Explaining variation in relations among intrinsic religiosity, political conservatism, and homonegativity as a function of authoritarianism's three components: An expansion on recent literature

Abstract

Past research suggested that the strong relationship between having high levels of religiosity and/or political conservatism and harboring a high level of negativity toward homosexuals often is accounted for by the strength of individuals' authoritarian views. In an effort to build upon this extant research, the goal of this study was to examine the way in which components of authoritarianism mediate the relationship between religiosity and political conservatism and homonegativity. To achieve this goal, a recently developed modality of path analysis that allows for the effect of one independent variable on another to be controlled was used. Because preliminary analyses indicated that attitudes toward same-sex marriage and homonegativity demonstrated multicollinearity, a composite measure was created. Results suggested that the overall strength of the relationship between religiosity and political conservatism with homonegativity remains statistically significant, even after accounting for three components of authoritarianism and the potential effect of social desirability. These authoritarianism components also had a significant indirect effect on the strength of the relationship between religiosity and homonegativity, with authoritarian submission and conventionalism fully mediating this relationship. Implications of these findings were discussed. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.