Petru Iluţ, Laura Nistor
Pages 159-176
DOI: 10.2478/v10193-011-0025-9
ABSTRACT
The article provides a summary of the analysis of the associations between Schwartz’s basic human values and religiosity in Romania, using the data of the fourth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS). Previous cross-cultural research has suggested that religiosity is positively and significantly associated with conservativeness and self-transcendence. On the other hand, negative associations were reported between religiosity and openness to change, while the association between religiosity and self-enhancement was less consistent. Our results succeeded in only marginally confirming these results in the case of Romania. Based on our data, religiosity is positively and significantly, but not extremely strongly, associated with conservativeness and self-transcendence; while the correlations between religiosity and openness to change, as well as between religiosity and self-enhancement values, although negative, are not statistically significant. These results suggest that, contrary to the findings of the mainstream literature, religious Romanians, while more conservative than their less religious counterparts, are not less concerned with values of self-gratification than the less religious respondents. These findings can be explained, probably, through the transition process, during which there occurs not only a macro-social departure from traditionalism to modernism, but also a transition in the individuals’ value priorities, which produces a nearly hazardous association between religiosity and values of self-gratification. Other possible reasons might be due to religious hypocrisy or to methodological bias associated with self-reported data.