Dogmatism and Committed and Consensual Religiosity

This research explores the consistency of cognitive style. It was hypothesized that a closed cognitive style would be associated with a consensual type of religiosity and an open cognitive style would be associated with a committed type of religiosity. Instruments used to measure the major variables were: Rokeach's Dogmatism Scale and Spilka's Religious Viewpoints Scale. The sample consisted of 264 college students. Factor analysis and multiple regression were employed in the analysis. The findings indicate that the Religious Viewpoints Scale did not differentiate well between committed and consensual types of religiosity, but alpha factor analysis showed that the scale seemed to be measuring these two dimensions of religiosity. Closed (as opposed to open) cognitive style was more positively associated with consensual religiosity than with committed religiosity; this finding was significant at the .001 level.