The Interplay between Religiosity and Horizontal and Vertical Individualism-Collectivism among Polish Catholic Students

Abstract

Individualism-collectivism has emerged as one of the most important constructs to depict cultural differences and similarities. It is typical to examine individualism and collectivism through comparison between the cultures of the West and those of the East or comparison between various religious traditions, e.g. Christianity has been seen as the source of Western individualistic understanding whilst Buddhism as the source of Eastern collectivist understanding. The research presented in this paper explored the connections between individualism-collectivism and religiosity in Polish Catholic culture. Although Poland is an orthodox Catholic environment, gradually intensified secularization processes have been observed there. In two separate studies we examined relationships between individualism-collectivism and religiosity defined in a traditional (study 1) and secularized context (study 2).