Fundamentalism as Dogmatic Belief, Moral Rigorism, and Strong Groupness Across Cultures: Dimensionality, Underlying Components, and Interreligious Prejudice

Is fundamentalism universal across religious cultures? We investigated this issue by focusing on 3 questions: (a) the dimensionality of fundamentalism, as measured by the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004); (b) the very nature of fundamentalism as denoting dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, or strong groupness; and (c) interreligious prejudice as predicted uniquely, additively, or interactively by religiousness and sociocognitive rigidity. We collected data from 14 countries of Catholic, Protestant, Christian Orthodox, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim tradition, regrouped in 7 cultural-religious zones (N = 3,218 young adults). We measured fundamentalism, the 4 dimensions of religiousness (believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging), authoritarianism, existential quest, and interreligious prejudice—negative and discriminatory attitudes toward various religious outgroups and atheists. Across religious cultures, we found that: (a) the scale is unidimensional; (b) fundamentalism is best conceptualized as a combination of dogmatic belief (believing and low existential quest) and moral rigorism (behaving and authoritarianism) and occasionally as strong groupness (belonging and authoritarianism); (c) religious dimensions, additively to and interactively with, authoritarianism and low existential quest predict interreligious prejudice (in monotheistic cultures); and (d) anti-Muslim attitudes were the highest, but fundamentalism and religiousness related most strongly to antiatheist sentiments.