The influence of friendship on religious choice

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the influence of a friendship variable upon children's choices when groups were being formed for religious and academic tasks. The subjects were college students, forty-five boys and forty girls, in three separate groups; Form Two, Form Three, and Form Five. The methods used were ones which elicited information. By the indirect method, each subject was asked to form groups for four tasks: a friendship task, an academic task, and two that were religious, from a list presenting the names of members of his or her own class. The direct approach called upon the subjects to complete a Personal Data Sheet giving information as to how they viewed themselves with regard to friendship, religious practice, and academic achievement. A further questionnaire aimed to determine whether each subject was more intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, and students were asked, upon being given the names of those most often selected for the four tasks, to write why they considered these people had been so often chosen. The first aim of the study was to determine the influence of friendship when choices were being made for members of religious groups. The subjects' choices for the friendship task were compared with their choices for the religious tasks. Friendship choices were also looked at in the light of the subject's own view on friendship, as recorded in the Personal Data Sheet, and were compared with sociograms constructed after the initial part of the study was complete. Religious choices were compared with religious practice, and with the religious motivation of the chosen subjects, as this was measured by the adapted Feagin-Hoge Questionnaire. Lastly academic choices were compared with actual Intelligence Quotient scores. It was hypothesized: (1) That, when choices were being made for the members of religious groups, friendship would intervene as a very potent variable. (2) That the friendship variable would prove particularly influential when choices were for an intrinsically motivated religious task, as this was assumed to be the most intimate of the tasks presented. (3) That in choosing members for a religious group overchoice of females would not result simply as a consequence of the sex variable. (4) That the specific orientation of the religious task would effect the choices made so that, for an intrinsically motivated group those chosen would almost certainly be the subjects' friends; for an extrinsically oriented group choices were expected to align with academic choices. RESULTS. It was found that the influence of friendship on religious choice was very powerful. Significant relationships between friendship choices and choices for both types of religious task were obtained. An overall correlation of .63 was found to exist between choices for friendship and choices for the religious tasks. Evidence was conclusive that friendship intervenes in these choices despite the orientation of the religious task. The results did show a somewhat more significant linkage between friendship choices and choices for the intrinsically oriented religious task but the influence was still intervening very strongly when choices were being made of members for the extrinsically oriented religious task as well. As girls were not significantly overchosen for the religious tasks no conclusive evidence could be presented to support the third hypothesis, but it remains unlikely that, in any overchoice of females, the causative factor operating would be the sex variable. It would be interesting, if a natural situation could be discovered, where overchoice of females had occurred, to probe into the motivation behind the choices. Further research may do this. In this study friendship was also found to have influence upon academic choice, with correlations of .54 and .57 for the Form Three and Form Two classes. This influence is not as potent as for the religious choice, but is nevertheless significant. The overall result of this research was to show that friendship intervenes as a very potent force when religious choices are made.