ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the mildly extrinsically religious elderly widowed show more signs of distress than their non-extrinsically religious peers. The overall results are in keeping with the tendency for extrinsicness to correlate more than intrinsicness with nonreligious variables. The positive relationship between indiscriminately proreligious tendencies and the distress measures among widowers is the most puzzling result to interpret. A high score, reflected by a positive raw correlation with the dependent variable, is indicative of an indiscriminately proreligious stance. Similarly, a lower score suggests a nonreligious orientation and would be evidenced by a negative raw correlation. In the indiscriminately proreligious orientation, the advantages of the intrinsic dimension are likely to be moderated somewhat by the concomitant emphasis on extrinsic items, though some adaptive benefits should still be present. The average religious orientation scores and their accompanying standard deviations suggest a fairly heterogeneous sample.
