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Social Justice Research
Published in: Social Justice Research 4/2019

08-06-2019

Religious and Spiritual Beliefs Uniquely Predict Poverty Attributions

Authors: Brett A. Boeh Bergmann, Nathan R. Todd

Published in: Social Justice Research | Issue 4/2019

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Abstract

In this study, we investigated how religion and spirituality were associated with internal and external attributions for the causes of poverty. Such attributions are important as they may shape the types of policies and interventions that individuals support to alleviate poverty. Across two studies with samples of Christian students from a Catholic university in the Midwest (Study 1: n = 189) and a large public Midwestern university (Study 2: n = 646), hierarchical regression analyses revealed that a religious variable, religious conservatism, was positively associated with internal poverty attributions. A spirituality variable, universality (i.e., a sense of shared connection and interdependence with others), was positively associated with external poverty attributions. These findings were present while controlling for demographic variables, political conservatism, and the Protestant work ethic and were consistent across Study 1 and Study 2. Overall, this shows the unique ability of religious and spiritual variables to predict these different types of poverty attributions, and that spirituality was a unique predictor for external poverty attributions over-and-above religious variables. These findings suggest the importance of considering both religion and spirituality when working with individuals and religious communities to alleviate poverty. Limitations and directions for future research and for working with religious and spiritual communities are discussed.
previous article The Effects of Severity and Number of Misfortunes on Reactions to Victims
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Footnotes
1
In the current study, we focused on internal and external poverty attributions as we were interested in comparing the distinction between individualistic versus structural explanations for poverty. Cozzarelli et al. (2001) also identified “cultural attributions” as a third type of poverty attribution with explanations for poverty such as family breakdown or being born into poverty. Although we collected the cultural attributions subscale in Study 1, it had less than adequate reliability (α = 0.56) and did not fit within our conceptualization for the current study, and thus, we do not report these data. Moreover, other research has examined fatalistic poverty attributions (e.g., Feagin, 1972) though Cozzarelli et al. (2001) were not able to find evidence for this fatalistic factor in their work, and they also noted previous research had found low internal consistency for measures of fatalistic attributions. Thus, we also did not focus on fatalistic types of attributions. Future research should expand on the current study to examine links between religion and spirituality and these other types of poverty attributions.
 
2
See footnote 1.
 
3
In Study 1, we also had a self-created measure of biblical literalism that we had intended to use as a second indicator of religious conservatism in our models (in addition to self-identification as conservative). In Study 2, we used the Intratextual Fundamentalism scale (Williamson, Hood, Ahmad, Sadiq, & Hill, 2010) to assess literal interpretation of sacred text; again with the intention of using this scale as a second indicator of religious conservatism in our models in addition to self-identification as conservative. Ultimately, we decided not to include these scales due to issues of measurement (one measure was not validated) and conceptualization (the second measure also could have been conceptualized as a measure of religious fundamentalism). Also, including or not including these scales did not alter the general findings of the current study. These analyses are available upon request.
 
4
Readers may be curious how results may change (a) if internal poverty attributions were included as a control variable in the models predicting external poverty attributions, and (b) if external poverty attributions were included as a control variable in the models predicting internal poverty attributions. We thus examined all models in Tables 2 and 3 including these controls in relevant models (analyses available upon request). Overall, the direction and significance of study findings remained unchanged. The only difference across all models was that universality was no longer a significant predictor of internal poverty attributions in Study 2.
 
5
See footnote 4.
 
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Metadata
Title
Religious and Spiritual Beliefs Uniquely Predict Poverty Attributions
Authors
Brett A. Boeh Bergmann
Nathan R. Todd
Publication date
08-06-2019
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Social Justice Research / Issue 4/2019
Print ISSN: 0885-7466
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6725
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-019-00335-7

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