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The study of the relationship between religion and attitudes on the environment is a growing area of academic inquiry and combines research from political scientists, sociologists, and religious historians. Researchers in this area seek to better understand how religion influences attitudes on the environment or environmental policy and if religion motivates environmental action or behaviors. Key to this area of study is defining what religion is and deciding how to measure environmental attitudes. Is religion identified through religious affiliation, religious beliefs, religious networks and communication, or other criteria? Relatedly, are environmental attitudes understood as support for particular environmental policies, willingness to sacrifice to protect nature, or personal environmental behaviors such as recycling? Social scientists have attempted to answer these questions through an overview of key works in the study of religion and the environment in the United States. For additional perspective, these works are placed into their religious and international context to show where, if at all, religiously motivated environmental attitudes in the United States differ from those around the world.

Attitudes towards political groups and their rights are often shaped by the core values held by individuals. In reference to LGBT people and their rights, research has often shown that core values play a role in understanding affect towards the group and related policies. Values such as moral traditionalism and egalitarianism have long been understood to be determinants of people’s attitudes toward LGBT rights. LGBT issues are framed relying on competing value frames, which change in their dominance over time. However, core values tend to be stable but American attitudes toward LGBT people and rights have undergone sharp increases in their favorability. One explanation for this change is an increasing political tolerance among the American public. Political tolerance is the degree to which the public supports the civil liberties of members of different social groups, and it is distinct though related to attitudes on LGBT issues of equality (e.g., marriage equality). Political tolerance encompasses attitudes toward the rights for LGBT people to exercise their free speech, political and social organization, and live free from government intrusion. In the US, adults have consistently expressed greater political tolerance for lesbian and gay people than issues of LGBT equality. Political tolerance toward lesbian and gay people has increased since the 1970s, but egalitarian values have remained rather stagnant. The effect of egalitarian values on political tolerance for lesbian and gay people was stronger in earlier years, and as Americans have become more tolerant of lesbian and gay people, the role of egalitarianism in affecting political tolerance has diminished. There are limitations of existing data, especially regarding the political tolerance of bisexuals, transgender people, and others who are generally considered to be within the broader LGBT community.

Since its emergence, framing has established itself as one of the most prominent areas of study within the political communication literature. Simply defined, frames are acts of communication that present a certain interpretation of the world that can change the ways in which people understand, define and evaluate issues and events. But while scholarly understanding of framing as a concept has been refined as a consequence of many years of constructive debate, framing methodology has evolved little since the introduction of the concept several decades ago. As a consequence, the methods employed to study and understand framing effects have not kept up with more modern conceptualizations of framing and have struggled to meaningfully contribute to framing theory on the whole. Specifically, analyses of the framing literature over the past two decades suggest framing studies often fall short in properly distinguishing framing effects from broader persuasion and information effects and the current state of the literature—characterized by inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies across individual works—has made generalization difficult, hampering further theoretical development. In light of these concerns, framing scholars must utilize research approaches that allow for a more precise understanding of the mechanisms by which framing effects occur and identify strategies by which broader insights may be gleaned from both current and future work on the subject in order to enrich framing theory moving forward.