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Science Proves Kids With Religious Upbringings Are Less Generous


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Surprise! Science proves kids with religious upbringings are less generous — and so are adults

 

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/surprise-science-proves-kids-with-religious-upbringings-are-less-generous-and-so-are-adults/

 

Instilling a strong sense of religious faith in your children probably won’t turn them into saints. If anything, it might make them less altruistic than kids who grow up in a nonreligious home.

 

 

Study: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)01167-7

 

 

Instilling a strong sense of religious faith in your children probably won’t turn them into saints. If anything, it might make them less altruistic than kids who grow up in a nonreligious home.

 

 

That’s the perhaps counterintuitive conclusion reached by a new  study published Thursday in Current Biology. Testing over 1,000 kids from a diverse variety of countries and religious backgrounds on a sharing task, the study authors found a noticeable generosity gap between those religious and nonreligious, a gap that only increased the more religious their households were. They also found that religious kids were more likely to be judgemental and to advocate harsher punishments for being wronged by others.

 

 

"Some past research had demonstrated that religious people aren't more likely to do good than their nonreligious counterparts," said lead author Jean Decety of the University of Chicago in a statement. "Our study goes beyond that by showing that religious people are less generous, and not only adults but children too."

 

 

Kinder Without God

 

 

The authors recruited 1,170 children (ages 5 to 12) from six countries, including the United States, Canada, and Turkey, to take part in a “resource allocation task” known as the dictator game. Not so much a game as a simple question, the dictator game asks one person to decide how much of a given resource they’d share with someone else. In the current study, the children were asked to decide how many of their stickers they’d offer to an anonymous child in the same school and ethnic group, in order to ensure that they’d be as generous as possible (most everyone tends to share more with people in their “in-group”).

 

 

It’s believed that as children become older, they steadily grow less selfish about sharing, and that’s exactly what the researchers found. But they also found that the degree of religiosity as well as the length of time in a religious household predicted less altruism. After controlling for other variables, the authors found that nonreligious households (323) predicted more generosity than Christian households (280), and Christian households predicted more than Muslim households (510) — children belonging to other religions were also tested, but their sample size was too small to obtain any conclusions from.

 

 

       

 

 

Additionally, these children were asked to judge the meanness of an “everyday mundane” act of interpersonal harm and to determine how severe the perpetrator's punishment should be. Once again, the pattern held firm, with nonreligious children significantly more likely to turn the other cheek than Christians and Muslims. “Thus, children who are raised in religious households frequently appear to be more judgmental of others’ actions, while being less altruistic toward another child from the same social environment, at least when generosity is spontaneously directed to an ambiguous beneficiary,” the authors wrote. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That latter conclusion isn’t out of left field either, with the authors citing prior research suggesting that Christians in particular might “view the moral wrongness of an action as a dichotomy and are less likely to discriminate between gradients of wrongness.”

 

 

As a sharp contrast to these results, religious parents were more likely to tout their kids as being very empathetic and sensitive to the plight of others than their nonreligious counterparts. That finding might signal the early emergence of a sociological phenomenon known as moral licensing, wherein people who see themselves as especially moral in one area of life (religion) give themselves implicit permission to be less noble elsewhere. It should be noted that no one group was entirely devoid of empathy; the average score on the generosity scale (1 to 5) was 3.25 for religious children compared to 4.11 for the nonreligious.

 

 

“Overall, our findings cast light on the cultural input of religion on prosocial behavior and contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others,” the authors concluded. “More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that the secularization of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness — in fact, it will do just the opposite.”

 

 

Decety and his colleagues hope to continue testing their hypothesis, with efforts to test children ages 4 to 8 in 14 different countries underway.

 

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Is that what you call a radical muslim from Iran, , or a jew in Israel, , maybe here? But this wasn't just  an american only study,  It said  "1,000 kids from a diverse variety of countries and religious backgrounds"    Although I appreciate your thoughts.. you cant relate the two. both suck and both are ;hypocritical>>>  Never trust self proclaimed  christian or republicans>

 

i bought a vehicle one time from an older couple, gave me handouts and everything bout how to come to church.. blah blah ,blah, you know what im talking about, and not a Jehovah,  well in short order found out it had a cracked axle, a broken head, head bolts were drilled out right into the water jacket. and epoxied to keep it from leaking for a couple months... nuff said there.. 

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It's because whoever doesn't believe in you particular invisible man in the sky is a heretic/infidel/sinner and doesn't deserve any kindness. Those evil folks get nothing but the wrath of God, deservedly so.

 

Those who share your beliefs can get their charity from the church and don't need your help.

 

lazy-jesus.jpg

Edited by Wild Bill
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Something else needs to be pointed out here:

Most of these Conservative religious hypocrites are REPUBLICANS!

Amen to that Brother

One thing to remember, most folk going to church are good charitable loving people.

The problem is you dont have to go far up the food chain to see the republican influence in leadership

That's where everything goes to ell and the family values end.

 

How come every time I see road rage the crazy guy flipping the bird got a fish symbol emblem on the back window.

And forget any guy in a robe , priest or otherwise, getting me on my knees , I feel a little closer to God standing. Safer to.

Edited by beourbud
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Not to defend any politicized religionism, but the Christian Republicans aren't the only problem here.

 

Consider Benton Harbor and similar cities. The Democrats Cadillac-driving, so-called religious leaders drawing comfortable salaries from their government grant-funded, action groups are no better.

 

Why is it the poorest cities in the U.S. Have the most reverends, preachers, and churchs?

 

For someone looking for answers, Christopher Hitchens' book 'God is not Great' is worth a look.

Edited by outsideinthecold
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Hey Wild Bill,

 

Funny Jesus poster but back in those days nobody ever had to worry about deadbeats, did they?

 

It took modern government's to invent them.

 

Indeed, those clever government's actually created deadbeats so they can grow even bigger.

 

Seems like the path of evolution has turned human beings into human governments.

 

Be fruitful and multiply no longer ensures the continuation of the species; instead it has become the driver to grow the governing structure to the largest extent possible.

Edited by outsideinthecold
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The important part are the ideals behind any religion and how they are followed. Good ideals make for good people as long as those ideals are not highjacked for the wrong purposes. Everyone needs good ideals and if they get them from religion then it's all good. But you don't need religion to give you good ideals .... you can get them elsewhere. That's where "What would Jesus do"? comes in. Whether you believe that Jesus was real or not doesn't matter. It's the stories of how he acted in situations that gives you the path, the ideals. It's not all that complicated. 

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"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

 

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

 

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slaver until the faith of Islam has eased to be a great power among men.

 

Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith; all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

 

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of Ancient Rome."

 

Sir Winston Churchill-The River War, First Edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London:Longmans, Green) 1899

Edited by outsideinthecold
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