Prophetic
Personal Prayer Buffers Self-Control Depletion
Malte Friese & Michaela Wänke
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, March 2014, Pages 56–59
Abstract:
The strength model of self-control has inspired large amounts of research and contributed to a deeper understanding of the temporal dynamics underlying self-control. Several studies have identified factors that can counteract self-control depletion, but relatively little is known about factors that can prevent depletion effects. Here we tested the hypothesis that a brief period of personal prayer would buffer self-control depletion effects. Participants either briefly prayed or thought freely before engaging (or not engaging) in an emotion suppression task. All participants completed a Stroop task subsequently. Individuals who had thought freely before suppressing emotions showed impaired Stroop performance compared to those who had not suppressed emotions. This effect did not occur in individuals who had prayed at the beginning of the study. These results are consistent with and contribute to a growing body of work attesting to the beneficial effects of praying on self-control.
----------------------
The Effect of Political Violence on Religiosity
Asaf Zussman
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies how politically-motivated violence associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict affects religiosity among Jews and Muslims in Israel. In order to explore this relationship I link data from the Israeli Social Surveys to information on Israeli conflict-related fatalities by date and location of survey interviews. The analysis, which covers the period 2002-2010, yields robust evidence that violence makes both Jewish and Muslim Israelis self-identify as more religious.
----------------------
Religious fundamentalism and perceived threat: A report from an experimental study
Paul Williamson & Ralph Hood
Mental Health, Religion & Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigated the experimental effect of threat on religious fundamentalism (RF) and the tendency towards reprisal. We presented 102 Christians with one of three scenarios, involving the hire of a Christian biologist, evolution biologist, or a (neutral) communications expert as professor at their university, and also the subsequent sanctioning of his speeding violation. Moderated multiple regression analyses of Christian/evolutionist data found that low RF endorsed the evolutionist and high RF endorsed the Christian; further, participants levied a higher court fine on the speeding evolutionist, regardless of RF. Analyses of Christian/neutral data found that low RF discriminated in favour of the neutral candidate, whereas high RF did not discriminate between candidates; also, low RF sanctioned the neutral candidate with a speeding ticket, while high RF sanctioned the Christian. Overall findings indicated that fundamentalists were not necessarily aggressive or punitive and that they reacted no different from non-fundamentalists when values were threatened.
----------------------
Does Religion Affect Economic Growth and Happiness? Evidence from Ramadan
Filipe Campante & David Yanagizawa-Drott
Harvard Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
We study the economic effects of religious practices in the context of the observance of Ramadan fasting, one of the central tenets of Islam. To establish causality, we exploit variation in the length of the fasting period due to the rotating Islamic calendar. We report two key, quantitatively meaningful results: 1) longer Ramadan fasting has a negative effect on output growth in Muslim countries, and 2) it increases subjective well-being among Muslims. We then examine labor market outcomes, and find that these results cannot be primarily explained by a direct reduction in labor productivity due to fasting. Instead, the evidence indicates that Ramadan affects Muslims’ relative preferences regarding work and religiosity, suggesting that the mechanism operates at least partly by changing beliefs and values that influence labor supply and occupational choices beyond the month of Ramadan itself. Together, our results indicate that religious practices can affect labor supply choices in ways that have negative implications for economic performance, but that nevertheless increase subjective well-being among followers.
----------------------
Residents of Poor Nations Have a Greater Sense of Meaning in Life Than Residents of Wealthy Nations
Shigehiro Oishi & Ed Diener
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using Gallup World Poll data, we examined the role of societal wealth for meaning in life across 132 nations. Although life satisfaction was substantially higher in wealthy nations than in poor nations, meaning in life was higher in poor nations than in wealthy nations. In part, meaning in life was higher in poor nations because people in those nations were more religious. The mediating role of religiosity remained significant after we controlled for potential third variables, such as education, fertility rate, and individualism. As Frankl (1963) stated in Man’s Search for Meaning, it appears that meaning can be attained even under objectively dire living conditions, and religiosity plays an important role in this search.
----------------------
Olga Stavrova & Pascal Siegers
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The question of whether religiosity is linked to prosocial behavior is currently hotly debated in psychology. This research contributes to this debate by showing that the nature of individuals’ religious orientations and their relationships to prosociality depend on their country’s social enforcement of religiosity. Our analyses of data from more than 70 countries indicate that in countries with no social pressure to follow a religion, religious individuals are more likely to endorse an intrinsic religious orientation (Study 1), engage in charity work (Study 2), disapprove of lying in their own interests (Study 3), and are less likely to engage in fraudulent behaviors (Study 4) compared with non-religious individuals. Ironically, in secular contexts, religious individuals are also more likely to condemn certain moral choices than non-religious individuals (Study 2). These effects of religiosity substantially weaken (and ultimately disappear) with increasing national levels of social enforcement of religiosity.
----------------------
Naser Aghababaei, Jason Adam Wasserman & Drew Nannini
Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Winter 2014, Pages 24-29
Abstract:
The relationship of religiousness with the HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness) model of personality was studied in Iran and the United States. Correlations of personality factors and religiousness were generally similar across the two societies. In both countries, religiousness was associated with higher scores on Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. The Honesty-Humility factor was one of the strongest correlates of religiousness in both countries. These findings support Saroglou's observation that the main personality characteristics of religiousness are consistent across different religious contexts and personality measures and models.
----------------------
Markus Schafer
Sociology of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article integrates life course and stress process perspectives to better understand the connections between early life victimization, hardship in adulthood, and religious turning points among middle-age Americans. I identified Christian “born-again” transformations as an empirical case, as this faith transition (1) is relatively commonplace in the American religious landscape and (2) makes direct claims concerning redemption and new life. Analyses use two-waves of panel data from a sample of American adults with retrospective childhood account, spanning 1995–2005. Among the men and women who were not born again at Wave 1, nearly 10 percent experienced a born-again turning point between Wave 1 and Wave 2. The individuals most likely to undergo this transition were those who faced the broadest forms of victimization during childhood. This association was partially explained by continued mistreatment experienced as adults. Though respondents victimized as children were at high risk of experiencing a broad range of adulthood stressors, few of these hardships predicted a born-again transformation.
----------------------
Religion insulates ingroup evaluations: The development of intergroup attitudes in India
Yarrow Dunham et al.
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on the development of implicit intergroup attitudes has placed heavy emphasis on race, leaving open how social categories that are prominent in other cultures might operate. We investigate two of India's primary means of social distinction, caste and religion, and explore the development of implicit and explicit attitudes towards these groups in minority-status Muslim children and majority-status Hindu children, the latter drawn from various positions in the Hindu caste system. Results from two tests of implicit attitudes find that caste attitudes parallel previous findings for race: higher-caste children as well as lower-caste children have robust high-caste preferences. However, results for religion were strikingly different: both lower-status Muslim children and higher-status Hindu children show strong implicit ingroup preferences. We suggest that religion may play a protective role in insulating children from the internalization of stigma.
----------------------
Peter Leeson
Journal of Law and Economics, August 2013, Pages 811-836
Abstract:
For 250 years insects and rodents accused of committing property crimes were tried as legal persons in French, Italian, and Swiss ecclesiastic courts under the same laws and according to the same procedures used to try actual persons. I argue that the Catholic Church used vermin trials to increase tithe revenues where tithe evasion threatened to erode them. Vermin trials achieved this by bolstering citizens’ belief in the validity of Church punishments for tithe evasion: estrangement from God through sin, excommunication, and anathema. Vermin trials permitted ecclesiastics to evidence their supernatural sanctions’ legitimacy by producing outcomes that supported those sanctions’ validity. These outcomes strengthened citizens’ belief that the Church’s imprecations were real, which allowed ecclesiastics to reclaim jeopardized tithe revenue.
----------------------
Church government and religious participation
Jason Wollschleger
Rationality and Society, November 2013, Pages 470-488
Abstract:
In this article religion is viewed as a collectively produced good. Religious groups must, therefore, overcome collective action problems, namely, coordination. This problem is usually alleviated by entering into an agency relationship with an organizer whose job is to ensure efficient production of religious goods. This will lead to an increase in participation from congregants and an increase in quality of the religious goods. However, this relationship is open to the principal–agent problem. Using data from the American Congregational Giving Study this paper finds that the organizational structure of religious groups makes some groups more susceptible to principal–agent problems, which ultimately impacts participation levels.
----------------------
Religion and Intergroup Conflict: Findings From the Global Group Relations Project
Steven Neuberg et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How might religion shape intergroup conflict? We tested whether religious infusion — the extent to which religious rituals and discourse permeate the everyday activities of groups and their members — moderated the effects of two factors known to increase intergroup conflict: competition for limited resources and incompatibility of values held by potentially conflicting groups. We used data from the Global Group Relations Project to investigate 194 groups (e.g., ethnic, religious, national) at 97 sites around the world. When religion was infused in group life, groups were especially prejudiced against those groups that held incompatible values, and they were likely to discriminate against such groups. Moreover, whereas disadvantaged groups with low levels of religious infusion typically avoided directing aggression against their resource-rich and powerful counterparts, disadvantaged groups with high levels of religious infusion directed significant aggression against them — despite the significant tangible costs to the disadvantaged groups potentially posed by enacting such aggression. This research suggests mechanisms through which religion may increase intergroup conflict and introduces an innovative method for performing nuanced, cross-societal research.
----------------------
Religiosity as a Potential Moderator of the Effects of R-rated Movies on Delinquency
Phil Davignon
Sociological Spectrum, November/December 2013, Pages 554-565
Abstract:
Previous research suggests viewing R-rated movies is associated with delinquency (Tanski et al. 2010; Titus-Ernstoff et al. 2008), while religiosity leads to decreases in substance use (Jang and Johnson 2001; Kovacs, Piko, and Fitzpatrick 2011; Miller 1998; Regnerus 2003). However, the influences of religiosity and viewing R-rated movies have not been examined in conjunction. This article tests whether religiosity moderates the effects of R-rated movies on delinquency, results suggesting that rather than religiosity moderating the effects of R-rated movies on delinquency, viewing R-rated movies actually tempers the pro-social effects of religiosity. This finding only held true for certain types of substance abuse, and not activity-based forms of delinquency such as fighting. The results are discussed in light of their implications for the current study of the effects of religiosity on delinquency, and suggestions are made for future research on the relationship between viewing R-rated movies and delinquency.
----------------------
Religious Value Priming, Threat, and Political Tolerance
Paul Djupe & Brian Calfano
Political Research Quarterly, December 2013, Pages 768-780
Abstract:
The exploration of the religious underpi-nnings of intolerance has long focused on the effects of religious behaviors and beliefs, but has ignored a variety of important facets of the religious experience that should bear on tolerance judgments: elite communication, religious values about how the world should be ordered, and social networks in churches. We focus on the communication of religious values and argue specifically that values should affect threat judgments and thus affect tolerance judgments indirectly. We test these assertions using data gathered in a survey experiment and find that priming exclusive religious values augments threat and thus reduces tolerance.
----------------------
Kelly Wolenberg et al.
Journal of Religion and Health, December 2013, Pages 1051-1065
Abstract:
This study surveyed 1,156 practicing US physicians to examine the relationship between physicians’ religious characteristics and their approaches to artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). Forty percent of physicians believed that unless a patient is imminently dying, the patient should always receive nutrition and fluids; 75 % believed that it is ethically permissible for doctors to withdraw ANH. The least religious physicians were less likely to oppose withholding or withdrawing ANH. Compared to non-evangelical Protestant physicians, Jews and Muslims were significantly more likely to oppose withholding ANH, and Muslims were significantly more likely to oppose withdrawing ANH.
----------------------
Rates of Phenotypic and Genomic Evolution during the Cambrian Explosion
Michael Lee, Julien Soubrier & Gregory Edgecombe
Current Biology, 7 October 2013, Pages 1889–1895
Abstract:
The near-simultaneous appearance of most modern animal body plans (phyla) ∼530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion is strong evidence for a brief interval of rapid phenotypic and genetic innovation, yet the exact speed and nature of this grand adaptive radiation remain debated. Crucially, rates of morphological evolution in the past (i.e., in ancestral lineages) can be inferred from phenotypic differences among living organisms — just as molecular evolutionary rates in ancestral lineages can be inferred from genetic divergences. We here employed Bayesian and maximum likelihood phylogenetic clock methods on an extensive anatomical and genomic data set for arthropods, the most diverse phylum in the Cambrian and today. Assuming an Ediacaran origin for arthropods, phenotypic evolution was ∼4 times faster, and molecular evolution ∼5.5 times faster, during the Cambrian explosion compared to all subsequent parts of the Phanerozoic. These rapid evolutionary rates are robust to assumptions about the precise age of arthropods. Surprisingly, these fast early rates do not change substantially even if the radiation of arthropods is compressed entirely into the Cambrian (∼542 mega-annum [Ma]) or telescoped into the Cryogenian (∼650 Ma). The fastest inferred rates are still consistent with evolution by natural selection and with data from living organisms, potentially resolving “Darwin’s dilemma.” However, evolution during the Cambrian explosion was unusual (compared to the subsequent Phanerozoic) in that fast rates were present across many lineages.