Keeping Faith
Sinning in the Rain: Weather Shocks, Church Attendance and Crime
Jonathan Moreno-Medina
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper provides evidence of the causal effect of church attendance on petty crime by using quasi-random variation in the number of Sundays when it precipitated at the specific time of most religious services. Using a novel strategy, I find a narrow time window when most individuals attend church. Based on a panel between 1980 and 2016, I find that one more Sunday with precipitation at the time of church increases yearly drug-related, alcohol-related and white-collar crimes. I do not find an effect for violent or property crimes. These effects are driven by more religious counties. Previous evidence showing negative effects of church attendance on the demand for alcohol and drugs is consistent with a demand-driven interpretation of the results presented.
Religious, Civil, and Economic Freedoms: What's the Chicken and What's the Egg?
Christos Makridis
Arizona State University Working Paper, April 2021
Abstract:
This paper studies the relationship between religious liberty and economic freedom. First, three new facts emerge: (a) religious liberty has increased since 1960, but has slipped substantially over the past decade; (b) the countries that experienced the largest declines in religious liberty tend to have greater economic freedom, especially property rights; (c) changes in religious liberty are associated with changes in the allocation of time to religious activities. Second, using a combination of vector autoregressions and dynamic panel methods, improvements in religious liberty tend to precede economic freedom. Finally, increases in religious liberty have a wide array of spillovers that are important determinants of economic freedom and explain the direction of causality. Countries cannot have long-run economic prosperity and freedom without actively allowing for and promoting religious liberty.
Threatening Morality: Religious and Political Opposition to Science in the United States
Timothy O'Brien & Shiri Noy
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research suggests that religious opposition to science in the United States is rooted in a belief that science threatens morality. We test this claim using a survey of United States adults (n = 3,763). Regression results indicate that the religious are more likely than the nonreligious to believe that science breaks down people's understanding of right and wrong, which we call moral opposition to science. However, the strength of this relationship varies by political ideologies. While moral opposition to science is relatively high among conservatives regardless of religiosity, secular and religious liberals differ widely in their beliefs about science's moral meaning. In fact, moral opposition to science among religious liberals is nearly as high as it is among secular conservatives. These findings accentuate the moral dimension of the science-religion interface and they underscore the importance of religion for understanding political opposition to science.
Peace through superior firepower: Belief in supernatural evil and attitudes toward gun policy in the United States
Christopher Ellison et al.
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although debates over guns and gun control have roiled the contemporary political scene, the role of religion has received only limited attention from scholars. We contribute to this literature by developing a series of theoretical arguments linking one specific facet of religion -- belief in supernatural evil (i.e., the Devil/Satan, Hell, and demons) -- and a range of gun policy attitudes. Relevant hypotheses are then tested using data from the 2014 Baylor Religion Survey (n = 1572). Results show that belief in supernatural evil is a robust predictor of support for policies that expand gun rights. Overall, the estimated net effects of belief in supernatural evil withstand statistical controls for a host of sociodemographic covariates, and, importantly, political ideology. Very few other aspects of religion are associated with any of these gun policy attitudes. Implications and study limitations are discussed, and promising directions for future research on religion and guns are identified.
Divine inhibition: Does thinking about God make monotheistic believers less creative?
Verena Krause, Jack Goncalo & Carmit Tadmor
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, May 2021, Pages 158-178
Abstract:
As individuals are given wider latitude to openly practice and express their faith at work, it is likely that believers will spend at least part of their working life actively thinking about God. Yet, despite the central role that belief in God plays in people's lives, research has given little attention to the impact of actively thinking about God on task performance. The current research investigates the relationship between monotheistic believers' thinking about God and creativity. We conducted six studies using different populations, mixed methods and complementary measures of creativity. Our results, as well as meta-analyses of our experimental data, provide converging evidence that believers are less creative than non-believers and this effect is strengthened when they are actively thinking about God. Thinking about God activates the mindset of passive followership which inhibits the creativity of believers. We discuss potential implications for future research on religiosity, creativity and followership.
Anxiety Enhances Recall of Supernatural Agents
Thomas Swan & Jamin Halberstadt
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The motivational account of religious belief - that belief fulfills some psychological need - has been historically popular, and recent studies have identified a causal role for anxiety in particular. However, the cognitive mechanisms by which anxiety ultimately produces religious belief are unclear. In two studies, we show that anxiety intensifies a known cognitive bias to recall supernatural agents via preferential processing of the threatening characteristics of these agents. Across the two studies, participants exposed to an anxiety manipulation at encoding (but not at retrieval) exhibited a stronger recall bias for supernatural agents than controls, regardless of how anxiety was elicited and regardless of participants' religiosity. The results suggest that people in anxious states are more likely to remember and accumulate representations of supernatural or "godlike" agents than people in non-anxious states, potentially biasing them toward religious belief in these agents. This work therefore lends support and detail to the motivational account, addresses the puzzle of why some malevolent gods attract believers, and, by illustrating the importance of anxiety in recall for supernatural agents, argues for the construction of cognitive-motivational models of religious belief.
A phylogenetic analysis of revolution and afterlife beliefs
Kiran Basava, Hanzhi Zhang & Ruth Mace
Nature Human Behaviour, May 2021, Pages 604-611
Abstract:
Beliefs about the fate of humanity and the soul after death may structure behaviours of religious groups. Here we test theories from religious studies: that belief in an imminent apocalypse co-evolved with and facilitated revolutionary violence, whereas belief in reincarnation caused people to acquiesce to existing social orders and withdraw from political activism. We test these hypotheses by building a cultural phylogeny of historical Islamic sects and schools from the seventh to twentieth centuries and use phylogenetic comparative methods to show that these two types of belief display distinct relationships with intergroup violence. There is substantial evidence that apocalyptic beliefs co-evolved with revolutionary violence, whereas reincarnation beliefs were evolutionarily stable in peaceful groups. In both cases, violence precedes the emergence of beliefs, which suggests that conditions that generate revolutionary violence changed beliefs rather than beliefs generating violence. We also found that apocalyptic beliefs are associated with accelerated group extinction, although causal relationships cannot be determined.
The Islamic Waqf: Instrument of Unequal Security, Worldly and Otherworldly
Fatih Serkant Adiguzel & Timur Kuran
Duke University Working Paper, April 2021
Abstract:
Until the modernizing reforms of the 19th century, the Islamic waqf played a massive role in the economy of the Middle East, the Balkans, and North Africa. Formally, it was a trust founded by an individual; income from the endowed assets financed designated services in perpetuity. The largest waqfs were established by members of high officials of the ruling dynasty to provide social services now supplied by municipalities or charitable corporations. These Islamic "state waqfs" have been the focus of case studies that make the waqf seem mainly a supplier of public goods. Using an original data set consisting of Istanbul waqf deeds from 1457-1923, this paper explores the functions of Islamic "regular waqfs" -- waqfs founded either by elites below the top echelon or by commoners. The typical regular waqf had a relatively modest endowment and architectural footprint. In a setting characterized by weak property rights and legal system that favored males, Muslims, and state officials, it was established principally to provide material security to its founder and his or her descendants. Providing public goods was not among its major functions; neither was assisting the poor. Founders belonging to a disadvantaged group, including women, were especially likely to prioritize wealth sheltering. Regular waqfs thus served to perpetuate prevailing worldly inequalities through material security to the wealthy. They also aimed to create inequalities in the hereafter. Their major functions included financing prayers to expiate the sins of founders and their families.
Does Religious Group Population Share Affect the Religiosity of the Next Generation?
Charissa Mikoski & Daniel Olson
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are teens more religious when (consistent with "religious monopoly" arguments) they live in an area where many people share their parents' religious identity? Or are teens more religious when (as religious economies models suggest) they live in areas where their parent's religious identity has a smaller population share (or "market share")? We examine these questions using Wave 1 of the National Study of Youth and Religion combined with county-level variables from the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Study and the 2000 U.S. Census. Parental religiosity has a huge effect on teen's religiosity, so much so that when parents are very religious, the religious context of the surrounding county does not matter. However, when parents are not very religious, results are consistent with the religious monopolies model but not the religious economies model. The percent of the county in the parents' religious tradition tends to boost teen's religiosity.