Findings

Hear No Evil

Kevin Lewis

August 12, 2010

Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life

Bastiaan Rutjenslow, Joop van der Pligt & Frenk van Harreveld
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
A simple reminder of the fact that we do not always control life's outcomes reduced people's belief in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This control-threat resulted in a relative preference for theories of life that thwart randomness, either by stressing the role of a controlling God (Intelligent Design) or by presenting the Theory of Evolution in terms of predictable and orderly processes. Moreover, increased preference for Intelligent Design over evolutionary theory disappeared when the latter was framed in terms of an orderly process with inevitable outcomes. Thus, psychological threat enhances belief in God, but only in the absence of other options that help to create order in the world.

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Islam and Large-Scale Political Violence: Is There a Connection?

Steven Fish, Francesca Jensenius & Katherine Michel
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming

Abstract:
Are Muslims especially prone to large-scale political violence? From Montesquieu to Samuel Huntington, prominent modern analysts of politics have regarded Muslims as unusually inclined to strife. Many other observers have portrayed Islam as a peace-loving faith and Muslims as largely pacific. Yet scholars still lack much hard evidence on whether a relationship between Islam and political violence really exists. Precious few studies adduce empirical evidence on whether Islamic societies are actually more or less violent. This article assesses whether Muslims are more prone to large-scale political violence than non-Muslims. The authors focus neither on terrorism nor on interstate war. Instead, they investigate large-scale intrastate violence. The article makes three contributions. First, it offers useful data on Islam and political strife. Second, it investigates whether Muslims are especially violence prone. Relying on cross-national analysis, the authors find no evidence of a correlation between the proportion of a country's population that is made up of Muslims and deaths in episodes of large-scale political violence in the postwar period. Third, the authors investigate whether Islamism (the ideology), as opposed to Muslims (the people), is responsible for an inordinate share of the world's large-scale political violence. They find that Islamism is implicated in an appreciable but not disproportionate amount of political violence.

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God: Do I have your attention?

Lorenza Colzato et al.
Cognition, forthcoming

Abstract:
Religion is commonly defined as a set of rules, developed as part of a culture. Here we provide evidence that practice in following these rules systematically changes the way people attend to visual stimuli, as indicated by the individual sizes of the global precedence effect (better performance to global than to local features). We show that this effect is significantly reduced in Calvinism, a religion emphasizing individual responsibility, and increased in Catholicism and Judaism, religions emphasizing social solidarity. We also show that this effect is long-lasting (still affecting baptized atheists) and that its size systematically varies as a function of the amount and strictness of religious practices. These findings suggest that religious practice induces particular cognitive-control styles that induce chronic, directional biases in the control of visual attention.

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Activist Religion, Empire, and the Emergence of Modern Long-Distance Advocacy Networks

Peter Stamatov
American Sociological Review, August 2010, Pages 607-628

Abstract:
Considering long-distance advocacy as a distinctive institution of European modernity, the article examines the genesis and history of networks engaged in political action on behalf of distant others. Ever since the beginnings of European expansion overseas in the sixteenth century, such networks have originated from a persistent pattern of radicalization of religious actors against rival networks within the context of empire. In the late eighteenth century, the very same processes led to the establishment of modern forms of long-distance advocacy, with the international movement against colonial slavery and the slave trade. Throughout, long-distance advocacy was initiated and carried out by distinctively reformist and activist religious organizations within Catholicism and Protestantism. These findings highlight the importance of religious organizations in the imperial context for the configuration of modern forms of political activism.

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America's Spiritual-Industrial Complex and the Policy of Revival in the Early Cold War

Jonathan Herzog
Journal of Policy History, Summer 2010, Pages 337-365

"From the wide halls of Congress to the serpentine corridors of the corporate bureaucracy, from the Cabinet Room to the boardroom, government and business leaders during the late 1940s and 1950s adopted a policy of religious revival in the name of national security and societal well-being. Its optimism was unmatched. But, then again, the early Cold War era was rife with projects on grand scales. This policy benefited from the dawning of a new American age, the time of the 'other-directed' individual and the 'organization man' - a time when, at least according to sociologists, the average citizen had devolved into a level of social malleability unthinkable in ages past. Similar partnerships had tamed the atom and delivered victory in history's most destructive war. Basking in the glow of this justified confidence, policymakers set their sights on the nation's religious economy. For scholars interested in the influence of religion on American policymaking, few time periods are as rich in case studies. Between 1945 and 1960, religious concerns attained a rare degree of salience in the development and implementation of policy. There were specific legislative achievements, such as the addition of 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. But there were less visible, and as a consequence largely forgotten, policy adoptions regarding religion in the areas of foreign propaganda and psychological warfare, military training, state-sponsored or state-supported national faith drives, and public education."

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Identity moderates the effects of Christmas displays on mood, self-esteem, and inclusion

Michael Schmitt, Kelly Davies, Mandy Hung & Stephen Wright
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
In two experiments we examined the differential psychological consequences of being in the presence of a Christmas display on participants who did or did not celebrate Christmas (Study 1), or who identified as Christian, Buddhist, or Sikh (Study 2). Participants completed measures of psychological well-being in a cubicle that either did or did not contain a small Christmas display. Across several indicators of well-being, the display harmed non-celebrators and non-Christians, but enhanced well-being for celebrators and Christians. In Study 2, we found that the negative effect of the display on non-Christians was mediated by reduced feelings of inclusion. The results raise concerns about the ubiquitous presence of dominant cultural symbols (such as Christmas displays) in culturally diverse societies.

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Prophetic at Any Price? Clergy Political Behavior and Utility Maximization

Brian Robert Calfano
Social Science Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 649-668

Objective: I examine the degree to which U.S. clergy might be considered utility maximizers in determining whether to undertake political behavior among their parishioners. Specifically, I investigate whether mainline Protestant clergy elect not to engage in political activities due to a general concern that their behavior might lead to a downturn in parishioner contributions.

Methods: Six maximum likelihood models are employed to analyze survey data of clergy in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and the Episcopal Church, USA.

Results: Evidence from six maximum likelihood models shows that clergy are less likely to undertake political behavior when this financial motive is in play, suggesting that even religious elites are susceptible to the maximization motive.

Conclusions: These results have implications for elites in voluntary organizations more generally. An example is interest group leaders who might be compelled to take the views of their rank-and-file members into account in making policy when group solvency is a concern. Overall, these findings advance the literatures on clergy politics, interest groups, and elite theory, and recommend a reexamination of the general assumptions about elite influence in organizational settings-both religious and secular.

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Piety and Profits: Stock Market Anomaly During the Muslim Holy Month

Jedrzej Bialkowski, Ahmad Etebari & Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski
University of New Hampshire Working Paper, April 2010

Abstract:
Observed by more than 1.5 billion Muslims, Ramadan is one of the most celebrated religious rituals in the world. We investigate stock returns during Ramadan for 14 predominantly Muslim countries over the years 1989-2007. The results show that stock returns during Ramadan are almost nine times higher and less volatile than during the rest of the year. No discernible difference in trading volume is recorded. We find these results consistent with a notion that Ramadan positively affects investor psychology, as it promotes feelings of solidarity and social identity among Muslims world-wide, leading to optimistic beliefs that extend to investment decisions.

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Reading, Writing, and Religion: Institutions and Human Capital Formation

Latika Chaudhary & Jared Rubin
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We test this hypothesis econometrically, finding that the period of Muslim political collapse has a statistically significant effect on Muslim literacy while controlling for it eliminates the significance of the proportion of Muslims on Muslim literacy. This suggests that the "long hand of history" has played some role in subsequent differences in human capital formation through the persistence of institutions discouraging literacy.

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Club Goods and Group Identity: Evidence from Islamic Resurgence during the Indonesian Financial Crisis

Daniel Chen
Journal of Political Economy, April 2010, Pages 300-354

Abstract:
This paper tests a model in which group identity in the form of religious intensity functions as ex post insurance. I exploit relative price shocks induced by the Indonesian financial crisis to demonstrate a causal relationship between economic distress and religious intensity (Koran study and Islamic school attendance) that is weaker for other forms of group identity. Consistent with ex post insurance, credit availability reduces the effect of economic distress on religious intensity, religious intensity alleviates credit constraints, and religious institutions smooth consumption shocks across households and within households, particularly for those who were less religious before the crisis.

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Religious Involvement, Humility, and Self-Rated Health

Neal Krause
Social Indicators Research, August 2010, Pages 23-39

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to develop and test a conceptual model that assesses the following theoretical linkages: (1) people who go to church more often tend to receive more spiritual support from fellow church members (i.e., encouragement to adopt religious teachings and principles); (2) individuals who get more frequent spiritual support are more likely to be humble; and (3) people with greater humility tend to rate their health more favorably. The data come from the third wave of a nationwide longitudinal survey of older adults. The data provide support for each of the conceptual linkages identified above.

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Religious Economy or Organizational Field? Predicting Bishops' Votes at the Second Vatican Council

Melissa Wilde, Kristin Geraty, Shelley Nelson & Emily Bowman
American Sociological Review, August 2010, Pages 586-606

Abstract:
This article explores the national factors that predict bishops' votes on two of the most contentious issues at the Second Vatican Council. Using data obtained from the Vatican Secret Archive, analyses demonstrate that rational choice oriented theory in the sociology of religion that focuses on competition is limited. While competition is important to religious leaders' actions, its effects can be understood only in relation to other crucial characteristics of the social environment within which leaders operate. These characteristics, which we derive from Neo‐Institutional Theory (NIT), shape leaders' interests and often lead them to prioritize concerns about their institutions' legitimacy over the concerns about efficiency and growth rational choice theorists assume are predominant. Most NIT studies examine the population of firms within one organizational field. Because we hold firm constant and examine how variation in the type of organizational field (supplied by the more than 100 countries in our analyses) predicts firm leaders' actions, this study represents a unique test of NIT.

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Religion and Secularism in Turkey: The Dilemma of the Directorate of Religious Affairs

Ufuk Ulutas
Middle Eastern Studies, May 2010, Pages 389-399

Abstract:
The current study aims to examine the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) from its formation in 1924 through to the present day, and attempts to place the Diyanet appropriately in the context of the prevailing perplexity over state-religion relations in Turkey. It questions Turkish-style secularism and examines the responsibilities, power, and limits of the Diyanet. The Diyanet has undertaken responsibility for making the state's control over religion visible through sermons and publications, helping the state gain legitimacy among religious people. Meanwhile, it has been the Achilles' heel of the republican regime in the sense that religious people found employment in it and some considered this as a way to influence the laicist state from inside.

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Efficiency in Islamic and conventional banking: An international comparison

Mariani Abdul-Majid, David Saal & Giuliana Battisti
Journal of Productivity Analysis, August 2010, Pages 25-43

Abstract:
The paper investigates the efficiency of a sample of Islamic and conventional banks in 10 countries that operate Islamic banking for the period 1996-2002, using an output distance function approach. We obtain measures of efficiency after allowing for environmental influences such as country macroeconomic conditions, accessibility of banking services and bank type. While these factors are assumed to directly influence the shape of the technology, we assume that country dummies and bank size directly influence technical inefficiency. The parameter estimates highlight that during the sample period, Islamic banking appears to be associated with higher input usage. Furthermore, by allowing for bank size and international differences in the underlying inefficiency distributions, we are also able to demonstrate statistically significant differences in inefficiency related to these factors even after controlling for specific environmental characteristics and Islamic banking. Thus, for example, our results suggest that Sudan and Yemen have relatively higher inefficiency while Bahrain and Bangladesh have lower estimated inefficiency. Except for Sudan, where banks exhibits relatively strong returns to scale, most sample banks exhibit very slight returns to scale, although Islamic banks are found to have moderately higher returns to scale than conventional banks. While this suggests that Islamic banks may benefit from increased scale, we would emphasize that our results suggest that identifying and overcoming the factors that cause Islamic banks to have relatively low potential outputs for given input usage levels will be the key challenge for Islamic banking in the coming decades.


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