Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers study finds atheists, agnostics and less religious people are more driven by compassion to be generous
☥☽✪☾DAW ☽✪☾
2012/04/30 20:11:03
Love thy neighbor" is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.
In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the July issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious.
"Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not," said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. "The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns."
Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost.
While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others. However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious counterparts.
"We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts generous behavior," said study lead author Laura Saslow, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.
Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco, said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.
"I was interested to find that this experience – an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers – was replicated in three large, systematic studies," Saslow said.
In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with such statements as "When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them" were also more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.
When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead: "These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals," the study found.
In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 "lab dollars" and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger. The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.
"The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity," Willer said. "But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants."
In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played "economic trust games" in which they were given money to share – or not – with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled in amount.
Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers than other participants in the study.
"Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people," Willer said.
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In addition to Saslow and Willer, other co-authors of the study are UC Berkeley psychologists Dacher Keltner, Matthew Feinberg and Paul Piff; Katharine Clark at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sarina Saturn at Oregon State University.
The study was funded by grants from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley's Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging, and the Metanexus Institute.
Read More: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/uoc...
Top Opinion
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+3God is love and religion means peace. Now accept that, you godless filth, and convert to my superior brand of sky daddy or DIE!
But I am Druid so…
Blessings to all and,
May all be well with you ^_^
And I am not even Roman…I never even liked Romans…so there is that… >.>
On the plus side for you: the majority of sacrificies involved criminals and Caesar was astonished by their vast knowledge on Astronomy and the importance of the Druids in their society (it took them 20 years to become Druid). All this is from the "De bello Gallico" which preceded Christ...
Anyone killed by the druids didn’t die via human sacrifice…they were put to death by law…
I'm deeply a religious/spiritual/whatever polytheistic. I've always considered myself a pretty generous person. I've helped build school, donated blood, give money to almost any charity I pass if I've the change to spare, help those around me, ect. I also avoid bringing up my beliefs unless there is a point to it. I know other polytheistics/pagans like me. I've met others who constantly shove their beliefs in you face, say how it makes them sooo much nicer than Christians(who apparently are all bent on oppressing them and killing kittens) then laugh at a homeless man struggling to eat. Every group has it's goods and bad. Don't judge all wheels by the squeaky one alone.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-1...
"They are all children of God, loved and created by the same heart of God," she said.
But now, it has emerged that Mother Teresa was so doubtful of her own faith that she feared being a hypocrite, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
In a new book that compiles letters she wrote to friends, superiors and confessors, her doubts are obvious.
Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the spirit left Mother Teresa.
"Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."
Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.
"Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.
As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.
"What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.
Letters from one of the Catholic church's best known figures reveal the crisis of faith that afflicted her.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...
if someone is not practicing these they are not true christian. the bible has been taken out of context by so many people it has reproached our maker. we are not supposed to force the bible on anyone, if one is willing to learn it great, if not, jesus didn't force it on anyone, he did however condemn those he knew were deliberatly misleading the people for their own selfish ends. that is why they (religious leaders) hated him. he exposed their hypocrisy and arrogance which means they were losing control over the people.
so if people are setting a bad example don't blame the bible. just like people who break the law you can't blame the law.as for the reproach I mentioned the bible indicates Gods purpose to put an end to it by destroying babylon the great(empire of false religion based on babylo...
if someone is not practicing these they are not true christian. the bible has been taken out of context by so many people it has reproached our maker. we are not supposed to force the bible on anyone, if one is willing to learn it great, if not, jesus didn't force it on anyone, he did however condemn those he knew were deliberatly misleading the people for their own selfish ends. that is why they (religious leaders) hated him. he exposed their hypocrisy and arrogance which means they were losing control over the people.
so if people are setting a bad example don't blame the bible. just like people who break the law you can't blame the law.as for the reproach I mentioned the bible indicates Gods purpose to put an end to it by destroying babylon the great(empire of false religion based on babylon in genesis 11) of whom christendom is the dominate part. this same christendom is called by paul as man of lawlessness(this is a group not invdividual)that is why in revelation it says to get out of her if you dont' want to share in her plagues. once we recognize who babylon teh great is we must get out of her and flee to the true religion once we recognize it .
rose
"highly religious" people are not "highly intelligent" people, nor "highly insightful" people and subscribe to religions less by understanding the truths spoken by their particular spiritual teachers but more by attempts to ally fears that they do not have the intellectual capacity to address without external help. Their faith therefore depends on force feeding themselves on the myth that saying "yay" to a particular denomination will wipe out those fears and this sense of entitlement that you rightly point out stems from that. Since they are "in the faith" for that narrow, selfish motive, there is not much hope that they want to help anyone else.
Indeed, if one reflects objectively, who needs a religion to tell us that we should help our fellow man? Doing that as a matter of course is a human trait - not a religious one.