QUALITATIVE RESEARCH OF KINDS OF RELIGIOUS NORMS

Within the sociocognitive approach, the religious norms are determined as the subjective representations of the results of a person’s cognitive processing of the information about the religious phenomena presented in the culture. The religious norms are present within the everyday life language and expressed as the normative judgments reflecting the correctness and preference of social behavior and way of thinking. Certain normative judgments do not exist independently of each other but form the clusters that can be considered as the kinds of social norms.  

The goal of presented empirical research is to determine the kinds of religious norms expressed as a normative judgment. The study tests a hypothesis about a verbal expression in the form of normative judgments of the enculturated religious experience. As the data-collection method, the author uses the semi-structured interviews method determining the judgments about the norms in the context of the evaluative attitude. The evaluations are expressed in respect of the objects that are the bearers of desired norms or adhere to them. The elements of phenomenography and matrix analysis serve as the method of qualitative data analysis.   

The study allows speaking about the existence of at least four kinds of religious norms: responsibility attribution norms, social interaction norms, interpersonal interaction norms, and self-introduction norms. Thus, the religious norms form a fragment of the individual psychological reality caused by the patterns of social behavior determining its acceptability and usefulness. 

Quoted results and conclusions offer the opportunities for the study of confessional differences when determining the types and inner content of the religious norms representations. Moreover, the results of the study highlight the necessity to specify the functions of religious norms representations in the context of social adaptation.