Beyond Good and Evil
Religious Identity and Economic Behavior
Daniel Benjamin, James Choi & Geoffrey Fisher
NBER Working Paper, April 2010
Abstract:
Although many scholars (e.g., Weber, 1930) have hypothesized that religious identity norms affect economic outcomes, empirical tests have been hampered by the difficulty of identifying exogenous variation in religion. We create exogenous variation by randomly varying religious identity salience in laboratory subjects. The marginal effect of religious identity is the change in subjects' choices when religion is salient. We test six hypotheses from prior literature. We find that Protestantism increases contributions to public goods. Catholicism decreases contributions to public goods, decreases expectations of others' contributions to public goods, and decreases risk aversion. Judaism increases worker reciprocity in a bilateral labor market gift-exchange game. We find no evidence of religious identity effects on disutility of work effort, discount rates, or generosity in a dictator game.
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Moral Transformation: Good and Evil Turn the Weak into the Mighty
Kurt Gray
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Moral transformation is the hypothesis that doing good or evil increases agency - the capacity for self-control, tenacity and personal strength. Three experiments provide support for this hypothesis, finding that those who do good or evil become physically more powerful. In Experiment 1, people hold a 5lb weight longer after donating to charity. In Experiment 2, people hold a weight longer when writing about themselves helping or harming another. In Experiment 3, people hold a hand-grip longer after donating to charity. The transformative power of good and evil is not accounted for by affect. Moral transformation is explained as the embodiment of moral typecasting, the tendency to "typecast" good- and evil-doers as more capable of agency and less sensitive to experience. Implications for power, aging, self-control and recovery are discussed.
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"Hooking Up" at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?
Amy Burdette, Christopher Ellison, Terrence Hill & Norval Glenn
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2009, Pages 535-551
Abstract:
Recent attention from media, scholars, and religious leadership has focused on the dating activities of college students, particularly in relation to casual physical encounters or what some have termed "hooking up." In this article, we examine the impact of both individual and institutional religious involvement on "hooking up" in a national sample of college women (N= 1,000). The results of our analysis reveal several important patterns. First, Catholic college women are more likely to have "hooked up" while at school than college women with no religious affiliation. Second, conservative Protestant college women are less likely to have "hooked up" while at school than college women with no religious affiliation; however, this difference is mediated or explained by church attendance, which is protective against "hooking up." Finally, women who attend colleges and universities with a Catholic affiliation are more likely to have hooked up while at school than women who attend academic institutions with no religious affiliation, net of individual-level religious involvement.
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Andrew Phillips
Review of International Studies, April 2010, Pages 257-280
Abstract:
In the absence of comparisons with prior episodes of transformative change in the history of the state system, contemporary debates on the long-term significance of the 9/11 terror attacks and the ensuing war on terror are in danger of polarising around opposing caricatures of epochal change and obstinate durability. The tendency to organise transnationally, mobilise along religious lines, and employ terroristic violence for the purposes of achieving far-reaching religious and political transformation of target societies is not unique to Al-Qaeda, but can be seen also in the activities of the militant confessional networks that flourished in Reformation Europe. By comparing the global struggle against jihadist terrorism with early modern European rulers' struggles against transnational confessional militants, I demonstrate that existing accounts of jihadist terrorism's transformative potential have been seriously mis-specified and require substantial revision.
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Predicting Position on Teaching Creationism (Instead of Evolution) in Public Schools
Andrew Lac, Vanessa Hemovich & Igor Himelfarb
Journal of Educational Research, March-April 2010, Pages 253-261
Abstract:
The federal government has repeatedly denied the introduction of creationism into public schools as it is a direct violation of the separation of church and state. Little is known about those who would opt to eliminate evolution in scientific curriculum altogether. The authors examined this more extreme anti-evolution perspective in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 2,000). A binary logistic regression model involving 11 relevant predictors revealed that the most important predictor of support for the teaching of creationism-only education in public schools was low educational attainment, which yielded a stronger magnitude of effect than did belief in God or importance of religion. Results are interpreted and discussed in the context of implications for educational policy and science curriculum in public schools.
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Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion in Public Goods and Trust Games
Lisa Anderson, Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo
Kyklos, May 2010, Pages 163-175
Abstract:
We examine the extent to which religious affiliation and participation are associated with other-regarding behavior in canonical public goods and bilateral trust games. In general, religious affiliation is unrelated to behavior in these experiments; further, there is only weak evidence that attendance at religious services is correlated with behavior in these games. Contrary to popular wisdom and several recent observational studies, religion is not strongly associated with increased cooperation and trust in our controlled experiments.
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Turning to God in the Face of Ostracism: Effects of Social Exclusion on Religiousness
Nilüfer Aydin, Peter Fischer & Dieter Frey
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research proposes that individuals who are socially excluded can turn to religion to cope with the experience. Empirical studies conducted to test this hypothesis consistently found that socially excluded persons reported (a) significantly higher levels of religious affiliation (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and (b) stronger intentions to engage in religious behaviors (Study 2) than comparable, nonexcluded individuals. Direct support for the stress-buffering function of religiousness was also found, with a religious prime reducing the aggression-eliciting effects of consequent social rejection (Study 5). These effects were observed in both Christian and Muslim samples, revealing that turning to religion can be a powerful coping response when dealing with social rejection. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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Serving God and Country? Religious Involvement and Military Service Among Young Adult Men
Amy Burdette, Victor Wang, Glen Elder, Terrence Hill & Janel Benson
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2009, Pages 794-804
Abstract:
Despite important connections between religion and military action throughout world history, scholars have seldom explored the association between religiosity and military enlistment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we used a person-oriented analysis to categorize young men according to patterns of adolescent religious involvement. Youth indentified as "highly religious evangelical" are more likely to enlist in the military compared to their "highly religious nonevangelical" and "nonreligious" counterparts; however, these findings hold only for those young men without college experience. These findings are discussed along with study limitations and promising directions for future research.
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Forgiveness as a mediator of the religiosity-health relationship
Kathleen Lawler-Row
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, February 2010, Pages 1-16
Abstract:
Forgiveness is proposed to be an important pathway through which the effects of religion on health are mediated. Three separate studies were conducted to examine this hypothesis. In Study 1, older adults (n = 605) completed measures of forgiveness, religiosity, and health. Feeling forgiven by God fully mediated associations between frequency of attendance, frequency of prayer, and belief in a watchful God with successful aging. Self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others partially mediated the religion-health relationships. In Study 2, 253 older adults completed measures of trait forgiveness, religiosity, and health. Trait forgiveness fully mediated associations between prayer and intrinsic religiosity with illness symptoms and 5 dimensions of successful aging. In Study 3, 80 middle-aged men and women completed state and trait forgiveness measures, as well as religiosity and health measures. State forgiveness fully mediated the relationships between existential well-being and both symptoms and medications, and trait forgiveness fully mediated the relationship between religious well-being and both intrinsic religiosity and quality of sleep. State forgiveness partially mediated the relationships between spirituality and both sleep and depression. Within adults, unselected with regard to religious affiliations or beliefs, a variety of religious variables, health outcomes, and forgiveness measures were interrelated. In the majority of cases, forgiveness either partially or fully mediated the religion-health relationships.
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Measuring religious costs and rewards in a cross-cultural perspective
Miran Lavric & Sergej Flere
Rationality and Society, May 2010, Pages 223-236
Abstract:
The assumption of rationally motivated individual religious behavior was tested in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural/religious environments: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and the United States of America. In particular, an attempt was made to explain readiness to bear religious costs by the expectation of otherworldly rewards and some other variables, such as religious socialization, support in the upbringing of children, religious capital, satisfaction with religious services and the perceived social sanctions for possible religious nonparticipation. It was found that it is the otherworldly rewards in all the samples that explain by far the major part of the variance in the readiness to bear religious costs. These results suggest that individuals do tend to make rational choices even when it comes to religion. Based on their beliefs, they are ready to accept religious costs approximately to the level of their expectation of otherworldly rewards.
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Financial Hardship and Psychological Distress: Exploring the Buffering Effects of Religion
Matt Bradshaw & Christopher Ellison
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite ample precedent in theology and social theory, few studies have systematically examined the role of religion in mitigating the harmful effects of socioeconomic deprivation on mental health. The present study outlines several arguments linking objective and subjective measures of financial hardship, as well as multiple aspects of religious life, with psychological distress. Relevant hypotheses are then tested using data on adults aged 18-59 from the 1998 US NORC General Social Survey. Findings confirm that both types of financial hardship are positively associated with distress, and that several different aspects of religious life buffer against these deleterious influences. Specifically, religious attendance and the belief in an afterlife moderate the deleterious effects of financial hardship on both objective and subjective financial hardship, while meditation serves this function only for objective hardship. No interactive relationships were found between frequency of prayer and financial hardship. A number of implications, study limitations, and directions for future research are identified.
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Church-Based Social Relationships and Change in Self-Esteem Over Time
Neal Krause
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2009, Pages 756-773
Abstract:
This study has two goals. The first goal is to see if church-based social relationships are associated with change in self-esteem. Emotional support from fellow church members and having a close personal relationship with God serve as measures of church-based social ties. The second goal is to see whether emotional support from fellow church members is more strongly associated with self-esteem than emotional support from secular social network members. The data come from an ongoing nationwide survey of older adults. The findings reveal that having a close personal relationship with God is associated with a stronger sense of self-esteem at the baseline and follow-up interviews. In contrast, emotional support from fellow church members was not associated with self-esteem at either point in time. However, emotional support from secular social network members is related to self-esteem at the baseline but not the follow-up interview.
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Religious beliefs influence neural substrates of self-reflection in Tibetans
Yanhong Wu, Cheng Wang, Xi He, Lihua Mao & Li Zhang
Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous transcultural neuroimaging studies have shown that the neural substrates of self-reflection can be shaped by different cultures. There are few studies, however, on the neural activity of self-reflection where religion is viewed as a form of cultural expression. The present study examined the self-processing of two Chinese ethnic groups (Han and Tibetan) to investigate the significant role of religion on the functional anatomy of self-representation. We replicated the previous results in Han participants with the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and left anterior cingulate cortex showing stronger activation in self-processing when compared with other-processing conditions. However, no typical self-reference pattern was identified in Tibetan participants on behavioral or neural levels. This could be explained by the minimal subjective sense of 'I-ness' in Tibetan Buddhists. Our findings lend support to the presumed role of culture and religion in shaping the neural substrate of self.
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Sanctification of Marriage and General Religiousness as Buffers of the Effects of Marital Inequity
Alfred DeMaris, Annette Mahoney & Kenneth Pargament
Journal of Family Issues, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theory suggests that relationship inequity will be associated with less marital and personal distress among the more religious, and that this interaction effect will be stronger for women than men. Data are from 178 married couples experiencing the third trimester of pregnancy of their first biological child. Five outcome variables were assessed for each spouse: marital satisfaction, love, marital conflict, depression, and anxiety. Consistent with equity theory, perceived relative advantage was related in a nonmonotonic fashion to all outcomes, with increasing advantage predicting better outcomes up to the equity point, but worse outcomes afterwards. Sanctification of marriage appeared to be a more important moderator of inequity effects than general religiousness. In particular, relative advantage had weaker effects among higher sanctifiers. The influence of relative advantage was also conditioned by gender. Wives' psychological well-being appeared to be more adversely affected than men's because of considering oneself overbenefited in the relationship. Moreover, the interaction between sanctification and relative advantage was somewhat stronger for wives.
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Amanda Nicholson, Richard Rose & Martin Bobak
Health Psychology, March 2010, Pages 227-235
Objective: Existing evidence on the relationship between religious involvement and health indicates that organizational religious involvement, such as attendance at services, is associated with better health. Findings concerning other dimensions of religious involvement, such as prayer, are inconsistent and analyses often neglect the potential influence of other correlated dimensions.
Design: Using cross-sectional data from 22 diverse European countries in the European Social Survey, including 18,129 men and 21,205 women, three dimensions of religious involvement (frequency of attendance at religious services; frequency of private prayer; self-assessment as a religious person) were studied. Main Outcome Measure: Poor self-rated health (SRH).
Results: When analyzed separately, less frequent attendance was associated with poor health in men and women. Associations were weaker with less frequent prayer and lower religiousness. In models with all dimensions together, the association with attendance was strengthened and prayer became significantly inversely associated with health.
Conclusions: The frequency of attendance at religious services and private prayer had opposite associations with self-rated health, resulting in negative confounding. These results are consistent with social contact being important in any health benefits from religious involvement and highlight the importance of using multidimensional measures.