Intrinsic and Extrinsic Religiousness: The Empirical Research

In the fifteen years since the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion devoted an entire issue to intrinsic (I) and extrinsic (E) religiousness, more than seventy published research studies have used these measures to address the relations between religion, personality, and behavior. I and E have been used both as individual, unipolar measures, and jointly in the fourfold typology originally proposed by Allport and Ross (1967) and refined by Hood (1970). Recently, Donahue (1985) published a review of this body of literature. The purpose of this article is to summarize the major findings of that review and to raise some previously unaddressed empirical issues. It will be presumed that the reader has read Kahoe's preceding article, or is otherwise familiar with the conceptual underpinnings of the scales. In the present article, I and E refer to Allport's version of the scales, except as otherwise noted.