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Posted by on Jan 22, 2013 in Morality, Religion and Society | 10 comments

Religion does not make you love your neighbour – study

This is an intriguing report from the Telegraph, of all places.

 It may promote messages such as “love thy neighbour” but religion does not make people more kind or trusting, a study has concluded.

Being religious only appears to make people more co-operative or unselfish when they are dealing with other people of the same faith, it suggested.

The findings, likely to prove controversial, emerge from a study carried out by Nottingham University Business School as part of government-funded research into the role of religion in public life.

A team of behaviour experts asked a group of Malaysian people with different religious backgrounds to take part in a series of tasks involving sharing money with other participants.

In one task people were given an imaginary sum of money and given the option of sending some to another participant.

They were told that whatever they did not send they would be able to keep but also that the participant could chose to send some of it back – which would then be tripled.

They had to judge how “generous” to be.

Participants included Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and non-religious volunteers

The team noticed that there was little difference between levels of co-operation and generosity when people knew nothing of the other person’s beliefs and when they knew that they were of different persuasions.

But when told that the other person shared their religion they were markedly more trusting and generous with the money.

Dr Robert Hoffmann, an Associate Professor of Economics at Nottingham University Business School and co-author of the report, said: “One would imagine the charity inherent in many well-known articles of faith might have some impact on everyday behaviour.

“But we discovered no evidence of that when we examined what happens when people who are religious knowingly interact with those of a different or no faith.

“When we looked at how religious people knowingly interact with those of the same faith, on the other hand, suddenly their religion started to explain their actions.

“This leads us to the sobering conclusion that religion doesn’t affect people’s behaviour in general terms. Rather, it affects how they relate to different individuals.”

By , Religious Affairs Editor

 

The Independent reports it as follows:

 

People of the same religious faith will help each other more, but religious people are no more unselfish than non-believers

Love thy neighbour, but only if he’s one of us, appears to be the message.

A new study shows that religious people are no more unselfish than non-believers, unless they are dealing with others of the same faith.

Researchers at the Nottingham University Business School carried out a series of behavioural experiments which established that believers of various faiths only acted on their various teachings when they know they are dealing with people who share their beliefs.

Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and non-religious volunteers were put into pairs, and simultaneously asked to decide whether to cooperate with a partner, to win small cash pay-outs.

When played blind, and when  religion and ethnicity didn’t match,  cooperation averaged at around 30 per cent. Where religion and ethnicity were the same, the rate jumped to 45.4 per cent.

Dr Robert Hoffmann, associate  professor of economics and co-author of the study, said: “One would imagine the charity inherent in many well-known articles of faith might have some impact on everyday behaviour. But we discovered no evidence of that.”

  • http://www.theaunicornist.com Mike D

    Not really surprising… I’ve read a fair bit of anthropological research which suggests that religion reinforces in-group bonds at the expense of out-group bonds.

  • David Marshall

    What a bunch of bull.  The authors of this study appear completely clueless about the relevant literature — they don’t seem to know there is any!  Or else that’s the reporters who report it, as usual.

    Read Arthur Brooks, Who Really Cares.  Brooks references NUMEROUS studies, mostly in the US but some in Europe, which show that highly religious people are more generous “in every measurable way” than those who don’t attend religious services — including charitable giving, giving blood, and even giving money back when the clerk returns you too much. 

    Malaysia is, of course, a special case, as anyone with the slightest bit of geographical or historical knowledge ought to know.  They’ve had religious riots there, not too long ago, that killed lots of people.  But Asia generally is covered with Christian charitable institutions, in which Christian missionaries have utterly transformed society through good works.  Even the Dalai Lama was impressed.  How gullible and ignorant modern skeptics make themselves appear, sometimes. 

  • David Marshall

    And of course people tend to be more charitable to those who belong to their own groups, than to people outside their groups.  One can see that, reading DC or Pharyngula every day of the week.  Are the authors of this study utter idiots? 

  • Copyleft

    Yes, I was aware of the study Marshall cites–and I note how these findings neatly dovetail with that one. Religious people do indeed give more–TO THEIR FELLOW BELIEVERS.

    As for everybody else? Screw ‘em! That’s the inspirational message of peace and love that religion teaches.

  • David Marshall

    Copy: Dr. Brooks didn’t cite one single study, but a broad range of studies.  This is one of his primary areas of research.  And no, the bounds of charity most certainly do NOT stay within the church. 

    Since we’re talking about Asia, read Melanie Kirkpatrick, Escape from North Korea.  She points out that one of the first things North Koreans are told when they run away from that hellhole – people raised to be atheists, that’s your tribe, presumably — is “go to a church, they’ll help you.”  And they do. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NZMJ7JRYKH7WR6YTXJGG3PU65E John Grove

    Dave,
    In the book “Morality without God” Armstrong cites different studies which do indicate that Christians tend to more charitable, while other studies indicate that atheist to be less judgmental. So, I am not sure sure I would entirely agree with this post, as David does have a point which has been corroborated in other studies.

    Funny an atheist would agree with a theist.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NZMJ7JRYKH7WR6YTXJGG3PU65E John Grove

    However, the fact that I find this information “inconclusive” doesn’t mean that I don’t find it interesting. Even the studies that Armstrong cites are inconclusive and speculative. However, it may not be true that Christians are more generous and charitable. But, it may be true.

    Those studies that have been done cut in both directions. The way the studies were done were quite good but limited by necessity and are conflicting.

  • http://www.www.skepticink.com/tippling/ Jonathan MS Pearce

    Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion
    Than Are Non-Believers

     

    ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2012) —

     ”Love thy
    neighbor” is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California,
    Berkeley,
    suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when
    helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

     

    In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion
    consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly
    religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous
    they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent
    online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

     

    The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of
    generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and
    compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity
    was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or
    less religious.

    “Overall, we find that for less religious people, the
    strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether
    they will help that person or not,” said UC Berkeley social psychologist
    Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. “The more religious, on the other
    hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors
    such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”

    Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when
    people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at
    a personal risk or cost.

     

    While the study examined the link between religion,
    compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why
    highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others.
    However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more
    strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious
    counterparts.

     

    “We hypothesized that religion would change how
    compassion impacts generous behavior,” said study lead author Laura
    Saslow, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

     

    Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San
    Francisco, said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic,
    nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery
    efforts in Haiti
    after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the
    rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.

     

    “I was interested to find that this experience — an
    atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to
    strangers — was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” Saslow
    said.

     

    In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a
    2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with
    such statements as “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel
    kind of protective towards them” were also more inclined to show
    generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and
    offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.

     

    When they looked into how much compassion motivated
    participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a
    homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out
    ahead: “These findings indicate that although compassion is associated
    with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals,
    this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,”
    the study found.

     

    In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of
    two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits
    of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 “lab
    dollars” and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger. The
    least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally
    charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.

     

    “The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on
    their generosity,” Willer said. “But it did not significantly change
    the generosity of more religious participants.”

    In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were
    asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played
    “economic trust games” in which they were given money to share — or
    not — with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person
    playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were
    free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled
    in amount.

     

    Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on
    momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers
    than other participants in the study.

     

    “Overall, this research suggests that although less
    religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling
    compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens
    than more religious people,” Willer said.

    In addition to Saslow and Willer, other co-authors of the
    study are UC Berkeley psychologists Dacher Keltner, Matthew Feinberg and Paul
    Piff; Katharine Clark at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sarina Saturn
    at Oregon State University.

    The study was funded by grants from UC Berkeley’s Greater
    Good Science Center, UC Berkeley’s Center for the Economics and Demography of
    Aging, and the Metanexus Institute.

  • Andy_Schueler

    She points out that one of the first things North Koreans are told when they run away from that hellhole – people raised to be atheists, that’s your tribe, 

    Nope.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NZMJ7JRYKH7WR6YTXJGG3PU65E John Grove

    Consider the periodic table of irrational nonsense

    http://www.crispian.net/PTIR/Nonsense.html