Department of Psychology, D.A.V. College, Muzaffarnagar, India.
Faculty of Psychology, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna¸ Austria.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 26;17(8):e0273174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273174. eCollection 2022.
The relationship between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and religiousness is well known; however, its (psychological mediation) mechanism is not clear. In the present study, we studied the mediation role of intolerance of uncertainty (IU; a personality measure of self-uncertainty) in the effect of SES on religiousness and its dimensions (i.e., believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging), in two different samples (students sample, N = 868, and community sample, N = 250), after controlling the effects of factors like age, sex, handedness, and self-reported risk-taking. The results showed that IU mediated the effects of lower family income and lower caste status (in students' sample only) on religiousness and its dimensions; higher caste status had a direct effect on religiousness (and its dimensions), and; among the sub-factors of IU, only prospective IU affected religiousness. Thus, along with showing that IU is a mediator of the effects of lower family income and lower caste status on religiousness, the present study supports the contention that religiousness is a latent variable that varied factors can independently initiate. Moreover, the present study suggests a nuanced model of the relationship between the hierarchical caste system and religiousness.
社会经济地位（SES）较低与宗教信仰之间的关系是众所周知的；然而，其（心理中介）机制尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们在两个不同的样本（学生样本，N=868 和社区样本，N=250）中，控制了年龄、性别、惯用手和自我报告的风险偏好等因素的影响，研究了 SES 对宗教信仰及其维度（即信仰、联系、行为和归属）的影响，以及不确定性容忍度（IU；自我不确定性的人格测量）在其中的中介作用。结果表明，IU 中介了较低的家庭收入和较低的种姓地位（仅在学生样本中）对宗教信仰及其维度的影响；较高的种姓地位对宗教信仰（及其维度）有直接影响；在 IU 的子因素中，只有前瞻性 IU 影响宗教信仰。因此，本研究不仅表明 IU 是较低家庭收入和较低种姓地位对宗教信仰影响的中介因素，还支持了宗教信仰是一个潜在变量的观点，不同的因素可以独立引发这一变量。此外，本研究还提出了一个关于等级种姓制度与宗教信仰之间关系的细致模型。
