Religion and attitudes on moral issues: Effects of individual, spouse and parental characteristics

Previous research on the explanation of moral attitudes has been restricted to individual characteristics of the respondents. In this article we take account of the trivial fact that respondents are surrounded by people in th eir primary networks who may affect their moral attitudes as well. The cruc ial question than becomes: Which individual characteristics affect one's mo ral attitudes, respectively, which characteristics of people belonging to t he individual's network (spouse, parents, and parents-in-law) affect the in dividual's more attitudes? We perform multivariate (LISREL) analyses, using national family data representative of the Dutch population. In line with previous research we find that the effects of individual religious characte ristics (religious involvement and religious beliefs) outweigh the effects of other characteristics (educational level and personal income) on the res pondent's moral attitudes. Moreover, we find additional direct effects of s pousal characteristics on the respondent's moral attitudes. These findings indicate that people in the respondent's networks contribute to the explana tion of one's attitudes on moral issues.