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Intrinsic-Extrinsic Religious Orientation: The Boon or Bane of Contemporary Psychology of Religion?

1990; Wiley; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1387311

1468-5906

Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Ralph W. Hood,

Marriage and Sexual Relationships

Although the Intrinsic-Extrinsic (I-E) framework has provided the dominant conceptual and measurement paradigm for the psychology of religion over the last two decades, research in this tradition suffers from a number of serious limitations. This paper details a variety of theoretical and methodological criticisms of contemporary I-E research, many of which have been noted by previous researchers but have yet to be adequately addressed. Theoreticalproblems include lack of conceptual clarity in the definitions of I and E; confusion regarding what I and E are supposed to measure (namely, intrinsic-extrinsic what?); the value-laden good-religion-versus-bad-religion distinction underlying the framework; the problems inherent in defining and studying religiousness independently of belief content; and the thorny issue of how I and E are conceptually interrelated (namely, Allport's original bipolar continuum versus the modern two-factor theory). Criticisms of the measurement of I and E concern the factorial structure, reliability, and construct validity of the I and E scales, as well as the empirical relationship between the scales. Although the I-E paradigm has clearly been successful in terms of generating research data, it is our view that much of this work is theoretically impoverished and has really taught us very little about the psychology of religion. Only a few years after the Allport-Ross I-E scales appeared on the scene, several researchers argued that it was time to move beyond a simplistic I-E framework to more theoretically and psychometrically sophisticated approaches. Nearly 20 years later, we believe this admonition bears repeating.