The Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale: cross-cultural application, validity evidence, and relationship with religious orientation and the Big 5 factor markers

Abstract

Abstract This paper introduces a new five-item cross-cultural fundamentalism scale based on the principle of intratextuality. Free of belief content and concerns with militancy, each of the five items taps into a different facet of intratextuality that collectively assess the attitudes that fundamentalists maintain toward their sacred text—namely, a persuasion that it is divine in origin, inerrant, privileged above all other texts, authoritative, and unchanging as the embodiment of timeless truth. In this article, we present three studies concerned with the Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale (IFS). Study 1 introduces the development, confirmatory factor analysis, and convergent validity of the IFS based on a sample of 119 Christians in the US as well as examines its relationship to religious orientation. Study 2 replicates the findings of the first study with a sample of 220 Muslims from Pakistan. Study 3 again confirms the structure of the IFS, addresses divergent validity, and investigates its relationship with religious orientation and Goldberg's Big 5 factor markers in a sample of 227 US Christians. Findings of all three studies suggest that the IFS is a psychometrically sound instrument that economically assesses religious fundamentalism without religious content bias or concern for aggression. Results also indicate that, only for Americans, fundamentalism, as measured by the IFS, is significantly related to intrinsic (r = 0.35; r = 0.51) and extrinsic-personal (r = 0.33; r = 0.23) religious orientations, but not extrinsic-social orientation. Keywords: Intratextual Fundamentalism Scalevalidity evidencereligious orientationBig 5 factor markers Acknowledgements We wish to express our thanks to Dr Kenneth Green, Associate Professor of Management at Sam Houston State University, who assisted us with the confirmatory factor analysis procedures presented in this study. Notes Notes 1. Portions of this paper were presented at the 115th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association at San Francisco, California, August 17–20, 2007. 2. The RFS contains religiously based beliefs in 3 of its 12 items, one of which also refers to aggression: item 6 expresses a religious belief that "the Righteous … will be rewarded by God; and the rest … will not"; item 9 expresses a religious belief that "'Satan' … is a diabolical 'Prince of Darkness' who tempts us"; and item 3 expresses a religious belief in "Satan … who is … ferociously fighting against God," which also has reference to aggression.