Does religious commitment spring from within the person, or is it a result of situational and environmental causes? Clearly, both are important, but psychological theories about religion have tended to emphasize dispositional rather than situational causes, perhaps because observers tend to explain the behavior of others in dispositional terms (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). Perhaps one's way of explaining religion is related to one's own religious commitment. The tendencies of religious and nonreligious students to assign situational and dispositional causes to religiosity were compared. Students at London University (16 men, 54 women) were classified as "religious" or "nonreligious" on the basis of agreement or tack of agreement with the statement "I am a religious person." They Then indicated extent of agreement on a 5-point scale ranging from -2 to + 2 with eight situational (S) and eight dispositional (D) attributions to religious people. The S - D scores of the religious group (.71, n = 34) were significantly higher than those of the nonreligious (-1.50, n = 36), F(1, 66) = 6.85, p < .025. No other sources of variance (Sex, Sex x Religion) were significant. Religious people, thus, tended to accept situational rather than dispositional explanations of religiosity to a greater extent than the nonreligious did. Does religious commitment spring from within the person, or is it a result of situational and environmental causes? Clearly, both are important, but psychological theories about religion have tended to emphasize dispositional rather than situational causes, perhaps because observers tend to explain the behavior of others in dispositional terms (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). Perhaps one's way of explaining religion is related to one's own religious commitment. The tendencies of religious and nonreligious students to assign situational and dispositional causes to religiosity were compared. Students at London University (16 men, 54 women) were classified as "rel... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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