When Religious Fundamentalists Feel Privileged: Findings from a Representative Study in Contemporary Turkey

Previous research established that people who are or feel more privileged tend to be less religiously fundamentalist. However, in the present research we predicted this association to be reversed when political leaders such as governments are promoting and incentivizing (religious) fundamentalism. Using Turkey as an example, we found support for our hypothesis in a Muslim sample (N = 736) representative for age, gender, education-level ethnicities, and urbanity: Individuals, who feel more privileged – i.e., less deprived – were more fundamentalist, even after controlling for a range of other variables that were previously associated with fundamentalism including conspiracy beliefs, personality, and sociodemographic variables. This negative association between deprivation and religious fundamentalism was not mediated by conspiracy beliefs. Interestingly, the associations of the control variables such as authoritarianism and conspiracy beliefs with religious fundamentalism mostly replicated previous research. Implications are discussed.