Preferences for religious help-seeking: racial and gender differences, interfaith intolerance, and defensive theology

Abstract

We examined the relation between preference for religious help-seeking and defensive theology, interfaith intolerance, spiritual conceptualisations of mental health problems, race/ethnicity, and gender in a predominantly Christian sample of 389 college students. MANOVA revealed significant main effects for race/ethnicity, with African American participants showing higher scores than Caucasians and Latinos/as across all main study variables. Follow-up ANOVA yielded main effects for race across all four variables and main effects for gender on spiritual conceptualisation of mental health problems and defensive theology. All race/ethnicity by gender interactions were nonsignificant. Preference for religious help-seeking was regressed in a hierarchical manner on race/ethnicity and gender, followed by interfaith intolerance, defensive theology, and spiritual conceptualisation of mental health problems. A statistically significant model explaining 46% of the variance emerged incorporating all variables except race. A framework for understanding help-seeking preference is presented, followed by directions for future research.

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