Study: Those with a religious upbringing are less altruistic. - Polidicks

[QUOTE]A team of developmental psychologists led by Prof. Jean Decety assessed the children's tendency to share - a measure of their altruism - and their inclination to judge and punish others for bad behavior. The study included 1,170 children between ages 5 and 12, from six countries -- Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. [I]Methodology is in source[/I] [I]Conclusion:[/I] Children from religious families were less likely to share with others than were children from non-religious families. A religious upbringing also was associated with more punitive tendencies in response to anti-social behavior. The results were at odds with the perceptions of [B]religious parents[/B], who [B]were more likely[/B] than non-religious parents [B]to report that their children had a high degree of empathy and sensitivity to the plight of others.[/B] "Our findings contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others. In our study, kids from atheist and non-religious families were, in fact, more generous,". Source: [URL]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151105121916.htm?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook[/URL] Journal: [URL="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)01167-7?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982215011677%3Fshowall%3Dtrue"]Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World.[/URL][/QUOTE] *I have manipulated sentences so as to not make a long post but tried to maintain contextually appropriate phrases; everything in full is in the source.

Well i suppose religion is inherently divisive. It tends to proclaim that some are lesser than others, for the most part.

I think the ideas of judgement, punishment, vengeance etc. are ingrained in religion. The faiths examined here (Christianity and Islam) also relate these ideas to compassion. For example, God is usually said to be wrathful and merciful, judgemental and loving. Also it may have something to do with being self-critical. Someone who thinks they are righteous simply because they believe in something are less likely to think they need to improve, and so take very few actions toward showing they are compassionate.

Not surprising. When you get down to the bottom of it, religion says that everyone else except for its specific group of believers are dead wrong and will go to hell/whatever.

There's two types of parents religious followers: the blind, and the people who have logically deduced that their religion is important to them. Those parents who follow blindly do not teach empathy all that well, and I fear, that is how the US is going. Then you take the materialistic, money focused lifestyle and combine it with blind religious following, and you get a lot of scary people :(

This is interesting. As someone raised Roman Catholic, but now agnostic, I feel like it did make me more empathetic and such. I think there are probably many more factors here. I mean I have always been very liberal, and I attribute that to being raised Roman Catholic and going to catholic schools my whole life. Yet, as many people here know, a large number of Catholics are very conservative.

Reminds me of an experiment done a long time ago, where some peple eventually concluded that the worst place to beg for money is right outside a church.

Honestly I think that this story is more about being raised [I]religiously conservative[/I] rather than religiously. I was raised without religion in my household and I'm somewhere between altruistic and selfish, so I don't think being an atheist or a christian has much to do with it. On the other hand, assuming this study is correct, you would think people who believe they're going to hell for being selfish would... be less selfish.

I'm always dubious of studies like these. "Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the United States." The one thing all these countries have in common is a large amount of poor people who are very religious. There have been studies in America that correlated religiousness with crime. Obviously no one with a shred of common sense however is going to say that being religious leads to doing criminal activity.

It doesn't seem to do a breakdown by particular churches, backgrounds, etc. For instance there's a very big difference between poorer traditional Catholics, and wealthy protestants who go to a megachurch. There's also those who are fairly quiet about their faith and are flexible with it in other parts of their life, and then those who see it as their duty to actively evangelize aggressively or have a narrow interpretation of their faith.

Working in a restaurant I have to agree. I'm not a waiter but I did notice that religious people never leave tips - they leave pamphlets. Why help people when you can [i]pretend[/i] to help people?

[QUOTE=Xystus234;49062249]I was raised without religion in my household and I'm somewhere between altruistic and selfish, so I don't think being an atheist or a christian has much to do with it.[/QUOTE] So you exist literally somewhere on the entirety of the spectrum.

This is awesome finding. Thanks.

I feel like this is a bit of a generalization. If you define religiousness in a certain way then you are inherently going to get a special subset of the whole. I wonder if this study includes buddhism, non-denominationalism, or non-practicing people.

[QUOTE=New Cidem;49062387]Working in a restaurant I have to agree. I'm not a waiter but I did notice that religious people never leave tips - they leave pamphlets. Why help people when you can [i]pretend[/i] to help people?[/QUOTE] When I was a teenager I worked at a fast food restaurant in a mall. Sundays were always my least favourite shifts. They were shorter yeah, but the church crowd was without a doubt the most impatient, unfriendly group. They'd be all happy and cheery with each other in line but then treat us like we'd already wronged them before they even got to the register to order.

Yet again the curse of small sample sizes fucks up a study. 1,170 is simply not enough to pass judgment on the generosity of religious children, no matter how many different countries are involved. I will say though, that most religious people are more likely to pray for others instead of doing something to help them.

I have found what people scream the loudest to be or against, tend to be the opposite in practice.

Who knew piety could cause some people to actually feel distain for the poor, certainly prominent figures like malfus or the entire religious wing of the Republican party don't send that message

[QUOTE=orgornot;49062098]Not surprising. When you get down to the bottom of it, religion says that everyone else except for its specific group of believers are dead wrong and will go to hell/whatever.[/QUOTE] That's a pretty simplistic view of theology. There's a variety of religions with a huge number of sects that practice those differently. It's a lot more than "We are the chosen ones so we will have a great afterlife."

[QUOTE=CoolKingKaso;49062685]That's a pretty simplistic view of theology. There's a variety of religions with a huge number of sects that practice those differently. It's a lot more than "We are the chosen ones so we will have a great afterlife."[/QUOTE] That depends on what religion you subscribe to. The more fringe ideas are more about conquering yourself, knowing your self. If you use to lord yourself over others, you re doing it wrong.

[QUOTE=Tigster;49062491]When I was a teenager I worked at a fast food restaurant in a mall. Sundays were always my least favourite shifts. They were shorter yeah, but the church crowd was without a doubt the most impatient, unfriendly group. They'd be all happy and cheery with each other in line but then treat us like we'd already wronged them before they even got to the register to order.[/QUOTE] This is unbelievably true. The people who go to church every Sunday and then pack their bigass family into restaurants are the most ungrateful assholes. I thought church was supposed to make people appreciate their fellow man? Turn the other cheek? Whatever.

It really does depend on the religion one was raised under. I was raised in a conservative Russian Baptist family til I broke away at 20 and I have to say I'm anti-social as fuck now. My social life and friends revolved around my church and after breaking away I didn't have any friends that I talked to from school. Luckily I still have a handful of childhood friends, but even then I'm anti-social and don't go out much anymore.

[QUOTE=New Cidem;49062387]Working in a restaurant I have to agree. I'm not a waiter but I did notice that religious people never leave tips - they leave pamphlets. Why help people when you can [i]pretend[/i] to help people?[/QUOTE] i once got a little card that said there are some things more valuable than money and some bible quotes. so glad they gave it to me, used it as kindling because i couldn't pay my heat

[QUOTE=kylejburke;49062511]Yet again the curse of small sample sizes fucks up a study. 1,170 is simply not enough to pass judgment on the generosity of religious children, no matter how many different countries are involved. I will say though, that most religious people are more likely to pray for others instead of doing something to help them.[/QUOTE] Please enlighten us resident statistician, what would be an appropriately sized representative sample?

Does anyone have the actual data? The PDF of the study is extremely vague in how they come to their conclusions. For example, they talk about the "generosity" of the kids, but they don't explicitly say where that generosity measurement is coming from. They talk about doing the "dictator game," but the description given in the study of that game is different than the normal idea of the dictator game, and doesn't really mention anything about giving or not giving. Even if they were doing the normal dictator game there would still be good reasons to doubt that it even tells you anything about altruism. For anyone who doesn't know, the dictator game normally goes like this: The experimenter gives the subject an amount of something and asks how much they would like to give to the second subject. The amount that they give is assumed to be a measure of their altruism. The problem is that people have done similar experiments where the subject is both allowed to give or take form the other subject, and people who gave in the original game were likely to take in the new game. It showed that expectation and the way the game is set up has a massive effect on the result. It may be just as likely that non-religious kids are more likely to fold to the expectations of an authority. I'm not actually saying that that's a correct interpretation, just that the dictator game has been found to be a terrible measure of altruism. [editline]6th November 2015[/editline] It's also interesting to note that kids from completely different cultures were directly measures against each other with only their religiousness being considered. For example, the only US city measured was Chicago, and they were directly compared with atheists from Guangzhou, China, and muslims from Turkey. Assuming all the data is legit and leads to the conclusions that they assume they do... isn't it still possible that people from different areas just act differently? It would seem that you would need religious and non-religious people from within the same culture to make a real comparison.

To the surprise of no one. Why would you expect altruism from a cult/ure of "you are the special ones" and "I'm much believe in magic sky beings, give me a discount on _______, and also I don't want to pay taxes either as is my _______ given right."

[QUOTE=sgman91;49064720]Does anyone have the actual data? The PDF of the study is extremely vague in how they come to their conclusions. For example, they talk about the "generosity" of the kids, but they don't explicitly say where that generosity measurement is coming from. They talk about doing the "dictator game," but the description given in the study of that game is different than the normal idea of the dictator game, and doesn't really mention anything about giving or not giving. Even if they were doing the normal dictator game there would still be good reasons to doubt that it even tells you anything about altruism. For anyone who doesn't know, the dictator game normally goes like this: The experimenter gives the subject an amount of something and asks how much they would like to give to the second subject. The amount that they give is assumed to be a measure of their altruism. The problem is that people have done similar experiments where the subject is both allowed to give or take form the other subject, and people who gave in the original game were likely to take in the new game. It showed that expectation and the way the game is set up has a massive effect on the result. It may be just as likely that non-religious kids are more likely to fold to the expectations of an authority. I'm not actually saying that that's a correct interpretation, just that the dictator game has been found to be a terrible measure of altruism. [editline]6th November 2015[/editline] It's also interesting to note that kids from completely different cultures were directly measures against each other with only their religiousness being considered. For example, the only US city measured was Chicago, and they were directly compared with atheists from Guangzhou, China, and muslims from Turkey. Assuming all the data is legit and leads to the conclusions that they assume they do... isn't it still possible that people from different areas just act differently? It would seem that you would need religious and non-religious people from within the same culture to make a real comparison.[/QUOTE] If you read the full text of the journal entry. They adjusted for country of origin as well as other factors. [QUOTE]Results from a linear regression with number of stickers shared as the dependent variable and age (1-year bins), country of origin, socioeconomic status (SES), and religious identification of the household (dummy coded) suggest that age (βstandardized = 0.39, p < 0.001), SES (βstandardized = 0.16, p < 0.001), country (βstandardized = 0.1, p < 0.01), and religious identification (βstandardized = −.132, p < 0.001) are significant predictors of sharing, (model r2adjusted = 0.184).[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Religiousness positively predicted parent-reported child sensitivity to injustice and child empathy, even after accounting for age, SES, and country of origin (βstandardized = 0.194, p < 0.001; βstandardized = 0.89, p < 0.01, respectively). [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Sprockethead;49062007]Well i suppose religion is inherently divisive. It tends to proclaim that some are lesser than others, for the most part.[/QUOTE] But that's not really true, actually. That is just what preachers say to their flock, but for Christianity the Bible itself emphasizes equality (well, for men anyways) which is what made it so popular back in Antiquity. It elevated commoners to the level of the nobles in the eyes of God. Honestly, religion is just so terribly warped now. Some religions are more altruistic than their scripture enforces (Judaism) and others are [I]less[/I] altruistic than their scripture enforces (Christianity and Islam to an extent). People have always been twisting it for their own gain. They use religion as a means of gaining authority and power over others and to make themselves superior; the "holier-than-thou" attitude. Most of that came from the organization of religion. I've always said that belief is a wonderful thing, but religion is awful, and I stand by that. It is fine to believe in God, but the minute you build a church around it suddenly it becomes nothing more than politics.

[QUOTE=Xystus234;49062249]Honestly I think that this story is more about being raised [I]religiously conservative[/I] rather than religiously. I was raised without religion in my household and I'm somewhere between altruistic and selfish, so I don't think being an atheist or a christian has much to do with it. On the other hand, assuming this study is correct, you would think people who believe they're going to hell for being selfish would... be less selfish.[/QUOTE] The difficulty ultimately comes from people not being able to decide what does and doesn't entail being selfish.

[QUOTE=old_hag12;49062104]There's two types of parents religious followers: the blind, and the people who have logically deduced that their religion is important to them. Those parents who follow blindly do not teach empathy all that well, and I fear, that is how the US is going. Then you take the materialistic, money focused lifestyle and combine it with blind religious following, and you get a lot of scary people :([/QUOTE] Also known as the Republican party.