Christian Religiosity, Self-Control and Social Conformity

Survey data from a southwestern metropolitan area are used to analyze whether the ability of personal Christian religiosity to predict social conformity is spuriously due to self-control. Results indicate that both personal religiosity and self-control display statistically significant, independent negative net relationships with many forms of projected misbehavior. And interaction between self-control and religiosity in predicting deviance appears to be limited. Thus, self-control does not seem to account for the effects of religiosity, leaving the issue of how and why religiosity leads to conformity unresolved.