Interfaith
America's Grace: How a Tolerant Nation Bridges Its Religious Divides
David Campbell & Robert Putnam
Political Science Quarterly, Winter 2011, Pages 611-640
Abstract:
David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam ask how America can simultaneously be religiously devout, religiously diverse, and religiously tolerant. They argue that America's relative religious harmony lies in the frequency of "religious bridging." Almost all Americans have a friend or close family member of another religion, and these personal relationships keep America's religious melting pot from boiling over.
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Yavuz Fahir Zulfikar
Journal of Business Ethics, February 2012, Pages 489-502
Abstract:
This study examines the work ethic characteristics of Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim people who are living in the US. People originally from Turkey were targeted under the Muslim group. Since a significant number of people selected "none" as their religious affiliation in the survey, this group has also been included in the final analysis. Eight hundred and three people (313 Protestants, 180 "none", 96 Muslims, 86 Catholics, and 128 other) participated in this questionnaire study. The analyses revealed that Muslim Turks reported greater scores on four of the five Protestant work ethic (PWE) characteristics. Protestants scored higher than Catholics on all characteristics, but there was no significant difference.
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Are virtues shaped by national cultures or religions?
Jan Pieter van Oudenhoven et al.
Swiss Journal of Psychology, January 2012, Pages 29-34
Abstract:
The present paper examines the relative influence of religion and nation on conceptions of virtues. In a first study, conducted in the Netherlands, 926 respondents of different profession, age, sex, and religious background rank ordered a list of 15 virtues. A comparison of Dutch Muslims and non-Muslims showed a remarkably high resemblance in their ratings of virtues. Only faith was rated as being much more important by Muslims than by non-Muslims. In the second study, the influence of national cultures was examined. Adults (N = 795) from two culturally relatively similar countries, Germany and the Netherlands, and from Spain rated the same list of virtues. Cross-national differences between the two Northern European countries and Spain by far exceeded the influence of religion on the importance ratings of virtues. The implications of the findings for the often-mentioned clash of religions are discussed. Currently, the influence of religion on the values of immigrants may be overemphasized and other important characteristics may be underestimated.
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Jochen Gebauer, Constantine Sedikides & Wiebke Neberich
Psychological Science, forthcoming
"The religiosity-as-social-value hypothesis posits that the psychological benefits of religiosity (benefits to social self-esteem and psychological adjustment) are culturally specific: They should be stronger in countries that tend to value religiosity more. Data from more than 180,000 individuals across 11 countries were consistent with this prediction. Overall, believers claimed greater social self-esteem and psychological adjustment than nonbelievers did. However, culture qualified this effect. Believers enjoyed psychological benefits in countries that tended to value religiosity, but did not differ from nonbelievers in countries that did not tend to value religiosity."
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Religious people discount the future less
Evan Carter et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The propensity for religious belief and behavior is a universal feature of human societies, but religious practice often imposes substantial costs upon its practitioners. This suggests that during human cultural evolution, the costs associated with religiosity might have been traded off for psychological or social benefits that redounded to fitness on average. One possible benefit of religious belief and behavior, which virtually every world religion extols, is delay of gratification - that is, the ability to forego small rewards available immediately in the interest of obtaining larger rewards that are available only after a time delay. In this study, we found that religious commitment was associated with a tendency to forgo immediate rewards in order to gain larger, future rewards. We also found that this relationship was partially mediated by future time orientation, which is a subjective sense that the future is very close in time and is approaching rapidly. Although the effect sizes of these associations were relatively small in magnitude, they were obtained even when controlling for sex and the Big Five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).
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Managerial Abilities: Evidence from Religious Mutual Fund Managers
Luis Ferruz, Fernando Muñoz & María Vargas
Journal of Business Ethics, February 2012, Pages 503-517
Abstract:
In this study, we analyze the financial performance and the managerial abilities of religious mutual fund managers, implementing a comparative analysis with conventional mutual funds. We use a broad sample, free of survivorship bias, of religious equity mutual funds from the US market, for the period from January 1994 to September 2010. We build a matched-pair conventional sample in order to compare the results obtained for both kinds of mutual fund managers. We analyze stock-picking and market timing abilities, topics widely neglected for the specific case of religious mutual fund managers. We also study style timing abilities. As far as we are aware, this aspect has not been studied previously for religious mutual fund managers. Our results indicate that religious mutual fund managers underperform both the market and their conventional counterparts. This result is driven by negative stock-picking ability which could be generated by excluding "Sin" stocks from their portfolios. Moreover, they are not able to time the market or any of the following styles: size, book-to-market, and momentum.
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Higher Education and Religious Liberalization among Young Adults
Damon Mayrl & Jeremy Uecker
Social Forces, September 2011, Pages 181-208
Abstract:
Going to college has long been assumed to liberalize students' religious beliefs. Using longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we compare change in the content of religious beliefs of those who do and do not attend college. We find that, in general, college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs than non-students. In some cases, collegians actually appear more likely to retain their initial beliefs. Change in religious beliefs appears instead to be more strongly associated with network effects. These findings indicate that college's effect on students' religious beliefs is both weak and fragmented, and suggest that the multiplicity of social worlds on college campuses may help to sustain religious beliefs as well as religious practice and commitment.
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Intrinsic religiosity reduces intergroup hostility under mortality salience
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Results of three studies indicate that intrinsic religiosity and mortality salience interact to predict intergroup hostility. Study 1, conducted among 200 American Christians and Jews, reveals that under mortality salience, intrinsic (but not extrinsic or quest) religiosity is related to decreased support for aggressive counterterrorism. Study 2, conducted among 148 Muslims in Iran, demonstrates that intrinsic religiosity predicts decreased out-group derogation under mortality salience. Study 3, conducted among 131 Polish Christians, shows that under mortality salience, priming of intrinsic religious concepts decreases support for aggressive counterterrorism.
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Renate Ysseldyk et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, January 2012, Pages 105-117
Abstract:
The divide between religious traditionalists and secular humanists has been widening for decades; yet, little is known about factors that attenuate hostility between these groups. Two studies examined whether (ir)religious identification could mitigate negative feelings toward (ir)religious outgroups. Following priming to make salient religious groups in daily life or group-based threat, Atheists and Christians in Britain (Study 1, n = 113), and Atheists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants in Canada (Study 2, n = 181) reported intergroup feelings, ingroup evaluations, and perceptions of their group as viewed by others. Atheists reported the lowest ingroup identification and felt equally negative toward all religious groups. Likewise, religious group members generally felt most negative toward Atheists. However, identification with the (ir)religious ingroup was associated with less hostility toward the outgroup(s). This was particularly marked for Atheists who perceived that religious followers felt positively toward them. These results challenge suggestions that (ir)religious identification and threat necessarily promote intergroup hostility.
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The Main Contributors to a Future Utopia
Richard Kinnier et al.
Current Psychology, December 2011, Pages 383-394
Abstract:
Which people, events, movements, institutions, and documents in the history of humankind have contributed most to the possible realization of a future utopia (i.e., a time when the Golden Rule is universally lived by)? This study consisted of two phases. The first phase involved generating nominated lists from over 100 graduate students and professionals in a variety of fields. In the second phase, the two resultant lists of 155 people and 122 events, movements, institutions, and documents were sent to a randomly-selected list of 400 tenured and tenure-track history and philosophy professors at 40 randomly-selected public Research 1 universities. These professors were asked to select who and what would be on their ‘A' lists. The most frequently-selected people included Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Buddha. The most-frequently selected events, movements, institutions, and documents included: the Abolitionist movement, the American Bill of Rights, and the Abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa. The lists are presented and discussed.
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Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine
Gregory Finnigan et al.
Nature, 19 January 2012, Pages 360-364
Abstract:
Many cellular processes are carried out by molecular ‘machines' - assemblies of multiple differentiated proteins that physically interact to execute biological functions. Despite much speculation, strong evidence of the mechanisms by which these assemblies evolved is lacking. Here we use ancestral gene resurrection and manipulative genetic experiments to determine how the complexity of an essential molecular machine - the hexameric transmembrane ring of the eukaryotic V-ATPase proton pump - increased hundreds of millions of years ago. We show that the ring of Fungi, which is composed of three paralogous proteins, evolved from a more ancient two-paralogue complex because of a gene duplication that was followed by loss in each daughter copy of specific interfaces by which it interacts with other ring proteins. These losses were complementary, so both copies became obligate components with restricted spatial roles in the complex. Reintroducing a single historical mutation from each paralogue lineage into the resurrected ancestral proteins is sufficient to recapitulate their asymmetric degeneration and trigger the requirement for the more elaborate three-component ring. Our experiments show that increased complexity in an essential molecular machine evolved because of simple, high-probability evolutionary processes, without the apparent evolution of novel functions. They point to a plausible mechanism for the evolution of complexity in other multi-paralogue protein complexes.
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Experimental evolution of multicellularity
William Ratcliff et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Multicellularity was one of the most significant innovations in the history of life, but its initial evolution remains poorly understood. Using experimental evolution, we show that key steps in this transition could have occurred quickly. We subjected the unicellular yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to an environment in which we expected multicellularity to be adaptive. We observed the rapid evolution of clustering genotypes that display a novel multicellular life history characterized by reproduction via multicellular propagules, a juvenile phase, and determinate growth. The multicellular clusters are uniclonal, minimizing within-cluster genetic conflicts of interest. Simple among-cell division of labor rapidly evolved. Early multicellular strains were composed of physiologically similar cells, but these subsequently evolved higher rates of programmed cell death (apoptosis), an adaptation that increases propagule production. These results show that key aspects of multicellular complexity, a subject of central importance to biology, can readily evolve from unicellular eukaryotes.
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Jeff Levin
Journal of Religion and Health, December 2011, Pages 852-868
Abstract:
Using data from the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) (N = 5,148), effects of eight religious measures were investigated in relation to two health outcomes, standard single-item indicators of self-rated health and presence of an activity-limiting health condition. Seven of the religious measures were associated bivariately with one or both health indicators. Through two-step OLS regression of each health indicator onto all of the religious measures, adjusting for age and other sociodemographic correlates, two measures of synagogue involvement remained statistically significant. Follow-up analysis revealed a net health impact of religious observance primarily limited to Orthodox and Conservative Jews.
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Competition and the Strategic Choices of Churches
Adam Rennhoff & Mark Owens
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we examine how the decisions of churches are impacted by the decisions of rival churches. Using a novel data set of Christian churches in two suburban Nashville, TN counties, we estimate a model of strategic interaction, based on empirical models of discrete games, which accounts for the location and denomination of churches. We focus on a church's decision of whether to provide a weekday child care program. Empirical evidence indicates that churches compete more strongly with nearby same-denomination churches than with different-denomination churches. These effects diminish with distance. Using our estimates, we conduct counterfactual simulations to examine the impact of an increase in the number of church adherents, the number of preschool aged children, and we also remove for-profit providers from the sample.
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Property rights and institutions in biblical society: The purchase of the cave of the patriarchs
Jacob Rosenberg & Avi Weiss
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
A market economy and civil society require specification and certification of property rights. Where property rights are recognized, allowable transactions are also institutionally specified. In this paper we describe and analyze the earliest documented transfer of property rights to land, in Hebron in the 17th century BCE when Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs from Ephron the Hittite. We show how a property rights perspective with institutional constraint on permissible transactions resolves the puzzles that have been previously noted in the bargaining between the buyer and seller.
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Jennifer Jackson
Language & Communication, January 2012, Pages 48-61
Abstract:
This paper examines the deployment of semiotic devices in several mass-mediated public apologies by US politicians and the reflexive awareness of apology as commodity in national political contexts. Beyond acts of contrition and deliverance from the clutches of sin, apology events are extremely dialogical, salient modes of sociality that reach across, arbitrate, and bond multiple publics. The paper examines how speakers toggle between particular chronotopes - of time, place, and personhood - to both shape and reflect particular presentation and participation frameworks. Of certain interest is how the Protestant testimonial informs the apology, makes way for, even necessitates future transgression as it shifts proximity between the sin of the Lost and the testimony of the Found, reinstating membership in and reinforcing a moral public.
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The Consumer Jihad: Boycott Fatwas and Nonviolent Resistance on the World Wide Web
Leor Halevi
International Journal of Middle East Studies, February 2012, Pages 45-70
Abstract:
This article deals with the origins, development, and popularity of boycott fatwas. Born of the marriage of Islamic politics and Islamic economics in an age of digital communications, these fatwas targeted American, Israeli, and Danish commodities between 2000 and 2006. Muftis representing both mainstream and, surprisingly, radical tendencies argued that jihad can be accomplished through nonviolent consumer boycotts. Their argument marks a significant development in the history of jihad doctrine because boycotts, construed as jihadi acts, do not belong to the commonplace categories of jihad as a "military" or a "spiritual" struggle. The article also demonstrates that boycott fatwas emerged, to a large degree, from below. New media, in particular interconnected computer networks, made it easier for laypersons to drive the juridical discourse. They did so before September 11 as well as, more insistently, afterward. Their consumer jihad had some economic impact on targeted multinationals, and it provoked corporate reactions.