Religious belief alignment: The structure of cultural beliefs from adolescence to emerging adulthood

This article presents an alignment model of cultural formation, arguing that belief systems become increasingly constrained from earlier periods life-course to adulthood. I show the pairwise correlations between beliefs increase and structure personal culture becomes relatively more aligned before entering Moreover, rate change slows down with each year age, suggesting process is most prevalent in specific socialization periods. Using four waves data National Study Youth Religion, test these propositions through analysis religious networks. find results are robust sampling variability, population heterogeneity, item selection.