As a follow up to this post, the one of the study’s researchers published this commentary today. Among his conclusions:
Liberals place a high value on individual autonomy and decision-making. Individuals are expected to internalize the norms of their culture and do the right thing on a case-by-case basis after thinking about it. This strategy can be highly successful but can also be costly in the time required for information processing, in making mistakes, and in ignoring successful behaviors winnowed by tradition that work without anyone knowing why they work. Conservatives place a high value on obedience to authority. This strategy might stifle creativity but has a number of advantages, such as easing the burden of information processing, retaining successful behaviors winnowed by tradition, and coordinated action. Even liberals sheepishly acknowledge that they are like cats when it comes to herding.
The entire study can be downloaded here. The study’s author, Ingrid Storm, concludes:
Liberal Protestantism was shown to correlate positively with social class, education and various measures of individualism. Conservative Protestantism was associated with lower levels of education and socioeconomic class, and correlated with higher levels of dependence on family. The results of this study strongly indicate that liberal Protestantism is an adaptive cultural strategy in groups of highly educated individuals in secure environments. Conservative Protestantism seems to be adaptive at the group level in situations and environments with comparatively lower existential security and lower levels of education.
It is important to emphasize that according to this theory there is no inherently superior cultural system. What is adaptive varies both in respect to environmental factors, the presence of other religious groups as well as the attributes and personalities of the individuals who make up the group. My approach predicts that those individuals who succeed in a conservative Protestant community might not do as well if adopting a secular lifestyle.
Again, the group being studied was small and compared a perhaps atypical set of indivduals (teenage adherents of “liberal” religious groups [Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopalian] and “conservative” religious groups [Mormons and Pentecostals]). To what extent the conclusions apply to non-religious adults is uncertain.