Different Types of Religiosity and Lay Intuitions About Free Will/Determinism in Turkey

Abstract

Religiosity has been found to be positively associated with belief in free will (FW) in the Western world. In the Muslim world however religiosity exhibits several characteristics that set it apart from the Western world including an overemphasis on fate or divine predestination. We therefore investigated FW/determinism beliefs and different types of religiosity and conservatism in two samples in Turkey a predominantly Muslim country (N=1690). In Study 1 a confirmatory factor analysis showed that FAD-Plus provided good fit to the data. Study 2 revealed that FW belief is not related to any of the religiosity measures (intrinsic extrinsic quest) whereas fatalistic determinism is consistently related to religiosity. The unique predictor of free will turned out to be belief in a just world. Overall these findings indicate that FW belief is not inherently related to religiosity in Turkey whereas fatalistic determinism is central to Turkish people's belief systems.