Citation

Jung JH, Olson DVA. Sociol. Inq. 2017; 87(4): 608-633.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Alpha Kappa Delta, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/soin.12164

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Does religion justify violent acts against wives, or does it reduce approval of this type of intimate partner violence? We examine whether personal religiosity raises or lowers the acceptability of wife-beating. In addition, we investigate how the relationship between personal religiosity and attitudes toward wife-beating differs depending on the overall normative context of the country where a person lives. Using multilevel modeling with data from the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (2005-2008), we find that greater individual-level religiosity reduces the acceptability of wife-beating. More importantly, cross-level interactions show that these reductions are greatest in countries where there is a general lack of normative restraint as measured by the "anomie" scale. These observations suggest that religiosity may influence an individual's norms the most in countries where secular controls are absent or weak.

Language: en