Dec 11, 2024 06:52 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 11, 2024 07:12 PM by C C.)
Religious people are not more generous – with one exception
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1067719
INTRO: Religious believers are no more generous than atheists – at least as long as they don’t know what the recipient believes in. Finding this out increases generosity significantly, mainly because people give more to those who share their religion. This is the conclusion of a study carried out at Linköping University, Sweden.
Nathalie Hallin is an atheist. Her colleague Hajdi Moche is a Christian. They both have a postdoc position at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping. Together they wanted to find out if a religious belief makes a person more generous, which research has so far disagreed on and they themselves have discussed a lot. To find the answer, together with their co-authors Gerhard Andersson and Daniel, they have carried out three studies: one in Sweden, one in the USA and a combined one in Egypt and Lebanon. The results are published in the journal Judgement and Decision Making.
The Swedish study included 398 people. These were given the task of distributing fictitious money between themselves and three hypothetical recipients over six rounds. They then answered questions about religious affiliation and political beliefs, but also about things such as favourite hobby, favourite film genre and the like.
In all rounds, participants were told something about the recipients, for example about hobbies, political conviction or which films they liked. In one of the rounds, information about religion was given. The researchers then examined how the participants’ generosity was affected by what they were told.
In most of the rounds, it turned out that religious and non-religious people gave away the same amount of money. But when they learned about the recipients’ religion, there was a clear difference. Religious believers became more generous than the non-religious participants. This was shown mainly by them giving more money to those of the same faith as themselves. But atheists also proved to favour their own group.
“I was actually surprised because the only thing that unites atheists is that you don’t believe in a god,” says Nathalie Hallin... (MORE - details, no ads)
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But Catholicism dominates at 48% in Europe (plus, close offshoots like the Church of England that would carry it beyond that measure), compared to 23% in the US. Doubtful that the very weak believing, but probably still sectarian religious communities of largely irreligious Europe could reflect the habits of those in the US (especially the Bible Belt), and certainly not the non-Christian belief communities of the world. Non-denominational churches have been springing up everywhere in the US, too.
But even without those intercontinental distinctions, the moral beliefs of "nones" and non-theists of the West were also shaped by Christianity. The proto-anarchists of the early 19th century pointed out how the secular-oriented ideologies that arose from the Enlightenment (classical liberalism) and the French Revolution (precursors of Marxist collectivism and 20th-century fascism) were both imitating and continuing certain thought orientations putatively derived from Christianity (like generosity, equality, property rights, etc) -- some of which appealed to the lower classes. Both progressives and anti-capitalist literary intellectuals exploited do-gooderism to implement respectively their political success or recruit the proles for violent revolutions.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1067719
INTRO: Religious believers are no more generous than atheists – at least as long as they don’t know what the recipient believes in. Finding this out increases generosity significantly, mainly because people give more to those who share their religion. This is the conclusion of a study carried out at Linköping University, Sweden.
Nathalie Hallin is an atheist. Her colleague Hajdi Moche is a Christian. They both have a postdoc position at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping. Together they wanted to find out if a religious belief makes a person more generous, which research has so far disagreed on and they themselves have discussed a lot. To find the answer, together with their co-authors Gerhard Andersson and Daniel, they have carried out three studies: one in Sweden, one in the USA and a combined one in Egypt and Lebanon. The results are published in the journal Judgement and Decision Making.
The Swedish study included 398 people. These were given the task of distributing fictitious money between themselves and three hypothetical recipients over six rounds. They then answered questions about religious affiliation and political beliefs, but also about things such as favourite hobby, favourite film genre and the like.
In all rounds, participants were told something about the recipients, for example about hobbies, political conviction or which films they liked. In one of the rounds, information about religion was given. The researchers then examined how the participants’ generosity was affected by what they were told.
In most of the rounds, it turned out that religious and non-religious people gave away the same amount of money. But when they learned about the recipients’ religion, there was a clear difference. Religious believers became more generous than the non-religious participants. This was shown mainly by them giving more money to those of the same faith as themselves. But atheists also proved to favour their own group.
“I was actually surprised because the only thing that unites atheists is that you don’t believe in a god,” says Nathalie Hallin... (MORE - details, no ads)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But Catholicism dominates at 48% in Europe (plus, close offshoots like the Church of England that would carry it beyond that measure), compared to 23% in the US. Doubtful that the very weak believing, but probably still sectarian religious communities of largely irreligious Europe could reflect the habits of those in the US (especially the Bible Belt), and certainly not the non-Christian belief communities of the world. Non-denominational churches have been springing up everywhere in the US, too.
But even without those intercontinental distinctions, the moral beliefs of "nones" and non-theists of the West were also shaped by Christianity. The proto-anarchists of the early 19th century pointed out how the secular-oriented ideologies that arose from the Enlightenment (classical liberalism) and the French Revolution (precursors of Marxist collectivism and 20th-century fascism) were both imitating and continuing certain thought orientations putatively derived from Christianity (like generosity, equality, property rights, etc) -- some of which appealed to the lower classes. Both progressives and anti-capitalist literary intellectuals exploited do-gooderism to implement respectively their political success or recruit the proles for violent revolutions.
