Religion and Value Systems

Uncovering the complex relationships between religiosity and values may provide a better understanding of what it means to be religious or nonreligious. This article reviews research on values and religiosity across cultural and religious groups. Although religious groups differ in the importance they attribute to different values, the pattern of correlations between religiosity and values is strikingly consistent across monotheistic religions: Persons more committed to religion attribute relatively high importance to values expressing motivation to avoid uncertainty and change and relatively low importance to values expressing motivations to follow one's hedonistic desires, or to be independent in thought and action.