Din, dindarlık ve değerler

Abstract

Values are an important area of social sciences; and religiosity is one essential topic within this area. On theoretical level, values and religiosity are interrelated; and these relationships are empirically studied within various value theories and models. Among these, the Schwartz Value Survey proved itself to be the most common measure of values that is applicable the various empirical studies. Schwartz’s approach made it possible to study the relationships between values and religiosity within a comprehensive framework. In this essay, we studied empirical researches in the West and Turkey conducted within the Schwartz’s framework, and evaluated their findings on the values-religiosity relationship. In a nutshell, the overall result from our evaluation is that religious people attribute relatively higher importance to values expressing motivation to avoid uncertainty and change; and relatively lower importance to values expressing motivations to be independent in thought and action and to follow one’s hedonistic desires.