Christian Orthodoxy and Right Wing Authoritarianism Predict Group Boundaries

Religion helps people form group boundaries, but the mechanisms by which these boundaries are established are not well understood. This study examined the perception of religious in-groups and out-groups. Participants were 153 Christians. In one condition participants received several figures representing various Christian denominations, and a figure representing themselves. They were instructed to place the figures in such a way that the distance between figures represented their degree of similarity. In another condition the task used world religions, rather than Christian denominations. After this, participants completed scales measuring Christian Orthodoxy (CO), Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), and other religiosity and demographic items. Results showed that CO and RWA scores for both groups were negatively correlated with the distance from the “me” figure to the figure representing their own religion, and with the number of moves required to complete the figure placement task. In the world religion condition, participants who placed themselves closer to their own religious group (Christian) placed the world religion figures further away, when compared with participants who saw more distance between themselves and Christianity. Those in the Christian condition showed the opposite pattern; the more closely they placed themselves to their own denomination, the more closely they also placed those of other Christian religions to themselves. The present data confirm the view that Christians who score high on CO and RWA tend to view those of other Christian religions as in-group members, while viewing non-Christians as out-group members.