Moderation Effects of Gender, Age, and Ethnicity on Intrinsic Religious Motivation and Spiritual Transcendence among European, Asian Indian, and Taiwanese Americans

Abstract

Given the reality of increasing multicultural and multiethnic parishes in the United States, this paper attempted to investigate the relationship between ethnicity, gender, and age in differentiating the levels of intrinsic religious motivation and spiritual transcendence among three Catholic groups of European Americans, Asian Indian Americans, and Taiwanese Americans. A multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the European Americans scored higher than the other two groups, and women and seniors scored higher than males and younger people on both spiritual transcendence and religious motivation. Contrary to the literature review, European American males had the highest scores on both the variables. Moderation effect of age by ethnicity on religious motivation for both European Americans and Taiwanese Americans was consistent with the literature, where it increased with the age. The effect of age by ethnicity on spiritual transcendence appeared to be complex, where it was higher in the early adulthood, dropped in the middle adulthood, and reached the peak during the senior years. The implications of these results are discussed.