
Far from bolstering generosity, a religious upbringing diminishes it - known
http://www.economist.com/node/21677613/
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tezza

      Religious     ~3 stickers of 10
      Non Religious ~4 stickers of 10
    

Geez... That's not a large difference is it... Certainly not an indication
worthy of the misleading title. If it was 4 and 1 or 4 and 0 it may have been
more persuasive.

"This is only one result, of course. It would need to be replicated before
strong conclusions could be drawn. But it is suggestive"

Poor article, poor study. It is pretty much link bait

~~~
taylodl
The non-religious gave away 33% more; _that_ is significant along with that
level of increased altruism was consistent across all socioeconomic
backgrounds.

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squidlogic
Everyone is brought up under a certain value system. I don't think the
traditional label of 'religious' is very informative. Which religion? Which
sect of that religion? For that matter, which non-religious value system?

The study makes a distinction between the 'big three' of Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism, but anyone with even a cursory knowledge on the matter knows that
there are sects and divisions within those overarching categories that are
worlds apart.

I think what this study shows is that religious belief isn't necessary for
moral behavior. But that's a question of epistemology, not a question of
ontology. Said another way, people can be awesome people, but still lack a
'grounding in being' for their values.

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ghufran_syed
This article rather strangely assumes that a child's upbringing ends between
the ages of 5 and 12. Regardless of whether you think religion is a wonderful
or a terrible thing, surely the correct outcome measure would be generosity in
adulthood. There is no reason to believe that this study is predictive of
adult behavior, which is what the article implies.

Interestingly, studies looking at 2 or 3 year-olds in bilingual households
show that the child's development on either language is delayed compared to
monolingual peers IIRC, but later comparisons at around age 6 show their use
of language is at least as good, in _both_ languages. The same phenomenon
could at least conceivably be true in religious households.

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bjourne
I believe a few studies have been done on adults and they all found that
practicing religious people give more aid than non-religious ones. Eg.
[http://mostlyrational.net/2010/04/are-religious-people-
more-...](http://mostlyrational.net/2010/04/are-religious-people-more-
charitable-than-non-believers/),
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10885180/Religion-m...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10885180/Religion-
makes-people-more-generous.html)

Through the refugee crisis in Europe, it is pretty clear that churches and
mosques are doing a lot of volunteer relief work. On the macro scale it breaks
down though, it is absolutely not the most religious countries (Poland) that
gives shelter to the most refugees.

------
ars
And yet results from the actual world do not match this study.

One thing non-believers report missing the most is a community.

However there is a definitely a difference with regard to in-group and out-of-
group behavior with religious groups, where most of the generosity is directed
in-group only.

I suspect that this group-oriented behavior is responsible for 100% of the
difference found in the study.

Non-believers are not oriented toward in/out groups so much (presumably
because they do not have a built-in group, so the concept is not mentioned
much).

I suspect if you redid the study and had some kids be told "the other kids
goes to the same xxx as you", (and others not told) you would find some very
interesting results.

I suspect the in-group generosity of the religious kids would go up much more,
compared to the in-group generosity of the non-believers.

~~~
fsloth
"And yet results from the actual world do not match this study."

I would have given the benefit of the doubt before this study.

Based on the huge sample size of my two children I cannot fathom how religious
upbringing could make them more altruistic than they are.

They share things, because they want to be nice to other people. They have
different sensibilities - one is more altruistic than the other - but
basically we try to teach to both of them the right thing by asking what they
think the other person would feel. Simple as that.

~~~
ars
> I cannot fathom how religious upbringing could make them more altruistic
> than they are.

It probably couldn't.

What it can do is take a parent who would not teach such things to their
children and make them into a parent who does.

What it did do is take a world that did not think that way, and make it into a
world that does think that way.

The history of the actions of religions is not always "clean" (the in-group
out-of-group thing I mentioned), but the history of the thought is, and that
influenced the world more than the deed.

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cantcopy
If religion has any impact on generosity at all, wouldn't the impact be
greater on practising adults ? This study doesn't make any sense.

------
rcurry
Okay, in all fairness - I'm a bit fluthered right now, but I'm not
understanding this:

"Altogether, Dr Decety and his colleagues recruited 1,170 families for their
project, and focused on one child per family. Five hundred and ten of their
volunteer families described themselves as Muslim, 280 as Christian, 29 as
Jewish, 18 as Buddhist and 5 as Hindu. A further 323 said they were non-
religious, 3 were agnostic and 2 ticked the box marked “other”.

So the sample size is 1,170 and then the article talks about five hundred and
ten? What happened to the other six hundred and sixty participants?

~~~
fulafel
510 was the number of Muslim families.

