THE PREDICTIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS

FUNDAMENTALISM, NEED FOR CLOSURE, AND SCIENTIFIC REASONING

IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

by

Joshua A. Lamb

JACQUELYN ST. GERMAINE, PhD, Faculty Mentor and Chair

JOHN ASTIN, PhD, Committee Member

PAULA FREMONT, PhD, Committee Member

Andrea Miller, PhD, Dean, Harold Abel School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Capella University

November 2016

Abstract

For some students, science and religion are in conflict that arises when a student’s

fundamentalist religious beliefs were contrary to the scientific explanations for natural

phenomenon. This study investigated the possibility that there was a predictive

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, as well as the

degree to which a tendency toward closure might have influenced this relationship.

Using a correlational design, 101 college students were surveyed. The instruments used

to measure the variables included the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer &

Hunsberger, 2004), Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011), and the

Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (Lawson, 2000). Pearson’s Correlation revealed

that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were negatively and significantly

related, while need for closure was not found to be correlated with either religious

fundamentalism or scientific reasoning. Multiple regression analyses revealed that

religious fundamentalism significantly predicted scientific reasoning scores. The analysis

also determined that need for closure did not play a mediating role in this relationship.

Although the results may have inadvertently reflected bias due to the sequencing of the

instruments used, the findings are consistent with the reasoning of Lawson (1995) who

argued that dogmatic beliefs, like those of religious fundamentalists, would inhibit the

development of scientific reasoning. Further research was needed to determine the extent

of the influence of religious fundamentalism on the development of scientific reasoning.

iii

Acknowledgments

I would first like to acknowledge my mentor, Dr. Jacquelyn St. Germaine, and my

committee members Dr. John Astin and Dr. Jean Brown Bryant, for their guidance over

the course of dissertation process. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my late

father, Jimmy Lamb, who died from colon cancer when I was just beginning graduate

school. Thank you for nurturing my curiosity and constantly challenging me

intellectually. Without your example, I could have never accomplished everything that I

have academically. I would also like to dedicate this to my mother Joan Lamb-Siami and

Dr. Ghodrat Siami. Your constant support and encouragement were invaluable in the

completion of this process. Finally, I would like to dedicate this to my niece and nephew.

You have been a constant source of joy and motivation to continue throughout this

process.

iv

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii

List of Tables vii

List of Figures viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

Background of the Study 1

Statement of the Problem 7

Purpose of the Study 8

Significance of the Study 9

Research Design 9

Research Questions and Hypotheses 10

Assumptions and Limitations 11

Definition of Terms 13

Expected Findings 16

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 18

Theoretical Orientation 19

Development of Scientific Reasoning 19

Piagetian Theory 19

Neo-Piagetian Theory 22

Cultural Influence 24

Avoiding Closure 26

Value of Religious Belief 28

Religious Fundamentalism and Science 30

v

Terror Management Theory 31

Review of Research 34

Development of Scientific Reasoning 34

Terror Management Theory 53

Methodology Review 61

Synthesis of Literature 65

Critique of Literature 70

Methodological Strengths and Limitations 70

Opposing Views 73

Summary 79

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 81

Research Design 82

Target Population and Population Selection 83

Procedures 84

Instruments 86

Research Questions and Hypotheses 91

Data Analysis 93

Expected Findings 94

CHAPTER 4 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 96

Introduction 96

Description of the Sample 96

Summary of the Results 99

Details of the Analysis and Results 100

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Descriptive Statistics 100

Research Question 1 101

Research Question 2 107

Conclusion 110

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 112

Introduction 112

Summary of Results 112

Discussion of Results 113

Discussion of the Conclusion 117

Limitations 119

Recommendations for Future Research 123

Conclusions 126

REFERENCES 128

APPENDIX A. Statement of Original Work 144

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List of Tables

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics for Age 97

Table 2 Descriptive Statistics for Nominal Demographics 98

Table 3 Descriptive Statistics for Study Variables 101

Table 4 Pearson Correlations for Study Variables 107

Table 5 ANOVA for Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning 108

Table 6 Coefficients of Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning 108

Table 7 Coefficients of Second Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning 110

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List of Figures

Figure 1 Distribution of Religious Fundamentalism Scores 101

Figure 2 Distribution of Need for Closure Scores 102

Figure 3 Distribution of Scientific Reasoning Scores 102

Figure 4 Religious Fundamentalism and Need for Closure Scores 104

Figure 5 Need for Closure and Scientific Reasoning Scores 104

Figure 6 Religious Fundamentalism and Scientific Reasoning Scores 105

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Problem

Scientific reasoning was an essential skill needed to conduct scientific inquiry and

understand complex scientific subjects (Han, 2013). Literacy in science, including the

ability to reason scientifically, is important for the jobs of the future, as the job market of

the future is becoming increasingly more dependent on individuals that were

scientifically competent (Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Osborne, Simon, & Tyler,

2009). Scientific competence was also essential when it came to dealing with the

challenge of climate change. Sharma (2012) argued that science education was an

essential tool in a societal response to the threat that climate change poses to human

civilization.

Success in the educational environment, especially success in science and math

classes, was an important factor in determining if a student chooses a career in science or

mathematics (Wang, 2013). Research had found that several factors were associated with

performance in the educational environment. Factors related to the educational

environment itself were found to influence academic performance. Specifically, larger

schools (Vorthmann, 2011), smaller class sizes (Schanzenbach, 2014), and quality of the

learning facilities (Mushtaq & Khan, 2012) were associated positively with academic

performance. The location of the school, whether it was in a city, town, suburb, or rural

area, was also associated with academic performance (Vorthmann, 2011). Further, social

class played a role too, as socioeconomic status (Considine & Zappala, 2002; Sirien,

2005) and poverty (Vorthmann, 2011) were associated with academic performance.

2

The perspective of the student toward the information being learned may

influence academic performance. Motlagh, Amrai, Yazdani, Abderahim, and Souri

(2011) found that self-efficacy and its sub-factors, self-regulation, self-evaluation, and

self-directing, were correlated with academic performance. Student attitudes, specifically

the value they placed on the learning of specific skills, were also associated with

academic performance (Liddell & Davidson, 2004). A student’s family environment was

found to influence performance. Parental educational attainment was found to be

positively associated with student performance (Rainey & Murova, 2004). Further, stress

coming from the family environment was negatively associated with performance

(Mushtag & Khan, 2004).

Family social influences heavily impacted the type of religious belief and

practices a child adopts (Eaves, Hatemi, Prom-Womley, and Murrelle, 2008). Religious

belief is another factor that is associated with success in the educational environment is

religious belief. Rissler, Duncan, and Caruso (2014) found that religiosity mattered more

than education when it came to predicting students’ understanding of the scientific

concept of evolution. Religious commitment was found to be related to academic

achievement, as children with high religious commitment were found to score higher on

most academic measures, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, race, and

gender (Jeynes, 2003).

Line (2005) found that different types of religious variables have different degrees

of influence on academic performance in college students. Variables measuring private

religiosity, such as personal scripture study and personal prayer, showed a strong

relationship with academic performance. Public religious practice, e.g. church

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attendance, was shown to have a moderate impact on academic performance, while

religious belief variables were found to have a completely negligible impact on academic

performance. McKune and Hoffman (2009) found that the relationship between

religiosity and academic achievement in adolescence was largely due to parent’s social

capital. The results also found that academic achievement was better when adolescents

and parents shared similar levels of religiosity; the lowest achievement was found in

adolescents that had low religiosity while their parents had high religiosity. This research

combined would suggest that while religiosity appears to be positively related to

academic achievement, the effect depended largely on the type of religious practice.

Not all forms of religious practice have an entirely positive impact on education,

especially when it comes to subjects like science (Legre & Visala, 2011). Specifically,

one type of religious practice, religious fundamentalism was often at odds science and

secular education, as it was seen as being in opposition to their beliefs in the legitimacy

of religious scripture and the authority of God (Herriot, 2007; Yarsi & Mancy, 2014).

For example, Christian religious fundamentalists believed in a literal biblical creation,

which places them in sharp opposition to the scientific concept of evolution (Herriot,

2007). The belief in the supremacy of religious text and/or God’s authority could have

led both more fundamentalist Christians and Muslims to not only feel as though science

and religion were in conflict, but to need to reject scientific understanding of the world in

favor of their religious beliefs (Hanley et al., 2014; Yarsi & Mancy, 2014).

Further exacerbating the conflict between science and religion in the mind of

some students was the attempt by young earth creationists to get creationism either taught

side by side with the theory of evolution or in place of evolution in science classrooms in

4

the United States (Scott, 2009). The courts in the United States have consistently ruled

against the teaching of creationism in science classrooms (Numbers, 1982/2006; Scott,

2009). The most famous of these trials was held in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. A

teacher by the name of John Thomas Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution, which

violated the Butler Act, a law that made it illegal to teach anything that denied the

creation of man as stated in the Bible. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution, but

the Tennessee Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction on a technicality

(Scott, 2009). While not a complete victory for the teaching of evolution, the Scopes

Trial did set the stage for future court victories that allowed evolution to be taught in

schools in the United States, while undermining the relevance of creationism to the

science classroom (Numbers, 1982/2006; Scott, 2009).

Consistent defeats in the court system have not stopped creationists from trying to

get their say in science classrooms. For example, when attempts to teach creationism in

science classrooms failed, there was an effort made to repackage creationism into

intelligent design in the hope that it would be more successful (Scott, 2009). This

conflict between creationism and evolution creates unique challenges to science

education, as directly confronting these conflicts can serve to undermine the attempt at

educating the students in scientific matters, such as the concept evolution and the

development of scientific reasoning abilities (Lawson, 1995; Lawson & Worsnop, 1992).

Directly addressing the conflict has served to alienate the religious students (Hanley et

al., 2014), while possibly driving them toward the distrust of higher education in general

(Darnell & Sherkat, 1997).

5

Constructivist theorists argued that the development of scientific reasoning

requires an environment supportive to its development (Cakir, 2008). Research had

found that the development of reasoning abilities is affected by the degree to which the

environment supports its development (Fiati, 1992; Luria, 1976; Noreanzayan, Smith,

Kim, & Nisbett, 2002; Suizzo, 2000). Learning was conceptualized as taking the form

of a sort of mental blueprint, often referred as a schema or cognitive structure. These

structures become more sophisticated over time as a result experience in their particular

domain of learning. As experience within a particular domain of learning increases,

cognitive structures change gradually, as higher order, more sophisticated structures were

shaped from lower order, less sophisticated structures (Case, 1985). However, the

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning was poorly

understood. Research does show a negative relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific literacy (Sherkat, 2011). There was also a negative

relationship between religious fundamentalism and a tendency to engage in analytical

reasoning (Gervais & Norenzayen, 2012; Pennycook, Cheyne, Sell, Koehler, &

Fugelsang, 2012).

Terror management theory argued that worldviews, such as religion, protected

against existential anxiety, such as the anxiety that people experienced when thinking

about death (Vail, Rothschild, Weise, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2010).

Research supports this view, as individuals that were exposed to a source of existential

anxiety were motivated to reaffirm their own worldview in defense against the threat (e.g.

Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992). Religious beliefs have

6

further been shown to serve a protective function against existential anxiety (Friedman &

Rholes, 2008; Jonas & Fischer, 2006).

Existing beliefs have been found to influence the quality of reasoning (Amsel &

Brock, 1996; Bastardi, Uhlmann, & Ross, 2011; Kuhn, Amsel, & O’Loughlin, 1998).

When religious beliefs run contrary to scientific fact they can affect reasoning ability

(Lawson & Worsnop, 1992). When participants were presented with experiments in

which their religious beliefs were made the subject of the experiment, they rated

experiments more favorable when they were favorable to the religious belief and more

negatively when the experiment was unfavorable to the religious belief, as compared to

participants shown religious neutral experiments (Klaczynski, 2000).

Another factor that was important when it comes to developing scientific

reasoning abilities is the concept of premature closure. Coming to understand complex

scientific subjects and developing reasoning skills requires an individual to avoid

jumping to premature conclusions (Lunzer, 1973). Premature closure occurs when

individuals draw conclusions prior to fully considering all relevant information. Research

had found that avoiding premature closure was essential to the product of quality

reasoning (Wollman, Eylon, & Lawson, 1980). Religious fundamentalism was positively

related to need for closure, which is a measure of an individual’s tendency toward

seeking premature closure (Golec de Zavala & Van Bergh, 2007; Saroglou, 2002). The

relationship between need for closure and scientific reasoning ability had yet to directly

explored in research.

7

Statement of the Problem

This research problem focuses on the development of scientific reasoning under

conditions in which such abilities may be influenced by the beliefs of religious

fundamentalists. Herriot (2007) defined religious fundamentalism as an acceptance of

absolute beliefs in right and wrong and a willingness to believe in and obey a sacred book

and/or deity. This tendency to believe in the supreme legitimacy of their religious text

often resulted in religious fundamentalists believing in creation as set forth by that text

and an unwillingness to accept explanations that contradict this belief, such as the science

of evolutionary biology (Scott, 2009). Lawson and Worsnop (1992) demonstrated that

after instruction in evolution individuals that believed in special creation were less likely

to change their beliefs. Evans (2001) found similar results as belief in evolution was

predicted by natural history knowledge and creationist belief was predicted by religious

interest. Further, research had demonstrated religious fundamentalism was negatively

related to both biological competence (Poling & Evans, 2004) and science literacy

(Sherkat, 2011). When cognitive ability was controlled for, a tendency to engage in

analytical thought was found to predict religious belief. The more willing participants

were to engage in analytical thought the less likely they were to endorse religious beliefs

(Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2012).

While the research discussed above supported the existence of a relationship

among religious belief, scientific knowledge and analytical style, research to date had not

explored the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning directly. The present research first explored this relationship. Next, the

research attempted to determine if a tendency toward premature closure mediates the

8

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. Need for closure

(Webster & Kruglanski, 1994, 1998) served as the measure of a tendency toward

premature closure and was defined the desire for clarity and certainty in knowledge and

discomfort with ambiguity in that understanding. Religious fundamentalism was found

to be associated with need for closure (Saraglou, 2002), which is the tendency to engage

in premature closure, while the tendency to avoid premature closure, which involves the

resisting of jumping to conclusions prior to the consideration of all relevant information,

had been found to be important in the development of scientific reasoning (Acredolo &

Horobin, 1987; Wollman, Eylon, & Lawson, 1980) and hypothesis generation (Mayseless

& Kruglanski, 1987). This suggested that the tendency toward closure could be a

plausible means by which religious fundamentalism could influence scientific reasoning.

Therefore, this research investigated the predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning, while also determining

whether need for closure was responsible for the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to address the gap in the research literature by

investigating the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning. While research to date had explored the relationship

between religious fundamentalism and need for closure, as well as the relationship

between sectarian religion and scientific literacy, research to date had not explored the

relationship between religious fundamentalism and need for closure and scientific

reasoning. The research to date had failed to explore the possibility that need for closure

9

mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

This research took a look at these relationships and determines if any predictive

relationship exists between these variables. This research attempted to provide insight

into these subjects of interest that have yet to be addressed in the knowledge base.

Significance of the Study

The development of cognitive abilities was an important issue in the fields of

developmental and cognitive psychology. One of the cognitive abilities that develop

commonly under Western formal educational conditions was scientific reasoning.

However, these abilities do not develop in all individuals, under all conditions (Suizzo,

2000). Understanding how these abilities could have been inhibited, such as in the

presence of religious fundamentalist beliefs, and the factors influencing the development

of scientific reasoning, such as need for closure, was important for a better understanding

of the development of scientific reasoning and cognitive development, in general.

Answering of the questions the research was designed to investigate was of interest to

psychologists and researchers in many different scientific disciplines. The results are of

interest to science educators that may be dealing with resistance to the teaching of

evolution from religious students or parents.

Research Design

This was a quantitative study using a non-experimental, correlational design. The

sampling employed a non-random convenience sample. The study investigated the

predictive relationship between three variables: religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning. The present research also investigated the role of need

for closure as serving to mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and

10

scientific reasoning. A convenience sample of college students filled out online surveys

consisting of measures of all three variables. The relationship between the variables was

analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics, including multiple regression with

bootstrapping to look for mediation.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The researcher was interested in the relationship between religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning. To accomplish this, this

research answered the following question.

Research Question 1: Is there a relationship between religious fundamentalism,

need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

Hypotheses:

H0: There is no statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students.

H1: There is a statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

H2: There is a statistically significant relationship between need for closure and

scientific reasoning in college students.

H3: There is a statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure in college students.

The researcher was also interested in the predictive relationship between the three

variables under study: religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific

reasoning, as well as the role of need for closure in mediating the relationship between

11

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. To accomplish this, the research

answered the following question and sub-questions.

Research Question 2: Is there a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

Sub-questions:

Sub-question 1: Which of the variables (religious fundamentalism and Need for

Closure) account for the predictive relationship with scientific reasoning in college

students?

Hypotheses:

H0: Neither of the variables have a predictive relationship with scientific

reasoning in college students.

H1: There is a predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning in college students.

H2: There is a predictive relationship between Need for Closure and scientific

reasoning in college students.

Sub-Question 2: Does need for closure mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students?

Hypotheses:

H0: Need for closure does not mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

H1: Need for closure does mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

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H2: Need for closure partially mediates the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Assumptions and Limitations

Assumptions

One assumption would be the accuracy with which the measures of the study

variables reflect the concepts the study was seeking to measure. The assumptions for this

study included the assumption that people responded honestly to all questions, that adults

should be capable of developing scientific reasoning abilities, and the assumption that

scores on measures of religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific

reasoning scores would be well distributed.

Limitations

One limitation of this study was the non-experimental design. This research was

correlational therefore one could only answer questions about the relationship between

variables. The study could not answer questions of causation. The reasoning underlying

the basis for the research argues that religious fundamentalism would inhibit the

development of scientific reasoning because of the nature of fundamentalist beliefs. It

also assumes that a greater tendency toward premature closure in fundamentalists was

responsible for this. However, this study could not explicitly answer whether or not

religious fundamentalism and need for closure effect the development of scientific

reasoning skills. The study could only look for the predictive relationships between

religious fundamentalism and need for closure and scientific reasoning, and the mediation

of the relationship between religious fundamentalisms and scientific reasoning that

should have existed if the rationale was correct.

13

Another limitation was the number of variables in the study. There were only

three variables in the study. With so few variables, the ability of the study to potentially

identify and control for the influence of mitigating variables was somewhat limited.

There may be other variables not under study that could be factors in producing the

relationships observed in this study. Similarly, the study cannot fully account for all

variables that may be responsible for variance in scientific reasoning scores. Other

variables could influence scientific reasoning to more or less a degree to that of religious

fundamentalism and need for closure.

Definition of Terms

Religious Fundamentalism

Religious fundamentalism reflects an intrinsic religiosity, which serves the

function of providing meaning and personal value. Intrinsically religious individuals

hold more orthodox religious beliefs (Batson, 1976). Peter Herriot (2007) argues that

three of the most common features of religious fundamentalism were: reactivity, dualism,

and authority. Reactivity reflects a general hostility toward the secular modern world.

Having a general hostility toward the modern world means that they see the modern

world as inconsistent with and moving away from the fundamental principles contained

within their worldview and in need of correction. Dualism meant seeing the world in

black and white terms. In the dualist point of view, there were only right and wrong

answers, as they often construct the world as a battle between good and evil. Those with

such beliefs and values were good, and modern secular society was bad. Finally,

authority represents their willingness to believe in and obey a sacred book and/or

authority figure(s) (Herriot, 2007). In the case of Christian fundamentalism, this likely

14

means taking the Bible as the literal truth, and a creation of the ultimate authority: God

(Emerson & Hartman, 2006; Herriot, 2007).

These traits were consistent with definitions of religious fundamentalism that see

it as a form of religious authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1996). Altemeyer and Hunsberger

(1992) define religious fundamentalism as:

The belief that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the

fundamental, basic, intrinsic, essential, inerrant truth about humanity and deity;

that this essential truth is fundamentally opposed by the forces of evil which must

be vigorously fought; that this truth must be followed today according to the

fundamental, unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and

follow these fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity. (p.

118)

This definition is the same as the one used by the measure of religious fundamentalism

being used in this research (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004).

Need for Closure

Premature closure occurs when an individual draws a conclusion or conclusions

prior to the consideration of sufficient information to draw that conclusion (Lunzer,

1973). This variable was measured by the revised short form Need for Cognitive Closure

scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Need for Closure (NFC) reflects a motivational

tendency by which an individual had a desire for a clear answer and an aversion to

ambiguity. NFC was conceptualized as emerging from five sub-facets: preference for

order, preference for predictability, discomfort with ambiguity, close-mindedness, and

decisiveness. People that were high in preference for order prefer structure and

15

consistency, while disliking disorder and chaos. When preference for predictability was

high, there was a desire for knowledge that was reliable and unchallenged. A high

capacity for discomfort with ambiguity reflects a dislike of situations and stimuli that

were not easily characterized. A high desire for close-mindedness reflects an

unwillingness to have one’s knowledge challenged or brought into question. Finally,

individuals high in decisiveness desire to make decisions quickly (Roets & Van Hiel,

2011).

Individuals that were high in NFC may display a degree of cognitive impatience.

It may be common for them to leap to conclusions based on insufficient or inconclusive

evidence. They may also display very rigid thought and reluctance to consider views

inconsistent with their own. This was in contrast to individuals that were low in NFC.

They tend to be very comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. They were more likely

to resist seeking quick judgment and quick to look for alternative explanations

(Kruglanski & Webster, 1996).

Scientific Reasoning

In this study, there were three variables under study: scientific reasoning,

religious fundamentalism, and need for closure. Reasoning was broadly defined as a

process by which conclusions were drawn. Reasoning was often described in terms of

being either inductive or deductive. These conclusions help to support problem-solving

and decision-making. The conclusions also help in the creation of goals and the

successful accomplishment of those goals (Leighton, 2004). A conclusion that was

inductively drawn may be strongly supported by a set of premises, but does not necessary

follow from the premises. The conclusion may plausible based on the premises, but was

16

not the only possible conclusion that can be drawn from the premises. Inductive

reasoning was consistent with the reasoning of pre-adolescents (Case, 1985).

When a conclusion was drawn deductively, it necessarily follows from a set of

premises. The conclusion was the only possible one given the premises (Leighton, 2004).

This was consistent with the reasoning of adolescents and adults. The capacity for

drawing deductive conclusions allowed reasoning to become more complex and more

efficient. Lawson (1995) saw reasoning within the domain of science as involving many

steps and consisting of the intermixing of inductive and deductive capabilities in a

process he referred to as abduction.

The process of abduction involves making connections between the present

situation and knowledge stored in memory and the use of that knowledge to develop

hypotheses relevant to the current situation. Abduction also involves making predictions

about the expected results of experiments and the confirmation of those results through

the process of collecting data and the comparison of that data to the predictions made.

Finally, the conclusions drawn from the data allow for the rejection or acceptance of the

hypotheses, as well as the development of new hypotheses to be tested at some point in

the future (Lawson, 1995).

Expected Findings

Research to date had yet to explore how religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning relate to each other. There was research showing a negative relationship

between religious fundamentalism and scientific literacy (Sherkat, 2011), as well as

research showing that those that were more likely to use analytical reasoning were more

likely to endorse supernatural beliefs (Pennycook et al., 2012). Therefore, it was

17

expected that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning would be significantly

correlated. Religious fundamentalism was also expected to be significantly related to

need for closure, which would be consistent with prior research (Saroglou, 2002). While

the relationship between need for closure and scientific reasoning had not been directly

studied, avoiding premature closure had been found to be important to successful

scientific reasoning (Acredolo & Horobin, 1987). Therefore, need for closure was

expected to be significantly related to scientific reasoning.

The reasoning behind the expected correlations also served as rationalization for

predictive relationships. Religious fundamentalism and need for closure were both

expected to be predictive of scientific reasoning scores. The relationships between

religious fundamentalism and need for closure, and the importance of avoiding premature

closure was to scientific reasoning, suggested that need for closure would be a plausible

mediator of the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Therefore, it was expected that need for closure would fully mediate the relationship

between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This research investigated the predictive relationship among religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning, while also determining the

role of a tendency toward premature closure played in the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. This literature review discussed theory and

research relevant to that topic. The theory and research reviewed demonstrated what was

already known about the topic and need for specific research on this topic.

The research discussed in this literature review was surveyed using multiple

approaches. Available databases in the Capella University library and online were

searched for relevant keywords. Several keywords were used including “scientific

reasoning”, “formal reasoning”, “critical thinking”, “neo-Piagetian”, “constructivism”,

“working memory”, “religious fundamentalism”, “religion”, “authoritarianism”, “Need

for Closure”, “closure”, “terror management theory”, “mortality salience”, among others.

The keywords were used both by themselves and in combination with other keywords.

While most databases available in the Capella library were searched, the ones that were

most valuable in finding the documents needed were PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, and

ProQuest Psychology Journals. Google Scholar online was also extremely useful in

finding relevant documents. Another means of finding relevant research was to search

Amazon.com with the keywords for academic books on the subject matters relevant to

the research topic. Finally, reference mining was employed to find articles that were

relevant to the research topic. This would include finding cited articles and books

referenced in other academic texts and then either obtaining them using Journal or Book

Locator database or using an Interlibrary Loan to obtain the documents.

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This introduction was followed by a discussion of the theoretical orientation

serving as the basis for this research. The discussion of theoretical orientation was

followed by a reviewed of literature relevant to the research topic. This discussion

included a review of research supporting the theoretical orientation, the research

variables, and methodology. The discussed research was then be synthesized in a

discussion of the larger themes and patterns, while discussing the strengths and

limitations of the content of the research findings. The research reviewed was then

critiqued based on quality of methodological approaches and opposing viewpoints,

including the strengths and limitations of both. Finally, literature review concluded with

a summary of the conclusions that can be drawn from the research reviewed.

Theoretical Orientation

Development of Scientific Reasoning

The theoretical tradition that had the most influence on understanding the

development of scientific reasoning was that of the constructivist tradition.

Constructivism sees knowledge as arising as a result of the internationalization of

experience; whereby the individual plays an active role in constructing his or her own

knowledge. Cakir (2008) explained that this knowledge was a product of intellectual

processes shaping the experience into a form that provides meaning to the experiencer.

That was, that knowledge was not simply the storage of experiences as they happen, but

was a human invention brought to life in the interplay between prior stored experiences

and present stimulation influencing the construct of new knowledge.

Piagetian theory. No one has influenced the constructivist tradition and the field

of developmental psychology more than Jean Piaget. What Piaget’s theory of cognitive

20

development accomplished was to change the way in which children’s cognitive abilities

have since been conceptualized and understood. A child’s cognitive abilities were no

longer seen as static and separate from adult abilities, but were seen as undergoing

constant change as they developed gradually into the form in which they take in adults

(Beilin, 1992). At the heart of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was the

constructivist mental construction of knowledge. The construction was also referred to as

a schema (Cakir, 2008).

Piaget’s concept of the schema was strongly influenced by the work of James

Mark Baldwin (Case, 1985). Baldwin reasoned that changes in the environment caused

an activation of stored movements that resulted in the individuals orientating in the

direction of the stimulus. The individual sought to maximize the intensity of the stimulus

by centering it in their field of perception. The movements that succeeded in centering

the stimulus became habitual over time. Successful movements were stored as a

“blueprint” for orientating to a specific stimulus, which Baldwin called a “schemata”.

For Piaget, these schemata or schema were not directly developed from the

environment, but were constructed logically. Higher order schemas, logical structures,

were assembling from lower order schema. Intellectual development was a process of

cognitive adaption whereby more complex cognitive abilities were built out of earlier

simpler forms (Piaget, 1977). One must develop the logical structure necessary for the

performance of a task in order to be successful in performing it. If children have not

developed the structures necessary for performing a task then their learning in the task

domain will be hindered, as they can only benefit from learning within their own domain

of understanding (Case, 1985).

21

This process of construction and reconstruction resulting in the development of

more complex forms proceeded through four stages, each stage only becomes possible

during a certain age range and each stage leading to the development of new logical

structures, each qualitatively superior to the previous stages. In accordance with the

Piagetian view of development, the development of certain abilities only becomes

possible during particular age ranges. Each stage develops newer more sophisticated

logical structures out of the less sophisticated structures of the previous stage (Simatwa,

2010). Piaget conceptualized children as moving through four stages: sensorimotor,

preoperational thought, concrete operations, and formal operations. The sensorimotor

stage starts at birth and proceeds until around two years of age. The actions of an infant

were at first exclusively reflexive, but as the stage proceeds their ability to more

efficiently use their senses and motor function to explore and interact with the world

increases.

The preoperational stage begins at the age of two and ends around the age of

seven. In this stage, children were not yet capable of logical thought and relied on

symbolic thought for the development of language and problem solving skills. The next

stage, concrete operations starts around the age of seven and proceeds until around the

age of eleven. Concrete reasoning involves reasoning about concrete objects, such as

objects in their environment or those stored in memory. They were not yet capable of

thinking in abstraction. This ability arises around the age of 11 when the stage of formal

operations begins. This stage continues into early adulthood. It was during this stage that

scientific reasoning becomes possible, as the ability to think in abstraction was applied to

scientific subjects (Simatwa, 2010).

22

For conceptual change to occur, conflicts between existing structures and present

situation must exist (Mayo, 2010). Knowledge was a process of active construction. The

learner does not passively store information, but actively constructs understanding

relevant to self (Cakir, 2008). The knowledge construction involves three processes.

First, the process of assimilation occurs when new information was incorporated into

existing schema. Second, accommodation occurs when an existing schema was altered to

bring it into line with knowledge obtained through the experience of some novel

stimulus. The final process was disequilibrium. Piaget (1977) theorized that humans

were motivated to keep the mind in a state of equilibrium. When a novel experience

demonstrates an existing schema was inadequate, the system was sent into a state of

disequilibrium. The individual was then motivated to employ cognitive resources toward

the changing the existing schema and thereby return the system to a state of equilibrium.

Neo-Piagetian theory. Most of the Piaget’s theory was preserved by neo-

Piagetian theorists, including stage-based transitions and age ranges in which certain

abilities arise. Neo-Piagetian theorists also argue that more sophisticated structures were

constructed from less sophisticated structures of the previous stages (Case, 1987).

Piaget’s description of cognitive change resulting in the construction of new schema

(structural change) and that new structure serving the function of providing the individual

with a means to deal with some cognitive conflict (functional change) had become an

essential element in modern constructivist and neo-Piagetian theories (Beilin, 1992).

Finally, neo-Piagetian theorists also support the idea that the constructed of knowledge

occur through the processes of accommodation, assimilation, and disequilibrium.

23

Disequilibrium had become an essential mechanism in explaining how cognitive change

occurs (Beilin, 1992).

In order to provide a better theoretical framework, neo-Piagetian theorists, such as

Robbie Case, Juan Pascual-Leone, and Kurt Fischer, have made an effort to advance

Piagetian theory (Case, 1985; Case & Okamoto, 1996; Fischer & Bullock, 1984; Fischer

& Silvern, 1985; Lamborn & Fischer, 1988; Pascual-Leone, 1969; Pascual-Leone &

Baillargeon, 1994; Pascual-Leone & Johnson, 2011). These theorists have advanced the

theory in several ways. First, they have theorized that there were differences in the

pattern of development in all individuals. The rate and pattern of development depends

on the types of experiences each individual had within that domain of learning. For

example, some children might have had more experience with logic and therefore were

better at logically reasoning, while others might have had more experience with

linguistics and were therefore more advanced in linguistics than other children (Case,

1987). This was a result of differences in experiences in the social domain or exposure to

more or learning experience in a particular domain.

When changes occur in structures, those changes were mostly limited to one

particular domain. Processing ability also influences these changes. The maturation of

brain structures was believed place limits on what types of changes can occur and when

(Andrews & Halford, 2011). Processing resources were believed to be limited and affect

the quality of reasoning that can be performed at certain ages. Working memory was that

limited resource in neo-Piagetian theory (e.g. Case, 1985; Pascual-Leone, 1969; Pascual

Leone & Johnson, 2011). Pascual-Leone (1970; 2000) argues cognitive resources focus

attention on concepts in the environment or in the mind. These resources then hold the

24

relevant concepts in working memory until they can be used or altered. Pascual-Leone

and Baillargeon (1994) theorize that the ability of working memory to hold more

information increases every two years, thereby allowing the child to engage in tasks that

were increasingly more resource intensive with age. As working memory increases, the

quality of reasoning that the individual was capable of increases as a result of the

increasing availability of cognitive resources. Children become more able to handle tasks

that require the investment of more significant amounts of mental effort.

Adolescence begins around the age of eleven and marks the beginning of

Piagetian formal operational stage. At this age, adolescents become capable of

developing deductive reasoning, as well as developing reasoning abilities that involve

thinking in abstraction. Reasoning during this period was considered to be hypothetical-

deductive reasoning (Lawson, 1995). This was because adolescent reasoning involves

imagining of abstract, hypothetical possibilities that may not be present in the

environment or a product of previous experience. The reasoning of the prior stage was

considered to be concrete, because it involved reasoning about things that the individual

had in memory or was perceiving in the environment. This limitation of pre-adolescent

minds to consider abstract possibilities was theorized to be a result of the maturation

process of the brain. As the brain matures into adolescence and early adulthood, the

individual becomes better able to think in abstraction and consider multiple hypothetical

possibilities (Lawson, 1993).

Cultural Influence. While Piaget believed that scientific reasoning was a product

the development of domain-general logical structures, the neo-Piagetian view was that

scientific reasoning was a product of domain-specific development of reasoning

25

strategies that allow for the drawing of accurate scientific conclusions. Case and

Okamoto (1996) argue that the absence of formal educational setting in many African

countries had served to inhibit the development of formal reasoning in those individuals.

Lev Vygotsky argued that the learning environment failed to provide sufficient

scaffolding in education of adolescents. That was, the educational environment did not

provide the type of support, such as in the form of lessons, activities, and/or instruction,

necessary to support the adolescent in the developing of their scientific reasoning abilities

(Tudge, 2010). According to the Piagetian perspective, the individual must experience

conflict in respect to an existing schema (disequilibrium) in order to be motivated to

change the existing schema into a form that was better suited to handling tasks requiring

scientific reasoning. The absence of sufficient scaffolding in the environment promoting

disequilibrium allows the existing schema to be maintained unchanged; in this case, a

reasoning capacity short of the quality necessary to reason about scientific matters.

Neo-Piagetian theorist Kurt Fischer argued that the development of certain

cognitive abilities was dependent on specific environmental conditions (Fischer &

Silvern, 1985). Individuals were characterized as being within a specific developmental

range that was determined by optimal and functional levels. When environments were

highly supportive to the development of specific knowledge and abilities children will

show optimal performance, but when children were in a low support environmental

condition the knowledge or abilities would fail to reach optimal level of performance.

This means that functional levels of specific knowledge and abilities will vary both

within and across cultures (Fischer & Bullock, 1984). The developmental range of

specific knowledge and ability will also vary across cultures, as different cultures would

26

employ different functional socialization of knowledge and ability in various content

domains (Lamborn & Fischer, 1988).

The development of scientific reasoning would therefore depend on a supportive

environment to nurture its development. The failure to elicit change in structures

resulting in the development of scientific reasoning abilities had also been theorized to

occur in response to ideologies that were hostile to science. Lawson (1995) argues that

dogmatic belief system would “retard the development” development of scientific

reasoning abilities. Lawson argued that such worldviews create environments in which

ideas were not critically analyzed and low effort thought was often enforced by the

worldview itself; these dogmatic environments can prevent the type of schematic change

from occurring that was necessary to fully develop scientific reasoning abilities.

Avoiding closure. An important factor in conceptual change was avoiding

closure. Lunzer (1973) argued that when developing the reasoning skills necessary to

reason scientifically it was important to avoid jumping to premature conclusions either

from inconclusive data or failing to fully consider the information at hand. Solving

scientific problems requires an individual to identify variables that may be casual and to

test those variables before making determination as to which variable(s) were the correct

casual factor(s) (Wollman, Eylon, & Lawson, 1980). People have to be willing to accept

ambiguity and uncertainty, for the time being, in order to develop approximate reasoning

strategies to deal with scientific problems and ultimately draw conclusions about those

problems.

Despite this need for avoiding premature closure, people have a fundamental need

to reduce uncertainty about the nature of self, the thoughts they should have, the manner

27

in which they should behave, and how other people will perceive and choose to treat

them (Hogg, 2000, 2007). This need for certainty provides people with the sense of

clarity about self and the world they live in. This greater sense of certainty makes the

world seem more predictable and actions more efficacious (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg,

2010). When threats to self arise, it was necessary to deal with them to protect self from

anxiety and maintain self-esteem (Greenberg et al., 1986). This need to immediately deal

with threats to self can result in an individual fixating on one solution without fully

considering the evidence at hand or the evidence that may be needed to draw good

conclusions. This premature closure would thereby inhibit conceptual change by drawing

conclusions before sufficient considering of all relevant factors had occurred (Lunzer,

1973).

Individual differences arise in our willingness to allow threats to linger and our

need to quickly seek resolution to presented threats. Individuals differ in their tendency

toward engaging in premature closure or the avoidance of closure. These differences in

motivation reflect a need for cognitive closure (NFC) (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994,

1998). This need was a motivational tendency that favors certainty in knowledge.

Individuals high in NFC were relatively close-minded as they prefer order and

predictability, as well experience discomfort when presented with ambiguity (Roets, Van

Hiel, & Cornelis, 2006). Individuals that have a weak tendency for NFC were more

tolerant toward states of confusion and ambiguity, and were less likely to quickly jump to

conclusions under such states. NFC comes in two forms: “need for specific closure” and

“need for non-specific closure” (Webster & Kruglanski, 1998). Need for specific closure

reflected a preference for specific answers over others. For example, religious

28

fundamentalists often believe in special creation and reject scientific concepts like

evolution (Scott, 2009). When presented with evidence in favor of evolution a religious

fundamentalist with high NFC might reject that evidence outright in favor of special

creation. This was an example of need for specific closure, as the preference for the

belief in special creation led to closure in response to evidence supporting evolution. In

contrast, if an individual, however, had a tendency to jump to such conclusions about

most, if not all, subject matters, it would be considered a need for non-specific closure.

Such an individual would seek to maintain definitive knowledge regardless of the subject

matter.

Value of Religious Belief

The nature of religious fundamentalism and the value these beliefs provide to

believers help serve to better illuminate why scientific reasoning ability may be inhibited

by religious fundamentalist worldviews. Sigmund Freud saw religion in an extremely

negative light. To Freud, religion was a psychologically immature state of mind and was

generally maladaptive. This “infantile” state of mind was theorized to produce serious

negative costs, such as the inability to perceive reality, failure to develop full human

potential, and a failure to be free as an individual (Freud, 1927/1964). The value of

religion arose as a means of avoiding engagement in the struggle between life (Eros) and

death (Thanatos) (Freud, 1930/1961). Religion was seen as a delusion or childish fantasy

that provided believers with the illusion of safety from many of the trials of life,

especially protection from the fear of the forces of nature and death. The religious belief

systems serve as a replacement for the safety provided by parents. In this, religion serves

as a defense against anxiety, while God serves as wish fulfillment that seeks to disregard

29

reality in order to protect self against personal insecurities and life’s many tribulations

(Freud, 1927/1964).

While more positive and goal-centric, Alfred Adler saw the value of religion

similar to Freud. Adler (1956) argued that each individual had his or her own perceived

inferiorities. This sense of inferiority caused one to feel as though they were lacking in

power. Religion provides a means by which an individual could have altered his or her

perceived inferiority; this occurred through the belief in God. God, in religion, was often

conceptualized as being perfect and omnipotent. By striving to be like God, humans

were striving for perfection. By striving for perfection, humans construct a means by

which to eliminate their perceived inferiorities. Therefore, to Adler, religious belief had

value to people because it provides a blueprint for overcoming a sense of inferiority by

striving for perfection (Adler, 1956).

While Freud and Alder saw the motivation for adopting religion as somewhat

one-dimensional, other theorists have recognized that religion often serves different

functions for different individuals. William James produced one of the earliest treatises

on the psychology of religion in his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience

(1902/2002). He drew a distinction between institutional religion and personal religion.

For James, there were two types of religious experience and personality: “healthy-

minded” (p. 132) and “sick soul” (p.137). Individuals that were ‘healthy-minded” in their

religious expression have a strong desire to expend energy toward moral pursuits that

aspired to make the world a better place. In contrast, individuals with a “sick soul” have

a passive desire for comfort and reassurance, as well as a desire to seek protection from a

30

divided, incomplete inner self. For James, religion had a beneficial influence on the

pursuit of a fruitful, fulfilling human life.

Gordon Allport also focused on individual differences in religious orientations in

his work, The Individual and His Religion: A Psychological Interpretation (1950).

According to Allport (1950), there were two distinct religious orientations: intrinsic and

extrinsic. An intrinsic religious orientation was related to the striving for meaning and

value. These individuals were seen as having a mature expression of religion. Extrinsic

religiosity, in contrast, was more self-interested, as the individuals use it to protect self,

gain social standing, and find solace. An extrinsic religious orientation was seen as being

immature. Individuals that were intrinsically religious attended church services as an end

in itself, while extrinsic religiosity might do so to satisfy social needs, or because

attending services help reduce stress. Batson and Ventis (1982) argue that the measures

of extrinsic religiosity measure a sort of utilitarian religiosity, where the individual uses it

for his or her own needs, often being religious for the sake of tradition, ritual, and/or

personal gain. However, they saw intrinsic religiosity as often measuring a tendency

toward dogmatic religiosity with uncritical respect for authority.

Religious Fundamentalism and Science

Among religious fundamentalists, especially those from Jewish, Muslim, or

Christian traditions, the authority of their religious texts was central to their worldview

(Herriot, 2007). The belief in one true God was also a central tenet of Judaism, Islam,

and Christianity (Almond, Sivan, & Appleby, 1995). The scientific concepts like

evolution can serve as an explicit threat to the fundamentalist worldview (Emerson &

Hartman, 2006; Tracy, Hart, & Martens, 2011).

31

Among Christian fundamentalists, a literal interpretation of the Bible was central

to their worldview. The book of Genesis suggests that the God created everything in six

days, roughly 6000 years ago. The theory of evolution and the supporting research

contradicts this, placing the age of the universe closer to 13.7 billion years (Numbers,

1992/2006; Hawking & Mlodinow, 2010). This was not the only reason that many

fundamentalists have a problem with evolution, as they also dislike the implication that

humans arose from lower life forms. Under Jewish, Christian, and Muslim orthodox

views, man was above that of animals and second only to God in importance (Numbers,

1982/2006). Anti-evolutionists also tend to feel that evolution diminishes the humanity

by removing purpose and meaning from human existence that would be implied by the

existence of a creator (Scott, 2009). One of ways some religious fundamentalists have

continued to fight modernity was through either trying to get evolution removed from

biology classrooms or trying to sneak creationism/intelligent design in the school

curriculum (Scott, 2009; Numbers, 1982/2006).

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986; Pyszczynski et al., 1999) was

one of the first theories to attempt to explain why people show allegiance to certain

worldviews and not others (Rosenbatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989;

Koltko-Rivera, 2004). Terror management theory (TMT) was largely built on the work

of Ernest Becker (1962, 1973, 1975). Becker (1962) argued that humans have a

fundamental need for self-esteem. Our capacity for symbolic, temporal, and self-

reflective thought, while useful for understanding the world, had the negative

consequence of potentially causing us to consider the possibility that the world was

32

uncontrollable and uncertain, as well as allowing for the recognition that death was an

inescapable consequence of our existence. Becker (1973, 1975) suggested that this could

lead to humans potentially being paralyzed by terror at any point in their lives. Culturally

derived worldviews help subdue this potential by making the world orderly, predictable,

and meaningful. In other words, culture provides the individual with the ability to ignore

and/or deny his or her own vulnerabilities and mortality.

Becker (1973, 1975) argued that human infants start out completely dependent on

their parents for security and protection. As they become children, they come to learn

that as long as they were good boys or girls, the security provided by their parents will

continue. This security helps contribute to a positive self-image (self-esteem). However,

as children become older and learn that parents were both mortal and incapable of

providing for all of their security and protection, they begin to look to culture to provide

that security and protection. Their security needs were transferred from parents to

religious and secular concepts, symbols, and cultural authorities (Greenberg et al., 1986).

Religious beliefs serve to provide knowledge, or at least the illusion of knowledge, about

the nature of reality. These beliefs protect against the anxiety that can arise from one’s

awareness of personal ignorance and/or vulnerability. Religion was especially good at

protecting against anxiety by providing a hope of immortality, thereby allowing the

individual to escape the terror that may result from awareness of an impending end to the

existence of self (Vail et al., 2010). Vail and colleagues (2010) argued that religion was

especially suited to provide anxiety protection because the nature of religious beliefs

makes them inherently hard to disconfirm.

33

According to TMT, cultural worldviews provide people with a sense of value or

self-esteem (Greenberg et al., 1986; Rosenblatt, et al. 1989). The worldview provided the

individual protection against anxiety. This buffer against anxiety consists of two

components: a) belief in a cultural worldview and the values and standards inherent in

that belief, and b) the belief one was living up to those standards (Rosenblatt, et al. 1989).

One can only maintain a high sense of value if the worldview provides protection from

threats. Worldviews arise from commonly held beliefs and practices within culture, and

were rarely subjected to critical analysis prior to a threat to the belief arising. This causes

worldviews to be prone to error. A belief that was incorrect or inadequate in dealing with

the context will result in anxiety, and will therefore require bolstering to preserve self-

esteem.

Worldview defense. A threat to an individual’s worldview increases anxiety and

thereby decreases self-esteem. Defense of one’s worldview against such threats are often

necessary to maintain self-esteem (Greenberg et al., 1986). For example, an individual

might reaffirm allegiance to a political or religious group by denigrating members of the

outgroup (e.g. Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992). The exact

nature of the defense, if any, depended on the nature of the nature the threat; not all

threats to worldviews were equal. Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Solomon (1999)

differentiate between proximal and distal defenses to threats. The difference between the

two concerns the ability of the threat to be dealt with conscious defense alone. Proximal

defenses can deal with threats with relative the same level of abstraction as the threat; it

typically only requires a quick conscious defense of the worldview to overcome.

Questioning the fairness of a test you failed or dismissing the thought of dental pain that

34

was not occurring in the moment, requiring only a modest conscious defense and

therefore typically does not increase worldview defense.

Distal defenses concern threats that cannot be dealt with by the same level of

abstraction or conscious defense alone (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). While it may be

possible to push the threat awareness out of consciousness, the threat still remains

significant enough that it lingers on in the unconscious mind. These threats were things

like awareness of mortality or attacking highly valued religious beliefs, such as God or

belief in special creation (Vail et al., 2010). To protect their self-esteem, defense against

such threats often requires a more direct affirmation of value, thus such threats increase

worldview defense.

Review of Research

Development of Scientific Reasoning

Cognitive conflict. Constructivist theorists argued that an individual’s capacity to

develop an intellectual ability like that of scientific reasoning depends on direct learning

experiences in which scientific ability was fostered. Specifically, Piagetian and neo-

Piagetian theorists argued that learning that elicits conflict with existing concepts and

abilities motivates the learner to alter existing concepts and abilities to fit the needs of the

situation (Cakir, 2008). These new concepts and strategies that were successful resolving

the conflict were preserved.

The role of cognitive conflict in shaping the development of scientific knowledge

and reasoning had become popular focus in research. Chen and Klahr (1999) studied the

ability of children to control variables. Children were told that they were to evaluate

specific experimental trial and determine the trial’s usefulness in determining how far a

35

ball would roll down a ramp. Children seven to ten years old were shown comparisons of

trials in which it was impossible to determine the casual variable influencing the outcome

due to extraneous variables and trials in which such a variable was controlled for. The

children were asked to determine whether the comparison of trials was a “good test” or

“bad test” of determining the casual factor the distance a ball would roll down the ramp.

In the training condition, the researchers provided feedback to the child after each trial,

including explaining why each test was either a good test or bad test. This feedback,

which acted to generate a conflict in the children’s mind between their own determination

quality of test and the researcher’s explanation of the proper response, resulted in

children in the training group improving their abilities to correctly determine the

informativeness of experiments and to draw inferences from them. Older children

showed the ability to transfer these new abilities to novel contexts even after a delay of

seven months.

Baser (2006) studied the role of cognitive conflict in fostering the development

of understanding of heat and temperature. Eighty-two second grade pre-service teachers

were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The control group got a

traditional physics course focusing on the concepts of heat and temperature. The

experimental group got physics instruction that focused on creating cognitive conflict.

This consisted of the professor pointing out an anomalous situation that conflicted with

the student’s prior conception. Whenever possible students were instructed to design an

experiment that demonstrated this anomalous situation. When experimentation was not

possible, students discussed the situation with his or her peers and then the instructor lead

a discussion in which student ideas were discussed and proper explanations were pointed

36

out and explained. Pre and post instruction tests were used to determine each

individual’s understanding of the concepts of heat and temperature. While there was no

difference between the two groups prior to instruction, after instruction the experimental

group showed better understanding of the concepts of heat and temperature; suggesting

that cognitive conflict did in fact foster the development of the understanding of the

concepts of heat and temperature.

Another study used a similar means to produce cognitive conflict, which the

researchers called holistic mental model confrontation. Gadgil, Nokes-Malach, and Chi

(2012) instructed students in the experimental condition to compare and contrast his or

her own flawed model of the human circulatory system with an expert’s model of the

system. The student was then prompted to explain the expert model. Students that were

not in the experimental group just had to explain the expert model without first being

instructed to compare and contrast their model with the expert’s. The research found that

students that had the holistic confrontation were more likely to acquire the correct model

of the circulatory system and showed a deeper understanding of the parts that the system

was made up of than the students that only had to explain the expert’s model. The

researchers argued the conflict helped target the flawed model at the proper level of

understanding, thus motivating the student to change his or her existing model to more

accurately reflect the expert’s model.

Avoiding premature closure. Avoiding closure was essential for successful

scientific reasoning. Wollman and colleagues (1980) sought to test the hypothesis of

Lunzer (1973) that the ability to accept a lack of closure (ALC) emerges in children

between 9 and 11 years of age. The study gave inference tasks emphasizing memory,

37

ALC, and hypothetico-deductive reasoning to children between the ages of 5 and 12

years of age. The results did not support the hypothesis of Lunzer (1973). While the use

of ALC increased with age, there was use of ALC among children as young as 6 years of

age. The tasks that placed more demands on working memory resources and the tasks

that required hypothetical-deductive reasoning were shown to be the most difficult.

Performance on tasks requiring hypothetico-deductive reasoning was a good predictor of

the spontaneous use of ALC. The results support the idea that ALC was essential to

performance on scientific reasoning tasks. The results were also consistent with Neo-

Piagetian theorists (e.g. Pascual Leone, 1969, 1970; Case, 1985) that argued that the

development of working memory was one of the primary factors driving the developing

of increasingly more advanced reasoning abilities with age.

Acredolo and Horobin (1987) sought to understand the developmental differences

in relational reasoning and in the avoidance of premature closure in children. The study

participants were 14 first graders, 17 third graders, 17 fifth graders, and 16 sixth graders

(ages ranging from 5 years and 10 months to 12 years and 2 months). They were given

20 relational reasoning problems, which required them to determine the possible sizes of

one item as compared to two other items by visually comparing the sizes. Some of the

problems had a single solution, while others had multi-solutions. The results found that

prior to the sixth grade, children did not consider the possibility of there being more than

one solution to the multiple solution problems. That was, children in fifth grade and

younger engaged in premature closure by assuming that there was only one solution to

the problem. Once they had come to that first solution they stopped looking for others

resulting in poorer performance on these reasoning tasks. First, third, and fifth graders

38

received corrective feedback on multiple solution problems on which they failed. The

corrective feedback did succeed in increasing the performance of children in these

grades, but the performance level never rose to the level demonstrated by sixth graders in

their spontaneous avoiding of premature closure on one solution. The results suggest that

the capacity to avoid premature closure, and thereby produce successful performance on

relational tasks, increases with age.

Cultural influences. Research found that cognitive abilities, particularly in the

case of scientific reasoning, were influenced by the degree to which the environment

supports their development. Luria (1976) studied syllogisms in farmers in central Asia.

Syllogisms employ the use of deductive reasoning to arise at a conclusion from two or

more propositions. For example, a syllogism from Luria’s research would be something

like “Cotton grows where it was hot and humid. England was cold and damp. Can cotton

grow there or not?” Luria studied both farmers that were not literate (and that had no

formal schooling) and those that were literate (and had some form of schooling). The

non-literate farmers would not even consider the problem; typically, they responded that

since they had no direct experience with one of the propositions they could not draw a

conclusion. They appeared to treat the propositions as completely dependent on an

individual’s personal experiences and independent of pieces of information and not as

pieces of the problem as a whole. Literate farmers, on the other hand, that had no

problem drawing the correct conclusion from the given propositions.

Fiati (1991) a group of individuals that lived in mud huts that had grass roofs in

the Volta region of central Africa. The villagers utilized subsistence farming to provide

for their livelihood. The passage of information among the village was largely oral. All

39

activity in the village ceased at dark and everyone gathered around the fire for

storytelling. No modern technology or books were present in the village, and children

did not attend any form of formal schooling. Western ten-base system of measurement

were also absent from their culture, as all trade involved direct barter and not any form of

currency.

These villagers were tested on measures of dimensional and spatial reasoning and

compared with children from schools in a nearby city and town. The influence of

schooling was clear as those with schooling performed significant better on the test of

dimensional and spatial reasoning (Fiati, 1991). Scores on reasoning tasks found to be

strongly related to both the presence and quality of schooling. Children without

schooling rarely solved problems that involved more than one variable, even during

adolescence. There were no differences in age related abilities, as there were no

significant differences in the groups of children on measures of working memory and

counting time.

The influence of schooling was not the only factor that can differ based on culture

that can influence the application of reasoning abilities. Culture can show preferences to

certain types of reasoning. Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, and Nisbett (2002) argued that

there were cultural differences in preferences for intuitive versus formal reasoning. They

argued European Americans would be more likely to set aside intuition in favor of formal

reasoning as compared to those from East Asia. Formal reasoning was based on rules,

focuses on logical inferences and represents concepts as being necessary and sufficient,

and discards sensory experience when in conflict with logic. Intuitive reasoning was

more based in experience, resisting separate reasoning from context, relies on sensory

40

experience, and favors intuition when in conflict with logic. The research exposed

groups of European American, Asian American, and East Asian undergraduate students

to conditions in which a conflict between formal and intuitive strategies was presented.

In a series of studies, European and Asian Americans students were found to be more

willing to favor of reasoning that was formal in nature, while setting intuition aside, as

compared to East Asian students. The opposite pattern was found in East Asia, as

students relied more on intuitive reasoning strategies as compared to Americans students.

This study demonstrates that cultural influences, such preferences for intuitive or

analytical reasoning, can influence the quality of reasoning strategies that arise in a

specific culture.

Soong, Lee, and John (2012) wanted to study cultural differences in justificatory

reasoning. Justificatory reasoning was the capacity to defend the rationale behind one’s

opinions, beliefs, and actions. Three types of justificatory reasoning were studied:

absolutism, relativism, and evaluativism. Absolutism involves defense by pointing to

values of authorities or common held norms. Relativism involves defense on the ground

that there were no right or wrong answer and that differing opinions should receive equal

consideration. Evaluativism involves defense based on evidence and sound reasoning.

Australian (a western/individualistic culture) and Malaysian (an eastern/collectivistic

culture) students had the links to online surveys sent directly to their school email

accounts. The surveys employed three scenarios were an individual defended a belief in

astrology, as well as three scenarios where an individual defended a perspective on

adultery. Each scenario employed one of the three approaches to justificatory reasoning.

Students were asked to respond to the scenarios. The responses of the students were

41

scored based on whether they agreed with, disagreed with, or were uncertain about the

defense of the belief in the scenario. Students from Australia preferred evaluativism

when defending belief in astrology, while students from Malaysia preferred relativism

when defending belief in astrology. In contrast, both of the cultures preferred absolutism

when in came to the moral issue of adultery. The results of the study suggest that cultural

differences can influence the way one defends their beliefs and actions.

Richland, Chan, Morrison, and Au (2010) studied analogical reasoning in children

in different cultures. Pre-school children from the United States and Hong Kong were

studied to understand the similarities and differences in logical reasoning errors. The

results showed that on analogy tasks children from both the U.S. and Hong Kong

demonstrated similar performance, but children from Hong Kong outperformed U.S.

students on tasks that were more relationally complex. Children from both cultures had

problems ignoring perceptual or semantic distractors during reasoning tasks. The results

suggest that culture differences can influence the development of better representations of

knowledge, which allows more efficient processing of relationally complex problems.

The results also suggested that inhibitory control in pre-school children was not

influenced by cultural differences.

The development of concepts like evolution can also be influenced by cultural

factors. Evans (2001) wanted to understand how belief in origin species emerged. Evans

utilized a mixed-design possessing aspects of both quantitative and qualitative research.

The researcher recruited Christian fundamentalist children and parents from two

Christian schools and one home school-group. Non-fundamentalist children and parents,

which had been matched for age with the fundamentalist group, were also recruited from

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the same town, as well as adjacent towns and cities. All the children and parents

complete the same tasks and interviews. The only difference between children in parents

was that children responded from their own perspective, while parents responded from

the child’s perspective on certain tasks.

The results showed that children’s beliefs in the origins of species changed with

time. Younger non-fundamentalist children between the ages of 5 to 7-years-old had

mixed beliefs about the origin of species, including creationist beliefs. In contrast,

fundamentalist children of the same age strongly endorsed creationist views. Middle age

children between the ages of 8 to 10-years-old mostly endorsed creationist ideas. By

adolescence, the beliefs about the origins of life took on the shape of the beliefs of the

community they were from. Children from fundamentalist communities were more likely

to adopt creationism, while children from communities that endorsed evolution were

more likely to adopt beliefs in evolution. The frequency of natural explanations for the

origin of species were some uncommon in the fundamentalist community, as compared to

the non-fundamentalist community, that it led Evans to conclude that natural explanations

for the origin of species had been “almost completely suppressed in the fundamentalist

community” (p. 231). Another finding of the research was that children’s knowledge of

natural history predicted the adoption of evolutionist beliefs, while religious interest

predicted the adoption of creationist beliefs. Evans (2001) interpreted this to meaning

that children adopted the beliefs of their communities. Children start out with their own

beliefs about the origin of species and then the community, in which they grown up,

either supports or discourages those beliefs.

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Prior belief and reasoning. The development of scientific reasoning and the

quality of reasoning within a scientific context can be influenced by an individual’s

existing beliefs. Kuhn, Amsel, and O’Loughlin (1988) studied the evaluation of

covariation evidence in children and adults. Their primary interest was determining how

they reconciled existing beliefs about specific casual variables with covariation evidence.

Participants were asked about which foods they believed beliefs would make a difference

in determining if a person caught a cold or not. From the questioning, four variables

were selected with two being factors that influence catching cold and two that do not.

The researchers then created evidence that confirmed one casual existing theory and one

non-casual theory. They also presented evidence that disconfirmed one existing casual

theory and one non-casual theory. The participants were then presented with the

evidence and asked questions about what the evidence showed on all four variables.

The researchers found three major patterns in the responding. First, they found

that as participants aged, the quality of evaluation of covariation increased, which was

consistent with constructivist theories of the development of scientific reasoning.

Second, subjects used several strategies that helped them keep prior theory and evidence

in alignment when they were actually discrepant. These strategies included ignoring

evidence, distorting evidence, and selectively attending to evidence that was consistent

with existing theory. Finally, they found that individuals adjusted existing theory to fit

evidence. While this was the expected response to disconfirming evidence, they found

that individuals were often unaware that they had altered their existing theory. They

found that some participants reporting having given a theory that was consistent with the

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evidence originally, when in reality their initial theory was actually inconsistent with the

evidence (Kuhn, Amsel, & O’Loughlin, 1988).

Amsel and Brock (1996) studied whether or not children (from second grade to

seventh grade) and adults (college students and non-college attending adults) evaluated

evidence in a fashion that was independent of prior beliefs. The researchers chose similar

design to Kuhn, et al. (1988), but one that was less cognitively demanding. Participants

were selected based on whether or not they held prior beliefs about the relationship

between the health of plants and the exposure of plants to sunlight. Participants were

presented with four data sets, which either showed a perfect positive correlation, or no

correlation that either confirmed or disconfirmed their existing beliefs. The results

revealed that college students were the most “ideal reasoners”, as they were better at

evaluating covariation evidence than children and non-college attending adults. The

research also found that all groups of children made judgments about covariation

evidence that was consistent with their prior beliefs. Non-college attending adults were

in between making less prior theory consistent evaluations of covariation evidence than

children, but making more prior theory consistent evaluations than college students.

Bastardi, Uhlmann, and Ross (2011) sought to determine if desires would

override beliefs based in fact while participants evaluated scientific evidence, as well as

determine if participants would change their initial beliefs after being exposed to

ambiguous evidence. Thirty-six participants were selected based on prescreening

questioning. Only subjects that had reported that they believed that home care for

children was better than day care and that they planned to have children in the future

were selected. The participants were equally broken up into two groups. The “conflicted

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group” planned to use day care in the future, despite a belief that home care was better.

The “unconflicted group” had reported that they would only be using home care, in the

future, for their children. The participants were presented with evidence from two

fictional studies one that was deemed to be in favor of day care, which was referred to as

the “Thompson study”, and one that favored home care, which was referred to as the

“Cummings study”. The other half of were told the opposite that the Thompson study

favored home care and the Cummings study favored day care. The participants were then

asked to rate the studies based on the quality of the research design and instructed to list

what they believed to be the strengths and weakness of each design. Next, the

participants indicated how convincing each study was. Finally, the participants were

asked which type of childcare was best for the development of their children.

The unconflicted group rated the Cummings study more negatively, as compared

to the Thompson study, when it supported day care than when it supported home care,

while the conflicted group rated the Cummings study more positively, as compared to the

Thompson study when it favored day care rather than home care. The results also

showed that the ambiguous evidence led the conflicted group to change their belief in

home care being better, while the unconflicted group maintained their belief that home

care was superior. Researchers interpreted the results to indicate that both groups

interpreted the results consistent with their initial beliefs. The conflicted group wanted to

believe that their choice to use day care was a good one so the evidence led them to

change their belief in its quality. The unconflicted group wanted to maintain their choice

in the superiority of home care, so the same evidence led them to maintain that strong

belief (Bastardi, Uhlmann, & Ross, 2011).

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Some religious beliefs run contrary to scientific fact and can inhibit the

development of scientific knowledge and abilities. Lawson and Worsnop (1992)

hypothesized that strong religious belief and a belief in special creation (a God being

responsible for the creation of the universe and all life in it) as hindering the acquisition

of scientific concepts. Students were first pretested to determine beliefs in respect to

evolution or specific creation, knowledge about natural selection and evolution, reflective

reasoning ability, and strength of commitment to religious practice. They then received

instruction in the subjects of evolution and natural selection. After instruction in

evolution and natural selection, students were given a post-test on those same things.

Reasoning ability was associated with prior scientific beliefs and increases in declarative

knowledge after instruction, but not changes in beliefs about evolution. Strength of

commitment to religion was negatively associated with prior beliefs in evolution and

changing of belief after instruction. The researchers’ initial hypothesis that strong

religious commitment and belief in special creation would hinder the acquisition of

scientific concepts like evolution was supported by the data.

Klaczynski (2000) studied the tendency of theory-motivated reasoning biases to

arise when reasoning skills were used to evaluate evidence that was either consistent or

inconsistent with individual’s belief systems. Sixty-six early adolescents and seventy-

three middle adolescents initially filled out questionnaires that determined their initial

theories about matters of social class and religion. Each individual was then presented

with nine experimental evaluation problems that were constructed so that the social class

or religion of the participant was the subject of the experiment. The individual’s social

class or religion was compared to others in other social classes or other religions on

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things like intellectual matters and moral behaviors. Each experiment evaluation was set

up so that it was class or religion favorable, class or religion unfavorable, or class or

religion neutral. The participants then indicated how strong they felt the conclusions

were and how valid or well the research was conducted. Finally, the participants wrote

the justifications for their conclusions. In both the social class and religion conditions,

reasoning biases were found in their justifications. However, only in the religious

condition was their evidence of in-group bias. The ratings of religion favorable

experimental evaluations were significantly higher than religion neutral experimental

evaluations, which in turn were significantly higher than religion unfavorable. The

justifications were most complex for religion unfavorable experimental evaluations.

There was also a significant difference between groups in terms of scientific reasoning

ability, as middle adolescents were better reasoners than early adolescents. When this

more analytical reasoning was used, it was used to evaluate and reject theory-incongruent

evidence, while more intuitive “judgmental heuristics” were used to evaluate and accept

theory-congruent evidence.

Religious resistance to science. The studies above showed that the motivation to

preserve religious belief was strong and drives a desire to resist subjects that were seen as

at odds with religious belief. Darnell and Sherkat (1997) argued that there was a great

deal of resistance toward higher education among Protestant fundamentalists. They

believed that fundamentalist beliefs and conservative Protestantism drove this resistance

to higher education would have a negative effect on educational attainment. The study

data was obtained from the Youth Parent Socialization Panel Study (YPSPS), collected

by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. The longitudinal study

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consisted of interviews with high schoolers from 1965 to 1982. The interviews of the

participants were separated into three groups: Conservative Protestants (CP), Biblical

Inerrantists (BI), and general population (GP). BIs were people that believed in a literal

interpretation of the Bible. The results revealed that CP and BI had significantly lower

educational aspirations then the general population. CP and BI were, also, found to have

significantly lower educational attainment in 1973 and 1982. There was no statistical

difference in the grade point averages any of the respondents. When the control for

social background was taken into account most of the relationships remained significant

(with the exception of educational aspirations of BI which lost its statistical significance).

The researchers concluded that the results demonstrate that fundamentalist orientations

have a direct, negative impact on post-secondary educational attainment in high school

students.

The resistance to education was most pronounced with respect to science. Yasri

and Mancy (2014) investigated the range of perspectives that students hold in respect to

religion and science, and how those positions may explain students’ approaches to

learning science. To accomplish this, the researchers employed a phenomenographic

design and the data was obtained through interviews with the participants. The

participants were nine students from Christian high schools. The researchers found five

different positions on how religion and science related in the students interviewed. Three

of the positions, contrast, commentary, and coalescence, each held by one student,

represented distinct ways in which the students attempt to reconcile religious and science

as compatible. Another position, compartmental, also held by one individual, held an

undecided perspective about the relationship between the subjects. The student was

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aware of the differences in explanation, but could not decide whether one was superior or

whether they were both compatible. Finally, the incompatible position argued that

science and religion were at odds and that religion should trump science. This position

was held by four of the nine students. These students could not reconcile evolutionary

explanations of the origin of species with their religious beliefs. These students did not

simply reject evolutionary explanations, but actively engaged in arguing against the

evolutionary perspective. For these students, the Bible was the only document of

relevance and only positions supporting the biblical account could be taken as legitimate.

Employing a grounded theory design, Hanley, Bennett, and Ratcliffe (2014)

sought to study how religious background of students would effect their willingness to

embrace scientific explanations about the emergence of life and the universe.

Researchers used questionnaires and focus groups to obtain data from more than 200

students. The researchers found that students could be divided into four categories based

on where they sit on four dimensions: whether their knowledge base was belief-based or

fact-based; their tolerance of uncertainty; their open-mindedness; and whether they

believe science and religion were in conflict or harmony. The four categories resemble

those found in Yasri and Mancy (2014). The first category “confused” reflects

individuals that were could not come to a conclusion as to how to reconcile their religious

beliefs with science. These individuals tended to have knowledge that was both belief

and fact based, while being intolerant of uncertainty and relatively close-minded.

“Reconciled” individuals had found a way to reconcile their religious belief and scientific

fact. They were more open-minded and tolerance of uncertainty than confused

individuals, but not by much. “Explorers” enjoyed the challenge of making religious

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views and scientific fact fit together. They were the most open-minded and tolerant of

uncertainty, while not seeing religion and science as being antagonistic. Finally,

“resistors” were the most close-minded and intolerant of uncertainty. They also held a

knowledge base that was heavily belief-based and saw religion and science as

antagonistic. They had determined that religion held the answers and that science had to

be rejected. The researchers reasoned that:

Resistors probably find school culture as a whole alienating, and not simply

aspects of science. Their preference for belief-based systems and their view of

the relations between science and religion as antagonistic, combined with the

desire for clear positions that are not open to doubt, suggest they would resist and

perhaps resent attempts to draw them into discussion of crossover topics such as

origins. (Hanley, Bennett, & Ratcliffe, 2014, p. 1223)

Many of the Muslim students often got defensive to the point of resentful of any

approach that forced them to discuss science and religion together. Researchers

concluded that such individuals might feel as though imposing the discussion of the

origin of life on them was an attempt at assimilation, thereby demanding that they give up

their culture and belief system in favor of scientific orthodoxy. Such a discussion in a

learning context could actually serve to further alienate them and drive them farther from

accepting of science.

Scientific literacy and reasoning. In people with fundamentalist beliefs, this

resistance to science and scientific concepts like evolution was accompanied by

decreased scientific literacy. Sherkat (2011) wanted to understand how religious

fundamentalism influenced scientific literacy. He obtained the data from the 2006

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General Social Survey obtained by the National Opinion Research Center at the

University of Chicago. The survey included information about religious orientations,

religious beliefs, income, race, and gender, among others. The data showed that

individuals that have self-identified as having a fundamentalist religious orientation had

significantly lower scores on a test of scientific literacy than any other religious

orientation or non-religious group identification. Religious fundamentalists with a belief

in the Bible as literal truth scored significantly lower on scientific literacy scores than

those that thought the Bible was merely inspired by God and those that thought it was a

book of fables after controlling for education and all other demographic variables.

Controlling for the demographics variables did decrease the magnitude of the difference

between sectarian Protestants and all other groups, but it did not eliminate the

significance. Sherkat (2011) concluded that the research demonstrated that the “religious

factors have persistent negative effects on scientific literacy” (p. 1146).

Religious beliefs, in general, have been found to be associated with a decreased

tendency toward analytical reasoning. Gervais and Norenzayan (2012) sought to

understand the cognitive processes that promote religious disbelief. In the first study,

they presented participants with three measures of religious belief and had them undergo

a task designed to test their analytical thinking skill. The results of this study showed that

analytical ability was negatively associated with all three measures of religious belief. In

studies 2 through 5, the researchers used various primes to trigger analytical thinking in

participants. For example, participants in the experimental group were given pictures

found to stimulate analytical thinking, such as a picture of Auguste Rodin’s “The

Thinker” sculpture. Individuals in the control group were given pictures of other

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sculptures that were matched on surface features like color and posture. The participants

then rated their belief in God (0 to 100). Participants primed to think analytically

reported less belief in God than those in the control group. The results of all four studies

showed that individuals primed in several different ways to think analytically reported

lower rates of religious belief than those that were not.

Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, and Fugelsang (2012) hypothesized that a

strong analytic cognitive style, defined as an individual’s tendency to analyze misleading

intuitions and engage in analytical processing would be associated with a history of

questioning and altering existing knowledge and understanding of the reality. They

argued that this would lead to the individual to find supernatural claims, such as religious

or paranormal belief, less plausible. In two studies, they examined the relationships

between beliefs about God, religious engagement, religious beliefs, and supernatural

beliefs with measures designed to access cognitive ability and analytical cognitive style.

Analytic cognitive style was found to negatively predict both religious and paranormal

belief. This predictive relationship held even when religious engagement, age, gender,

political ideology, cognitive ability, and education were all controlled for. That was,

participants that were most willing to employ analytical reasoning were also the least

likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. The researchers also found that religious beliefs

mediated the relationship between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement.

Therefore, an individual’s tendency to engage in analytical thought would appear to

negatively influence religious belief, which in turn negatively influences an individual

tendency to participate in religious activities such as going to church and praying

(Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2012).

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Creationist beliefs, often found in Christian fundamentalists, were associated with

decreased reasoning skill. Lawson and Weser (1990) were interested in the extent to

which college students held non-scientific beliefs, such as creationism, the soul, and

vitalism among others. They hypothesized that reasoning skills would facilitate

movement away from such non-scientific beliefs. To test this, they compared the

students reasoning level to the degree to which they held non-scientific beliefs and the

degree to which they changed after instruction. Overall, the results supported the

hypothesis, instruction did succeed in increasing the percentage of students that adopted

evolution and agreed that Darwinian theory as the correct explanation for evolution.

However, less skilled reasoners were found to more likely to have initially held non-

scientific beliefs and were less likely to give those beliefs up after instruction. The

percentage of students that expressed belief in special creation (creationists) did not

change significantly after instruction. The researchers concluded that the persistence of

scientific misconceptions found in creationists after instruction was likely a result of the

emotionally charged nature of the subject.

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory argued that worldviews serve as protection against

existential anxiety. The worldviews provide a source of meaning, security, direction,

structure, and purpose in the face of the immense complexities inherently associated with

understanding the universe and everything in it, as well as protection against the

awareness of one’s weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and morality. The worldviews also serve

to provide an individual with self-esteem, which was increased by one’s awareness that

they were living in a fashion that was consistent with whatever standards and values were

54

established by the worldview. This self-esteem also served to protect the individual

against existential anxiety (Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

Morality Salience. Terror management research relied on a concept called

morality salience. This hypothesis states that since a worldview protected against anxiety

that would naturally arise in response to awareness of one’s morality, then reminding

someone of their own morality should increase their need for the structure that the

worldview provided. This increased need for structure should cause a change in an

individual’s evaluations of others that were perceived to be infringing on the evaluator’s

worldview. The evaluations of individuals with like worldviews should be more positive

and evaluations those with contrary worldviews should become more negative.

Rosenbratt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and Lyon (1989) sought to test

this hypothesis in a series of six experiments. The first experiment involved judges. The

judges were divided in to experimental and control conditions. The judges in the

experimental condition were asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their concerns,

thoughts and feelings about the prospect of dying (mortality salience). Next, the judges

were asked to set bonds for alleged prostitutes. Judges in the control condition were ask

to set bonds on the same prostitutes without first filling out the morality salience

questionnaire. The judges that had filled out the morality salience questionnaire set

significant higher bonds for the alleged prostitutes than the judges in the control

condition. That was, the judges that had been made aware of their own morality sought

to reestablish the sense of structure that their worldview provided by judging those that

broke the law harsher than judges in the control group, as being a judge they no doubt

saw themselves as being in accordance with the law.

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Experiment 2 replicated the first experiment using students. The results of the

experiment found that only students with initial negative attitudes about prostitution

responded to the morality salience prime by giving the prostitute a large bond.

Experiment 3 went the opposite direction as it asked students to give reward

recommendations for “heros”. Following the mortality salience prime the students gave

larger reward recommendation to a hero that upheld specific culturally held values. The

mortality salience prime caused them to need to reestablish the sense of structure their

worldview provided by recommending higher reward for the hero that upheld their own

values. Experiments 4 and 5 found that mortality salience primes did not result in a

significant increase in self-awareness or physiological, as they were potential alternative

causes of the harsher bonds and higher rewards. Finally, experiment 6 replicated the

bond experiment with students using a scale designed to access fear of death as a

mortality salience prime (Rosenblatt et al., 1989).

Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Chatel (1992) wanted to

determine if awareness of one’s mortality would result in increased intolerance when the

value of tolerance was made salient. The first of two studies hypothesized that because

liberals value tolerance more than conservatives, when mortality salience was primed that

dislike of dissimilar others would increase in conservatives, while it would decrease in

liberals. Participants were given a four question survey to access their political

orientation and based on their responses were ranked on the degrees to which they were

liberal or conservative. The most liberal and conservative subject were selected for

participation. The liberals and conservatives that were selected were induced to either

think about their own mortality or a neutral subject. They were then asked to evaluate

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two individuals, one liberal and one conservative. The results were consistent with the

hypothesis as conservatives and liberals responded differently after the mortality salience

prime. Conservatives became more favorable to similar others and less favorable to

dissimilar others. Liberals, however, did not become more favorable to similar other and

decreased unfavorably rating of dissimilar other. The second study employed students

that were first primed with the value of tolerance and then induced to either think about

their mortality or a neutral subject. The students then rated a critic that criticized the

United States. With the value of tolerance accessible, awareness of mortality did not

result in negative reactions to the critic. The researchers concluded that these studies

provided evidence that values like tolerance could override mortality salience’s tendency

to increase intolerance of dissimilar others.

Halloran and Kashima (2004) sought to determine if mortality salience would

affect the validation of primed social values. For the first of two studies, Aboriginal

Australians were recruited from a semi-traditional Aboriginal community in Perth,

Western Australia. They were presented a packet consisting of brief essays talking about

the importance of Aboriginal culture or general Australian culture, either morality

salience primes or a questionnaire about watching television, and scales asking about the

importance of specific values. The results showed that mortality salience caused the

participants to rate ingroup values high and outgroup values low depending on which

social values were made salient. In the second study, undergraduate students were

primed with student values, Australian values or human values; given the mortality

salience prime (or non-mortality salience prime); and then given the questionnaire

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designed to measure the importance of certain values. Consistent with the first study,

students validated the values that had been made salient following mortality salience.

Religious Terror Management. Terror management theory argued that religion

served a protective function against existential anxiety. This protection against anxiety

increases self-esteem and subjective well-being (Vail et al., 2010). Greenberg,

Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, and Kirkland (1990) wanted to determine if

mortality salience would cause Christians to react more favorably to those that share their

beliefs and less favorably to those that threaten their beliefs. Christians were asked to

form impressions of questionnaires filled out by others after a mortality salience prime.

One of the questionnaires appeared to be filled out by a Christian and one by a Jew. The

results showed that mortality salience led to positive impressions of the ingroup member

(Christian) and negative impressions of the outgroup member (Jew). Christians preferred

the worldviews of similar others because it served as a validation of their own worldview,

while the worldview of the Jew served as a threat to their own worldview (Greenberg et

al., 1990).

Religion often serves to provide aid in dealing with the inevitability of death in

the form of a belief in an afterlife (Vail et al., 2010). Intrinsically religious people have

internalized their religious beliefs and the internalization of a belief in some form of

death avoidance, such a belief in an afterlife, should serve as protection against anxiety

that typically occurs as a result of mortality salience. Jonas and Fischer (2006) sought to

study the role of intrinsic religiosity in reducing the effect of death awareness. In the first

study, the participants that were high in intrinsic religiosity did not react to mortality

salience with worldview defense, while those that scored low in intrinsic religiosity react

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with worldview defense. In the second study, intrinsic religiosity was only successful in

mitigating the effects of mortality salience when participants were allowed to first affirm

their religious beliefs. The final study, found that affirmation of religious beliefs only

helped mitigate the effects of mortality salience when participants had scored high on

measures of intrinsic religiosity. Taken together, the results suggested that only people

that were intrinsically invested in their religious beliefs benefit from the protective

functions of those beliefs. In other words, worldview beliefs only serve a protective

function if they were well integrated in a person’s identity.

Religious fundamentalism was a form of intrinsic religiosity. Friedman and

Rholes (2008) hypothesized that the intrinsic religiosity of religious fundamentalists

would serve to protect against existential anxiety typically produced by mortality

salience. Individuals that were high in religious fundamentalism engaged in significantly

less worldview defense after having to think about their own deaths as compared those in

the control condition that had to think about dental pain. Individuals that were low in

religious fundamentalism engaged in more worldview defense than those that had to

think about dental pain. In general, religious fundamentalist writings about their own

death took on a positive note. Fundamentalists often wrote about death in terms of peace

and acceptance and appeared to have benefited the most from the protection against

existential anxiety that their worldview provided.

The intelligent design (ID) movement arose out as an attempt to make creationist

beliefs about the origin of the universe and life more scientifically acceptable (Numbers,

1992/2006; Scott, 2009). Tracy and colleagues (2011) wanted to understand the

psychological motives underlying the support for ID and associated antagonism toward

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evolutionary theory. In five studies, participants were first presented with an existential

threat, in the form of mortality salience, and then presented the participants with a

passage arguing in favor of evolutionary theory or a passage arguing in favor of ID. The

participants were then asked about their impressions of the author of the passage. In the

four studies, existential threat resulted in an increase in acceptance of ID and/or the

rejection of evolutionary theory. The increase was present regardless of the individual’s

religion, religiosity, educational background, or preexisting attitudes to evolutionary

theory. In one of the studies, the researchers taught the participants that naturalism could

serve as a source of existential meaning and then exposed them to the existential threat.

Another study used students that were from natural science background. The results of

the studies showed a reversed affect, as the students taught to see that naturalism served

as a source for meaning and the students with a background in the natural sciences were

more favorable toward the pro-evolutionary theory passage. The researchers interpreted

this to mean that individuals preferred a theory that “offers a greater sense of meaning by

depicting human life as having ultimate purpose (while appearing consistent with the

scientific worldview)” (Tracy, Hart, & Martens, 2011). They likely did not see

evolutionary theory as providing much in terms of existential comfort. The students

educated on naturalism and the natural science students had learned that the natural

sciences, specifically evolutionary theory, could provide a source of existential meaning

and therefore show greater favor toward that theory.

Religion and Closure. Golec de Zavala and Van Bergh (2007) chose to

investigate the relationship between need for closure, personal worldviews (traditional,

modern, or post-modern), and conservative political beliefs. A traditional worldview

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reflected a belief in specific, unshakeable, transcendent truths that were not subject to

rational verification or evaluation. Evidence was interpreted by relating it to their

personal transcendent reality and the absolutist values contained within that belief. This

worldview was consistent with religious fundamentalism. This was in contrast to modern

and post-modern worldviews. For a modern worldview, there was a belief in an objective

truth and this truth was verifiable and legitimized through scientific means. People with

a post-modern worldview, doubt the existence of an objective truth. Science was seen

more as a “production” of truth, rather than the revealing of reality it was those with a

modern worldview. Polish adults (N = 189) were given a questionnaire consisting of

instruments designed to access these three variables. The results revealed that traditional

beliefs were positively related to conservatism, while a modern worldview was related to

the rejection of conservative beliefs. Need for closure was found to be positively and

significantly related to traditional worldview. The relationship between need for closure

and political beliefs was found to be mediated by personal worldviews.

As the previous study would suggest, traditional worldviews, like that possessed

by religious fundamentalists, were associated with a greater tendency toward premature

closure. Saroglou (2002) wanted to better understand the relationship between religion

and need for closure. The researcher gave 239 college students instruments designed to

measure need for closure, religious fundamentalism, and two-dimensional religiosity.

Religious fundamentalism was positively correlated with need for closure in general, as

well as preference for order and predictability (need for closure sub-facets). None of the

five need for closure sub-facets (preference for order, discomfort with ambiguity,

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preference for predictability, close-mindedness, and decisiveness) predicted religious

fundamentalism, though it was predictive of the entire Need for Cognitive Closure scale.

One of the need for closure sub-facets was discomfort with ambiguity. Sagioglou

and Forstmann (2013) wanted to understand the effect of Christian religious concepts on

tolerance of ambiguity. In study one, 64 participants were given scrambling sentences to

unscramble contain religiously associated words such as faith, church, heaven, prayer,

and divine (or neutral set of sentences contain no religious words to unscramble). The

participants then completed a scale designed to measure intolerance of ambiguity. The

group that got the religious word sentences showed significantly high intolerance of

ambiguity than the control group. In study 2, the priming was handled the same and then

participants were present with ambiguous and non-ambiguous pieces of art and then

asked how much they liked the piece of art. Religiously primed participants dislike the

ambiguous piece of art significantly less than the control group, while the there was no

difference between religiously-primed and controls in respect to the non-ambiguous piece

of art. This suggests that religious fundamentalists might be more prone to premature

closure with more complex subject matters.

Methodology Review

This dissertation studied the predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning, as well as determining if need

for closure mediates the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning. For this study, a non-experimental, correlation design was selected. This

design was common for research looking into the how differences in one variable were

associated to differences in one or more other variables (Leedy & Ormond, 2010). This

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study was interested in how differences in religious fundamentalism, need for closure,

and scientific reasoning were related to each other. This research hypothesized that

religious fundamentalism would influence scientific reasoning by means of need for

closure. That was, that need for closure would be responsible for how religious

fundamentalism transmits its influence on scientific reasoning. This was the type of

question that mediation modeling was designed to answer (Hayes, 2013).

According to Baron and Kenny (1986), for mediation to be confirmed a few items

would have to be demonstrated by the study, a) need for closure needs to be predicted by

religious fundamentalism, b) scientific reasoning needs to be predicted by need for

closure, and c) scientific reasoning would need for be regressed on religious

fundamentalism, while controlling for need for closure. It was expected that religious

fundamentalism would no longer predict scientific reasoning when need for closure was

controlled if mediation was to be confirmed. To accomplish this, multiple regression was

selected as the primary statistical analysis. This statistical procedure was used with

multiple predictive variables (Hayes, 2013). Descriptive statistics was also used. These

statistics were necessary to confirm the assumptions necessary for regression model

(Warner, 2008).

The instruments were selected to ensure that they were easily correlated and

regressed. All of the variables were non-dichotomous. The measure of religious

fundamentalism consisted of 12 items and each item has a seven point Likert (1 =

strongly agree and 7 = strongly disagree). The items were added up. The higher the

score of the combined items indicates a higher degree of religious fundamentalism. The

range of scores was from twelve to eighty-four (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004). The

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measure of need for closure consisted of 15 items. Each item included a 6-point Likert (1

= strongly agree and 6 = strongly disagree). The measure of scientific reasoning

consisted of twelve two-tiered items, each with answer and justification for the answer

part. The range of scores was from zero to twenty-four (Lawson, 2000).

A convenience sample of college students from a university in the Southeastern

United States used for the study. The method for collecting the data was to obtain the

participants from General Psychology courserooms or some other widely taken elective

course(s). All college students that consented to be in the study, and were between the

ages of 18 to 59, were included in the study until the number of subjects exceeded 100

participants. The G*Power tool suggested 89 participants or more were necessary for

statistical significance. G*Power was a power analysis program that was useful in

determine sample sizes needed for significance in correlation and regression analysis

(Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009).

Similar research design found in the literature. Saroglou (2002) used a similar

design to look at the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism,

religiosity, and need for closure. Such a design was also used in Golec de Zavala and

Van Bergh (2007). They studied the predictive relationship between need for closure,

conservative political beliefs, and personal worldview. Both of these studies employed a

non-experimental, correlational design with multiple predictive variables. They also both

employed predictive relationship analysis with multiple regression. Finally, they both

employed mediation modeling in determining how variables influenced each other.

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Synthesis of Literature

Scientific Reasoning

The focus of the study is looking at specific influences on the development of

scientific reasoning. A developmental tradition, in the form of constructivism,

specifically Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theory, was selected as the theoretical basis for

understanding the development of scientific reasoning. In accordance with this

theoretical orientation, knowledge was conceptualized as being constructed actively by

individuals from experience. When a novel situation presents itself, the novel stimulus

triggers a state of disequilibrium, a conflict, within the individual. The individual was

then motivated to resolve the conflict and thereby return to a state of equilibrium (Piaget,

1977).

Research was reviewed in this dissertation that demonstrated the success of

conflict-based approaches to science learning. Chen and Klahr (1999) created a conflict

in the minds of 7 to 10-year-olds by providing feedback, in which the research explained

why certain experimental trials were good and bad, after an inaccurate determination of

the quality of an experimental trial. This resulted in children becoming better at

determining the informativeness of an experimental trial and drawing inferences from

experiment after the feedback. Basor (2006) also used feedback to create conflict in

students’ minds resulting in a better understanding of the concepts of heat and

temperature after feedback. Having students compare their flawed model of the human

circulatory system with an expert model succeeded in creating a conflict in their minds

that led to a better understanding of the circulatory system (Gadgil, Nokes-Malach, &

Chi, 2013). Together these studies can be taken as support of constructivist theory

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arguing that learning was triggered by the need to resolve a conflict in one’s mind,

thereby returning the mind to a state of equilibrium.

This theory also argues that concepts and abilities develop gradually over time.

They start also simple lower order schemas. High order, more complex understanding

and abilities were constructed from lower order forms. This gradual construction of

abilities means that students can only benefit from certain kinds of experiences and

certain kinds of learning relative their biological maturation or prior experience (Case,

1985). Moreover, certain types of experiences were necessary for certain types of

learning to occur. This was supported by the cross-cultural research reviewed in this

dissertation.

The development of scientific reasoning depends on the presence of an

environment that was supportive to its development. Luria (1976) found that literate

farmers in central Asia with some schooling performed better in reasoning tasks

involving syllogisms than did illiterate farmers without schooling. Fiati (1991) found

similar results as individuals from central Africa with schooling performed significantly

better on tests of dimensional and spatial reasoning than did central Africans from

subsistence farming culture that had no formal education. The absence of schooling led

to the creation of an environment that did not support the development of more advanced

forms of reasoning, which in turn resulted in illiterate farmers in central Asian and

subsistence farmers in central Africa failing to develop the same quality of reasoning as

those with schooling. Research also found that there were culture differences in

preferences toward types of reasoning. European and Asian American students were

more willing than East Asian students to set aside intuition in favor of ruled-based formal

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reasoning (Noreanzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002). Evans (2001) found that

children’s beliefs about the origin of species were either supported or discouraged by the

beliefs of the community or their religion. Around early adolescence, beliefs about the

origin of species were predicted by the belief of their community, which their parents

also shared. Taken together, this research suggests that cultural differences in education

and preferences for certain types of reasoning and knowledge can negatively affect the

development of correct conceptualization of scientific concepts and availability and usage

of reasoning abilities.

Effective scientific reasoning was also susceptible to prior knowledge. Kuhn et

al. (1988) found that the participants in the studied interpreted covariation evidence to be

consistent with existing belief, even when it was discrepant. Other research found similar

results, as children were more likely to interpret covariation evidence as consistent with

existing beliefs. This was in contrast to college students that were found to be the most

ideal reasoners, as they were better at accurately interpreting covariation evidence and

less likely to interpret evidence as consistent with existing belief (Amsel & Brock, 1996).

Bastardi and colleagues (2011) found that participants that held conflicted beliefs were

more likely to change beliefs after exposure to ambiguous evidence, while unconflicted

participants were more likely to maintain existing belief when evidence was ambiguous.

Suggesting that certainty with which beliefs were held can influence the interpretation of

evidence and reasoning from evidence.

Effective scientific reasoning further depends on an individual’s ability to avoid

premature closure. Wollman and colleagues (1980) determined that the ability to avoid

premature closure was present in children as early as six years of age. The more working

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memory the tasks required the harder the task was. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning

tasks were the hardest and required the spontaneous use of avoidance of premature

closure. Performance on these tasks predicted the spontaneous avoidance of premature

closure. Children in the fifth grade and younger were found to regularly engage in

premature closure when solving multiple solution relational reasoning tasks (Acredolo &

Horobin, 1987). These children showed poor performance on multiple solution reasoning

tasks by closing on the first solution found and failing to determine if there was another

solution. These studies clearly show the importance of avoiding premature closure in

reasoning.

Religion Fundamentalism

Terror management theory (TMT) argued that worldviews, such as religion,

provided meaning and understanding. This understanding served to protect an individual

against existential anxiety that may arise from awareness of sources of existential

anxiety, such as the awareness of one’s own mortality. Further, when exposed to a

source of existential anxiety, the individual should be motivated to re-affirm as a form of

protection against the source of anxiety. The research reviewed supports the view that

worldviews serve a protective role against existential anxiety. Rosenblatt and colleagues

(1989) found that judges that were first made to think about the prospect of their own

death (mortality salience) set significantly higher bonds for prostitutes than judges that

did not have the mortality salience prime. The harsh bonds served as a means for judges

to affirm aspects of their own identity as a means of reestablishing structure in the face of

existential anxiety. Another study focused on the fact that liberals tend to value

tolerance, as part of their worldview, more than conservatives. Researchers made the

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value of tolerance salient and then exposed liberals and conservatives to mortality

salience (Greenberg et al., 1992). After the mortality salience prime, conservatives

responded more favorably toward similar others and less favorably to dissimilar others,

while liberals did not decrease favorability to similar others and became more favorable

toward dissimilar others. The researchers interpreted this as support for TMT, as after

mortality salience as conservatives and liberals re-affirmed their existing worldview as a

means of re-establishing structure in the face of existential anxiety. Mortality salience

also led participants to re-affirm social values that were primed by researchers (Halloran

& Kashima, 2004). These studies serve as support that worldviews serve a protective

function against sources of existential anxiety.

Religions, like other worldviews, serve a protective function against existential

anxiety. Mortality salience also leads religious individuals to re-affirm their worldview

as protection against existential anxiety. Christians that were exposed to mortality

salience had positive impressions about a questionnaires filled out by a Christian and

negative impressions of a questionnaire filled out by a Jew (Greenberg et al., 1990). One

belief that was common among religious people was a belief in the afterlife. Research

demonstrated that intrinsic religiosity, particularly with a belief in the afterlife, can

reduce the effect of morality salience. Individuals that scored high in intrinsic religiosity

with belief in the afterlife did not respond to mortality salience with worldview defense,

while those that scored low intrinsic religiosity responded to mortality salience with

worldview defense (Jonas & Fischer, 2006). The results suggested that religious beliefs

that were well integrated in one’s identity best served as a protective role against

existential anxiety. Religious fundamentalists have been shown to gain similar benefits

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from their religious beliefs and often discuss death in positive terms (Friedman & Rholes,

2008). That was, religious fundamentalists have religious beliefs that were intrinsically

invested in and that served as protective function against existential anxiety.

For science to serve such a protective role, individuals must first see science as a

source of existential support. Research suggests that individuals see more intuitive

solutions, like intelligent design, as a more natural source of protection against anxiety.

Unless an individual learns to take comfort in science they were more likely to look to

such intuitive sources for support (Tracy, Hart, & Martens, 2011). Religious beliefs

influence how individuals make sense of scientific concepts and employing reasoning

skills. Lawson and Worsnop (1992) found that participants with strong religious beliefs

were less likely to initially hold a belief in evolution and were less likely to change that

belief after instruction. Researchers interpreted this as consistent with their hypothesis

that strong religious belief and a belief in special creation would inhibit acquisition of

scientific concepts like evolution. Yasri and Mancy (2014) found that four of nine

students from a Christian high school believed that science and religion were incapable

and that science was to be rejected when the two came into conflict. Hanley, Bennett,

and Ratcliffe (2014) also found that many students believed that religion and science

were incompatible and science must ultimately give way to religious belief. This

resistance to science was accompanied by decreased expectation of educational

achievement (Darnell & Sherkat, 1997) and decreased scientific literacy (Sherkat, 2011)

in religious fundamentalists. Further, religious fundamentalism was found to be

negatively associated to a tendency to analytical thinking (Gervais & Norenzayen, 2012;

Pennycook et al., 2012). Taken together, these results suggest that strong religious

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beliefs, particularly religious fundamentalism, have a negative influence over scientific

literacy and reasoning.

Religious fundamentalists have a traditional worldview. This worldview consists

of transcendent truths that were absolute and not subject to verification or rational

analysis. This type of worldview had been showed to be positively associated with a

tendency toward premature closure (need for closure) (Golec de Zavala & Van Bergh,

2007). Saroglou (2002) reproduced this result as religious fundamentalism was found to

be positive correlated with need for closure. This tendency to premature closure in

religious fundamentalists would seem to exist when dealing with complex subject

matters. Sagioglou and Fortmann (2013) found that subjects prime with sentences

containing religious words showed greater intolerance of ambiguity than the control

group. In a second study, religiously primed subjects showed significantly greater dislike

for ambiguous pieces of art than the control group, while there was no difference between

the groups when rating non-ambiguous pieces of art. Taken together, these results

suggested that religious fundamentalists may be prone to premature closure.

Critique of Literature

The research reviewed in this chapter was quite diverse. The research designs

reviewed include research that used various quasi-experimental designs, non-

experimental designs, multiple types of qualitative designs, and mixed-designs including

both aspects of quantitative and qualitative research. For this section, the strengths and

limitations of research will be discussed. Next, opposing points of view to this research

theoretical orientation will be discussed. Finally, the limitations of these viewpoints as

compared to the theoretical orientation will be discussed.

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Methodological Strengths and Limitations

The study closest to the subject matter to this research was that of Sherkat (2011).

Sherkat’s (2011) study had several issues with construct validity. The first problem of

construct validity comes from a couple demographics variables. Both race and income

were not representative of the population in reality. The researcher used dichotomous

measures of both race and income. For race, the only two options were either “African

American” or “Other” (p. 1141). Income was represented by the options of either below

or above $150,000. Both of these variables were far more diverse in reality than just two

options. This could bring into question the accuracy of any conclusion drawn about the

relationship of either of these variables and scientific literacy (Warner, 2008). This does

not really effect the primary research question, but it does effect the interpretation of

results obtained when controlling for demographics variables.

There was also a construct validity problem with the measure of scientific

literacy. It was uncertain as to what it was actually measuring. The instrument primarily

tests scientific factual knowledge. However, it does have three items that might be

considered as measures of scientific reasoning. These items measure two types of

problems requiring scientific reasoning: controlling of variables and the use of

probabilistic reasoning (Sherkat, 2011). First, three items were hardly sufficient as a

measure of scientific reasoning. Second, scientific reasoning was seen to be more

complex an ability than just controlling for variables and probabilistic reasoning. For

example, a measure of scientific reasoning would include measures of many types of

reasoning relevant to the scientific domain, such as proportional reasoning, combinatorial

reasoning, correlational reasoning, probabilistic reasoning and controlling for variables

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(Lawson, 1978). If the researcher desired to measure scientific reasoning, a well-

validated measure of scientific reasoning should have been used (e.g. Lawson, 1978;

2000; Tobin & Capie, 1981). Sherkat (2011) also failed to provide evidence for the

reliability of this measure of scientific literacy.

The final problem of construct validity comes from the how the variable of

“sectarian Protestant” was determined. Sherkat (2011) used self-identified religious

denominations and put them into groups based on whether the denomination was either

sectarian Protestant or mainline Protestant. For example, a self-identified “Baptist”

would be classified as sectarian Protestant, while a “Methodist” would be classified as a

mainline Protestant. The problem with this approach was that there was likely a great

deal of diversity in belief regardless of religious denomination. A Baptist might hold

mainline beliefs, while a Methodist might hold more sectarian beliefs. This undermines

the results obtained, because it was uncertain as what was actually meant by sectarian

when defined by religious denomination.

The Sherkat study adds strength to the argument for the need for research in this

subject matter. The limitations in respect to the measures of sectarian Protestant and

scientific literacy provide further justification to conduct similar research with better

instruments and more clearly defined variables. Research looking at the relationship

between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were mostly absent from the

knowledge base and having a study with questionable use of instrumentation like Sherkat

(2011) only adds to the need to do research that explicitly addresses this absence.

Another study with limitations was that of Luria (1976). In the Luria study, those

individuals classified as literate were also those that had some form of schooling, while

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those classified as non-literate were also those that have not had schooling. While they

were often thought of as synonymous, literacy and schooling were not necessarily the

same thing (Scribner & Cole, 1981). This confounds the interpretation of the results, as it

was unclear to what existent literacy was responsible for the results as compared to

schooling. However, this does not influence the reasoning of the synthesis, as the study

was still solid evidence that in the absence of a more formal education, whether it was

explicitly schooling or being taught to read, the differences in reasoning between the two

groups was pronounced. Fiati (1991) found that schooling was predictive of reasoning

ability, which helps provide better clarity to which variable was likely responsible for

inability to reason about syllogisms among the illiterate and unschooled individuals in

Luria’s study.

Opposing Views

The primary theoretical opposition to constructivism and terror management

theory comes from nativist psychologists, specifically in the form of evolutionary

psychology. Evolutionary psychologists have a modular view of brain functionality. The

brain, primarily the cerebral cortex, was conceptualized being made up of psychological

adaptions. Each adaption was specialized in processing certain types of information in

ways that solved a specific or similar problem to one experienced in our evolutionary

past. The majority of these “modules” that make up the brain were theorized to have

been adapted to deal with evolutionary problems during the Pleistocene epoch stretching

from 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago (Buller, 2005). As Pinker (1997) argues that:

The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized

design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The

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modules’ basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was

shaped by natural selection to solve the problems of the hunting and gathering life

led by our ancestors in most of our evolutionary history. (p. 21)

Tooby and Cosmides (1995) described modularity in the brain as being like having

hundreds of tiny computers. Each computer had its own separate domain of processing.

The function of each computer was shaped by evolution to accomplish its own specific

task.

Each module comes equipped with innate knowledge about problems within its

respective domain. This implies that development of skills within domains would be

specific to the domain (Case & Okamoto, 1996; Buller, 2005). The environment was

only necessary for stimulating the development of each module, which learning then aids

in making the processing of information and the behaviors expressed within that domain

more sophisticated (Buller, 2005). Essentially, modules laid in wait for some specific

environmental stimuli to begin their development. Once this stimulation occurred the

development of genetically selected for behaviors and abilities follows in short order.

Constructivism. Evolutionary psychology was in opposition to constructivism,

as the Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theory argued that abilities, like reasoning, were

acquired through experience. These abilities develop gradually over time with high-level

abilities being constructed from lower level abilities (Case, 1985). Specifically, scientific

reasoning, which was a specific form of formal reasoning, was constructed from less

sophisticated concrete reasoning skills. Constructivist theory implied that there were no

innate reasoning capabilities. The biological machinery that was selected for by

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evolution was more general purpose. The brain stores and alters experience into

sophisticated form in almost all domains of learning.

Evolutionary psychology argued that reasoning skills were have evolved to deal

with the complexities of the social domain. The primary evolutionary role of reasoning

skills was theorized to be the detection of cheaters (Trivers, 1971). Cheaters were

individuals that take the benefits of an altruistic act, but do not reciprocate by behaving

altruistically toward others individuals within the social group. This type of relationship

was argued to be evolutionary unstable, leading evolution to select for the ability to

detect cheaters and algorithms to perform cost versus benefit analyses within the social

domain. Cosmides (1989) found that participants were more successful reasoning about

an unfamiliar social contract problem than a logically identical non-social contract

problem. Cosmides interpreted this to be evidence of the existence of an innate capacity

to reasoning about social contract problems. Buller (2005), however, argued that the

results of research have been over interpreted. He reviewed research that demonstrated

that the results obtained were a result not of some innate ability to reason about social

contracts, but because the social problems were simpler reasoning problems than the non-

social reasoning problems.

One of the problems with evolutionary psychology’s view of the function of the

brain is that it was not consistent with the current neuroscience view of how the brain

works. Price, Jarman, Mason, and Kind (2011) explained that there were two models for

how genes influence brain development. The first was the protomap model suggests that

genes lay down a template for later developing cortical areas in the early cortex that was

matched to incoming axons. This view of brain development was consistent with

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evolutionary psychology view. The second was the protocortex model. According to this

view, the cortex specific innate specialization, as the identity of the cortical areas was

specified by afferent axons from the thalamus (Price et al., 2011). This model was most

consistent with the constructivist view. Research had found that genes aid in

development of distinct cortical areas. The cortical areas that genes influence to

development of were highly regional in nature (Chen et al., 2011). This was consistent

with other research. Johnson and de Haan (2015) concluded that large-scale regions of

the brain appear to be determined by genetic factors, but small-scale functional areas of

the cortex were shaped heavily by experience. That was, there were very few innate,

predetermined wiring of neurons in the cerebral cortex or in the thalamus. Specialization

in the cortex results appears to be a product of the interaction of neural inputs (perceived

experience) and the temporal dynamics of neural development. In other words,

experience and neural development combined to produce specialized abilities in specific

areas of the brain. Several reviews of neurological research have concluded similarly

(Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi, & Plunkett, 1996; Johnson, 1997;

Johnson & de Haan, 2011). This conclusion was more consistent with a mix of the

protocortex and protomap models, as well as more consistent with constructivism than

evolutionary psychology; while large-scale areas of the brain were shaped by genetic

factors, the specific layout out of functional areas of the brain appears to be more

dependent on experience than genetics.

Even if evolutionary psychology does wind up being correct in theorizing the

existence of domain-specific modules selected for by evolution, the interpretation of this

dissertation would not have changed much. Genovese (2003) explained that evolutionary

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biology views abilities as coming in two forms: biologically primary and secondary

abilities. Biologically primary abilities were things like learning that were explicitly a

product of the brain’s architecture. Biologically secondary abilities start out in some

general form and then were shaped into something more sophisticated by culture. Formal

reasoning, specifically, was theorized to arise as a biological secondary ability. This was

similar to Braine (1990) who argued that biology sets in place certain inferential rules of

logic, selected for by evolution, which give rise to more advanced forms of logic and

reasoning. If formal reasoning was a biologically secondary ability, the reasoning

arguing that religious fundamentalism would likely influence the development of

scientific reasoning would still be valid. All that would need to change would be the

theoretical origin of basic inferential rules (assuming they exist), as they would arise from

biology rather than experience. However, given that developmental neuroscience

research was more consistent with the constructivist theory, there was no reason to alter

that aspect of the theoretical basis for this research.

Terror management theory. Evolutionary psychology also serves as opposition

to terror management theory (TMT). Central to this opposition was the idea of death

anxiety. Navarrete and Fessler (2005) criticized TMT on the grounds that no survival

instinct could have evolved. In accordance with their reasoning, immediate survival and

enhanced longevity would not increase the likelihood of genes being passed on to future

generations. The longevity of the individual can actually distract from reproductive

success. Navarrete and Fessler further argued that worldview defense would be better

explained by evolution selected for the capacity to form coalitions to enhance

coordination and membership to social groups. Finally, they argued that the fact that

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worldviews can do as much to increase anxiety as they do to inhibit it suggests that

existential anxiety could not have been a basis for the adoption of worldviews.

These criticisms largely reflect a misunderstanding of TMT theory. First, TMT

does not propose the existence of an instinct specifically designed by evolution to serve a

survival function. What TMT proposed was that genes indirectly shaped our brains in

such a way as to orient individuals toward reproduction and orient individuals away from

things that would harm them or ultimately lead to the annihilation of self that death was

(Landau, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2007). TMT also did not argue that the

only function of worldviews was to manage anxiety or that all sources of anxiety were

kept under control by worldviews. What the theory did argue was that worldviews, in

concert with self-esteem, buffered anxiety associated with death. Worldviews do not

necessarily protect against all anxiety and do not necessarily cause people to feel good.

They provide meaning and understanding that protect against specific sources of anxiety.

Landau and colleagues (2010) further argued that the theory arguing that

evolution selected for a capacity for coalition forming (CF) was not a viable alternative to

TMT. First, they point out that the theory cannot explain the fact that virtually every

culture had a supernatural dimension. Second, they argued that CF cannot explain why

worldview defense was symbolic, in that it involved defense of both specific and general

systems of meaning unrelated to the specific nature of the threat, rather than focusing on

the specific adaptive threat it supposedly was selected by evolution to deal with. Finally,

they argued that TMT theory had a large body of empirical support for hypotheses

developed direct from the theory, while such hypotheses could have never been deduced

from CF theory.

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TMT theory was extremely well supported by the research (Landau et al., 2010)

and CF theory does not provide a compelling alternative to TMT. When the strong

empirical support of TMT was combined with the neuroscience research undermining

evolutionary psychology theory discussed previously, there appears to be no reason to

change the rationale underlying this research. The rationale for the research being that

religious fundamentalism provided meaning and understanding to its adherents. When

that meaning and understanding was brought into doubt, it created anxiety and a need to

defend one’s worldview. The research discussed in this dissertation suggested that

science and scientific concepts, like evolution, might serve as a threat to the religious

fundamentalist worldview, creating a need to defend that worldview against the perceived

threat. This would have served to undermine the use of reasoning about scientific

concepts and thereby undermine the development of scientific reasoning ability. An

individual’s tendency to avoid premature closure (need for closure) should mediate this

relationship, as the avoidance of closure would allow for the greater consideration of

scientific subjects, while a tendency toward premature closure would support the

preservation of the fundamentalist worldview.

Summary

The research reviewed suggests that knowledge was actively constructed by the

individual in response to the experience and the degree to which the environment

supports the development of the specific type of knowledge. The development and

successful production of scientific reasoning was shown to be susceptible to cultural

environmental influences, premature closure, and prior belief. Religious fundamentalism

was shown to both be hostile to academic achievement and science concepts like

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evolution. Terror management theory asserted that religious belief served a protective

function against existential anxiety. When the protective function was threatened the

individual would feel the need to re-affirm the relevance of his or her own worldview in

defense against of the source of existential anxiety. Evidence was presented that supports

terror management theory’s description of the value of religion. Evidence was also

presented that religious fundamentalists may see scientific concepts as being in

opposition to their religious worldview and may feel motivated to reject the scientific

concepts in defense of their worldview.

This resistance of science by religious fundamentalists was accompanied by

research suggesting that religious fundamentalists were less competent about science

subjects and less likely to employ analytical reasoning. Religious fundamentalists were

also shown to have a tendency toward premature closure. Research to date, however, had

not explored the relationship of religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, and

had not determined the role of a tendency toward premature closure (need for closure)

plays in this relationship. Therefore, there was a need for research looking at the

predictive relationship between these three variables, as well as research determining the

role premature closure had in the interaction between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter first discussed the purpose of the study. The chapter then discussed

specifics related to the research design, target population, selection of participants,

research procedures, and the instruments used for data collection. Finally, the chapter

stated the research question and related hypotheses, discussed the data analysis

procedure, and the expected results of the study.

Purpose of the Study

Scientific reasoning was an essential skill needed to conduct scientific inquiry and

understand complex scientific subjects (Han, 2013). The literature review failed to find

any research looking at the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning specifically. Sherkat (2011) did find a negative relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific literacy, a variable related to scientific reasoning. Further,

several studies have found that an individual’s tendency to engage in analytical thought

was associated with religiosity (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook, 2014;

Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2012; Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012).

This study advanced the knowledge base by expanding our understanding of the

nature of the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

There was a small amount of research looking at the relationship between need for

closure (NFC) and religious fundamentalism (Saroglou, 2002). NFC was conceptualized

as being a motivational tendency to seek definite knowledge about a subject and to

remove confusion and ambiguity from that understanding (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994,

1998). This research had found a positive relationship between religious fundamentalism

and NFC (Saroglou, 2002). While avoiding premature closure was found to be important

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in aiding the development of scientific reasoning (Acredolo & Horobin, 1987; Wollman,

Eylon, & Lawson, 1980) and hypothesis generation (Mayseless & Kruglanksi, 1987), no

research was found in the review of literature that investigated the relationship between

NFC and scientific reasoning. This study investigated the nature of the relationship

between NFC and scientific reasoning, thus advancing the knowledge base in respect to

the subject matter. Finally, the research reviewed did not explore the question as to

whether or not NFC might mediate the relationship religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning; on this subject matter, the knowledge base was also be advanced.

The purpose of this study was to address this absence in the research literature by

investigating the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism, NFC, and

scientific reasoning, while also seeking to determine if NFC mediates the relationship

between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Research Design

A quantitative non-experimental correlational design was used to determine the

nature of the relationship between religious fundamentalism, NFC, and scientific

reasoning. A correlational design was used when investigating the relationship between

variables (Leedy & Ormrod, 2010). A step-wise multiple regression was used to

determine the predictive relationship between the three variables. Bootstrapping was

used to determine if need for closure mediated the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. Bootstrapping involves taking many random

samples of the data and estimating the desired statistic based on the samples. For

example, if you were interested in the mean of a sample, bootstrapping would pick out

many small randomly selected samples of the entire data set and estimate the mean from

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the means of all the small samples. Multiple regression with bootstrapping was used

when testing a mediation model (Hayes, 2013).

Target Population and Participant Selection

The target population from which the subjects were obtained was that of a state

university in Southeastern United States. The larger population was diverse in terms of

age and gender. The larger population was roughly 60% women and 40% men. The

mean age was 25 years and the mode age was 19 years. The distribution of females to

males was similar for college enrollment across the US (US Census Bureau, 2012). Ages

range from 15 to 82 years. Total enrollment per semester was greater than 10,000

students. The students come from a diverse range of racial and ethnic backgrounds with

65.6% non-Hispanic white students, 18.8% African American students, 5.6% Hispanic

students, and 10% of students from other races or ethnicities. The percentage of non-

Hispanic whites enrolled at the college was similar to the percentage enrolled in colleges

across the US (compared to 60% nationally in 2012), but the school had higher

percentage of African Americans (compared to 9.4% nationally in 2012) and a smaller

number of Hispanics (compared to 17% nationally in 2012) as compared to the average

US college (US Census Bureau, 2012).

The G*Power tool was used to determine that the sample would need to be at

least 89 subjects with two predictor variables for significance at .05 level and a power of

.95 using multiple regression for analysis of data. These values reflected a 5% chance of

Type I error and were commonly used by researchers in multiple regression analysis

when determining significance (Warner, 2008). The effect size selected was .15. The

goal of researchers in such analyses was typically to demonstrate a medium effect size.

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The value .15 was considered a medium effect size (Warner, 2008). The study employed

at least 100 college students as subjects. The choice of 100 subjects was chosen as a

round number above 89, as more subjects would increase the likelihood of a sample that

was more representative of the larger population (Warner, 2008).

Participants were included in the study if they consented to participation, were a

college student, and were between the ages of 18 and 59. The first 101 completed

responses were selected for inclusion in the study.

Procedures

Students were recruited from commonly taken elective courses likely to have a

wide range of college students, such as General Psychology and Introduction to

Sociology. Professors of the classes were contacted through email and asked to distribute

a flyer to their students in physical classrooms or post the flyer as an announcement in

online classrooms. Professors that agreed to distribute or post the flyer were given the

flyer to give to their students at their convenience. The researcher had no direct contact

with any of the participants.

The flyer asked students to participate in the research, provided details about the

study, and directed the students to a website to complete a survey. The survey was

hosted on Surveymonkey.com and consisted of a demographics survey and instruments

measuring the three variables of interest to this study: religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning.

Professors distributed the flyer to students and interested students went to the

website link provided on the survey. Before completing the survey, the students were

provided with relevant consent information and asked to agree to participation in the

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study. If students consented, they were taken directly to the survey to complete. If

students failed to consent, the survey ended and they were taken to a screen thanking

them for their time.

The specific order in which the instruments would be presented was selected to

minimize the chance measurement bias. Prior research had shown that lengthy

examinations requiring considerable mental effort, like the measure of scientific

reasoning, could impair performance on an instrument that followed such an examination

(Webster, Richter, & Kruglanski, 1996). Therefore, it was decided that the measure of

scientific reasoning would go last. There was also a concern that presenting the measure

of religious fundamentalism prior to the measure of scientific reasoning might prime

certain religious concepts that could bias performance on the measure of scientific

reasoning in some participants. This was because beliefs consistent with religious

fundamentalism were often in conflict with scientific explanations (Hanley et al., 2014;

Yasri & Mancy, 2014). To limit the chance of measurement bias, the Need for Cognitive

Closure scale was positioned between measures of religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning. The Need for Cognitive Closure scale would likely not prime any

concepts that were religious or scientific in nature; therefore, it should serve as a strong

buffer between the other instruments and likely absorb any priming affects associated

with the measure of religious fundamentalism having proceeded the instrument, while at

the same time not biasing responses on the measure of scientific reasoning.

The participants first completed the demographic survey. Second, they completed

the measure of religious fundamentalism. To avoid biasing the responses or possibly

offending strongly religious individuals the document was titled the “Personal Beliefs”

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scale. The students then completed the Need for Cognitive Closure scale titled the

“Closure Scale”. Finally, the participants completed the measure of scientific reasoning,

titled “Test of Reasoning”. Once the participants completed the final instrument, they

clicked “Done” and the survey was then over. They were thanked for their participation.

Once sufficient responses had been collected, the survey link was closed and the

researcher downloaded the data from Surveymonkey.com for data analysis.

Instruments

The instruments that were used included a demographics survey (including

gender, age, race, religious affiliation, and year in college), Religious Fundamentalism

Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (Roets & Van

Hiel, 2011), and the Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (Lawson, 2000).

The Religious Fundamentalism Scale and Need for Cognitive Closure scale both

employed Likert-style questions. The Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning employed a

multiple-choice style with three-tier scoring. All of the instruments produced interval

data. The demographics survey employed multiple styles of questions and produced both

nominal and interval data.

The Religious Fundamentalism Scale was that of Altemeyer and Hunsberger

(2004). It was the short-form version of the original Religious Fundamentalism Scale

(Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Both scales have similar reliability and validity

(Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004). The religious fundamentalism scale characterizes

individuals that were both “authoritarian” and “religious” (Altemeyer, 1996).

Fundamentalism “refers to the attitude that your religion’s beliefs encompass the

fundamental, complete truth about fundamental forces of good and evil and fundamental

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practices based on a fundamental, special relationship with God” (Altemeyer, 1996, p.

157). The scale consisted of 12 items and each item had a seven point Likert scale (1 =

strongly agree and 7 = strongly disagree). The scale employed protrait and contrait items,

and scoring on the scale was reversed for contrait items. The items were to be added up.

The higher the score of the combined items indicated a higher degree of religious

fundamentalism. Each individual would fall somewhere on the continuum between low

religious fundamentalism (low score) and high religious fundamentalism (high score).

The scale consistently shows strong internal consistency. Out of eleven different samples

the mean alpha was .90 (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Altemeyer & Hunsberger,

2004; Danso, Hunsberger, & Pratt, 1997; Rowatt & Franklin, 2004; Krauss et al., 2006;

Jonathan, 2008). The scale also had strong internal consistency across non-Christian

religious traditions, including Jewish, Muslim and Hindu religious traditions with

coefficient alphas between .85 and .94. (Hunsberger, 1996). The scale also had strong

construct validity. Altemeyer (1996) insisted that fundamentalism was a religious type of

right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). RWA was defined as the covariation of the

tendency to submit perceived legitimate authorities (authoritarian submission), the

tendency to be aggressive toward various groups of people sanctioned by authority

(authoritarian aggression), and the tendency to adhere to social conventions endorsed by

the authority (conventionalism) (Altemeyer, 1996). Religious fundamentalism and RWA

were strongly correlated (between .62 and .82) (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992;

Altemeyer, 1996; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004;Hunsberger, 1996; Danso, et al., 1997;

Rowatt & Franklin, 2004; Krauss et al., 2006; Jonathan, 2008).

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The Need for Cognitive Closure scale (NFC) measured a motivational tendency to

seek definite knowledge about a given subject and to remove confusion and ambiguity

from that understanding (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994, 1998). This tendency manifested

through five aspects: preference for order, discomfort with ambiguity, preference for

predictability, close-mindedness, and decisiveness. The scale that was used for this study

consisted of 15-items. Each item included a 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree and 6

= strongly disagree). Both scales had strong reliability (.90 for 41-item and .87 for 15-

item) and were correlated strongly and significantly with each other (.95). Each also

correlates similarly with right-wing authoritarianism, openness, Need for Structure, and

Need for Cognition (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). These aspects reflected two types of

closure: “non-specific closure”, being the desire for any answer rather than confusion and

ambiguity, and “specific closure”, which reflected a preference for specific answers. As

would be expected with an instrument measuring two types of closure, NFC fails as a

unidimensional instrument and was found to consist of two distinct factors (Neuberg,

Judice, & West, 1997; Neuberg, West, Judice, & Thompson, 1997; Kruglanski, Atash,

DeGrada, Mannetti, Pierro, & Webster, 1997; Roets & Van Hiel, 2007; Roets, Van Hiel,

& Cornelis, 2006). Specific closure items were selected to be identical to those in the

Personal Need for Structure scale (PNS) (Kruglanski, et al., 1997). These items correlate

positively and significantly with the PNS Scale with correlations between .69 and .84

(Neuberg, Judice, & West, 1997; Neuberg, West, et al., 1997) demonstrating convergent

validity. PNS was also unrelated to the non-specific closure items producing divergent

validity (Neuberg, Judice, & West, 1997; Roets & Van Hiel, 2007). Roets and Van Hiel

(2007) argued that the decisiveness reflected a measure of ability, not a need. As a result,

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they developed new items that better reflected a decisiveness need. They produced a new

scale that better reflected a unidimensional scale, with decisiveness now correlating with

other closure items. A short-form version of this new unidimensional scale was then

developed (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). The reliability and validity of this scale was

already discussed above.

The Lawson (2000) Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (CTFR) will be used for

this study to measure scientific reasoning. The scale employs questions requiring the

usage of different types of formal reasoning in scientific contexts, making it a measure of

scientific reasoning. The Lawson (2000) scale was an altered version of the original

Lawson (1978) scale. The original scale was made up of fifteen two-tiered items, each

with answer and justification for the answer part. The original scale consisted of

presentations by a professor and the participants writing responses on an answer sheet.

The newer scale was a completely pencil-and-paper form. Scoring on the original scale

was two-tiered, being that individuals had to get the correct answer on both portions of

the question to get credit, and the newer version employed a separate grading for both

portions of the question. Han (2013) argued that a three-tier grading approach was a

better reflection of the type of reasoning being used. This study employed the three-tier

grading on the first 20 items, while the final four questions will be worth a point each as

suggested by Han (2013). The original scale tapped five formal reasoning facets: control

of variables, proportional reasoning, combinatorial reasoning, correlational reasoning,

and probabilistic reasoning, and one concrete reasoning facet: conservation. The newer

version of the scale replaced combinatorial reasoning items with more correlational items

and new hypothetical-deductive reasoning items. The change was a result of research

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demonstrating the original scale failed as a complete measure of formal reasoning due to

the lack of hypothetical-deductive reasoning items (Hacker, 1989; Pratt & Hacker, 1984).

With this exception the original scale was deemed valid (Han, 2013; Lawson, 1978). The

CTFR was found to be reliable with a Kuder-Richardson 20 estimate of reliability of .78

(Lawson, 1978). The scale had face validity as experts in Piagetian measures of formal

reasoning found unanimously that the items appeared to measure aspects of formal

reasoning. The total score on the CTFR correlated with level of response on Piagetian

bending rods (r = .75; p < .0001) and balance beam (r = .65; p < .0001) tasks known to

measure formal reasoning (Lawson, 1978). The scale was found to be multidimensional

(Hacker, 1989; Lawson, 1978; Pratt & Hacker, 1984). Three distinct factors were found.

These factors corresponded to the degree to which formal reasoning had been developed.

Those that scored from 0-5 were considered to be in the concrete reasoning stage, scores

of 6-11 were deemed to be transitioning to formal reasoning, and scores of 12-15 were

deemed to be in the formal reasoning stage. Stephanich and colleagues (1983) found that

Lawson’s formal reasoning items correlated with other more traditional measures of

formal reasoning consistent with the findings of Lawson (1978). Another study found

that the Lawson scale correlated with success in math and science, and was found to

predict success in the science, especially biology (Hofstein & Mandler, 1985). The

Lawson (2000) version has been found to correlate with success on tests of physics (Diff

& Tache, 2007). Other studies had also found similar results (i.e. Coletta & Phillips,

2005). Han (2013) found that total scores on Lawson (2000) were found to be similar in

large samples of both U.S. and Chinese students.

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Research Questions and Hypotheses

The research studied the relationship between religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning. To accomplish this, this research answered the

following question.

Research Question 1: Is there a relationship between religious fundamentalism,

need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

Hypotheses:

H0: There is no statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students.

H1: There is a statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

H2: There is a statistically significant relationship between need for closure and

scientific reasoning in college students.

H3: There is a statistically significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure in college students.

The research was also interested in the predictive relationship between the three

variables under study: religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific

reasoning, as well as the role of need for closure in mediating the relationship between

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. To accomplish this, the research

answered the following question and sub-questions.

Research Question 2: Is there a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

Sub-questions:

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Sub-question 1: Which of the variables (religious fundamentalism and Need for

Closure) account for the predictive relationship with scientific reasoning in college

students?

Hypotheses:

H0: Neither of the variables have a predictive relationship with scientific

reasoning in college students.

H1: There is a predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning in college students.

H2: There is a predictive relationship between Need for Closure and scientific

reasoning in college students.

Sub-Question 2: Does need for closure mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students?

Hypotheses:

H0: Need for closure does not mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

H1: Need for closure does mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students.

H2: Need for closure partially mediates the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Data Analysis

The data was collected on three variables for this study. The Religious

Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), which measured the religious

fundamentalism variable, the Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (Roets & Van Hiel,

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2011), which measured the need for closure variable, and the Classroom Test of Formal

Reasoning (Lawson, 2000), which measured the scientific reasoning variable, all

provided interval data. The measures of religious fundamentalism and need for closure

both employed Likert-style items. The measure of scientific reasoning employed

multiple choice questions. The demographics survey, which asked about participant’s

gender, age, race, and religious affiliation, employed multiple styles of questions and will

produce both nominal and interval data. The data obtained from the demographic survey

was not used as variables in the study.

The data was downloaded from Surveymonkey.com. Each participant’s

responses were then copied to an answer sheet. The researcher then graded the answer

sheets. The demographic information and scores on the measures of religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning obtained were entered into a

SPSS file for data analysis.

The demographics data was subjected to descriptive statistics analysis. For all of

the demographic variables the frequencies of responses was determined. Means and

standard deviations were also obtained for age. For the variables, religious

fundamentalism, need for closure and scientific reasoning frequencies, means, standard

deviations, scatterplots, and histograms were obtained to test the assumptions. For the

answering of the research questions, inferential statistics in the form of correlational

analysis and multiple regression with bootstrapping were used. The significance tests

were set at .05 level.

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The SPSS data file after analysis was stored on a flash drive. The flash drive and

answer sheets were stored in a lock box in the researcher’s private residence. Only the

researcher had access to and a key for the lock box.

Expected Findings

Research Question 1: Is there a relationship between religious fundamentalism,

need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students? Based on the reviewed

literature, the null hypothesis for the first research question that there was no relationship

between any of the variables was expected to be rejected. The data analysis was expected

to find that religious fundamentalism was significantly and positively correlated with

need for closure, as such a finding would reproduce a relationship discussed in the

literature reviewed. The data analysis was also expected to find that religious

fundamentalism was significantly and negatively correlated with scientific reasoning, as

this would be consistent with reviewed literature finding a negative relationship between

religious fundamentalism and science literacy and the tendency to reason analytically.

Need for closure was also expected to be significantly correlated with scientific

reasoning, as reviewed literature showed the importance to avoiding premature in

scientific reasoning.

Research Question 2: Is there a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students? The

first research question is broken into to sub-questions.

Sub-question 1: Which of the variables (religious fundamentalism and Need for

Closure) account for the predictive relationship with scientific reasoning in college

students? For the second research question, the null hypothesis for the first sub-question,

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which hypotheses that there would be no predictive relationship between the variables

(religious fundamentalism and need for closure) and scientific reasoning was expected to

be rejected. For the first sub-question, the data analysis was expected to find that

religious fundamentalism and need for closure both predict scientific reasoning, this

would be for the same rationale as first research question.

Sub-Question 2: Does need for closure mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students? For the second sub-

question, the null hypothesis, which stated that need for closure did not mediate the

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, was expected to

be rejected. The data analysis was expected to find that need for closure fully mediates

the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. Specifically,

when need for closure was controlled for in the regression equation the relationship

between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning was expected to lose

statistical significance. This would be consistent with reviewed literature showing a

positive relationship between religious fundamentalism and need for closure, as well as

literature demonstrating the importance of avoiding premature closure to successful

scientific reasoning.

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CHAPTER 4: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Introduction

This chapter discussed the demographics of the sample, the results of the tests of

assumptions, and the analysis performed on the study data. All the data was analyzed

with SPSS (version 23). Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the

research questions. Correlation and multiple regression with bootstrapping were used to

investigate the relationship between the variables: religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning.

The research questions to be answered: Research Question 1: Is there a

relationship between religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning

in college students?

Research Question 2: Is there a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

Sub-questions:

Sub-question 1: Which of the variables (religious fundamentalism and need for

closure) account for the predictive relationship with scientific reasoning in college

students?

Sub-question 2: Does need for closure mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students?

Description of the Sample

Students were recruited from widely-taken classes, such as General Psychology

and Introduction to Sociology. Classes were chosen based on the likelihood of yielding a

representative sample of the student population.

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The G*Power tool was used to determine the size of the sample. The G*Power

tool was commonly used in social and behavioral science to determine sample size (Faul,

Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007). The study involved a multiple regression with two

predictor variables. A significance of .05, a power of .95, and a medium effect size of .15

were chosen. The G*Power tool determined that a minimum sample of 89 participants

was need to achieve statistical significance. All participants that consented to be

participants, were between the ages of 18 and 59, and fully completed the survey were

selected for inclusion in the study until the number of participants exceeded 100. Upon

observation of the data it was determined that several respondents employed an unique

response pattern, in which they selected the same level of response to all of the Likert

items on the measures of religious fundamentalism and/or need for closure. This

suggested that these respondents likely rushed through the survey. This would likely

result in less than accurate responses on one or more of the measures; therefore, it was

determined that responses employing such a response pattern were unsuitable for

inclusion in the study. A total of 9 responses were determined to be unusable for this

reason. A total 26 responses were also deemed unusable because the survey was

incomplete. Three responses were not used because they were duplicates. A total of 101

responses were included in the study.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for Age

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Age 100 18 53 22.75 7.628 Valid N (listwise) 100

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In the demographic survey, participants were asked about their gender (see Table

2). Of the 101 participants in the study, 66 (65.3%) participants self-identified as female,

34 (33.7%) participants self-identified as male, and 1 participant (< 1%) self-identified as

“Other”. They were also asked about their age. Ages of the participants ranged from 18

to 53 years old (M = 22.75, SD = 7.63) with one of the participants confirming that they

were older than 18, but choosing not to give their specific age (see Table 1).

Table 2

Descriptive Statistics for Nominal Demographics

________________________________________________________________________

Demographic N Percentage Gender

Male 34 33.7% Female 66 65.3% Other 1 <1%

Ethnicity White/Caucasian 66 65.3% Black or African American 19 18.8% Hispanic or Latino 5 5.0% Asian or Pacific Islander 4 4.0% American Indian or Alaskan Native 3 3.0% Other Ethnicity or Non Answer 4 4.0% Religious Affiliation Protestant Christian 40 39.6% Catholic Christian 9 8.9% Inter/Non-denominational 13 12.9% Atheist/Agnostic/Free Thinker/Non-religious 21 20.8% Spiritual 7 6.9% Buddhism 1 1.0% Other 10 9.9%

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The demographic survey also asked participants about their ethnicity and religious

affiliation (see Table 2). Of the 101 participants, 66 (65.3%) self-identified as

“White/Caucasian”, 19 (18.8%) self-identified “Black or African American”, 5 (5%) self-

identified was “Hispanic or Latino”, 4 (4%) self-identified as “Asian or Pacific Islander”,

3 (3%) self-identified as “American Indian or Alaskan Native”, 3 (3%) self-identified as

“Other”, and 1 (1%) participant selected “Prefer Not to Answer”. The religious

affiliation of the participants including 40 (39.6%) participants self-identifying as

“Protestant Christian”, 21 (20.8%) participants self-reporting as “Atheist/Agnostic/Free

Thinker/Non-religious”, 13 (12.9%) participants self-reporting as “Inter/Non-

denominational”, 9 (8.9%) participants self-reported as “Catholic Christian”, 7 (6.9%)

participants self-reporting as “Spiritual”, 1(1%) participant self-reporting as “Buddhism”,

and 10 (9.9%) participants self-reporting as “Other”. “Judaism”, “Islam”, “Hinduism”,

and “Native American” were also options for religious affiliation, but no participants

self-reported as identifying with those religions.

Summary of Results

Research Question 1: Is there a relationship between religious fundamentalism,

need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students? Correlation analysis

revealed that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were negatively and

significantly related. The analysis failed to find a relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure. Finally, the analysis found that there was no

relationship between need for closure and scientific reasoning.

Research Question 2: Is there a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific reasoning in college students?

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Sub-question 1: Which of the variables (religious fundamentalism and need for

closure) account for the predictive relationship with scientific reasoning in college

students? Multiple regression analysis found that religious fundamentalism did

significantly predict scientific reasoning scores. The relationship was negative

suggesting that when religious fundamentalism was high, scores of scientific reasoning

ability were low. The analysis failed to find a predictive relationship between need for

closure and scientific reasoning.

Sub-question 2: Does need for closure mediate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning in college students? Multiple regression

analysis with boot strapping failed to find evidence of mediation by need for closure in

the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Details of the Analysis and Results

Data analysis consisted of both descriptive and inferential statistics for each

research question. Correlation analyses were used to answer Research Question 1.

Multiple regression analyses were used to answer Research Question 2, Sub-question 1.

Multiple regressive analysis with bootstrapping with used to answer Research Question 2,

Sub-question 2.

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics were obtained for the three variables of interest in this study

(see Table 2). Scores on the Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RFS), measuring the

religious fundamentalism variable, ranged from 14 to 84 (M = 47.84, SD = 20.00). The

RF had 12 items and employed a 7-point Likert items from “strongly agree” to “strongly

disagree”. The RFS employed protrait and contrait items, and scoring on the scale was

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reversed for contrait items. Scores on the Need for Cognitive Closure Scale (NFCC),

which measures need for closure, ranged from 19 to 73 (M = 47.81, SD = 10.26). The

NFC had 15 items that employed a 6-point Likert from “strongly agree” to “strongly

disagree”. Scores on the Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (CTFR), which measures

scientific reasoning, ranged from 2 to 22 (M = 10.49, SD = 5.18). The CTFR employed

24 multiple-choice questions. The first 20 questions were structured in a two-tier fashion

with each pair of questions worth two points and employing three-tier scoring. The final

four questions were worth one point each. The data obtained from these instruments was

analyzed and the results were discussed below. The next sections discuss the statistical

analysis done to answer each research question and the results of those analyses.

Table 3

Descriptive Statistics for Study Variables

N Range Mean Std. Deviation Skewness Kurtosis Stat Stat Stat Stat Stat Std. Error Stat Std. Error RFS 101 70 47.84 20.000 -.065 .240 -1.095 .476 NFCC 101 54 47.81 10.258 -.421 .240 .283 .476 CTFR 101 20 10.49 5.178 .596 .240 -.543 .476 Valid N 101 (Listwise)

Research Question 1

To investigate the relationship between religious fundamentalism, need for

closure, and scientific reasoning, and determine if the variables were significantly related

to each other in college students, tests of assumptions and Pearson Correlation were used.

First, to address the normality of the distributions of each variable histograms and

degrees of skewness and kurtosis were used.

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Figure 1

Histogram of Distribution of Religious Fundamentalism Scores

Figure 1. Histogram of distribution of religious fundamentalism scores. The horizontal axis reflects the scores on the Religious Fundamentalism scale and the vertical axis reflects the frequency that those scores occur in the sample.

Figure 2

Histogram of Distribution of Need for Closure Scores

Figure 2. Histogram of distribution of need for closure scores. The horizontal axis reflects the scores on the Need for Cognitive Closure scale and the vertical axis reflects the frequency that those scores occur in the sample.

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Figure 3

Histogram of Distribution of Scientific Reasoning Scores

Figure 3. Histogram of distribution of scientific reasoning scores. The horizontal axis reflects the scores on the Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning and the vertical axis reflects the frequency that those scores occur in the sample. The histograms for religious fundamentalism scores (see Figure 1) and need for

closure scores (see Figure 2) do not appear to be significantly different from a normal

distribution, as the scores on both variables appear well-distributed across the range of

scores and there were no clear outliers. The histogram for scientific reasoning scores

does seem to suggest a positively skewed distribution, as most of the scores appear to be

on the left of the distribution and the scores tail off to the right. Skewness and kurtosis

were also used to determine normality. At p <.05 significance level, skewness and

kurtosis scores of between 1.96 and -1.96 were considered sufficient to establish

normality (George & Mallery, 2012; Ghasemi & Zahediasl, 2012). Scores of skewness

and kurtosis suggest that the distributions of religious fundamentalism (skewness = -.065,

kurtosis = -1.095), need for closure (skewness = -.421, kurtosis = .283), and scientific

reasoning (skewness = .596, kurtosis = -.543) scores were all within the range of score

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needed to establish normality (see Table 2).

Combining the histograms and skewness and kurtosis scores within the range

necessary to establish normality was possible to confirm the assumption of normality for

religious fundamentalism and need for closure scores. The histogram suggested a

skewed distribution for scientific reasoning scores. This skewed distribution was

confirmed by scores of skewness and kurtosis, but the degree of skewness and kurtosis

fell within the realm necessary to establish normality. A similar positively skewed

distribution had been found in other research (Lawson, 1983, 1992; Lawson & Weber,

1990; Lawson & Worsnop, 1992; O’Donnell, 2011). The presence of similar

distributions scores of scientific reasoning in college students suggests that a skewed

distribution may be normal for samples of college students. This suggests that the

distribution of scientific reasoning was consistent with the assumption of normality.

Figure 4

Scatterplot of Religious Fundamentalism and Need for Closure Scores

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Figure 5

Scatterplot of Need for Closure and Scientific Reasoning Scores

To address the assumption of linearity, the visual inspection of scatterplots for

each set of variables was used. The scatterplots of religious fundamentalism and need for

closure scores (see Figure 4) and need for closure and scientific reasoning scores (see

Figure 5) not only do not appear to violate the assumption of linearity, but there does not

seem to be a correlation between any of these sets of variables. The scatterplot of

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning scores (see Figure 6) also does not

appear to violate the assumption of linearity, but there does appear to be a correlation

between these two variables. Also, the inspection of the scatterplots failed to find any

evidence for a violation of the assumption of homogeneous variance. That was, the

variance in Y scores appears to be homogeneous across all levels of X.

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Figure 6

Scatterplot of Religious Fundamentalism and Scientific Reasoning Scores

Pearson correlation was used to investigate the possible relationship between

religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning. The results can be

seen in Table 3. Only the correlation between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning was statistically significant, r(99) = -.436, p < .001 (two-tailed). The

correlation religious fundamentalism and need for closure was not found to be

statistically significant, r(99) = .040, p = .689 (two-tailed). Finally, the correlation

between need for closure and scientific reasoning was also not statistically significant,

r(99) = .017, p = .865 (two-tailed).

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Table 4

Pearson Correlation for Study Variables

RFS NFCC CTFR Pearson Correlation 1 .040 -.436***

RFS Sig. (2-tailed) .689 .000 N 101 101 101 Pearson Correlation .040 1 .017 NFCC Sig. (2-tailed) .689 .865 N 101 101 101 Pearson Correlation -.436*** .017 1 CTFR Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .865 N 101 101 101 Note. RFS = Religious Fundamentalism Scale; NFCC = Need for Cognitive Closure scale; CTFR = Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning. *** = p < .001(2-tailed).

Research Question 2

The second research question sought to determine if there was a predictive

relationship between religious fundamentalism and need for closure, and scientific

reasoning. The answering of this question was broken into two sub-questions. The first

sub-question was sought to investigate which variables account for the predictive

relationship with scientific reasoning. To investigate this, a stepwise multiple regression

was employed. The assumptions of multiple regression were the same for correlational

analysis. The results of the regression analysis indicated the overall regression equation

was significantly predictive of scientific reasoning, R = .436, R2 = .190, adjusted R2 =

.182, F(1, 99) = 23.197, p < .001 (see Table 4). Religious fundamentalism was a

significant predictor of scientific reasoning, t(99) = -4.816, p < .001 (see Table 5). Need

for closure was excluded from the model because it was determined that it would not

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have a significant effect on the model’s ability to predict scientific reasoning, t(99) =

.383, p = .703. The zero order correlation between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning was r = -.436, r2 = .190; thus religious fundamentalism predicted

19% of the variance in scientific reasoning scores.

Table 5

ANOVA for Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1 Regression 508.989 1 508.989 23.197.000a Residual 2172.239 99 21.942 Total 2681.228 100 Note. Dependent Variable is Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (CTFS). a. Predictors: (Constant), Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RFS). Table 6

Coefficients of Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning

Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig. 1 (constant) 15.882 1.214 13.087.000 RFS -.113 .023 -.436 -4.816 .000

R2 = .190

R2adjust = .182 R = .436*** Note. Dependent Variable: Dependent Variable is Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (CTFS). *** = p < .001 The second sub-question sought to investigate if need for closure mediated the

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. The absence of a

significant relationship between need for closure and religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning, as well as the lack of significance in the model’s ability to predict

scientific reasoning, does make mediation unlikely. However, an association between

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need for closure and scientific reasoning was not a necessary precondition for need for

closure to play a role in mediating the relationship between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning (Hayes, 2013).

Given that the need for closure variable was excluded by SPSS from the

predictive model of scientific reasoning during step-wise multiple regression, it was

decided that a second regression needed to be completed with need for closure staying in

the predictive model with the addition of bootstrapping to test for mediation. Andrew

Hayes’ PROCESS (version 2.15) tool was downloaded from his website and imported

into SPSS. The tool ran a multiple regression with 5000 bootstrap samples and 95%

confidence level for confidence intervals. In the predictive model, religious

fundamentalism was entered as the independent variable, need for closure was the

mediator, and scientific reasoning was the outcome variable. The results of the second

regression analysis indicated the overall regression equation was significantly predictive

of scientific reasoning, F(1, 99) = 11.572, p < .001. The zero order correlation between

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning was r = -.437, r2 = .191; thus religious

fundamentalism predicted 19.1% of the variance in scientific reasoning scores. Need for

closure was not a significant predictor of scientific reasoning when religious

fundamentalism was controlled for, b = .018, t(99) = .383, p = .703. Religious

fundamentalism stayed a significant predictor of scientific reasoning when need for

closure was controlled for, b = -.113, t(99) = -4.807, p < .001. Table 6 presents the

results for this regression.

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Table 7

Coefficients of Second Regression to Predict Scientific Reasoning

Model B Std. Error t Sig. 1 (constant) 15.060 2.471 6.095 .000 NFCC .018 .046 .383 .703

RFS -.113 .024 -4.807 .000

R2 = .191 R = .437*** Note. Dependent Variable: Dependent Variable is Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning (CTFS). *** = p < .001

According to Baron and Kenny (1986), the test of mediation involves determining

if religious fundamentalism still predicts scientific reasoning after controlling for need for

closure. It was expected that religious fundamentalism would no longer predict scientific

reasoning when need for closure was controlled, if mediation was to be confirmed. The

absence of a change in the significance of the predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism when need for closure was controlled for suggests that need for closure

failed to provide a significant indirect effect on the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. In other words, the mediation analysis failed to

find any evidence that need for closure mediates the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Conclusion

This study involved 101 college students from a state university in Southeastern

United States. Students ranged from the age of 18 to 53. They completed a survey that

included instruments designed to measure religious fundamentalism, need for closure,

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and scientific reasoning. The study sought to investigate a possible predictive

relationship between the variables, and determine if need for closure mediate the

relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. Religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were found to be negatively and significantly

correlated. Need for closure was not significantly correlated with religious

fundamentalism or scientific reasoning. Religious fundamentalism was found to be a

significant predictor of scientific reasoning. However, need for closure was not a

significant predictor of scientific reasoning. Finally, it was determined that need for

closure did not mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning.

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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Introduction

This study investigated the predictive relationship among religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning, and the degree to which need

for closure mediates the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning. The results of and conclusions drawn from the study were presented and

discussed in this chapter. The limitations of the study were also discussed, and

recommendations for future research and a suggestion for intervention were given.

Summary of Results

The relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning is

poorly understood. Research investigating this relationship was largely absent from the

literature. Research had shown that religious fundamentalism was negatively associated

with scientific literacy (Sherkat, 2011). Research had also shown that creationist beliefs

that were often found in religious fundamentalists were associated with a decreased skill

in reasoning (Lawson, 1990), while the tendency to engage in analytical reasoning was

negatively associated with belief in the supernatural (Pennycook, Cheyne, Sell, Koehler,

& Fugelsang, 2012). This research addressed this gap in research looking at the

predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. Need

for closure was also included in the research as a possible predictor of scientific

reasoning and a mediator of the relationship between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning because need for closure, as a measure of the tendency toward

premature closure, had been shown to be related to religious fundamentalism (Saroglou,

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2002) and the avoidance of premature closure had been shown to be important in the

development of scientific reasoning (Acredolo & Horobin, 1987; Wollman, Eylon, &

Lawson, 1980).

To investigate the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism, need

for closure and scientific reasoning, with need for closure a possible mediator, a non-

experimental correlational design was chosen. College students were asked to fill out an

online survey consisting of measures of the three variables. The analysis of the data

involved descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, in the form of correlational

analysis and multiple regression with bootstrapping. The results of data analysis revealed

that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were negatively and significantly

correlated. Need for closure was not found to be associated with religious

fundamentalism or scientific reasoning. The analysis also found that religious

fundamentalism predicted scientific reasoning, while need for closure was revealed to not

be a predictor of scientific reasoning or a mediator of the relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

Discussion of the Results

The study first sought to investigate the relationship between the three study

variables: religious fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning.

Correlational analysis, in the form of a Pearson correlation, was used determine the

relationship between these variables. Before the analysis was run, the assumptions for

correlational analysis were tested. Specifically, the assumptions that were test were the

assumptions of normality, linearity, and homogeneous variance.

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Histograms, skewedness, and kurtosis were used to determine normality.

Inspection of histograms revealed relatively normal distributions for religious

fundamentalism and need for closure, while revealing a positively skewed distribution for

scientific reasoning. Final determinations of normality were made based on skewedness

and kurtosis. Skewedness and kurtosis scores between 1.96 and -1.96 were considered

sufficient to establish normality (Ghasemi & Zahediasl, 2012). The scores skewedness

and kurtosis were found to be well within this range for all three variables. Therefore, it

was determined that the distribution of scores on all three variables was sufficient to

establish that the assumption of normality was met.

The scores confirmed that scientific reasoning scores were positively skewed, but

not so skewed as to be considered non-normal. A couple factors could have contributed

to the skewed distribution. First, the age of the sample was young for the population of

college students. The mean of student ages for the entire school was 25 years of age,

while the mean age for the sample obtained was 22.75 years of age. A second possibility

was that scores on the Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning naturally have a positive

skewed distribution among college students. Research supports this possibility as several

studies have found similar distributions of scores (Lawson, 1983, 1992; Lawson &

Weber, 1990; Lawson & Worsnop, 1992; O’Donnell, 2011).

Tests the assumptions of linearity and homogeneous variance involved the

inspection of scatterplots of each pair of variables. Scatterplots of religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, religious fundamentalism, and need for closure,

need for closure and scientific reasoning were inspected for possible violations of the

assumptions. The scatterplots confirmed that the assumptions of linearity and

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homogeneous variable had not been violated. The scatterplot of religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning also revealed a possible correlation between the

two variables.

Given that the assumptions of correlational analysis were confirmed, correlational

analysis was then employed to investigate the relationship between religious

fundamentalism, need for closure, and scientific reasoning, and answer the first research

question. The analysis found that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were

negatively and significantly correlated. There was a possibility that measurement bias

could have influenced this relationship. The researcher may have inadvertently

introduced bias by administering the measure of religious fundamentalism first. The

measure of religious fundamentalism could have primed religious concepts that were

hostile to science, which could have affected performance on the measure of scientific

reasoning.

Need for closure was not correlated with religious fundamentalism or scientific

reasoning. Other research that used similar correlational designs had found that religious

fundamentalism (Saroglou, 2002) and a traditionalist worldview (Golec de Zavala & Van

Bergh, 2007) consistent with religious fundamentalism were correlated with need for

closure. One possible reason for this difference may be the size of the sample. Both of

the studies involved samples that were larger than the one employed by this study. A

large sample may have reproduced the relationship between religious fundamentalism

and need for closure. The range of ages of the participants in Golec de Zavala and Van

Bergh study was similar to this study, while Saroglou did not report age ranges,

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suggesting that the age of the participants likely did not influence the relationship found

in those studied that was not found in this one.

To investigate the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism, need

for closure, and scientific reasoning and answer the second research question, multiple

regression analysis with bootstrapping was employed. The second research question had

two sub-questions. The first sub-question was interest in which variables predicted

scientific reasoning, and the second sub-question was interested in determining if need

for closure mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning. A stepwise multiple regression determined that religious fundamentalism did

significantly predict scientific reasoning scores. SPSS determined that need for closure

would not contribute enough to the predictive model and was removed. A second

multiple regression ensured that need for closure stayed in the model, while employing

bootstrapping was necessary to fully answer the sub-questions. The second multiple

regression confirmed the predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and

scientific reasoning, while demonstrating need for closure did not predict scientific

reasoning scores. When need for closure was controlled for, the predictive relationship

between religious fundamentalism preserved its significance. This was interpreted to be

evidence that need for closure was not a mediator of the relationship between religious

fundamentalism. The Need for Cognitive Closure instrument that was used as a measure

of need for closure may have been more complex a variable than simply a tendency

toward premature closure, as the ability to avoid premature closure had been shown to

important in the development of scientific reasoning (Acredolo & Horobin, 1987;

Wollman, Eylon, & Lawson, 1980).

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Discussion of the Conclusion

The study finding a negative and significant relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, and a predictive relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, expands our understanding of how religious

fundamentalism influences scientific reasoning. Religious fundamentalism had

previously been associated with decreased educational achievement (Darnell & Sherkat,

1997) and decreased scientific literacy (Sherkat, 2011). Further, religious

fundamentalism was found to be negatively associated to a tendency to analytical

thinking (Gervais & Norenzayen, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2012).

The present results were consistent with the rationale suggesting that religious

fundamentalism would inhibit the development of scientific reasoning. Lawson (1995)

argued, “a dogmatic environment in which the relative merits of ideas were not discussed

and rules were strictly and unthinkingly enforced would most likely retard the

development of skill in using hypothetical-deductive thought” (p. 123). Religious

fundamentalism was conceptualized as believing in and obeying a sacred book and/or

authority figure and by being highly resistant to a modern secular worldview (Herriot,

2007). Recent research suggests that highly religious students may see science as in

opposition to their religious beliefs. When this occurs they may feel the need to reject

science in favor of preserving their religious belief (Hanley, Bennett, and Ratcliffe, 2014;

Yasri and Mancy, 2014).

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This resistance to science may be driving the negative relationship between

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning, as highly religious student may not

invest the proper effort into developing scientific reasoning skills because they see the

subject matter as a existential threat to their religious worldview. This was consistent

with terror management theory that argues that religion served a protective role against

existential anxiety (Vail et al., 2010). Consistent with this view, highly religious

individuals may respond to the perceived existential threat of science and the practice of

scientific reasoning by rejecting the science and reaffirming their relevance of their own

worldview. Without sufficient practice in employing reasoning in scientific situations,

their scientific reasoning skill would likely not advance to their full potential. This was

consistent with constructivist theory that argues that the development of reasoning

depends on the active construction of reasoning as a result of experience with reasoning

in the domain of science (Cakir, 2008; Lawson, 1995). In effect, religious

fundamentalism would inhibit the development of scientific reasoning by causing the

individuals to resist science learning, leading to insufficient experience with reasoning

within the domain of science to fully develop their scientific reasoning abilities.

The results do not support the roll of need for closure in influencing this

relationship. Kruglanski and Webster (1996) saw individuals that were high in need for

closure as likely to demonstrate a degree of cognitive impatience. This suggests that they

may be prone jump to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, which was the

definition of premature closure (Lunzer, 1973). Avoiding premature closure had also

been shown to be important in the development of scientific reasoning (Acredolo &

Horobin, 1987; Wollman, Eylon, & Lawson, 1980). However, the present results failed

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to find a relationship between need for closure and scientific reasoning. This suggests

that the Need for Cognitive Closure scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) may reflect a

variable that was more complicated than a tendency toward premature closure. The

absence of a relationship may suggest that same quality need for closure may be

expressed differently in individuals with different worldviews or differing beliefs about

the importance of the consideration of evidence before drawing a conclusion. The

present study was insufficient to draw any definitive conclusions about the nature of need

for closure.

Limitations

The first limitation of this study concerns the time students invested in filling out

the survey. The survey was hosted online and the students were permitted to fill it out at

their convenience, as a means of limiting the inconvenience of investing the time needed

to complete the survey. Nevertheless, several responses were thrown out because

participants either failed to complete the survey or responded to the items on either the

measure of religious fundamentalism or need for closure with the same quality of

response to every Likert item on the scale. This pattern of limited time spent completing

the survey could have influenced the degree to which the responses accurately reflect the

variable in the student participants. This could have also influenced how the variables

related to each other. Specifically, it could partially explain the positively skewedness of

scientific reasoning, as it was the final instrument presented in the survey. This variable

also required the most intellectual effort to complete possibly resulting in lower scores on

the variable for those that invested less time in completing it.

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A second limitation of the study was the age of sample. The mean age of the

student population at the school where the data was collected was 25-years-old. In the

sample of students participants, the mean age for this study was M = 22.75 years. This

suggests that the sample was younger than the population on average. Of the variables

scientific reasoning was the variable most susceptible to youth. Constructivists believe

the development of scientific reasoning occurs as a result of the student constructing their

own understanding of scientific reasoning (Lawson, 1995). If the students have had

insufficient experience with reasoning in the domain of science, their ability to reason

about scientific subject would suffer. Therefore, a younger sample may suffer from a

limited amount of experience in the reasoning within the domain of science. This could

also help explain the positively skewedness of scientific reasoning. The positively

skewedness suggests that most of the students’ scored low on the measure of scientific

reasoning.

The skewedness of scientific reasoning could also be naturally occurring. College

students have been found to have problems with scientific reasoning, specifically when it

comes to the control of variables (Boudreaux, Shaffer, Heron, & McDermott, 2008). If

students in college were still developing scientific reasoning abilities, one might expect to

see a higher number of low scores on measures of scientific reasoning, resulting in a

positively skewed distribution of scores. Research had found that student samples on

measure of scientific reasoning were relatively positively skewed. Most of the college

students were in an early or intermediate stage of developing their scientific reasoning

abilities (Han, 2013; Lawson, 1983, 1992; Lawson & Weber, 1990; Lawson & Worsnop,

1992). A similar pattern of scientific reasoning development was found in graduating

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high school seniors (O’Donnell, 2011). When using instruments like the Classroom Test

of Formal Reasoning (2000) in correlational research, if the distribution was too skewed

it could affect the ability of parametric statistics to demonstrate significant relationships

between scientific reasoning and other variables, as they depend on the presence of a

relatively normal distribution (Warner, 2008). For this study, the distribution of scientific

reasoning scores was found to fall within the range of skewedness to demonstrate

normality.

Another possible limitation of this study could be the size of the sample. This

study determined sample size using the G*Power tool. The tool determined that a

minimum sample of 89 participants was needed to achieve statistical significance, given a

significance of .05, a power of .95, and a medium effect size of .15. The study ultimately

selected 101 participants for the study. The study failed to find a significant relationship

between religious fundamentalism and need for closure. This result was in contrast to

two other studies. Saroglou (2002) found that religious fundamentalism was significantly

related to need for closure while using a sample of 239 college students. A traditionalist

worldview, which was consistent with the worldview held by religious fundamentalists,

was demonstrated to be significantly related to need for closure while using a sample of

189 Polish adults (Golec de Zavala & Van Bergh, 2007). This raises the possibility that

if the sample was larger, this study may have replicated this relationship. The studies

employed similar correlation designs to this study and had participants from similar age

ranges. The use of Polish adults in the Golec de Zavala and Van Bergh study, rather than

the college students used in this study and Saroglou study, could have influenced the

results of that study.

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A final possible limitation of the study concerns the order in which the

instruments were given the participants. Having the measure of religious fundamentalism

presented prior to the measure of scientific reasoning could have influenced scientific

reasoning scores. The possibility exists that the measure of religious fundamentalism

served to prime religious beliefs. Gervais and Norenzayan (2012) found that analytical

ability was negatively associated with multiple measures of religious belief. Consistent

with this finding, priming religious beliefs prior to taking the test of reasoning may have

driven some individuals to rely less on their reasoning abilities and more on their

intuition when completing the measure of scientific reasoning.

Considerable thought did go into the order in which to present the instruments

prior to conducting the study. Presenting the measure of scientific reasoning first was

concluded to not be an option, as the completing a test of reasoning first might lead to

mental fatigue influencing the responses to the instruments that followed the test of

reasoning. For example, Webster, Richter, and Kruglanski (1996) used a lengthy exam to

fatigue participants resulting in an increase in need for closure. The possibility that

priming religious belief first might influence responses on the measure of scientific

reasoning was also considered. To decrease the likelihood of this happening, the

researcher decided to use the Need for Cognitive Closure scale as a buffer between the

measure of religious fundamentalism and the measure of scientific reasoning. The

researcher believed that the Need for Cognitive Closure scale would not prime concepts

that were religious or scientific in nature, therefore allowing it to absorb any priming

affects caused by the measure of religious fundamentalism, while at the same time not

biasing performance on the measure of scientific reasoning.

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The scientific reasoning scores in this study were consistent with prior research,

as the distribution of scientific reasoning scores was similar to that of other research in

which scientific reasoning ability was tested and religious fundamentalism was not

measured prior to the testing (Lawson, 1983, 1992; Lawson & Weber, 1990; Lawson &

Worsnop, 1992; O’Donnell, 2011). The negative relationship between religious

fundamentalism and scientific reasoning was also consistent with prior research

demonstrating that religious fundamentalism was negatively associated with scientific

literacy (Sherkat, 2011) and the tendency to reasoning analytically (Gervais &

Norenzayen, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2011). Combined these facts cast some doubt on

the possibility that scientific reasoning scores were biased by the priming of religious

fundamentalism. Yet, it was still possible that some biasing of scientific reasoning scores

occurred that was not detectable based on the data obtained by this study. Ultimately, it

was impossible to determine if any such biasing occurred, as the present study was not

designed to test the possibility that priming religious fundamentalism might bias

reasoning about scientific matters.

Recommendations for Future Research

Given the possibility of limitations of the study related to study size, a replication

of the study with a much larger sample was in order. The study could also take the

opportunity to consider other variables as possible mediators of the relationship between

religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning. While need for closure was not found

to mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning,

the study does point to the need to understand the factors that may be responsible for the

predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning.

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The possibility that priming religious fundamentalism prior to taking a test

requiring reasoning in a scientific context might bias responses on the test of scientific

reasoning ability was raised in interpretation of the results of this study. Research to

determine if priming religious fundamentalism would inhibit performance on a measure

of scientific reasoning in religious fundamentalists should be done. To accomplish this,

the study should find subjects that score high on the Religious Fundamentalism Scale,

which was used in this research to measure religious fundamentalism. Then break up the

high scorers into two groups. The first group would be given the neutral statement that

was not religious in nature followed by a Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning, which

was used as a measure of scientific reasoning in this study. The second group would be

presented with a statement that paints beliefs of religious fundamentalists in a favorable

light followed by the measure of scientific reasoning. The mean scores of each group on

the measure of scientific reasoning would be compared to determine if there were any

statistically significant differences in the scores. If religious fundamentalism does inhibit

performance on a test of scientific reasoning ability, we would expect that the second

group, which received the statement treating the beliefs of religious fundamentalists

favorably, would score significantly lower than the other group that received the neutral

statement.

The predictive relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning found in the study, raises the question as to whether the influence of religious

fundamentalism on scientific reasoning was causal. Does presence of religious

fundamentalism actually cause decreased scientific reasoning ability? This possibility

needs to be investigated in future research. Such a study might be best done in a

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longitudinal fashion. To determine if religious fundamentalism does truly negatively

affect scientific reasoning the development of formal reasoning ability needs to be traced

from a time prior to formal reasoning developing (between the ages of 7 to 11) to into

early adulthood. Certain factors would also need to be accounted for such as parent and

child religious beliefs, frequency of church attendance, attitudes toward science, and

hours of science education among others. The process of development of formal

reasoning should be compared in children being raised with parents who were heavily

fundamentalist in religious belief with children raised more secularly.

The results of the study also raise questions about the nature of the Need for

Cognitive Closure scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). The results failed to find a

relationship between need for closure and scientific reasoning despite the importance of

avoiding premature closure to the development of scientific reasoning. These results

suggest that need for closure may be a more nuanced variable than simply reflecting a

tendency to premature closure. One possibility was that need for closure reflects a more

general tendency toward closure that was heavily dependent on worldview. For example,

an individual that was high in need for closure may engage in premature closure if their

worldview values the protecting of exiting beliefs (such as religious beliefs). Another

individual high in need for closure may be compelled to draw a conclusion, but their

worldview may value a full consideration of evidence prior to finalizing a conclusion,

resulting in them not engaging in premature closure despite being high in need for

closure. This possibility needs to be investigated in future research.

Finally, the results suggest that students from a fundamentalist religious

background may be less developed in terms of scientific reasoning ability compared to

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other students. This may require intervention in middle and high school to help increase

these students’ scientific reasoning ability. However, any intervention should make

every effort to not trigger their religiously based resistance to science. The best approach

might be to focus on reasoning tasks that were not explicitly scientific in nature. Allow

them to develop the skills needed to do scientific reasoning outside the domain of science

and then introduce problems specific to science. The intervention may also require

specific discussion of how the science was consistent with their religious beliefs, and

avoid pointing out ways in which science and religion may be incapable.

Conclusions

The jobs of the future and the challenges that humanity will face in future require

the capacity to reason scientifically. From understanding how technology works, to

dealing with challenges of climate change, the ability to understand and reason about

science has been paramount to success (Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Osborne,

Simon, & Tyler, 2009). The answers to the research questions and the findings of the

study revealed that religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning were negatively

correlated, suggesting that high religious fundamentalism was associated with a

decreased capacity for scientific reasoning. Need for closure was not found to be related

to religious fundamentalism or scientific reasoning and was not found to predict scientific

reasoning. The relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific reasoning

was found to be predictive, even when controlling for need for closure. Need for closure

did not mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and scientific

reasoning.

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The study provides recognition that individuals from a fundamentalist religious

background may be limited in their ability to reason about scientific subjects. This likely

arises because of the resistance of a fundamentalist worldview to science, as it was

reflective of a modern secular worldview and often incompatible with specific religious

beliefs (Hanley et al., 2014; Yasri & Mancy, 2014). This resistance likely leads to

insufficient experience with scientific reasoning to fully develop the ability. While this

understanding of the influence of religious fundamentalism on scientific reasoning still

requires further illumination, it does provide a basis for recognizing students that may be

a risk of failing to optimally develop their capacity to reason scientifically.

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Appendix A

Statement of Original Work

Academic Honesty Policy Capella University’s Academic Honesty Policy (3.01.01) holds learners accountable for the integrity of work they submit, which includes but is not limited to discussion postings, assignments, comprehensive exams, and the dissertation or capstone project. Established in the Policy are the expectations for original work, rationale for the policy, definition of terms that pertain to academic honesty and original work, and disciplinary consequences of academic dishonesty. Also stated in the Policy is the expectation that learners will follow APA rules for citing another person’s ideas or works. The following standards for original work and definition of plagiarism are discussed in the Policy:

Learners are expected to be the sole authors of their work and to acknowledge the authorship of others’ work through proper citation and reference. Use of another person’s ideas, including another learner’s, without proper reference or citation constitutes plagiarism and academic dishonesty and is prohibited conduct. (p. 1) Plagiarism is one example of academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s ideas or work as your own. Plagiarism also includes copying verbatim or rephrasing ideas without properly acknowledging the source by author, date, and publication medium. (p. 2)

Capella University’s Research Misconduct Policy (3.03.06) holds learners accountable for research integrity. What constitutes research misconduct is discussed in the Policy:

Research misconduct includes but is not limited to falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, misappropriation, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. (p. 1)

Learners failing to abide by these policies are subject to consequences, including but not limited to dismissal or revocation of the degree.

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Statement of Original Work and Signature

I have read, understood, and abided by Capella University’s Academic Honesty Policy (3.01.01) and Research Misconduct Policy (3.03.06), including Policy Statements, Rationale, and Definitions. I attest that this dissertation or capstone project is my own work. Where I have used the ideas or words of others, I have paraphrased, summarized, or used direct quotes following the guidelines set forth in the APA Publication Manual.

Learner name and date Joshua A. Lamb March 18, 2016

Mentor name and school

Dr. Jacquelyn St. Germaine, Harold Abel School of Social and Behavioral Sciences