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Religion, Race, and Discrimination: A Field Experiment of How American Churches Welcome Newcomers
Bradley Wright et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, May 2015, Pages 185–204
Abstract:
This article reports the results of a nationwide audit study testing how Christian churches welcome potential newcomers to their churches as a function of newcomers' race and ethnicity. We sent email inquiries to 3,120 churches across the United States. The emails were ostensibly from someone moving to the area and looking for a new church to attend. That person's name was randomly varied to convey different racial and ethnic associations. In response to these inquiries, representatives from mainline Protestant churches — who generally embrace liberal, egalitarian attitudes toward race relations — actually demonstrated the most discriminatory behavior. They responded most frequently to emails with white-sounding names, somewhat less frequently to black- or Hispanic-sounding names, and much less to Asian-sounding names. They also sent shorter, less welcoming responses to nonwhite names. In contrast, evangelical Protestant and Catholic churches showed little variation across treatment groups in their responses. These findings underscore the role of homophily, organizational homogeneity, and the costs of racial integration in perpetuating the racial segregation of American religious life.
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Religion, Cultural Clash, and Muslim American Attitudes About Politically Motivated Violence
Gabriel Acevedo & Ali Chaudhary
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, May 2015, Pages 242–260
Abstract:
Does adherence to Islam predict attitudes about "suicide bombing" among American Muslims? This study examines the effects of religious and political factors on views of politically motivated violence (PMV). We draw from diverse scholarship, emphasizing arguments that are inspired by Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations perspective, as well as recent work in the sociology of Islam. Using a measure that gauges support for "suicide bombing" from the 2007 Pew Survey of American Muslims, results from logistic regression models suggest that political views and religious factors have a minimal effect on Muslim American attitudes toward suicide bombing. Furthermore, we find that Qur'ānic authoritativeness (i.e., the view that the Qur'ān is the word of God and not written by men) is associated with lower odds of supporting this form of PMV. We discuss the implications of our findings for the often anecdotal and alarmist accounts that link Muslim religiosity to support for "radical" extremism. We close with study limitations and avenues of future research.
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God Rest Our Hearts: Religiosity and Cognitive Reappraisal
Allon Vishkin et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although religiosity is often accompanied by more intense emotions, we propose that people who are more religious may be better at using 1 of the most effective emotion regulation strategies—namely, cognitive reappraisal. We argue that religion, which is a meaning-making system, is linked to better cognitive reappraisal, which involves changing the meaning of emotional stimuli. Four studies (N = 2,078) supported our hypotheses. In Study 1, religiosity was associated with more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal in 3 distinct religions (i.e., Islam, Christianity, Judaism). In Studies 2A–2B, we replicated these findings using 2 indices of cognitive reappraisal and in a large representative sample. In Studies 3–4, individuals more (vs. less) religious were more effective in using cognitive reappraisal in the laboratory. We discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the psychology of religion and of emotion regulation.
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Trust Me, I Believe in God: Candidate Religiousness as a Signal of Trustworthiness
Scott Clifford & Ben Gaskins
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religion plays a prominent role in American politics, and candidates often attempt to display their religiousness in a variety of ways. For example, in spite of the association between conservatism and religion, research shows that candidates of both parties routinely use religious language and seek to demonstrate personal religiousness. Existing research portrays religious rhetoric primarily as an ideological cue, failing to explain why Democrats would make religious appeals. Drawing on psychological theories of prejudice toward atheists, we argue that candidates emphasize their religiousness in order to enhance perceptions of their trustworthiness and morality. Using survey data, we show that voters are quite unlikely to support an atheist candidate, an effect that is strongly driven by the perception of atheists' morality. Next, we show evidence that voters perceiving Hillary Clinton as religious also viewed her as more trustworthy, and were more likely to view her favorably. Finally, we show experimentally that religious candidates are perceived as more trustworthy, at least among a wide swath of the electorate. We conclude that displays of religiousness likely serve not only an ideological purpose but also the broader goal of increasing perceived candidate trustworthiness.
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Explaining religious terrorism: A data-mined analysis
Nilay Saiya & Anthony Scime
Conflict Management and Peace Science, November 2015, Pages 487-512
Abstract:
What is the relationship between religious liberty and faith-based terrorism? The wider literature on freedom and terrorism has failed to reach a conclusive verdict: some hold that restricting civil liberties is necessary to prevent acts of terrorism; others find that respecting such rights undermines support for terrorist groups, thus making terrorism less likely. This article moves the debate on liberty and terrorism forward by looking specifically at terrorism motivated by a religious imperative and a country's level of religious liberty — something not attempted in previous studies. Using classification data mining, we test a unique dataset on religious terrorism in order to discover the characteristics that contribute to a country experiencing religiously motivated terrorism. The analysis finds that religious terrorism is indeed a product of a dearth of religious liberty. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy-makers.
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Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Effect of Higher Education on Religiosity
Philip Schwadel
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, May 2015, Pages 402–418
Abstract:
While sociologists have long argued that higher education has a secularizing influence, recent research emphasizes the moderating role of social contexts in the relationship between social class and religion. I extend this line of research by examining sources of cross-national variation in the association between higher education and religiosity using survey data from more than 46,000 respondents in 39 nations. Multilevel models of a religiosity scale show (1) in the aggregate, higher education has a moderate, negative effect on the religiosity scale, (2) this effect varies considerably across nations, and (3) the negative effect of higher education on religiosity is most robust in relatively religious nations. These results demonstrate the importance of national contexts in moderating the effect of education on religiosity. The results also support a cultural diffusion argument that suggests that the highly educated are innovators and early adopters of secular behaviors but that low levels of religiosity then diffuse to less-educated segments of a population as secularity becomes more common.
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Fetal Malnutrition And Academic Success: Evidence From Muslim Immigrants In Denmark
Jane Greve, Marie Louise Schultz-Nielsen & Erdal Tekin
NBER Working Paper, September 2015
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of potential fetal malnutrition on the academic proficiency of Muslim students in Denmark. We account for the endogeneity of fetal malnutrition by using the exposure to the month of Ramadan during time in utero as a natural experiment, under the assumption that some Muslim women might have fasted during Ramadan when they were pregnant. In some of our specifications, we use a sample of students from predominantly non-Muslim countries as an additional control group to address potential seasonality in cognitive outcomes in a difference-in-differences framework. Our outcome measures are the standardized test scores from the national exams on the subjects of Danish, English, Math, and Science administered by the Danish Ministry of Education. Our results indicate that fetal exposure to Ramadan has a negative impact on the achievement scores of Muslim students, especially females. Our analysis further reveals that most of these effects are concentrated on the children with low socioeconomic status (SES) background. These results indicate that fetal insults such as exposure to malnutrition may not only hamper the cognitive development of children subject to such conditions, but it may also complicate the efforts of policy-makers in improving the human capital, health, and labor market outcomes of low-SES individuals. Our findings highlight the importance of interventions designed to help economically disadvantaged women during pregnancy.
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Christian Religious Badges Instill Trust in Christian and Non-Christian Perceivers
Michael McCullough et al.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conducted 4 experiments to examine how people incorporate visual information about strangers' religious identities — religious badges — into their decisions about how much to trust them. Experiment 1 revealed that Christian and non-Christian participants were more trusting (as measured by self-report) of targets who wore a religious badge associated with Christianity (Ash Wednesday ashes) than toward targets who did not wear such a badge. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and also revealed that the effects of Ash Wednesday ashes on Christians' and non-Christians' trust extended to a behavioral measure of trust (i.e., monetary allocations in a multiplayer trust game). Experiment 3 replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with a different religious badge (a necklace with the Christian cross on it). Experiment 4 ruled out a potential confound. Consistent with a stereotype interpretation, these results suggest that U.S. students regard visual cues to people's espousal of Christian religious beliefs as signals of their trustworthiness.
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The Janus face of Darwinian competition
Arend Hintze, Nathaniel Phillips & Ralph Hertwig
Scientific Reports, September 2015
Abstract:
Without competition, organisms would not evolve any meaningful physical or cognitive abilities. Competition can thus be understood as the driving force behind Darwinian evolution. But does this imply that more competitive environments necessarily evolve organisms with more sophisticated cognitive abilities than do less competitive environments? Or is there a tipping point at which competition does more harm than good? We examine the evolution of decision strategies among virtual agents performing a repetitive sampling task in three distinct environments. The environments differ in the degree to which the actions of a competitor can affect the fitness of the sampling agent, and in the variance of the sample. Under weak competition, agents evolve decision strategies that sample often and make accurate decisions, which not only improve their own fitness, but are good for the entire population. Under extreme competition, however, the dark side of the Janus face of Darwinian competition emerges: Agents are forced to sacrifice accuracy for speed and are prevented from sampling as often as higher variance in the environment would require. Modest competition is therefore a good driver for the evolution of cognitive abilities and of the population as a whole, whereas too much competition is devastating.
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Magali Clobert, Vassilis Saroglou & Kwang-Kuo Hwang
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Accumulated research has shown that Western Christian religiosity often predicts prejudice toward various kinds of outgroups. On the contrary, initial recent evidence indicates that East Asian religiosity predicts tolerance of various outgroups — except atheists. To understand these differences, we investigated cognitive (intolerance of contradiction) and emotional (disgust) mechanisms possibly mediating the link between religiosity and prejudice versus tolerance. In Study 1 (295 Westerners of Christian tradition), high disgust contamination and, to some extent, intolerance of contradiction mediated the relationship between religiosity and prejudice against ethnic (Africans), religious (Muslims), moral (homosexuals), and convictional (atheists) outgroups. However, in Study 2 (196 Taiwanese of Buddhist or Taoist tradition), religiosity was unrelated to disgust, and predicted low intolerance of contradiction, and thus tolerance of the same religious, ethnic, and moral outgroups — but still not of atheists. Cultural differences in cognition and emotion seem to explain East–West differences in religious prejudice.
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Thinking About God Causes Internal Reflection in Believers and Unbelievers of God
Michael Kitchens
Self and Identity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research found that reflecting on God increased public self-awareness. There is, however, reason to expect that reflecting on God should also direct attention inward to the private self. Thus, this work examined whether priming God increases private self-awareness. The results showed that reflecting on God increased private self-awareness, irrespective of the belief in God, and the effect remained, even after controlling for trait levels of private self-awareness and state public self-awareness. Contrary to previous findings, reflecting on God did not increase public self-awareness. These findings provide a foundation for further research on a number of questions related to why God prompts internal reflection.
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Bridging Religion and Politics: The Impact of Providential Religious Beliefs on Political Activity
Rebecca Glazier
Politics and Religion, September 2015, Pages 458-487
Abstract:
Past research shows that religious beliefs can shape political activity. Yet current literature leaves open many questions about the mechanisms at work. I point to the key role of a particular religious belief found across denominations: providentiality, or the belief that God has a plan that humans can further. When these beliefs are connected to politics, providential believers are likely to be active and dedicated participators. I test this notion using survey data collected during the 2012 election campaign from congregants in Little Rock, Arkansas. In general, providential believers are less likely than their non-providential counterparts to participate in politics. However, when providential believers report hearing political sermons from their clergy, they are significantly more likely to participate. These findings illustrate one pathway by which religious beliefs can influence politics: through a cue that links providentiality and politics.
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Does Religiousness Increase with Age? Age Changes and Generational Differences Over 35 Years
Vern Bengtson et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, May 2015, Pages 363–379
Abstract:
We examine aging patterns and generational trends in religion using 35 years of survey data from 420 four-generation families and in-depth interviews with a subset of 25 families. Results indicate the importance of three time-related effects on religiosity: individual aging and religious development over the life course; cohort influences; and effects of historical trends in religion. Results indicate an overall aging effect with an upward drift in religious intensity and strength of beliefs over the adult lifespan, though religious attendance remains generally stable over adulthood until it drops in late life. Growth curves show that the oldest generations (G1 and G2) display a "retirement surge" in religiosity. Trajectories of change for G3s and G4s reflect both lifecycle and cohort effects. Qualitative analysis provides insight concerning the generational differences identified in the survey, suggesting two trends: (1) from older- to later-born age groups, spirituality becomes increasingly decoupled from religion; (2) conceptualizations of the divine show a shift from a God who is primarily transcendent ("out there") for the G1s to one that is more imminent and personal in the G4s.
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The (Non) Religion of Mechanical Turk Workers
Andrew Lewis et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, May 2015, Pages 419–428
Abstract:
Social science researchers have increasingly come to utilize Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to obtain adult, opt-in samples for use with experiments. Based on the demographic characteristics of MTurk samples, studies have provided some support for the representativeness of MTurk. Others have warranted caution based on demographic characteristics and comparisons of reliability. Yet, what is missing is an examination of the most glaring demographic difference in MTurk — religion. We compare five MTurk samples with a student convenience sample and the 2012 General Social Survey, finding that MTurk samples have a consistent bias toward nonreligion. MTurk surveys significantly overrepresent seculars and underrepresent Catholics and evangelical Protestants. We then compare the religiosity of religious identifiers across samples as well as relationships between religiosity and partisanship, finding many similarities and a few important differences from the general population