Le rôle des groupes de reference dans l'intégration des attitudes religieuses

A clear trend which marked the sociology of religion during the last few years has been its effort to push on its studies beyond sociography to the domain of social psychology. In this paper the Author takes social integration in the small group as the starting point for a discussion on how far attitudes of the spirit are influenced by the groups themselves. These attitudes are defined as the structurization of personal dynamism which positively or negatively orient behaviour in the face of a psycho-social object. Their two springs arc individual psychology and the social milieu. Attitudes are influenced by the groups to which the individual persons belong. The first achievement of sociology was to free itself from simplicist determin ism. The second one consisted in an effort to examine the influence of the family, union, party and other groups to which people belonged. The third step was an examination of the reference groups, that is, the groups to which people did not necessarely belong but to which they ware psychologically linked. These two ideas can be applied to the sociology of religion. The Author applies them to the religious sentiment of young people (attached or otherwise to the Church groups), to the attitudes of the modal Catholic (i.e. in relation to the parochial group) and to the institutional points of reference of religious conversion (i.e. between the Church and the convert).