Religious Test
Church and State: An Economic Analysis
Keith Hylton, Yulia Rodionova & Fei Deng
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
What purpose is served by a government's protection of religious liberty? Many have been suggested, the most prominent of which center on the protection of freedom of belief and expression. However, since every regulation potentially interferes with religious freedom, it is useful to consider more concrete purposes that could suggest limits on the degree to which religious liberty should be protected. This article focuses on the concrete economic consequences of state regulation of religion. We examine the effects of state regulation on corruption, economic growth, and inequality. The results suggest that laws and practices burdening religion enhance corruption. Laws burdening religion reduce economic growth and are positively associated with inequality.
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Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God
Amitai Shenhav, David Rand & Joshua Greene
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some have argued that belief in God is intuitive, a natural (by-)product of the human mind given its cognitive structure and social context. If this is true, the extent to which one believes in God may be influenced by one's more general tendency to rely on intuition versus reflection. Three studies support this hypothesis, linking intuitive cognitive style to belief in God. Study 1 showed that individual differences in cognitive style predict belief in God. Participants completed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005), which employs math problems that, although easily solvable, have intuitively compelling incorrect answers. Participants who gave more intuitive answers on the CRT reported stronger belief in God. This effect was not mediated by education level, income, political orientation, or other demographic variables. Study 2 showed that the correlation between CRT scores and belief in God also holds when cognitive ability (IQ) and aspects of personality were controlled. Moreover, both studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases self-reported belief in God.
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Faith and Understanding: Specifying the Impact of Higher Education on Religious Belief
Jonathan Hill
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2011, Pages 533-551
Abstract:
This study examines the impact of educational enrollment and attainment on several measures of religious belief using nationally representative panel data. Although college does not appear to substantially alter the religious beliefs of most emerging adults, findings do reveal a modest increase in skepticism toward super-empirical religious beliefs among college students and graduates compared to those who have never attended any form of postsecondary education. This effect is dependent on college type, with students attending elite universities exhibiting the greatest increase in skepticism. Apart from changes in super-empirical belief, graduating from college modestly increases preferences for institutionalized religion while simultaneously reducing adherence to exclusivist religious belief. Faculty commitment to secularism, the degree of student academic engagement, and developing social identities may play a role in religious belief change, particularly at elite universities.
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The material and immaterial in conflict: Spirituality reduces conspicuous consumption motives
Tyler Stillman et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many spiritual leaders have argued that materialistic pursuits are incompatible with following a spiritual life. Consistent with this view, we found that higher levels of spirituality correspond to a decreased desire to consume material goods in a conspicuous manner. Study 1 was correlational, and found that people who reported having spiritual experiences reported a decreased desire to spend lavishly for visible consumer goods, such as a cell phone. Study 2 was experimental, and found that participants assigned to recall a spiritual event also demonstrated a decreased desire to consume conspicuously, relative to participants assigned to recall an enjoyable event.
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Niklas Potrafke
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices, Rowley and Smith (Public Choice 139(3-4):273, 2009) found that countries with Muslim majorities enjoy less freedom and are less democratic than countries in which Muslims are a minority. Because the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices have been criticized on several grounds, I reinvestigate Rowley and Smith's finding using the new Democracy-Dictatorship data from Cheibub et al. (Public Choice 143(1-2):67, 2010). The empirical results confirm that countries with Muslim majorities are indeed less likely to be democratic.
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The Young and the Restless? The Liberalization of Young Evangelicals
Justin Farrell
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2011, Pages 517-532
Abstract:
This study examines popular and scholarly perceptions that young American evangelicals are becoming more liberal than older evangelicals. Young evangelicals are more likely to have more liberal attitudes on same-sex marriage, premarital sex, cohabitating, and pornography, but not abortion. This analysis is situated within the theoretical context of emerging adulthood, and considers higher education, delayed marriage, and shifts in moral authority as potential mediating factors accounting for age differences. A new method for operationalizing evangelical as a religious identity is suggested and three different classification schemes are examined: religious tradition, self-identified evangelicals, and theologically conservative Protestants. The data come from the 2006 Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity.
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Will Gervais & Ara Norenzayan
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Believers describe God is a strategic social agent who perceives human thoughts and actions. Thinking about God therefore might make believers feel as if their behavior is being monitored, a possibility we call the supernatural monitoring hypothesis. Three studies offered new and converging empirical support for this hypothesis using two variables that are sensitive to perceived social surveillance: public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. For believers, the effect of an explicit God prime on public self-awareness was comparable to the effect of thinking about how other people view oneself (Experiment 1). An implicit God concepts prime increased public self-awareness (Experiment 2) and socially desirable responding (Experiment 3) among believers. These studies offer the first direct evidence that thinking of God triggers perceived social surveillance.
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Matthew Vess, Jamie Arndt & Cathy Cox
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A common theme among many religions, particularly those with Abrahamic roots, is that humans are separate from the rest of nature. Though empirical support is lacking, such themes do suggest that religiosity may play a role in shaping the ways that people relate to the natural world. The present research used terror management theory to address this issue. It was hypothesized that death-relevant concerns would moderate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and feelings of connectedness to nature. Across three studies, religious fundamentalism negatively predicted feelings of connectedness to nature when death-relevant thoughts were activated. No such relationship emerged in the absence of death-relevant thought. The implications of these findings for better understanding the role of religion in human/nature relationships and current ecological issues are discussed.
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Scientists Negotiate Boundaries Between Religion and Science
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Jerry Park & Katherine Sorrell
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2011, Pages 552-569
Abstract:
Analysis of interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at 21 elite U.S. research universities suggests that only a minority of scientists see religion and science as always in conflict. Scientists selectively employ different cultural strategies with regards to the religion-science relationship: redefining categories (the use of institutional resources from religion and from science), integration models (scientists strategically employ the views of major scientific actors to legitimate a more symbiotic relationship between science and religion), and intentional talk (scientists actively engage in discussions about the boundaries between science and religion). Such results challenge narrow conceptions of secularization theory and the sociology of science literature by describing ways science intersects with other knowledge categories. Most broadly the ways that institutions and ideologies shape one another through the agency of individual actors within those institutions is explored.
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Hyper-real religions: Fear, anxiety and late-modern religious innovation
Adam Possamai & Murray Lee
Journal of Sociology, September 2011, Pages 227-242
Abstract:
Census data from 2006 identified 133,800 Australians as being of ‘inadequately described religion'. This aggregated category conceals the exponential growth of innovative late-modern religious faiths. For example, leaked 2001 Census data suggests that some 71,000 Australians identified Jediism, as appropriated from the Star Wars films, as their faith. For most respondents to the Census this was no doubt an ironic late-modern play with the Census process as a response to an internet-based meme. However, evidence does suggest that a significant minority of respondents take the religion seriously. Such innovative faiths have raised the ire of some traditional religious practitioners who have responded with expressions of fear and anxiety. From a sociological perspective, this article examines the growth in innovative faiths and the backlash against them, and reports the results of a survey of university staff and students on the topic.
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Religiosity and prejudice revisited: In-group favoritism, out-group derogation, or both?
Megan Johnson, Wade Rowatt & Jordan LaBouff
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies focused on the relationship between religiosity and intergroup bias. In Study 1, participants completed brief measures of religiosity and spirituality and attitudes toward religiously value-consistent in-groups (Christians, heterosexuals) and value-violating out-groups (atheists, Muslims, and gay men). As predicted, self-reported religiosity and spirituality correlated positively with more negative attitudes toward out-groups relative to in-groups. In Study 2, priming methods were used to examine whether activating cognitive representations of religion would affect intergroup bias. Individuals subliminally primed with religious words showed significantly larger increases in negative attitudes toward value-violating out-groups relative to attitudes toward in-groups than those primed with neutral words. This change in relative attitudes was due to simultaneous increases in in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. These effects remained when statistically controlling for self-reported religiosity and spirituality and preexisting attitudes toward these groups. Furthermore, there were no interaction effects between religious primes and self-reported levels of religiosity, indicating that the religion primes drove the effects. Results are discussed in light of religious priming and its association with increases in attitudes relevant to the social group component of religion.
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Instrumental variable estimation of the effect of prayer on depression
Kevin Denny
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses a cross-country representative sample of Europeans over the age of 50 to analyse whether individuals' religiosity is associated with higher levels of well-being as a large number of studies by mental health researchers and economists have suggested. It is shown that in simple models which take no account of possible simultaneity that religiosity, as measured by the frequency of prayer, is associated with a higher level of depression. To circumvent possible reverse causality, the paper utilises a quasi-experimental/instrumental variable design which allows one to interpret the findings as causal. This leads to the conclusion that prayer has a positive effect i.e. it leads to a lower level of depressive symptoms.
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Religiosity, Psychological Resources, and Physical Health
Joonmo Son & John Wilson
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2011, Pages 588-603
Abstract:
Various explanations have been given for the positive association between religiosity and physical health. Using data from two waves of the National Survey of Midlife in the United States (1995, 2005) and retrospective data on the importance of religion in the home in which respondents were raised we find that psychological resources, operationalized by measures of emotional and psychological well-being, mediate the effect of this early exposure to religion but only on self-rated health and physical symptomatology; chronic illnesses and health limitations on activities of daily living are unaffected.
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Spirituality and Severity of Menopausal Symptoms in a Sample of Religious Women
Patrick Steffen
Journal of Religion and Health, September 2011, Pages 721-729
Abstract:
Menopause represents an important life change, particularly for religious women whose identity is significantly related to family. Two competing hypotheses are examined: one, because religious women have their identity focused on family and child rearing, spirituality will be related to increased menopausal symptoms because menopause represents a loss of identity and purpose; and two, because spirituality can provide strength and comfort during difficult times, it will, therefore, be related to decreased menopausal symptoms. To test these competing hypotheses, questionnaires were administered to 218 women (average age 55, 35% premenopausal, 26% peri-menopausal, 39% postmenopausal) who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Regression analyses indicated that higher levels of spiritual strength were related to decreased levels of reported menopausal symptoms. Spiritual strength was also related to increased benefit finding during menopause, decreased concern with body appearance, and increased use of adaptive coping strategies. We conclude that finding strength in spirituality may help religious women cope better with the life changes associated with menopause.
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Cheryl Holt et al.
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Spiritual and religious capital are forms of the broader construct of social capital. The present study, using probability-based sampling methods, surveyed a national sample of African American adults to examine the relative contributions of spiritual and religious capital to their physical and emotional functioning. Analyses were conducted to determine if these constructs made a unique contribution above and beyond general social capital. African American men and women (N = 803) were interviewed by telephone. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that, across the full sample, although social capital was a positive predictor of physical and emotional functioning (p < .05 and p < .001), neither religious nor spiritual capital made an additional contribution to these outcomes. However, the relationships among these variables differed for men and women. Among men, social capital predicted positive emotional functioning (p < .001) but not physical functioning; spiritual and religious capital made no additional contribution to either outcome variable. Among women, social capital predicted positive emotional functioning (p < .01) but not physical functioning. However, religious capital did make a significant additional contribution to the prediction of emotional functioning (ΔR2, p < .01). Dividing the sample into different age groups did not produce any different findings from those found with the sample as a whole. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for church- and faith-based health promotion interventions aimed at health disparities reduction.