Religion as Culture: Religious Individualism and

Collectivism Among American Catholics, Jews, and

Protestants

Adam B. Cohen1 and Peter C. Hill2

1
Arizona State University and University of California, Berkeley
2
Biola University

ABSTRACT We propose the theory that religious cultures vary in in-

dividualistic and collectivistic aspects of religiousness and spirituality.
Study 1 showed that religion for Jews is about community and biological
descent but about personal beliefs for Protestants. Intrinsic and extrinsic
religiosity were intercorrelated and endorsed differently by Jews, Catho-
lics, and Protestants in a pattern that supports the theory that intrinsic
religiosity relates to personal religion, whereas extrinsic religiosity stresses
community and ritual (Studies 2 and 3). Important life experiences were
likely to be social for Jews but focused on God for Protestants, with
Catholics in between (Study 4). We conclude with three perspectives in
understanding the complex relationships between religion and culture.

The attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is

not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be

Adam B. Cohen, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, and Institute

of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley. Peter C. Hill,
Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University.
Some data from Study 1 and Study 2 were presented at the seventh annual confer-
ence of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, Palm Springs, CA.
Both Adam Cohen and Peter Hill gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spir-
itual Transformation Scientific Research program, sponsored by the Metanexus In-
stitute on Religion and Science, with the generous support of the John Templeton
Foundation. Adam Cohen also thankfully acknowledges the support of a Templeton
Advanced Research Program grant from the Metanexus Institute. We would like to
thank Michelle V. Flythe and Elizabeth J. Horberg for assisting with narrative coding
in Study 4.
Address correspondence to: Adam Cohen, Department of Psychology, Arizona State
University, PO Box 871104, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104. E-mail: adamcohen@asu.edu.

Journal of Personality 75:4, August 2007

r 2007, Copyright the Authors
Journal compilation r 2007, Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2007.00454.x
710 Cohen & Hill

no religion in particular. . . . Thus every living and healthy religion

has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and
surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to
life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it propounds are another
world to live in; and another world to live in—whether we expect
ever to pass wholly into it or no—is what we mean by having a
religion.
George Santayana, Reason in Religion (1905/1982, pp. 5–6)

American culture is highly individualistic relative to other countries.

Many interrelated factors could have promoted the high level of in-
dividualism in America (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman,
Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Triandis, 1995). Influences on Amer-
ican individualism have been theorized to include, for example, the
political philosophies of the American founding fathers, the empha-
sis on individual rights and freedom, limited government, the Amer-
ican market economy, and American frontier life (Oyserman et al.,
2002). While not disputing these other factors, we wish to focus on
the rich theoretical tradition that attributes American individualism
to Protestant religion. As Oyserman and colleagues (2002) pointed
out, ‘‘Researchers assume that these processes led to a Western cul-
tural focus on individualism that is more salient in countries and
ethnic groups with a Protestant heritage, applying the idea of West-
ern individualism to both cross-regional and within-country com-
parisons of ethnic groups with different cultural heritages’’ (p. 4).
It has long been noted that Protestant religion was formatively
related to American culture in general and, more specifically, to
American individualism (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tip-
ton, 1985). In his classic work, Democracy in America, the French
political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1835/1969) famously
claimed, ‘‘I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained
in the first puritan who landed on those shores, as that of the whole
human race in the first man’’ (p. 279). de Tocqueville further re-
marked on the great influence that Christianity had on American
culture, noting that Protestantism had a tendency to make people
independent. As such, Protestantism can be seen as individualistic
because the Protestant Reformation promoted the view that salva-
tion occurs as a process between an individual and God and is not
mediated by the Church (as in Catholicism, for example).
Religion as Culture 711

In the American context, an individual-centered construal of re-

ligion seems to have become even more individualistic because of the
history of the church-state relationship. Religion in the United States
was not always viewed as being entirely personal and private, as it is
today. Because the First Amendment only prohibits federally sanc-
tioned religion, for much of early American history there was an
established religion (though other religions were tolerated), and this
continued until well after the Revolutionary War. Following the
disestablishment of religion, which was complete in 1833 when Mas-
sachusetts gave up established religion, religion became more of a
private matter (Bellah et al., 1985). By the 1850s, ‘‘For religion to
have emphasized the public order in the old sense of deference and
obedience to external authorities would no longer have made sense.
Religion did not cease to be concerned with moral order, but it
operated with a new emphasis on the individual and the voluntary
association. Moral teaching came to emphasize self-control rather
than deference’’ (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 222), and sermons became less
doctrinal and ‘‘more emotional and sentimental’’ (p. 223). Perhaps
another factor that made Protestantism increasingly focused on
emotion was the scientific revolution, which encouraged religion to
focus on subjective emotions and be independent of a more ration-
ally based, natural science (reviewed in Cohen, Hall, Koenig, &
Meador, 2005).
The Protestant influence on American culture might be one key
reason why American theories of religious identity and motivation
are particularly centered on the individual. Clearly, the dominant
theoretical model in the scientific study of religion has been Gordon
Allport’s distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religion (Allport,
1950, 1958; Allport & Ross, 1967). Originally conceived by Allport
as mature (i.e., intrinsic) and immature (i.e., extrinsic) religion, the
intrinsic/extrinsic distinction has been, by and large, maintained by
psychologists of religion for 50 years. Extrinsic religion was con-
ceived by Allport as an orientation where religion is ‘‘used’’ for in-
strumental purposes, including for social integration. Because
American Protestant religion focuses strongly on personal relation-
ship with God, Americans by and large do not resonate with religion
that is based on community affiliation, social relationships, tradi-
tion, and ritual (Bellah et al., 1985; Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005; Snibbe
& Markus, 2003). Hence, certain extrinsic items on the Allport
and Ross (1967) scale such as ‘‘One reason for my being a church
712 Cohen & Hill

member is that such membership helps to establish a person in the

community’’ seem to have a particular negative connotation and
nonnormative valence within American, individualistic, Protestant
religions.

Religious Cultural Differences in Individualism and

Collectivism
We claim that considerable light can be shed on individualism and
collectivism by explicating differences among religious groups in in-
dividualistic and collectivistic processes (see Hill, 1999; McCrae,
1999; Tarakeshwar, Stanton, & Pargament, 2003, for discussions of
how the study of religion can benefit many areas of psychology).
Snibbe and Markus concluded that ‘‘cultural models are sets of as-
sumptions that are widely (though not universally) shared by a
group of people, existing both in individual minds and in public ar-
tifacts, institutions, and practices. At the individual level, these cul-
tural models provide implicit blueprints of how to think, feel, and
act. When people act according to these blueprints, they reproduce
the public models, thereby perpetuating the cultural context from
which both were derived’’ (Snibbe & Markus, 2005, p. 704). Sub-
scribing to this view of culture, we claim that groups of people that
share religious identity can be meaningfully viewed as sharing cul-
tural models and indeed as members of different cultures.
There are many facets to both individualism and collectivism that
carry implications for many domains of psychological functioning,
such as well-being, attributional style, self-concept, and relationality.
As Oyserman et al. (2002) pointed out, the core of individualism is a
worldview that stresses personal goals, uniqueness, and personal
control. In contrast, the ‘‘core element of collectivism is the assump-
tion that groups bind and mutually obligate individuals’’ (p. 5). With
so many domains to individualism and collectivism, it is necessary
for us to specify in what sense we will be discussing individualism
and collectivism as they have an impact on religious and spiritual
identity and motivation.
We propose that many American Protestant religious groups are
individualistic in the sense that all of religious and spiritual experi-
ence is seen as a process that occurs uniquely between an individual
and God. As such, religious identity and motivation are seen as
revolving around personal faith and the salience of religion to the
Religion as Culture 713

individual. As a consequence, religious motivations that are socially

centered can be seen as detracting from individualistic, intrinsic re-
ligious identity.
In contrast, like the collectivistic cultures that are more often
studied (e.g., Hindu India and several East Asian countries), certain
religious cultures value social connections as an integral element of
religious life, and group affiliations are seen as important, even de-
fining, parts of religious identity. In collectivistic religious cultures,
people are seen as fundamentally connected with each other and
their communities. Exemplars of such religions include Judaism,
Catholicism, certain branches of non-Catholic Christianity (such as
Episcopalianism or the Amish), and Hinduism (reviewed in Cohen,
Hall, et al., 2005).
Furthermore, we propose that, in collectivistic religious cultures,
people’s religious and spiritual behavior may be tightly regulated
through ritual and tradition. Rabbi Neil Gilman (1990) explained,
‘‘Rituals, like verbal languages, confer identity. That’s how they cre-
ate communities, for who we are depends in large measure on where
we belong. They garb the social experiences of everyday life in the
distinctive values of a particular group. In the process, a group ac-
quires a distinctive identity, separate from others’’ (p. 229). This
emphasis on ritual, to us, goes hand-in-hand with a more obligation-
based view of religion among collectivistic religious groups. Collec-
tivism is often seen as relying on obligation and on overcoming one’s
internal desires for the good of the collective (Markus & Kitayama,
1991; Triandis, 1995). We theorize that a similar set of processes
could characterize the experience of collectivistic religions. For ex-
ample, there are several clear justifications within Jewish teaching
concerning reasons to perform religious duties even when not in-
trinsically motivated. It is often seen as praiseworthy to place the
religious requirement above one’s own private desire (Cohen, Hall,
et al., 2005).
We theorize that differences in religious individualism and collec-
tivism among religious cultures may be partly attributable to wheth-
er religious membership is defined by heredity or by beliefs. Judaism
is a religion of ‘‘descent’’ (Morris, 1997), where religion is first de-
fined in hereditary terms—traditionally, a person is first a Jew be-
cause that person is born of a Jewish mother (or parent of either sex
in more liberal strains of Judaism). Perhaps as a consequence of this
strong collective identity, members of descent religions may be more
714 Cohen & Hill

likely to downplay the importance of what constitutes appropriate

religious dogma—evident perhaps in a lesser expectation that relig-
ious behavior expresses internal beliefs, as well as allowing more
latitude in what constitutes appropriate religious beliefs. Gilman
(1990) wrote, ‘‘In the final analysis, the suspicion that seems to have
haunted Jewish philosophy most throughout its history stems from
an almost intuitive feeling that the philosopher’s preoccupation with
clarifying and systematizing what Jews are supposed to believe is
simply not as intrinsically important to Judaism, as it is for Chris-
tianity. . . . Most Jews, even the most authentic among us, have never
given much thought to clarifying just what we believe about God,
nor do we feel that our religiosity is any the worse for it. The ‘re-
ligious’ among us observe the Sabbath, the dietary laws, the Festi-
vals, thrice-daily prayer, and the ethical teachings of the tradition’’
(preface, p. xx). In contrast, Protestant Christianity, as a set of
religions of ‘‘assent’’ to shared beliefs and values, is more likely to
focus on internal motivations and states (Morris, 1997).

Current Goals
Despite these theoretical differences among religious cultures, there
has been little empirical work on cultural differences in what people
mean when they claim to be religious or spiritual or on the processes
related to their religious and spiritual identities and motivation. Co-
hen, Siegel, and Rozin (2003) found that Jews and Protestants have
similar views on the importance of practice in being religious but
that Protestants place greater importance on religious belief. Other
initial support for our argument is evident in recent work by Cohen,
Pierce, et al. (2005), who demonstrated that intrinsic and extrinsic
religiosity were correlated negatively among Protestants. However,
extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity were positively (but weakly) corre-
lated among Catholics. Cohen, Pierce, et al. suggested these moder-
ator effects could be due to the differing value that Catholicism and
Protestantism place on certain components of intrinsic and extrinsic
religiosity, particularly on social aspects of religious identity and
motivation. They furthermore claimed that the individualistic slant
of the intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales applied better to Prot-
estants than Catholics.
Our intent is to provide systematic evidence for differing religious
collectivistic and individualistic identity and motivation among three
Religion as Culture 715

religious cultural groups (Catholics, Jews, and Protestants) in the

United States. As we have stated, we consider individualistic relig-
ious identity and motivation as an expression of individual feelings
and faith and personal relationship with God. Collectivistic religious
and spirituality identity and motivation are conceptualized as em-
phasizing social integration, ritual, and tradition. Of course, it is too
simplistic to suggest that either religious tradition fully embraces
only one orientation to the exclusion of the other. Rather, we claim
that religious cultures reflect different emphases—just as cultural
psychologists propose not that America fully embraces individual-
ism whereas certain other cultures solely embrace collectivism but
that cultures contain both individualistic and collectivistic notions,
yet differentially emphasize individualistic and collectivistic aspects
of self-construal, identity, and motivation (Markus & Kitayama,
1991; Oyserman et al., 2002).
Much cross-cultural work on individualism and collectivism con-
founds country of origin and religion, such as in studies of Amer-
ican–Hindu Indian differences in moral reasoning (e.g., Miller &
Bersoff, 1994; Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997). There-
fore, we restrict our focus to religious cultural groups within one
country, the United States. Because religious values persist through
the process of modernization in cultures (Inglehart & Baker, 2000),
we hypothesize that religious values concerning individualistic and
collectivistic identity and motivation will be evident in contemporary
American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants.
Early work on related topics, such as moral judgment, forgive-
ness, well-being, and religiosity, has focused primarily on Jewish–
Protestant differences (e.g., Cohen, 2002, 2003; Cohen, Malka,
Rozin, & Cherfas, 2006; Cohen & Rankin, 2004; Cohen & Rozin,
2001; Cohen et al., 2003). And indeed, Sampson (2000) contrasted
the collectivistic worldview of traditional Judaism with the individ-
ualistic viewpoint of certain Christian religious groups. Unfortu-
nately, much prior work has neglected to include Roman Catholics,
who are perhaps in a unique position. On the one hand, Catholics
are Christian, with a belief structure that has considerable overlap
with that of Protestants. On the other hand, Catholics seem more
collective, compared to Protestants, as reflected in placing greater
importance on religious symbols, corporate worship, and communal
religious identity (Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005). In three of the four
studies reported here, Catholics are included in the analyses.
716 Cohen & Hill

In Study 1, a preliminary study on community samples of Jews

and Protestants, we investigated whether Jews and Protestants differ
on whether religion relies on assent to beliefs versus biological de-
scent, as well as some related constructs (Morris, 1997).
In Study 2, using a large undergraduate sample, we investigated
interrelationships between religiousness, spirituality, salience of re-
ligious identity, and Allport and Ross’s (1967) intrinsic and extrinsic
religiosity scales. We present data from Catholics, Jews, and Prot-
estants.
In Study 3, participants rated intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity
items for the degree to which they were seen as appropriate moti-
vations for religion.
In Study 4, an Internet sample of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants
described meaningful experiences. We investigated the involvement
of God and social relationships in these experiences. We also exam-
ined whether these social and God experiences correlated with in-
trinsic and extrinsic religiosity in divergent patterns.

STUDY 1
In this preliminary study, we investigated whether Jews and Protes-
tants would differ on whether religion relies on assent to beliefs ver-
sus biological descent, feelings of connection to coreligionists, views
about the controllability of religious beliefs, and views of ritual.
These are all factors that Morris (1997) has theorized would be re-
lated to assent- and descent-based religious membership. If we can
produce evidence related to these goals, we will begin to bolster our
theoretical perspective that Protestants endorse what we have the-
orized to be religiously individualistic processes of identity, whereas
Jews are more religiously collectivistic.

Method

Participants. Religious leaders from churches and synagogues in central

Pennsylvania were asked to distribute questionnaires to congregants.
They were not told in detail about the purpose of the questionnaire. No
compensation was given.
The Jewish sample (n 5 88) consisted of 35 Orthodox Jews, 24 Con-
servative Jews, 24 Reform Jews, and 5 Reconstructionist Jews. Sixty-five
were married, 13 single, 7 widowed, 2 separated or divorced, and 2 did not
provide marital status. Fifty-three participants were women, 34 were men,
Religion as Culture 717

and 2 did not indicate sex. Seventy-five were White and 10 did not provide
racial or ethnic information.
The Protestant sample (n 5 72) consisted of 39 Methodists, 16 Baptists,
and 13 Presbyterians. Four participants were from a nondenominational,
fundamentalist church. Most (n 5 59) were married, 6 single, 3 separated
or divorced, 3 widowed, and 1 did not provide marital status. This
sample was also predominantly female (45 women, 26 men, and 1 did not
provide sex). Sixty-seven were White, 3 were Black, and 1 did not provide
race.

Demographic measures. Participants indicated their age, education from

1 (elementary school) to 5 (graduate degree), and self-rated levels of re-
ligiousness and spirituality, which were rated on separate 0 (not at all) to 5
(extremely) scales.

Assent, descent, ritual, community, and belief controllability. Thirteen

items tapped people’s beliefs about assent versus descent membership in
their religion, community obligations, ritual emphasis, and controllability
of religious beliefs (Table 1). Responses were from 7 (strongly disagree)
to 17 (strongly agree).

Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses. Jews (M 5 55.3, SD 5 17.0) were slightly old-

er than Protestants (M 5 50.2, SD 5 14.0; t (146) 5 2.0, po.05). Jews
(M 5 4.1, SD 5 1.0) were also more educated than Protestants
(M 5 3.8, SD 5 1.0; t (156) 5 2.0, po.05). Protestants (M 5 3.6,
SD 5 0.8) rated themselves more religious than did Jews (M 5 2.6,
SD 5 1.0; t (156) 5 6.7, po.001). Protestants (M 5 3.6, SD 5 1.0)
also rated themselves more spiritual than Jews did (M 5 2.7,
SD 5 1.2; t (156) 5 5.0, po.001).

Assent, descent, ritual, community, and controllability of religious be-

liefs. The pool of 13 items was subjected to an exploratory Prin-
cipal Components Analysis with Varimax rotation, which generated
a clear five-factor solution (Table 1). Three items were averaged to
create an ‘‘assent factor’’ (Factor 1). Two items were combined to
make a ‘‘belief controllability factor’’ (Factor 2). Three items were
combined to create a ‘‘ritual factor’’ (Factor 3). Three items were
combined to create a ‘‘descent factor’’ (Factor 4). Two items
were averaged to create a ‘‘community responsibility factor’’ (Factor 5).
 Table 1
Varimax Rotated Factor Loadings from Principal Components Analysis in Study 1

Loading on Factor

Item 1 2 3 4 5

Factor 1: Assent
Being a member of my religion/faith is a .83 .03 .08 .15 .08
matter of what a person believes in his or
her heart.
My religion or faith mostly cares about .83 .09 .02 .19 .05
what a person believes in his heart.
My religion or faith is mostly focused on .77 .17 .27 .05 .07
an individual’s relationship with God.
Factor 2: Belief controllability
My religion or faith teaches that a .03 .90 .04 .02 .08
person’s religious beliefs cannot be
controlled.
My religion or faith teaches that a .04 .88 .05 .02 .06
person’s religious beliefs can be
controlled.
Factor 3: Ritual
My religion or faith has a very legalistic .23 .00 .80 .19 .16
tradition.
My religion or faith is very structured. .01 .23 .69 .33 .00
My religion or faith cares mostly about a .07 .12 .68 .11 .10
person’s behavior.
Factor 4: Descent (Instructions: Imagine a person who was born into a different religion/faith from you but then was adopted as
an infant into a family of your religion/faith. This person does not know that he was adopted and believes fully in the teachings of
your religion.)
In order for this person to be a true .10 .01 .07 .76 .15
member of my religion or faith, they
would have to undergo a formal
conversion.
This person is as much a member of my .29 .03 .01 .75 .07
religion or faith as anyone else.
If I want to know whether a person really .28 .00 .24 .61 .27
belongs to my religion/faith, I have to
know what religion their biological
parents are.
Factor 5: Community Responsibility
As a member of my religion or faith, I am .04 .04 .00 .11 .87
in some sense responsible for other
members of my religion or faith.
My religion or faith is focused mostly on .03 .07 .38 .05 .66
community life.
Percent of total variance explained 16.9 12.9 14.3 13.5 10.3
Eigenvalue 3.1 1.8 1.7 1.2 1.0
Note: Salient factor loadings are in bold.
720 Cohen & Hill

Table 2
Means for Jews and Protestants on Demographics, Assent, Descent,
Belief Controllability, Ritual, and Community Responsibility Scales in
Study 1

Jews Protestants Significance

M SD M SD df t

Demographics
Religiousness 2.6 1.0 3.6 0.8 156 6.7nnn
Spirituality 2.7 1.2 3.6 1.0 156 5.0nnn
Age 55.3 17.0 50.2 14.0 146 2.0n
Education 4.1 1.0 3.8 1.0 156 2.0n
Scale Scores
Assent 2.1 3.5 5.2 2.3 149 6.2nnn
Belief control 1.7 3.9 2.4 4.2 121 1.0
Ritual 3.7 2.3 0.5 3.1 130 6.9nnn
Descent 2.3 3.8 4.9 2.6 143 4.6nnn
Community responsibility 3.0 3.0 1.8 2.9 130 2.2n
Notes: np  .05. nnn
p  .001.

Jews were expected to express greater endorsement of the descent,

community responsibility, and ritual scales, whereas Protestants were
expected to score higher on the assent scale and on the belief controll-
ability scale (Morris, 1997). Jews and Protestants differed strongly in
scores for the assent, descent, and ritual scales, and Jews scored higher
on the community responsibility scale (Table 2). Means for belief con-
trollability were in the predicted directions but were not significantly
different.
We next investigated whether these differences would survive con-
trolling for sex, religiousness, spirituality, age, and education. Jewish
was coded as 1, and Protestant was coded as 0. For the descent scale
(b 5 .49, po.001), the ritual scale (b 5 .57, po.001), and the assent
scale (b 5 .46, po.001), the effect of religious group was still
highly significant (bs are the effects of religion). The effect of religion
on the community responsibility scale was reduced to marginal
significance (b 5 .19, p 5 .09). These results suggest that for Jews,
religious identity is more related to biological descent and ritual
than for Protestants—a religiously collectivistic viewpoint. For
Religion as Culture 721

Protestants, religion is related to personal assent to religious beliefs, a

religiously individualistic outlook.

STUDY 2
In this study, we investigated, in a large student sample of Catholics,
Jews, and Protestants, responses to Allport and Ross’s (1967)
intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales. Of importance, our goal
was not to use these scales to examine the religious orientation of our
participants per se but to demonstrate that religious cultural group
moderates patterns of responses to these items in ways that are con-
sistent with differences in religious individualism and collectivism.
We predicted that for all three groups, intrinsic religiosity would
be positively correlated with self-ratings of religiousness and spiri-
tuality. All of these religious communities consider it important to
have religion be personally salient and internalized. Because many
extrinsic religiosity items tap social and ritual elements of religion,
we expected extrinsic religiosity to be positively related to religious-
ness and spirituality for Jews and Catholics. We expected extrinsic
religiosity to relate negatively to religiousness and spirituality for
Protestants.
In drawing our distinction between social and individualistic re-
ligious motivation and identity in the context of Allport’s notion of
intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness, we note that prior investigators
have devoted considerable attention to the factor structure of the
Allport and Ross (1967) intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales, as
well as derivative scales. For example, some evidence has emerged
(Kirkpatrick, 1989) that extrinsic religiosity can be further subdi-
vided into a three-item, extrinsic-personal subscale (sample item:
‘‘The primary purpose of prayer is to gain relief and protection’’)
and a three-item, extrinsic-social subscale (sample item: ‘‘A primary
reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a congenial
social activity’’). Perhaps, then, for our purposes, the best strategy
would be to explore differences in endorsement of extrinsic-social
versus extrinsic-personal items.
However, we agree with Cohen, Hall, et al. (2005) that there are
implicit social aspects to many extrinsic items, even those that do not
explicitly reference social considerations (Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005).
For example, the extrinsic item from Allport and Ross (1967) of
722 Cohen & Hill

‘‘I pray chiefly because I have been taught to pray’’ may not explic-
itly have a social nature to it. But Cohen, Hall, et al. (2005) observed
that, in religions that focus on ritual and tradition, prayer is a skill
that requires practice. Hence, people are taught to pray in a certain,
ritualized way from a young age, which could result in more en-
dorsement of ‘‘praying because one has been taught to pray.’’ For
these reasons, we did not strongly hypothesize that the greater value
placed on social motivation and identity among Catholics and Jews
would be evident only in extrinsic-social items. Therefore, we present
data for the intrinsic and extrinsic scales, as well as exploratory an-
alyses for the extrinsic-social and extrinsic-personal subscales.

Method

Participants. A total of 1,364 students at the University of California,

Berkeley, filled out a questionnaire packet for course credit. Data were
analyzed from all people who identified themselves as Catholic (N 5 164;
62 men and 102 women), Jewish (N 5 42; 21 men, 21 women), or Prot-
estant (N 5 214, 79 men, 135 women). The sex ratios did not significantly
differ among the samples, w2 (2) 5 2.60, p 5 .27.

Measures. Measures included the intrinsic and extrinsic subscales of

Allport and Ross’s (1967) religious orientation scale, separate single-item
self-ratings of religiousness and spirituality, and two items designed to tap
salience of religious identity: (a) ‘‘How important a part of your identity is
your religion or faith to you?’’ and (b) ‘‘If someone wanted to understand
who you are as a person, how important is your religion or faith in that?’’
These two items were combined into an ‘‘identity’’ scale (a 5 .93). The
intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales and the two religious salience items
were responded to on 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scales.
Self-ratings of religiousness and spirituality were responded to on 0 (not
at all) to 5 (deeply) scales.
The intrinsic religiosity subscale consists of nine items, originally con-
ceptualized to measure mature religiosity and the extent to which religion
is the master motive in one’s life (Allport & Ross, 1967). Sample items are
‘‘I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings in life’’ and
‘‘My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to
life.’’
The extrinsic religiosity subscale consists of 11 items, proposed by
Allport and Ross to tap the immature, instrumental use of religion. Sam-
ple items are ‘‘It doesn’t matter so much what I believe so long as I lead a
Religion as Culture 723

Table 3
Mean Differences Among Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in Study 2

Catholics Jews Protestants Significance

Item or scale M SD M SD M SD F

Religiousness 2.38A 1.29 1.66B 1.20 2.94C 1.43 18.96nnn

Spirituality 2.85A 1.320 2.02B 1.21 3.24C 1.25 16.92nnn
Intrinsic religiosity 33.37A 11.59 22.95B 10.05 39.99C 14.43 34.60nnn
Extrinsic religiosity 42.17A 9.49 39.55AB 12.01 36.97BC 11.39 10.94nnn
Identity 8.24A 3.72 6.57B 3.85 9.73C 4.04 14.70nnn
Notes: dferror for analyses range from 413 to 419. The between-subject df is 2 for all
analyses. Means that do not share a subscript within a row differ significantly by
post-hoc Bonferroni test.
nnn
p  .001.

moral life’’ and ‘‘A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my
church is a congenial social activity.’’
Intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity items were adapted to be more
inclusive. For example, the extrinsic item, ‘‘One reason for my being a
church member is that such membership helps to establish a person in the
community’’ was changed slightly to read ‘‘One reason for my being a
church member (or other religious institution, such as synagogue,
mosque, etc.) is that such membership helps to establish a person in the
community.’’

Results and Discussion

Mean differences. Mean differences for the scales were explored

via one-way ANOVA (Table 3). There was a significant effect of
religious culture on intrinsic religiosity, F (2, 419) 5 34.60,
MSE 5 168.79, po.001. Bonferroni tests showed that all three
groups differed, with Protestants scoring highest, then Catholics,
with Jews showing the lowest scores ( pso.001).
For extrinsic religiosity, there was a significant effect of religious
culture, F (2, 416) 5 10.94, MSE 5 115.45, po.001. The scores for
Catholics were higher than those of Protestants (po.001), but Jews
did not differ significantly from Catholics (p 5 .50) or Protestants
(p 5 .49).
On the identity scale, all three groups significantly differed, F (2,
419) 5 14.70, MSE 5 15.19, p  .001, with Protestants scoring
724 Cohen & Hill

Table 4
Correlations of Items and Scales in Study 2

Catholics (ns range from 160 to 165)

Religious Spiritual Identity Intrinsic religiosity

Spiritual .56nnn
Identity .68nnn .48nnn
Intrinsic religiosity .71nnn .56nnn .82nnn
Extrinsic religiosity .05 .13 .06 .07
Extrinsic religiosity–social .19n .14w .27nnn .32nnn
Extrinsic religiosity–personal .29nnn .30nnn .32nnn .32nnn

Jews (ns range from 38 to 42)

Religious Spiritual Identity Intrinsic religiosity

Spiritual .57nnn
Identity .79nnn .38nn
Intrinsic religiosity .58nnn .41nn .69nnn
Extrinsic religiosity .46nn .25 .58nnn .60nnn
Extrinsic religiosity–social .33n .11 .41nn .44nn
Extrinsic religiosity–personal .39n .29w .57nnn .58nnn

Protestants (ns range from 212 to 215)

Religious Spiritual Identity Intrinsic religiosity

Spiritual .61nnn
Identity .76nnn .55nnn
Intrinsic religiosity .79nnn .60nnn .91nnn
Extrinsic religiosity .32nnn .26nnn .33nnn .34nnn
Extrinsic religiosity–social .10 .02 .15n .16n
Extrinsic religiosity–personal .00 .07 .02 .02
Notes: wpo.10. np  .05. p  .01.
nn nnn
p  .001.

higher than Catholics (p 5 .001) and Jews, (p  .001), and Catholics

scoring higher than Jews (p 5 .04).
Religious cultural groups also differed in mean levels of self-rated
religiousness, F(2, 413) 5 18.96, MSE 5 1.83, po.001. Post-hoc
Bonferroni tests indicated significant differences between the three
groups, with Protestants scoring higher than Catholics and Jews
Religion as Culture 725

(ps  .001), and Catholics also scoring higher than Jews (p 5 .008).
A similar pattern was seen for spirituality self-ratings, F (2,
413) 5 16.92, MSE 5 1.62, po.001. Protestants rated themselves
more spiritual than did Catholics (p 5 .01) and Jews (po.001). Cath-
olics rated themselves more spiritual than did Jews (p 5 .001).

Correlational and moderator analyses. Intrinsic religiosity was high-

ly and positively correlated with identity, religiousness, and spiritu-
ality in all three religious groups (Table 4). To test for the
significance of differences in correlations, we followed the proce-
dures for moderated regression analyses proposed by Aiken and
West (1991). In these regressions, the dependent variable was re-
gressed on religious group, intrinsic religiosity, and their interaction.
All variables were standardized. Intrinsic religiosity correlated to
about similar extents with self-rated religiosity (b 5 .01, ns), spiritu-
ality (b 5 .07, ns), and religiosity identity (b 5 .01, ns), among Cath-
olics and Protestants. Intrinsic religiosity also correlated to similar
extents among Jews and Protestants with religiosity (b 5 .03, ns),
spirituality (b 5 .01, ns), and identity (b 5 .02, ns). Comparing
Catholics and Jews also showed no differences in correlations be-
tween intrinsic religiosity and self-rated religiosity (b 5 .04, ns),
spirituality (b 5 .05, ns), or identity (b 5 .00, ns).
In contrast, extrinsic religiosity correlated with intrinsic religios-
ity, religious identity, self-rated religiousness, and self-rated spiritu-
ality to vastly different extents among Catholics, Jews, and
Protestants. Correlations were negative among Protestants, nonsig-
nificant among Catholics, and highly positive among Jews. Similar
patterns were evident for the extrinsic-social and extrinsic-personal
subscales.
We next carried out a series of moderated regressions to test for
differences in correlations. First we compared Jews to Protestants.
Extrinsic religiosity was more highly correlated among Jews, as com-
pared to Protestants, with self-rated religiousness (b 5 .25, p  .001),
self-rated spirituality (b 5 .18, p  .01), intrinsic religiosity (b 5 .26,
p  .001), and identity (b 5 .31, p  .001). As our analyses for ex-
trinsic-social and extrinsic-personal subscales were exploratory and
the patterns were similar to those of the general extrinsic scales, we do
not present moderator analyses for the subscales.
Next, we compared correlations among Catholics and Prot
estants. Extrinsic religiosity was more highly correlated among
726 Cohen & Hill

Catholics, as compared to Protestants, with religious identity

(b 5 .18, p  .001), self-rated religiousness (b 5 .17, p  .001), self-
rated spirituality (b 5 .18, p  .001), and intrinsic religiosity (b 5 .18,
p  .001). We similarly compared correlations among Jews and
Catholics and discovered significant differences for correlations of
extrinsic religiosity with religious identity (b 5 .19, p  .01), intrinsic
religiosity (b 5 .16, p 5 .02), a marginal difference for self-rated re-
ligiousness (b 5 .13, p 5 .06), and no significant difference in corre-
lations for self-rated spirituality (b 5 .03, ns).
One interpretation of these differing correlations is group differ-
ences in global religiousness, though we believe these analyses should
be interpreted with caution because self-rated religiosity and intrinsic
religiosity are highly correlated and may tap similar underlying con-
structs for members of these religious groups. However, the Jewish-
Protestant difference in correlations between intrinsic religiosity and
extrinsic religiosity was still significant when controlling for self-rat-
ed religiousness (b 5 .09, p 5 .03). The Jewish-Protestant difference
in correlations between extrinsic religiosity and identity also re-
mained significant when controlling for self-rated religiousness
(b 5 .13, p 5 .003). Similar results emerged for Catholic–Protestant
differences in correlations. The difference in correlations between
intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity scales among Catholics and Prot-
estants, controlling for religiousness, was marginally significant
(b 5 .06, p 5 .11). For the extrinsic religiosity-identity difference in
correlations, partialling out religiousness also reduced the effect
somewhat (b 5 .05, p 5 .18). For Catholics and Jews, controlling
for religiosity left a significant difference in correlations between ex-
trinsic religiosity and identity, (b 5 .11, p 5 .04) and a marginal dif-
ference in correlations between extrinsic religiosity and intrinsic
religiosity (b 5 .08, p 5 .11).

Summary. We interpret these results to be consistent with our the-

orizing regarding differences in individualistic and collectivistic pro-
cesses among American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. For
Protestants, the individualistic aspects of religious identity that are
contained in the intrinsic religiosity scale seem to resonate more than
they did with either Catholics or Jews, as reflected in the higher mean
scores for Protestants. Conversely, the items in the community-ori-
ented extrinsic religiosity scale were endorsed more by Catholics and
Jews than by Protestants. Moreover, for Protestants, but not for
Religion as Culture 727

Catholics or Jews, extrinsic motivations are incompatible with in-

trinsic motivations insofar as extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity are
negatively correlated with each other. For Jews, for whom intrinsic
and extrinsic religiosity are positive intercorrelated, both individu-
alistic (intrinsic) and community (extrinsic) aspects of religion may
be mutually reinforcing. The correlations of extrinsic religiosity with
other variables among Catholics were intermediate in magnitude
between those of Jews and Protestants, suggesting perhaps that
Catholics may entertain some combination of these outlooks.

STUDY 3
The goal of Study 3 was to provide converging evidence that relig-
ious motivations are viewed differently by members of different re-
ligious cultural groups. We asked participants to rate how
appropriate each intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity item would be as
a religious motivation instead of asking how participants personally
endorsed each item.

Method

Participants and procedures. Procedures were the same as in Study 2. We

present data from a separate University of California, Berkeley, sample of
62 Jews, 151 Protestants, and 121 Catholics. Participants were provided
with the intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity items and were given the fol-
lowing instructions: ‘‘For each of the following statements, imagine that
this is a statement by a person who is explaining their motivations or
feelings about religion. Please rate each of the following statements in
terms of how appropriate they would be as motivations for religious be-
havior—not how much each one describes you, but how appropriate each
one is in your view.’’ Ratings were made on 1 (not at all appropriate) to 7
(very appropriate) scales. In addition, we obtained single-item self-ratings
of religiousness and spirituality on 1 (not at all) to 5 (deeply) scales. We
neglected to solicit the two-item religious identity scale in this study.

Results

Mean differences. There was a significant effect of religious cultural

group on religiousness self-ratings (F (2, 330) 5 24.02, MSE 5 1.06,
po.001). Protestants (M 5 3.5, SD 5 1.1) and Catholics (M 5 3.2,
SD 5 0.9) rated themselves more religious than did Jews (M 5 2.4,
 Table 5
Estimated Marginal Means (Controlling for Religiosity and Spirituality) in Study 3

Catholics Jews Protestants Significance

M SE M SE M SE F

Intrinsic religiosity 4.9AB 0.11 4.4A 0.16 5.1B 0.10 6.76nnn

Extrinsic religiosity 3.9A 0.08 4.0A 0.12 3.4B 0.08 15.15nnn
Extrinsic religiosity–social 3.7AB 0.12 4.0A 0.18 3.4B 0.11 3.63n
Extrinsic religiosity–personal 4.6A 0.12 4.1AB 0.17 4.1B 0.11 5.36nn
Notes: dferror for analyses range from 326 to 327. The between-subject df is 2 for all analyses. Means that do not share a subscript within a row
differ significantly by post-hoc Bonferroni test.
n
p  .05. nnp  .01. nnnp  .001.
Religion as Culture 729

SD 5 0.9; pso.001). Protestants also rated themselves marginally

more religious than did Catholics (p 5 .07). There was also a signif-
icant effect of religious cultural group on spirituality self-ratings
(F (2, 329) 5 7.92, MSE 5 1.24, po.001). Protestants (M 5 3.6,
SD 5 1.1) and Catholics (M 5 3.4, SD 5 1.0) were higher than
Jews (M 5 2.9, SD 5 1.2; po.001 and p 5 .009, respectively). Prot-
estants and Catholics were not different (p 5 .83).
We analyzed the following scales: intrinsic religiosity (9 items,
a 5 .92), extrinsic religiosity (11 items, a 5 .81), extrinsic-social
(3 items, a 5 .71), and extrinsic-personal (3 items, a 5 .69). We con-
ducted analyses with and without controlling for self-ratings of re-
ligiousness and spirituality, and since results were extremely similar,
we present results for analyses that controlled for religiousness and
spirituality self-ratings.
Religious culture had a significant effect on appropriateness rat-
ings of the general extrinsic religiosity scale (Table 5), and post-hoc
Bonferroni tests indicated that Protestants were lower than both
Catholics and Jews (pso.001), who did not differ. Protestants were
significantly higher on intrinsic religiousness than were Jews,
p 5 .001. Catholics did not significantly differ from Jews (p 5 .10)
or Protestants (p 5 .16).
We also conducted exploratory analyses on the extrinsic-social
and extrinsic-personal subscales. There was a significant effect of
religious cultural group on the extrinsic-social subscale, such that
Jews differed from Protestants (p 5 .02). On the extrinsic-personal
subscale, there was also a significant effect of religious cultural
group, and Catholics and Protestants differed significantly
(p 5 .005).

Correlational and moderator analyses. To follow up on the findings

in the prior study, we focused on the differing correlations of the
extrinsic religiosity scale with intrinsic religiosity, self-rated religious-
ness, and self-rated spirituality. For Protestants, ratings of the nor-
mativeness of extrinsic religiosity were negatively correlated with
ratings of the normativeness of intrinsic religiosity (r 5 .36,
po.001), with self-ratings of religiousness (r 5 .36, po.001),
and spirituality (r 5 .30, po.001). For Catholics, ratings of the
normativeness of extrinsic religiosity were not significantly cor-
related with ratings of the normativeness of intrinsic religiosity
(r 5 .10, p 5 .26) but were negatively correlated with self-ratings of
730 Cohen & Hill

religiousness (r 5 .31, p 5 .001) and spirituality (r 5 .16,

p 5 .09). For Jews, ratings of the normativeness of extrinsic religi-
osity were strongly and positively correlated with ratings of the nor-
mativeness of intrinsic religiosity (r 5 .47, po.001) and positively,
but more weakly, with self-ratings of religiousness (r 5 .15, p 5 .26)
and spirituality (r 5 .16, p 5 .21). Our exploratory analysis of pat-
terns for the extrinsic-social and extrinsic-personal scales followed
similar patterns as the global extrinsic scale.
Using moderated regressions, we compared the differences in cor-
relations as we did in Study 2. Comparing Catholics to Jews, the
differences in correlations between extrinsic and intrinsic normative-
ness ratings (b 5 .20, p 5 .004), self-ratings of religiousness (b 5 .21,
p 5 .002), and self-ratings of spirituality (b 5 .15, p 5 .04) were all
significant. Comparing Jews to Protestants, the differences in corre-
lations between extrinsic and intrinsic normativeness ratings
(b 5 .40, po.001), self-ratings of religiousness (b 5 .23, po.001),
and self-ratings of spirituality (b 5 .22, p 5 .002) were also all sig-
nificant. Comparing Catholics to Protestants, the difference in cor-
relations between extrinsic and intrinsic normativeness ratings was
significant (b 5 .22, po.001). However, the differences in correla-
tions of extrinsic religiosity normativeness ratings and self-ratings of
religiousness (b 5 .05, p 5 .43) or between extrinsic religiosity nor-
mativeness ratings and self-ratings of spirituality (b 5 .07, p 5 .24)
were not significant.
We next explored whether controlling for self-rated religiosity
would explain the group differences in correlations between the
normativeness of extrinsic religiosity and intrinsic religiosity. The
Catholic–Protestant difference (b 5 .21, po.001), the Jewish–
Protestant difference (b 5 .32, po.001), and the Catholic–Jewish
difference (b 5 .15, p 5 .03) in correlations were all still significant
when controlling for self-rated religiosity.

Summary. As we proposed in Study 2, we believe that the greater

endorsement among Protestants of intrinsic religiosity items reflects
a greater emphasis on the personal salience of religious identity. For
Catholics and Jews, religious identity seems collectivistically ground-
ed in that extrinsic religiosity items are more strongly endorsed.
Furthermore, as in Study 2, we replicated here the finding that ex-
trinsic (collectivistic) religious motivations are antithetical to the
Religion as Culture 731

more individualistic, intrinsic motivations for Protestants but not for

Catholics and Jews.

STUDY 4
In this study, we obtained participants’ open-ended, narrative de-
scriptions of important experiences in their lives. Our goal was to
determine whether differences in social versus individualistic aspects
of religious identity would emerge in this less-structured format. In
addition to speaking to the differing salience of individualistic and
collectivistic aspects of religion, these data also document some ef-
fects of religious cultural norms on emotional and meaningful ex-
periences. We hypothesized that such experiences for Protestants
would commonly involve a personal encounter with God. For Cath-
olics, and especially Jews, we hypothesized that such experiences
would commonly be social. We also predicted that the likelihood of
having an experience involving God would correlate positively with
intrinsic religiosity, whereas having a social experience would be
positively correlated with extrinsic religiosity.
Method

Participants and procedures. The data being analyzed here come from a
project that focused primarily on forgiveness (Cohen, et al., 2006). Most
participants were students at an East Coast or West Coast research uni-
versity. Most participants were women (n 5 91), with 35 men. The age
range of the sample was 17 to 58 (M 5 23.0, SD 5 7.04). Education was
coded from 1 (elementary school) to 5 (graduate degree), M 5 3.4,
SD 5 0.85.

Measures. We asked participants to describe life-changing experiences

as follows: ‘‘Have you ever had an experience that significantly changed
the way you approach life or the world? If not, just say you haven’t. If so,
please tell us about the experience in a few sentences: Where were you?
What was the experience like? What emotions did you experience? How
did the experience change you?’’ Participants also completed the intrinsic
religiosity (a 5 .88) and extrinsic religiosity scales (a 5 .81), and the two-
item identity scale (a 5 .93).

Results and Discussion

Sample narratives. There was a very wide range of experiences re-

ported. Some resembled the prototypical, spiritually transformative,
732 Cohen & Hill

born-again experience described by Starbuck (1900) and James

(1902/1997). One participant described his or her experience as
follows:

The most important experience in my life was the moment that I

first accepted that Jesus Christ really was God Himself. I remem-
ber sitting in my bedroom crying because I was deeply upset and
angry. If Jesus Christ was who he said he was then there weren’t
an infinite number of ways to God; there was One. Then every-
thing I’d believed before, all of the vague nebulous self-conceived
ideas I’d had about God, were simply wrong. Here was a God who
was real, concrete, and infinitely loving. And I was angry because I
knew that I wouldn’t be able to go on living however I wanted
with God consigned to some ethereal realm of ideals. Here was a
God who had created me and knew me completely, a God who
suffered and died for me. He wasn’t an idea, He was a reality. I
couldn’t just treat Him as I treated an idea or a philosophy, fol-
lowing it when it was easy and abandoning it when it interfered
with what I wanted. I would have to give Him my life. That night,
in spite of all my anger and frustration, I put my trust in Him for
the first time.

Table 6
Correlations of Social and God Codes With Demographics and
Religiosity Scales in Study 4

Code

Social God

God code .21n

Intrinsic religiosity .21n .31nnn
Extrinsic religiosity .10 .25nn
Identity .11 .32nnn
Sex .11 .01
Age .10 .21n
Education .07 .16w
Notes: For both the social code and the God code, yes was coded as 1 and no was
coded as 0. For sex, male was coded as 1 and female as 0.
w
p  .10. np  .05. nnp  .01. nnnp  .001.
Religion as Culture 733

Other participants’ descriptions were focused on connections to

other people, often in a religious context:

When my brother died my father started attending minyan [the

participant is referring to daily Jewish services] every day. He said
it comforted him greatly. I was aware that it was the rituals and
other men there that made him feel better—not any idea that God
had intended this—he used religion as a subverbal tool to connect
him with other people now as well as forward and backward in
time in his mourning. I understood then that my human relation-
ships were all that gave meaning to my life but that the humans
that I related to were a much larger group than the people I would
meet during my lifetime.

Narrative coding. The sample of 126 essays were separated from

the rest of the data and coded by two independent coders (blind to
condition and hypotheses) on a binary scale (yes/no) whether the
experiences importantly involved God and connection to other peo-
ple. These codes were not designed to be mutually exclusive. Initially,
coding reliabilities were at acceptable levels. For the God code, 44
essays were coded no by both coders, and 61 were coded yes, with 13
disagreements (K 5 .65, po.001). For the social code, 69 essays were
coded no by both coders, and 40 were coded yes. There were 15 dis-
agreements (K 5 .70, po.001). The two coders then got together
with an author to discuss discrepancies. Revised decisions were
reached, as follows: For the social code, 68 were coded no by both
coders, and 53 were coded yes. There remained five disagreements
(K 5 .92, po.001). For the God code, after discussion, 48 essays
were coded no by both coders, 71 coded were yes by both coders, and
there were 7 disagreements (K 5 .89, po.001). Remaining disagree-
ments were decided by an author. Finally, for the social code, 68
essays were coded yes, and 58 no. Fifty-one essays received yes for
the God code, and 75 no.

Correlational analyses. We correlated God and social codes with

gender, age, education, intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, and the re-
ligious identity scale (Table 6). For each category (God or social),
yes was coded as 1, and no was coded as 0. The God and social code
were modestly and negatively correlated with each other. Intrinsic
734 Cohen & Hill

religiosity predicted a lower likelihood of a yes on the social code,

but a greater likelihood of a yes for the God code. Extrinsic religi-
osity was not significantly related to the social code, but was neg-
atively correlated with the God code. The two-item religious identity
scale was not significantly related to the social code but was posi-
tively correlated with the God code.

Religious differences. For the following analyses, we present data

from the subset of participants who were Catholic (n 5 33), Jewish
(n 5 22), or Protestant (n 5 45). The ages of the three religious
groups (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant) did show some significant dif-
ferences, F (2, 97) 5 5.55, MSE 5 50.02, p 5 .005. By post-hoc Bon-
ferroni tests, Jews (M 5 27.3, SD 5 12.94) were older than Catholics
(M 5 22.4, SD 5 5.14; p 5 .005) and Protestants (M 5 21.0,
SD 5 2.35; p 5 .03). And there were some differences in education
levels between the religious cultural groups, F (2, 97) 5 3.64,
MSE 5 0.68, p 5 .03. The only significant difference was between
Jews (M 5 3.6, SD 5 1.05) and Protestants (M 5 3.4, SD 5 0.84;
p 5 .04). Catholics (M 5 3.1, SD 5 0.61) did not significantly differ
from either of the other groups. As in prior studies, there were sig-
nificant differences on intrinsic religiosity, F (2, 97) 5 15.55,
MSE 5 0.43, po.001. Jews (M 5 3.4, SD 5 0.76) scored lower than
Catholics (M 5 3.7, SD 5 0.71) and Protestants (M 5 4.3, SD 5 0.55;
p’s  .001), who did not differ (p 5 .22). For the extrinsic religiosity
scale, there was also a significant effect of religion, F (2, 97) 5 12.16,
MSE 5 0.40, po.001. Protestants (M 5 2.2, SD 5 0.74) scored lower
than both Jews (M 5 3.0, SD 5 0.42; p  .001) and Catholics
(M 5 2.7, SD 5 0.60), who did not differ (p 5 .34). For the two
item religious identity scale, there was a significant effect of religion,
F (2, 97) 5 10.74, MSE 5 1.47, po.001. Protestants (M 5 4.7,
SD 5 0.66) were higher than Catholics (M 5 3.6, SD 5 1.30;
p 5 .001) and Jews (M 5 3.4, SD 5 1.82; po.001) who did not dif-
fer (p 5 1.0).
Next, we investigated the likelihood of social and God experiences
in the religious groups. For the God code, a significantly higher
percentage of Protestants (84.4%) than Catholics (54.5%) and Jews
(27.3%) were coded as yes, w2 (2 df) 5 21.66, po.001. For the social
code, a marginally significant higher percentage of Jews (68.2%)
than Catholics (51.5%) and Protestants (40%) were coded as yes, w2
(2 df) 5 4.74, p 5 .09.
Religion as Culture 735

As in previous studies, the differences between Jews and Protes-

tants were largest. We used regression analyses to further explore
Jewish–Protestant differences. Jewish was coded as 1 and Protestant
as 0. Predicting likelihood of having an essay coded as involving God,
the effect of religion ( Jewish or Protestant) was significant and large,
b 5 .57, po.001. Individually controlling for gender (b 5 .57,
po.001), education (b 5 .54, po.001), or age (b 5 .50, po.001)
did not explain the effect (bs are the effects of religion on God cat-
egory codes). The effects of religious group also did not seem to be
explainable by religiousness, as in prior studies. Controlling for in-
trinsic religiosity, the effect of religion was still significant (b 5 .33,
p 5 .005). Controlling for extrinsic religiosity also did not reduce the
effect of religion, (b 5 .47, po.001), and neither did controlling for
the two item religious identity scale (b 5 .45, po.001).
The effect of religion ( Jewish or Protestant) was also significant
when predicting likelihood of having social experiences, b 5 .27,
p 5 .03. This difference was also not explainable by demographics, as
controlling for gender (b 5 .27, p 5 .03), or education (b 5 .26,
p 5 .04) or age (b 5 .25, p 5 .05) did not reduce the size of the effect
of religion. Controlling for intrinsic religiosity (b 5 .26, p 5 .07), ex-
trinsic religiosity (b 5 .25, p 5 .08), or religious identity salience
(b 5 .23, p 5 .09) also did not meaningfully change the effect sizes.
Again, bs are the effects of religion while controlling for the stated
covariate.

Summary. Our analyses again suggest that Protestants are more

individualistic than Catholics and especially Jews. Their life-chang-
ing experiences are more likely to focus on a personal encounter with
God. In contrast, the experiences of Catholics, and particularly of
Jews, are more likely to be centered around the collective. Further-
more, the correlations we observed between God-centered experi-
ences with intrinsic religiosity underscore our prior findings that
intrinsic religiosity is related to personal faith. Of importance, in-
trinsic religiosity was negatively related to social experiences, and
this is also consistent with our demonstration that extrinsic religios-
ity was negatively correlated with God-centered experiences. All of
these results converge to suggest that intrinsic religiosity is tapping
individualistic religious outlooks, whereas extrinsic religiosity is
much more related to the collective.
736 Cohen & Hill

GENERAL DISCUSSION
Theologians, historians, psychologists, and sociologists have claimed
that American Protestant religion focuses strongly on a personal re-
lationship with God and that Americans, by and large, do not base
religious identity on community affiliation, social relationships, tra-
dition, and ritual (Bellah et al., 1985; Cohen, Hall, et al., 2005;
Snibbe & Markus, 2003). To our knowledge, we have produced the
first clear evidence that American Jews and Catholics resonate more
with collectivistic aspects of religion and spirituality than do Prot-
estants. Moreover, our results can thus be seen as evidence that dif-
ferences in religious groups can be understood as differences in
culture.
In several studies, using quite different measures, we have shown
that the religious and spiritual identities, motivations, and experi-
ences of Catholics and Jews are more socially and community ori-
ented than those of Protestants, who are more religiously
individualistic. If our proposal is that Catholics and Jews are col-
lectivistic and Protestants individualistic, it may seem a natural place
to start to use established scales to measure self-construal (e.g. Sing-
elis, 1994). However, Cohen and Rozin (2001) found that American
Jews and Protestants did not differ in the independent/interdepen-
dent self-construal scales of Singelis (1994). There are many reasons
why this might be the case. Perhaps Jews and Catholics are more
community oriented only in the domains of religion or spirituality.
Or perhaps Singelis’s scales are better suited for East–West cultural
differences, the focus of most cultural research. Reference group ef-
fects are another intriguing possibility (Heine, Lehman, Peng, &
Greenholtz, 2002).

Implications for Conceptualization of Religiousness and Spirituality

With increasing interest in religiousness and spirituality among so-

cial and medical scientists, it is important to conceptualize and op-
erationalize religiousness and spirituality appropriately. How to
accomplish this has been a vexing problem (e.g. Hill & Pargament,
2003), and classic theorists have had fundamentally different ap-
proaches. For example, James (1902/1997) saw religion as an
individualistic phenomenon: ‘‘Religion, therefore, as I now ask
you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and
Religion as Culture 737

experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend

themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the di-
vine’’ (p. 42, italics in original). Durkheim (1912/1995) understood
religion as inherently social because sacred objects symbolize the
society and religion unifies people into a community: ‘‘A religion is a
unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that
is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which
united into one single moral community called a Church, all those
who adhere to them’’ (p. 44). Recently, theorists have struggled over
how religiousness and spirituality are similar or different, as well as
with attempting to create definitions of religiousness and spirituality
that apply equally well to diverse religious cultures.
Spirituality has been proposed as being both more universal and
more individualized than religiousness (Hill & Pargament, 2003),
which is somewhat paradoxical (Bellah et al., 1985; Hall, Koenig, &
Meador, 2004). Contemporary conceptions of spirituality, with their
focus on that which is individual, subjective, inward, unsystematic,
self-directing, and freeing, may reflect a Protestant perspective. That
is, it is not surprising that an individualistic spirituality flourishes
well in a society that is otherwise strongly secular where the indi-
vidualistic character of Protestantism dominates (see Hill et al.,
2000, for a more elaborate discussion). In fact, it can be argued that
spirituality is a term adopted by Protestants as a way of communi-
cating that their religion focuses primarily on a personal and
individual—not institutional—relationship to God. Of interest, Bel-
lah et al. (1985) also suggested that the growing American emphasis
on spirituality could be the result of the cultural development of
religion as increasingly privatized, personal, and experiential-
expressive.
We found mean differences and differing intercorrelations among
intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (Studies 2 and 3). Allport and Ross
theorized that extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity would be inversely
correlated but were apparently surprised to discover that they were
orthogonal. They therefore developed a four-fold classification,
which many researchers have maintained; for example, those high
in both intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity were dubbed ‘‘indiscrimi-
nately pro-religious.’’ There have even been arguments that the
scales should not be used any longer because of their questionable
psychometric properties (Kirkpatrick, 1989). But this is not the only
kind of critique that has been leveled. For example, Pargament
738 Cohen & Hill

(1992) claimed that religion is appropriately viewed both as a means

and as an end.
Our results shed considerable light on this nearly long-standing
debate in that they demonstrate that the psychometric properties of
the religious orientation scale depend on religious group. For Prot-
estants, they are, in fact, negatively correlated, but for Jews, they are
positively correlated. In this vein, we do not recommend abandoning
the scales because the interrelationships differ among religious
groups. Rather, we propose that different religious motivations are
valued in different religious cultures and that this needs to be rec-
ognized when conceptualizing and measuring religious motivations.
Our approach recognizes the futility of developing a single definition
or a single measure of religiousness and spirituality independent of a
broader religious, cultural, and social context (Hall et al., 2004; Hill
& Pargament, 2003; Moberg, 2002). We propose that, because iden-
tity and motivation processes have deep, mutually constitutive rela-
tionships with core cultural ideals (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, &
Nisbett, 1998), religious identity and motivation must be understood
within a cultural framework. It remains a challenge for future re-
search to generate ways of measuring religious and spiritual identity
and motivation that recognize how cultures differ without explicitly
or implicitly privileging certain motivations.

Some Future Directions in Culture and Religion

The current work has approached religious group differences as cul-

tural differences—as has converging work on morality (Cohen, 2003;
Cohen & Rankin, 2004; Cohen & Rozin, 2001), forgiveness (Cohen,
et al., 2006), death anxiety (Cohen, Pierce, et al., 2005), and well-
being (Cohen, 2002; Cohen & Hall, 2005). Based on these lines of
work, we suggest three complementary theoretical approaches in re-
gard to future directions on religion and culture. First, this prior
work, along with the current studies, are most clearly relevant to the
view that religious group differences can be conceptualized as cul-
tural differences that shape personal and social aspects of religious
and spiritual motivation, moral judgment, and other processes.
A second theoretical approach would claim not only that religious
group differences are to be seen as cultural differences but also that
religious differences may promote country differences in psycholog-
ical processes. Perhaps some of the differences observed in the wealth
Religion as Culture 739

of research on country differences in individualism and collectivism

can be partly attributed to religious differences. It promises to be a
fascinating direction for future research to attempt to disentangle
effects of country of origin from effects of religious and spiritual
group memberships.
A third theoretical perspective is that country differences produce
religion differences. Under this perspective, one could view religions
as subcultures (such as viewing Protestantism as a subculture in
America). Within any religious tradition, there is a rich set of beliefs
and values from which one could choose. For example, it is clear that
the community (i.e., the church), whether local or universal, plays a
critical role in Protestant theology and is based on Christ’s strong
constitutive declaration ‘‘I will build my church’’ (Matt. 16:18). The
church is a collective entity, the image of which has been variously
interpreted as the people of God (as community), the temple of the
Holy Spirit (stressing the Trinitarian concept of the church as a re-
lational institution, collective in nature), or the body of Christ
(stressing the interconnectedness of the church) with Christ as
head and believers as other parts (Erickson, 1985). Yet the domi-
nant strand in American Protestantism is a pietistic approach that
stresses an individual’s direct relationship to God, a relationship not
mediated by the church. Does this tendency to place emphasis on a
scriptural or other religious notion related to personal faith, even as
other scriptural notions related to the collective are perhaps deem-
phasized, reflect a cultural context that stresses individualism? And,
as we have speculated above, perhaps it is this same cultural context
that partly explains the current interest in an interior notion of spir-
ituality.
We feel there is promise in all these theories and, in fact, believe
that the relationship between religion and country-related processes
is probably bidirectional and constantly culturally evolving. Two
lines of future work that could speak to these theoretical issues are
on different religious groups in different countries and work on re-
ligious denomination differences. Great sophistication could be add-
ed to this work by focusing not only on the religious groups we have
examined (Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in the United States) but
on other religious groups in different countries. Given Shweder and
Miller’s extensive work on interpersonal bases of moral judgment in
Hindu India (e.g., Miller & Bersoff, 1994; Shweder et al., 1997),
Hindu India might be a natural place to extend the current work.
740 Cohen & Hill

Furthermore, much research has been conducted on Caucasian

Protestants in the United States, and findings could be used as a
platform to explore Protestant motivation in various countries.
There are large pockets of Protestants in other countries (e.g., Ko-
rea, much of Europe), and it would be interesting to know, for ex-
ample, whether Protestants living in Asian countries are more
collectivistic than those in Western countries. Similar questions
could also be asked about Protestants in the United States of dif-
ferent ethnic cultures (e.g., African American, Asian American).
Furthermore, we have not attended in these studies to the mean-
ingful denominational differences within overall religious groups,
such as comparing Reform to Orthodox Jews or Episcopalians to
Baptists. American Reform Judaism, for example, at the time of its
founding in the late 1800s, claimed that much traditional ritual was a
hindrance to spiritual elevation (but the Reform movement has more
recently advocated adherence to ritual, particularly if it is personally
meaningful). Rather, monotheism, ethical teachings, and personal
spiritual elevation were Reform Judaism’s main concerns (Glazer,
1957). Similar distinctions can also be found in Protestantism and,
perhaps to a lesser extent, in Catholicism. Investigations of identity
and motivation among different religious groups in different coun-
tries, as well as among different religious denominations, could begin
to speak to the different theoretical models on culture and religion
that we have proposed.

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