scored lower than

Catholics (M 5 3.7, SD5 0.71) and Protestants (M 5 4.3, SD5 0.55;

p’s .001), who did not differ (p5 .22). For the extrinsic religiosity

scale, there was also a significant effect of religion, F (2, 97)5 12.16,

MSE 5 0.40, po.001. Protestants (M5 2.2, SD5 0.74) scored lower

than both Jews (M5 3.0, SD5 0.42; p .001) and Catholics

(M5 2.7, SD5 0.60), who did not differ (p5 .34). For the two

item religious identity scale, there was a significant effect of religion,F (2, 97)5 10.74, MSE 5 1.47, po.001. Protestants (M 5 4.7,

SD5 0.66) were higher than Catholics (M 5 3.6, SD5 1.30;

p5 .001) and Jews (M 5 3.4, SD5 1.82; po.001) who did not dif-

fer (p5 1.0).

Next, we investigated the likelihood of social and God experiences

in the religious groups. For the God code, a significantly higher

percentage of Protestants (84.4%) than Catholics (54.5%) and Jews

(27.3%) were coded as yes, w2 (2 df )5 21.66, po.001. For the social

code, a marginally significant higher percentage of Jews (68.2%)

than Catholics (51.5%) and Protestants (40%) were coded as yes, w2

(2 df )5 4.74, p5 .09.

734 Cohen & Hill



As in previous studies, the differences between Jews and Protes-

tants were largest. We used regression analyses to further explore

Jewish–Protestant differences. Jewish was coded as 1 and Protestant

as 0. Predicting likelihood of having an essay coded as involving God,the effect of religion ( Jewish or Protestant) was significant and large,

b5 À .57, po.001. Individually controlling for gender (b5 À .57,

po.001), education (b5 À .54, po.001), or age (b5 À .50, po.001)

did not explain the effect (bs are the effects of religion on God cat-

egory codes). The effects of religious group also did not seem to be

explainable by religiousness, as in prior studies. Controlling for in-

trinsic religiosity, the effect of religion was still significant (b5 À .33,

p5 .005). Controlling for extrinsic religiosity also did not reduce the

effect of religion, (b5 À .47, po.001), and neither did controlling for

the two item religious identity scale (b5 À .45, po.001).

The effect of religion ( Jewish or Protestant) was also significant

when predicting likelihood of having social experiences, b5 .27,

p5 .03. This difference was also not explainable by demographics, as

controlling for gender (b5 .27, p5 .03), or education (b5 .26,

p5 .04) or age (b5 .25, p5 .05) did not reduce the size of the effect

of religion. Controlling for intrinsic religiosity (b5 .26, p5 .07), ex-

trinsic religiosity (b5 .25, p5 .08), or religious identity salience(b5 .23, p5 .09) also did not meaningfully change the effect sizes.

Again, bs are the effects of religion while controlling for the stated

covariate.

Summary. Our analyses again suggest that Protestants are more

individualistic than Catholics and especially Jews. Their life-chang-

ing experiences are more likely to focus on a personal encounter withGod. In contrast, the experiences of Catholics, and particularly of

Jews, are more likely to be centered around the collective. Further-

more, the correlations we observed between God-centered experi-

ences with intrinsic religiosity underscore our prior findings that

intrinsic religiosity is related to personal faith. Of importance, in-

trinsic religiosity was negatively related to social experiences, and

this is also consistent with our demonstration that extrinsic religios-

ity was negatively correlated with God-centered experiences. All of

these results converge to suggest that intrinsic religiosity is tappingindividualistic religious outlooks, whereas extrinsic religiosity is

much more related to the collective.




GENERAL DISCUSSION

Theologians, historians, psychologists, and sociologists have claimed

that American Protestant religion focuses strongly on a personal re-

lationship with God and that Americans, by and large, do not basereligious identity on community affiliation, social relationships, tra-

dition, and ritual (Bellah et al., 1985; Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005;

Snibbe & Markus, 2003). To our knowledge, we have produced the

first clear evidence that American Jews and Catholics resonate more

with collectivistic aspects of religion and spirituality than do Prot-

estants. Moreover, our results can thus be seen as evidence that dif-

ferences in religious groups can be understood as differences in

culture.In several studies, using quite different measures, we have shown

that the religious and spiritual identities, motivations, and experi-

ences of Catholics and Jews are more socially and community ori-

ented than those of Protestants, who are more religiously

individualistic. If our proposal is that Catholics and Jews are col-

lectivistic and Protestants individualistic, it may seem a natural place

to start to use established scales to measure self-construal (e.g. Sing-

elis, 1994). However, Cohen and Rozin (2001) found that American

Jews and Protestants did not differ in the independent/interdepen-

dent self-construal scales of Singelis (1994). There are many reasons

why this might be the case. Perhaps Jews and Catholics are more

community oriented only in the domains of religion or spirituality.

Or perhaps Singelis’s scales are better suited for East–West cultural

differences, the focus of most cultural research. Reference group ef-

fects are another intriguing possibility (Heine, Lehman, Peng, &

Greenholtz, 2002).

Implications for Conceptualization of Religiousness and Spirituality

With increasing interest in religiousness and spirituality among so-

cial and medical scientists, it is important to conceptualize and op-

erationalize religiousness and spirituality appropriately. How to

accomplish this has been a vexing problem (e.g. Hill & Pargament,

2003), and classic theorists have had fundamentally different ap-

proaches. For example, James (1902/1997) saw religion as an

individualistic phenomenon: ‘‘Religion, therefore, as I now ask

you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and

736 Cohen & Hill



experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend

themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the di-

vine’’ (p. 42, italics in original). Durkheim (1912/1995) understood

religion as inherently social because sacred objects symbolize thesociety and religion unifies people into a community: ‘‘A religion is a

unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that

is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which

united into one single moral community called a Church, all those

who adhere to them’’ (p. 44). Recently, theorists have struggled over

how religiousness and spirituality are similar or different, as well as

with attempting to create definitions of religiousness and spirituality

that apply equally well to diverse religious cultures.

Spirituality has been proposed as being both more universal and

more individualized than religiousness (Hill & Pargament, 2003),

which is somewhat paradoxical (Bellah et al., 1985; Hall, Koenig, &

Meador, 2004). Contemporary conceptions of spirituality, with their

focus on that which is individual, subjective, inward, unsystematic,

self-directing, and freeing, may reflect a Protestant perspective. That

is, it is not surprising that an individualistic spirituality flourishes

well in a society that is otherwise strongly secular where the indi-

vidualistic character of Protestantism dominates (see Hill et al.,2000, for a more elaborate discussion). In fact, it can be argued that

spirituality is a term adopted by Protestants as a way of communi-

cating that their religion focuses primarily on a personal and

individual—not institutional—relationship to God. Of interest, Bel-

lah et al. (1985) also suggested that the growing American emphasis

on spirituality could be the result of the cultural development of

religion as increasingly privatized, personal, and experiential-

expressive.We found mean differences and differing intercorrelations among

intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (Studies 2 and 3). Allport and Ross

theorized that extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity would be inversely

correlated but were apparently surprised to discover that they were

orthogonal. They therefore developed a four-fold classification,

which many researchers have maintained; for example, those high

in both intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity were dubbed ‘‘indiscrimi-

nately pro-religious.’’ There have even been arguments that the

scales should not be used any longer because of their questionable

psychometric properties (Kirkpatrick, 1989). But this is not the only

kind of critique that has been leveled. For example, Pargament




(1992) claimed that religion is appropriately viewed both as a means

and as an end.

Our results shed considerable light on this nearly long-standing

debate in that they demonstrate that the psychometric properties of the religious orientation scale depend on religious group. For Prot-

estants, they are, in fact, negatively correlated, but for Jews, they are

positively correlated. In this vein, we do not recommend abandoning

the scales because the interrelationships differ among religious

groups. Rather, we propose that different religious motivations are

valued in different religious cultures and that this needs to be rec-

ognized when conceptualizing and measuring religious motivations.

Our approach recognizes the futility of developing a single definition

or a single measure of religiousness and spirituality independent of a

broader religious, cultural, and social context (Hall et al., 2004; Hill

& Pargament, 2003; Moberg, 2002). We propose that, because iden-

tity and motivation processes have deep, mutually constitutive rela-

tionships with core cultural ideals (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, &

Nisbett, 1998), religious identity and motivation must be understood

within a cultural framework. It remains a challenge for future re-

search to generate ways of measuring religious and spiritual identity

and motivation that recognize how cultures differ without explicitlyor implicitly privileging certain motivations.

Some Future Directions in Culture and Religion

The current work has approached religious group differences as cul-

tural differences—as has converging work on morality (Cohen, 2003;

Cohen & Rankin, 2004; Cohen & Rozin, 2001), forgiveness (Cohen,

et al., 2006), death anxiety (Cohen, Pierce, et al., 2005), and well-being (Cohen, 2002; Cohen & Hall, 2005). Based on these lines of

work, we suggest three complementary theoretical approaches in re-

gard to future directions on religion and culture. First, this prior

work, along with the current studies, are most clearly relevant to the

view that religious group differences can be conceptualized as cul-

tural differences that shape personal and social aspects of religious

and spiritual motivation, moral judgment, and other processes.

A second theoretical approach would claim not only that religious

group differences are to be seen as cultural differences but also that

religious differences may promote country differences in psycholog-

ical processes. Perhaps some of the differences observed in the wealth

738 Cohen & Hill



of research on country differences in individualism and collectivism

can be partly attributed to religious differences. It promises to be a

fascinating direction for future research to attempt to disentangle

effects of country of origin from effects of religious and spiritualgroup memberships.

A third theoretical perspective is that country differences produce

religion differences. Under this perspective, one could view religions

as subcultures (such as viewing Protestantism as a subculture in

America). Within any religious tradition, there is a rich set of beliefs

and values from which one could choose. For example, it is clear that

the community (i.e., the church), whether local or universal, plays a

critical role in Protestant theology and is based on Christ’s strong

constitutive declaration ‘‘I will build my church’’ (Matt. 16:18). The

church is a collective entity, the image of which has been variously

interpreted as the people of God (as community), the temple of the

Holy Spirit (stressing the Trinitarian concept of the church as a re-

lational institution, collective in nature), or the body of Christ

(stressing the interconnectedness of the church) with Christ as

head and believers as other parts (Erickson, 1985). Yet the domi-

nant strand in American Protestantism is a pietistic approach that

stresses an individual’s direct relationship to God, a relationship notmediated by the church. Does this tendency to place emphasis on a

scriptural or other religious notion related to personal faith, even as

other scriptural notions related to the collective are perhaps deem-

phasized, reflect a cultural context that stresses individualism? And,

as we have speculated above, perhaps it is this same cultural context

that partly explains the current interest in an interior notion of spir-

ituality.

We feel there is promise in all these theories and, in fact, believethat the relationship between religion and country-related processes

is probably bidirectional and constantly culturally evolving. Two

lines of future work that could speak to these theoretical issues are

on different religious groups in different countries and work on re-

ligious denomination differences. Great sophistication could be add-

ed to this work by focusing not only on the religious groups we have

examined (Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in the United States) but

on other religious groups in different countries. Given Shweder and

Miller’s extensive work on interpersonal bases of moral judgment in

Hindu India (e.g., Miller & Bersoff, 1994; Shweder et al., 1997),

Hindu India might be a natural place to extend the current work.




Furthermore, much research has been conducted on Caucasian

Protestants in the United States, and findings could be used as a

platform to explore Protestant motivation in various countries.

There are large pockets of Protestants in other countries (e.g., Ko-rea, much of Europe), and it would be interesting to know, for ex-

ample, whether Protestants living in Asian countries are more

collectivistic than those in Western countries. Similar questions

could also be asked about Protestants in the United States of dif-

ferent ethnic cultures (e.g., African American, Asian American).

Furthermore, we have not attended in these studies to the mean-

ingful denominational differences within overall religious groups,

such as comparing Reform to Orthodox Jews or Episcopalians to

Baptists. American Reform Judaism, for example, at the time of its

founding in the late 1800s, claimed that much traditional ritual was a

hindrance to spiritual elevation (but the Reform movement has more

recently advocated adherence to ritual, particularly if it is personally

meaningful). Rather, monotheism, ethical teachings, and personal

spiritual elevation were Reform Judaism’s main concerns (Glazer,

1957). Similar distinctions can also be found in Protestantism and,

perhaps to a lesser extent, in Catholicism. Investigations of identity

and motivation among different religious groups in different coun-tries, as well as among different religious denominations, could begin

to speak to the different theoretical models on culture and religion

that we have proposed.

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