Suchergebnisse

All social exchanges involve some degree of uncertainty, although the amount depends on the conditions of the exchange. Uncertainty may arise due to the unverifiable quality of the good exchanged or the indeterminable quality of the exchange partner (i.e., whether she is trustworthy). Social exchange theory offers several mechanisms by which uncertainty may be reduced or mitigated such as through trust, repeated exchanges, reputation, information regarding the exchanges of others, and institutions. This paper applies principles from social exchange theory to religious behavior and argues that the same mechanisms that reduce uncertainty in social exchanges also reduce uncertainty in 'religious' exchanges, resulting in higher levels of religious commitment. In particular, this paper proposes that having experiences believed to be supernatural, having close ties to others within one's religious congregation, and being affiliated with a higher tension church should increase religious commitment through decreasing uncertainty. Analysis of the 1988 General Social Survey and the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey supports these hypotheses.

AbstractWhy do some individuals perceive religion and science as being in conflict while others do not? Research suggests that individuals' endorsement of religion–science conflict is often as much an expression of identity and group membership as it is an intellectual assessment of the relationship. This study examines this dynamic among graduate students in five science disciplines in the United States. An analysis of original survey data finds that students who both identify strongly with science and believe that others in their scientific discipline are hostile toward religion are more likely to say that religion and science are in conflict and that they are on the side of science. This suggests that endorsements of religion–science conflict are a way for students to express solidarity with a group that is important to their identity.

A nascent but growing literature on religious discrimination in U.S. workplaces has shown that some religious identities, especially non-Christian and nonreligious identities, are more likely to experience and/or perceive such discrimination. While Christianity might represent the majority of the U.S. population, the religious composition of the United States is not monolithic. Regional differences in religious demography and culture could shape the discrimination experiences of individuals belonging to particular religious traditions. This research examines this question using data from a nationally representative survey that asked respondents how often they have experienced religious discrimination in their place of work. We find that atheists are more likely to perceive discrimination in the South than in the West and Northeast. Non-Christians are more likely to perceive discrimination in the South and Northeast than in the West. Finally, evangelical Protestants are more likely to perceive discrimination in the West than in the South.

In this article we use network theory to explain the adoption of the Protestant Reformation. We use new historical data on the connections between Hansa towns that allow us to conduct the first social network study of the Protestant Reformation. Based on an analysis of cities in central and Western Europe between 1517 and 1530, we find evidence for diffusion through both simple and complex contagion. Our operationalization of network data based on medieval Hansa Diets points to the complex association between tie weights (i.e., the strength of ties) and numbers of ties in network diffusion. Using optimal tuning parameters for simple adoption models, we show that a combination of strong ties and weak ties fostered Protestant adoption in northern cities.

ObjectiveThere has been a growing interest in the relationship between culture and crime in recent years, but there is little research investigating the role of religion. To clarify this empirical cleavage, we propose a Durkheimian model of the countervailing effects of religion on violent crime.MethodsWe test our propositions with robust linear models and a large country sample (N = 100).ResultsWe show that religious intensity and belief in an active God are not significantly associated with intentional homicide. However, religious intensity is positively and significantly associated with assault. We also find that belief in an active God is negatively and significantly associated with assault and has a stronger effect than several structural variables.ConclusionThe findings provide partial support for our Durkheimian model and suggest that cultural factors are important for predicting certain types of violent crime.

How do insurgents engaged in high-risk collective action maintain solidarity when faced with increasing costs and dangers? Based on a combination of process tracing through qualitative evidence and an event-history analysis of a unique data set assembled from naval archives concerning a mass mutiny in the Royal Navy in 1797, this article explains why insurgent solidarity varied among the ships participating in the mutiny. Maintaining solidarity was the key problem that the organizers of the mutiny faced in confronting government repression and inducements for ships' companies to defect. Solidarity, proxied here as the duration of a ship's company's adherence to the mutiny, relied on techniques used by the mutiny leadership that increased dependence and imposed control over rank-and-file seamen. In particular, mutiny leaders monitored and sanctioned compliance and exploited informational asymmetries to persuade seamen to stand by the insurgency, even as prospects for its success faded.

Abstract
Forces of secularization are theorized to disenchant an individual's worldview—i.e., erode an individual's belief in nonnatural beings, forces, or abilities. Tests of this proposition, though, have often failed to measure the variety of forms of worldview enchantment found among individuals. Drawing on the broader secularization literature, we theorize correlates of (dis)enchantment and test these predictions using a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults featuring a wide battery of enchanted beliefs. We identify four latent enchanted worldview dimensions and find, consistent with secularization theories, that education and income are consistently and negatively associated with all four worldview enchantment dimensions.

Sociologists define power as one party's capacity to influence another's action. Thus, power is a relational property of interpersonal interaction. However, its dynamics embed within institutions such as the church and the state. This paper explores power dynamics using a case study of the conflict between an Old Order Amish church and the civil law of Ohio. The church excommunicated a member for violating community rules. The member countered by suing the church in state court. We trace power within and across these spheres of influence, showing how each party defined the situation according to institutional vectors of power. While one might expect the state to possess greater power in this situation, we demonstrate that ultimately neither party had total power, and both lost to some extent. This case study identifies the importance of viewing power as interactional, dynamic, and contextual.

Abstract
Conservative religious ideologies have been linked to vaccine hesitancy. Yet, little is known about how paranormal beliefs relate to vaccine confidence and uptake. We hypothesize that paranormal beliefs will be negatively related to both confidence and uptake due to their association with lower levels of trust in science and a greater acceptance of conspiratorial beliefs. We test this hypothesis using a new nationally representative sample of U.S. adults fielded in May and June of 2021 by NORC. Using regression models with a sample of 1,734, we find that paranormal beliefs are negatively associated with general vaccine confidence, COVID-19 vaccine confidence, and COVID-19 vaccine uptake. These associations are partially or fully attenuated net of trust in science and conspiratorial belief. Although not a focus of the study, we also find that Christian nationalism's negative association with the outcomes is fully accounted for by measures of trust in science and conspiratorial beliefs.

Prior studies on perceptions of structural disadvantage and injustice, efficacy, and collective action have suffered from two major limitations: (1) they have used single‐country samples, usually of economically advanced countries, and (2) generally theorized and investigated perceptions of structural injustice and efficacy separately. Drawing on value‐expectancy theory, we provide an integrated theory to predict direct and conditional effects of efficacy and perceptions of structural disadvantage and injustice on collective action within countries. To address the limitations of previous research, we use cross‐national data of 29 countries, including economically advanced and less advanced nations, to test how well these hypotheses explain within‐country variation in collective action. We find that internal efficacy is significantly and positively associated with low‐ and moderate‐cost collective action, whereas organizational embeddedness, a proxy for political efficacy, is significantly and positively associated with low‐, moderate‐, and high‐cost collective action. Perceptions of legitimate and unjust structural disadvantage are also positively associated with all types of collective action. Importantly, the positive effects of both types of efficacy on high‐cost collective action are conditional on perceptions of structural injustice. That is, participation in high‐cost collective action is more likely for those who are both efficaciousandperceive structural disadvantage as unjust.