Fundamentalism and Empathy

The interconnection between religious fundamentalist beliefs, spirituality, and four interrelated dimensions of empathy (empathie concern, personal distress, perspec tive-taking, and fantasy abilities) remains relatively unexplored at this time. As such, the purpose of this project is to establish whether or not the four different aspects of empathy are related to religious fundamentalism and a sense of spirituality, control ling for religiosity, religious affiliation and other sociodemographic controls. Results suggest that fundamentalist beliefs will lead to lower amounts of empathie concern, perspective-taking, and fantasy abilities, whereas a sense of spirituality will con tribute to higher levels of the same three aspects of empathy. Personal distress was found to be unrelated to either fundamentalism or spirituality.