RELIGIOUS SCHEMA AND VALUES *

Past research has consistently shown marked differences between religious believers and non‐believers. Such differences were suggested in this study to be due to the presence of religious schema in believers. It was hypothesized that non‐believers would be less schematic, or aschematic with respect to religion. This hypothesis was examined by comparing the value system of college student believers (Protestants and Catholics) and non‐believers (those indicating no religious faith). Extensive differences were found. Consistent with the hypothesis, the differences were found mainly on the schema‐relevant values. In essence, believers showed greater preference for and possession of the moral and relational values, and lesser on the personal‐extrinsic, competency, and egoistic values. As predicted, no difference was found on the social and intellectual types of values which are basically schema‐irrelevant. The notion of schema availability was also supported. When subjects' religiosity (as indicated by their preference for the salvation value and their self‐rated possession of the religiousness value) was controlled for, all the above differences were removed. When high and low religiosity believers were compared, great differences were found. The differences between the high and low religiosity non‐believers were however much less extensive.