Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Self-Esteem

The Impact of Religiosity

Bibliographic Data

ID2155442
AuthorsMaxine Seaborn Thompson (North Carolina State University, corresponding author), Melvin E Thomas (0000-0001-5813-1036, North Carolina State University), Rachel N Head (0000-0001-7459-4516, North Carolina State University)
Year2012
Volume32
Issue5
Pages385-405
Publication date2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Spectrum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0273-2173 • E-ISSN: 1521-0707
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02732173.2012.694792
OpenAlexW2042769102
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited52

This research examines two factors that have an impact on the self-esteem of African Americans and whites: religion and socioeconomic status (SES). Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that for whites, belief in the Bible (i.e., that it is the literal word of God) and self-identifying as fundamentalist were significant predictors of self-esteem. For African Americans, belief in the Bible and being Catholic were significant predictors of self-esteem. However, the association between belief in the Bible and self-esteem was stronger for African Americans than whites. SES was positively associated with self-esteem for both groups. The interactions between SES and the measures of religiosity reveal a greater impact on self-esteem for lower SES respondents. This was especially true for African Americans. These findings are discussed in light of the resource compensation hypothesis. Notes *p ≤ .05; **p ≤ .01; ***p ≤ .001. *p ≤ .05 level; **p ≤ .01; ***p ≤ .001. 1Although a Christian fundamentalist religious orientation is typically associated with a strong belief in the Bible, we consider these distinct dimensions of religiosity. The belief that the Bible is the Word of God is shared by religious people who do not self identify as a fundamentalist. We also found these factors to be distinct in our analyses (see Tables 2 and 3). 2We chose this item because of the relatively low reliability of the three items from Rosenberg's self-esteem scale in the dataset (alpha =.65). The results presented using the single item were not significantly different than the results using the scale items. 3To test for a statistically significant difference between the coefficients for blacks and whites, a t-test is used: , where b is the unstandardized coefficient and is the standard error of the coefficient for blacks and whites respectively (Chiswick and Chiswick Citation1975, p. 213). *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. a Unstandardized regression coefficients are in parentheses. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. a Unstandardized regression coefficients are in parentheses. 4The interaction effects in all figures are plotted using the unstandardized coefficients for all variables in the equation (including controls; Aiken and West Citation1991)

Belief in God · Geography · Population · Religiosity · Religious orientation · Self-esteem · Socioeconomic status · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology

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