The Influence of Religious Fundamentalism, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, and Christian Orthodoxy on Explicit and Implicit Measures of Attitudes Toward Homosexuals

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine relations among dimensions of religiosity and explicit and implicit attitudes about homosexuals. Implicit attitudes were measured using the Implicit Association Test, an instrument that assesses attitudes about objects, persons, or groups, indirectly via participants' response times to words that are paired with symbols (e.g., “gay” and “straight” couples). Participants also completed explicit measures of religious fundamentalism, Christian orthodoxy, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes toward homosexuals. With respect to explicit attitudes, the results were consistent with previous research. Religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism predicted negative attitudes toward homosexuals, whereas Christian orthodoxy predicted more positive attitudes. In contrast, right-wing authoritarianism was the only significant predictor of implicit attitudes. People who scored high on a measure of right-wing authoritarianism had more negative explicit and implicit attitudes toward homosexuals than did people who scored low. Right-wing authoritarianism appears to play an important role in predicting both explicit and implicit attitudes toward homosexuals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was conducted as an honor's thesis at the University of California, Davis. I thank Debra L. Long and Clinton L. Johns for their help and comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Notes

∗Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed)

∗∗Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

∗p < .05.

∗∗p < .01.

¹When right-wing authoritarianism and Christian orthodoxy are entered into the regression, right-wing authoritarianism is a significant and positive predictor of attitudes toward homosexuals (β = 0.72, t = 9.65, p < .01) and Christian orthodoxy is nonsignificant but positive (β = 0.07, t = .87, p > .01). Entering religious fundamentalism and Christian orthodoxy together in a regression resulted in religious fundamentalism being a significant and positive predictor of attitudes toward homosexuals (β = 0.94, t = 9.29, p < .01) and Christian orthodoxy being a significant but negative predictor (β = −0.33, t = −3.25, p < .01).

²The variance inflation factor will reflect the presence or absence of multicollinearity. For a high variance inflation factor, larger than 1, the variable may be affected by multicollinearity. The variance inflation factor has a range 1 to infinity.