THE EFFECT OF RELIGION ON SELF-INTEREST MORALITY

There are frequent reports that the increase in permissive morality towards behavior involving dishonesty in pecuniary matters, like tax cheating, is partly due to the secularization process. Using data from a nationwide Dutch survey (N = 1199), this study examined the effect of Christian belief church involvement, denomination, and nonreligious background characteristics on self-interest morality. Multiple regression analyses indicated that, for the total sample, church involvement and Christian belief had moderate effects on self-interest morality. For the subset of church members the findings revealed that both church involvement and denomination had a strong effect on self-interest morality, with highly involved church members and Calvinists having a more strict moral outlook than members who are lesser involved and Catholics. Christian belief had a slight indirect effect; strong Christian believers were more likely to consider honesty to be a Christian duty in their life than weak Christian believers and, as a consequence, had a more strict moral outlook. Of the nonreligious variables age appeared especially important. On the whole, the results support the idea that the decline of Christian religion leads to a more permissive self-interest morality, and that different dimensions of religiosity account for this change.