Why is fundamentalism increasing

Lack of centralised control ironically — It might be that Catholicism has not developed fundamentalist strains because the Pope and the Vatican tightly control dissenters.

The existence of marginalised individuals facing oppression — Fundamentalism needs recruits, and if a Fundamentalist group emerges with claims that it can provide a better life for people if they just adhere to the faith, it is more likely to grow Bruce further argues that the nature of Fundamentalism is shaped by how the political institutions deal with Fundamentalist movements: where they are blocked access to political representation, movements are more likely to turn to violence.

Further Analysis Bruce argues that both the external factors above and religious beliefs themselves are important in explaining the rise of Fundamentalism. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Previous Previous post: What is Religious Fundamentalism? Next Next post: How to Bag a Billionaire: tips for young women feeling held back by their average joe boyfriends. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Thus they insisted upon the necessity of a conversion experience through faith in Jesus Christ alone, the accuracy of the Bible in matters of science and history as well as theology, and the imminent physical return of Christ to the earth where he would establish a millennial reign of peace and righteousness.

Fundamentalists conveyed their convictions in numerous ways, but most prominently through the wide dissemination of twelve booklets called The Fundamentals Fundamentalists also pursued the battle through legislatures, courts, and denominational machinery.

In the s they tried to monitor public school curricula by presenting anti-evolution bills in the legislatures of eleven states mostly in the South. Undoubtedly the best-known instance, the so-called "Monkey Trial," pitted the Fundamentalist politician William Jennings Bryan against the agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow in a steamy courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of Bryan won in the court but lost in the press.

Partisans also fought their opponents, commonly known as Modernists, in the general conventions of several mainline denominations, including the Northern Baptists and Northern Presbyterians. Here too their record proved mixed at best. Nonetheless, Fundamentalism continued to grow and eventually to flourish. In the s it moved underground, so to speak, where it built a network of day schools, colleges, seminaries, and missionary agencies.

More importantly the movement soon established a print and telecast industry of its own. It also created a system of parachurch organizations aimed to meet the spiritual needs of numerous socially discrete groups youths, unmarrieds, veterans.

Above all Fundamentalists found innovative ways to address the religious concerns of common people. Therefore, religious fundamentalists, especially those for whom certainty is especially important, should be more sensitive to error-related events as potential signals of threat. We claim that increased sensitivity to error-related words poses the threat to the sense of certainty. We tested this hypothesis in an experimental study in which we measured individual differences in religious fundamentalism.

As the beneficial function of religious fundamentalism has been mainly demonstrated under conditions of stress or uncertainty Hood et al. NFC constitutes a fundamental epistemic motive behind how people process information from the social environment. Thus, intolerance of uncertainty is a fundamentally important element of cognitive closure.

Recently, this claim has been supported by neuropsychological analyses Kossowska et al. We predicted that high religious fundamentalism would be related to increased sensitivity to error-related events among those who are intolerant of uncertainty i. We hypothesized that the expected enhanced response to errors may be observed neurophysiologically.

Research using ERP has shown that the N, a negative-going deflection peaking around ms poststimulus onset, is primarily involved in processing information related to semantics and violations of meaning Kutas and Hillyard, ; Kutas and Federmeier, Although initially discovered when participants examined incongruent words in sentences, researchers have recently demonstrated that N is also elicited by incongruent words and knowledge about the self and the world van den Brink et al.

Due to its important role in the processing of assumption violations and expectancy, the N is a component of ERP that may also encode information related to emotional or social conflict White et al. We expected that religious fundamentalism among people intolerant to uncertainty would be related to more intense processing of error-related stimuli increased N amplitude compared to those who tolerate uncertainty well. Therefore, error-related events are signals that there is a possible threat that the rules may be broken, which can lead to misbehaviors, or at least to deviations from valued standards.

Thus, religious fundamentalists should be sensitive not only to their own errors, but also to any event in the environment that suggests possible errors. In the EST, participants read the words, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the words were written McKenna and Sharma, Throughout numerous variations of the EST, it has been consistently found that people have difficulty ignoring the meaning of a word while naming the color in which it is written Johnson and Hasher, ; Salo et al.

It is then not surprising that when the words relate directly to the participants, higher response latencies result Logan and Goetsch, In our experiments we use neutral words, as well as words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering.

We expected an interference effect for error-related words, but not for words related to uncertainty or pondering. As only words related to errors are inconsistent with fundamentalist views of correct behavior, they may be particularly unexpected, emotionally salient, or otherwise attention grabbing, and thus they might call for intensified processing of meaning, thereby elevating the N The experimental procedure followed the ethical principles described in the Declaration of Helsinki World Medical Organization, and was approved by the Research Ethic Committee at the Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University.

The written informed consent was obtained from the participants of this study. The study was run in For purpose of this study we decided to preselect participants based on their NFC levels as the effect we study is expected to occur only under uncertainty or among people sensitive for uncertainty. In addition, due to the specificity of EEG studies they are costly, time-consuming and difficult for participants , we intentionally used small sample sizes see Preacher et al.

All of the participants had normal or corrected to normal vision and normal hearing. All of the participants reported that they did not have any neurological or psychiatric disorders, including drug abuse, and that they were not on any medications during the experiment. Data from three participants were not included in the analysis because on pre-processing data stage problems with recording and due to excessive muscle artifacts reviled in them.

The remaining 39 participants 2 33 women, 6 men had a mean age of All of them self-reported as being religious, and as having been brought up in Christianity. The experiment was run in a sound-attenuated cabin. This scale defines religious fundamentalism along four dimensions: 1 the belief that there is a single set of religious teachings containing the fundamental, basic, intrinsic, inerrant truth about the deity and humanity; 2 this essential truth stands in opposition to evil, which must be actively fought; 3 the truth is to be followed in our current day according to the fundamental practices of the past; and 4 people who succeed in following these fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity.

All participants stayed within previous category of high and low NFC. This computerized version of the EST consisted of a series of words neutral terms and those related to errors, pondering, and uncertainty printed in one of four different colors yellow, red, green, or blue , and grouped in four blocks. The words were selected based on a pilot study. The words used in the procedure are presented in Table 1. Participants were instructed to name the font color of a presented word and to neglect its meaning.

After 28 practice trials for the training session numerals — one, two, etc. In each trial, a word was presented for ms; the maximum time for a response was restricted to ms.

The blocks were presented in a random order. The procedure was programmed in PsychoPy software. Additional four leads were located above and below the right eye and in the external canthi of both eyes. The signal was sampled at Hz frequency and filtered using 46 Hz low-pass and 0. Evoked potentials were analyzed time-locked to the stimuli onset with baseline correction using the to 0 ms epoch. Differences of the resulting N values between uncertainty, errors, and ponder blocks and the neutral block were considered.

As N is a negative component, the lower the index means the stronger interference. The emotional Stroop interference effect for ERP, RT and accuracy was computed as the difference between the experimental trials and the neutral words. For each experimental measure separately for all trial types, i. The obtained results were used as dependent variables in all further analysis. To test our hypothesis, we ran a moderation model using PROCESS program Hayes, , model 1, bootstrap 10, with religious fundamentalism as a predictor and NFC as a moderator, for each of the dependent variables.

Religious fundamentalism was centered. We then performed simple slope analyses because we were interested in the relationship between religious fundamentalists and N interference effect for words related to error for low and high NFC separately. We present the illustration of the interaction between NFC and Fundamentalism on Stroop effect index based on real calculations, with provided by Process Macro data for plots on Figure 1.

The more negative score, the stronger interference. The N component is defined as a difference black solid line between average activity within the — ms window for error-related dashed lines minus neutral dotted lines words. Gray polygons marks the time window of interests — ms , relative to words onset. Despite the absolute differences between values, the statistical significance was found only for the high NFC slope and not for the low NFC. Without these statistical parameters, the ERP plots may be misleading on a first sight.

Moreover, the presented plots are provided only for illustrative purposes, and were created with median split of the variables. The results that are considered in the manuscript were computed using continuous variables. Researchers claim that there is a link between self-control and religion McCullough and Carter, They suggest that religion helps promote delayed gratification, prosocial tendencies, and other socially adaptive behaviors Baumeister and Exline, Explaining the link between self-control and religion, they suggest that by making salient the belief in an ever-watchful God Norenzayan and Shariff, religion may in effect encourage self-monitoring see McCullough and Willoughby, Religious concepts may also bring reputational concerns to the fore and this increased salience may in turn promote more self-monitoring Rounding et al.

The empirical support for these claims is, however, very limited and mixed. In this preliminary study we argue that religious beliefs, in a fundamentalist form, are linked to monitoring for errors, an important component of self-control Baumeister and Heatherton, Errors are aversive as they distort the pleasant and stable pictures one might have of the self and the world, and they thus destroy predictability.

In addition, for people with highly fundamentalist views that include standards for correct behaviors and suggest strict rules to follow and severe punishments for deviation from them, errors should pose a special threat. A fundamentalist view may also make people more aware of the discrepancies between their imperfect performance and the rigorous standards of correct behavior. To further develop this idea, we focused on the link between religious fundamentalism and responses to error-related words.

Thus, the aim of the current study was to examine whether religious fundamentalism is related to altered self-control evinced as sensitivity to error-related words among participants highly intolerant of uncertainty high NFC compared to those with a high tolerance of uncertainty low NFC. The results of our study indicate that religious fundamentalism and intolerance to uncertainty differentiate electrophysiological measures related to error monitoring. In particular, we found significantly larger error-related brain activity in the N for religious fundamentalism in the high NFC group decreased interference index , although N decreased for religious fundamentalism among participants low in NFC.

Behaviorally, however, there were no significant differences between these groups on RTs or accuracy. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Search within Show Summary Details Fundamentalism and Globalization.