Sacred Time
Holiday gift giving in retreat
Joel Waldfogel
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using US cross-section data, holiday gift giving is a normal good whose income elasticity of demand is about 0.5. As income rose 1914-2000, aggregate holiday gift expenditure grew as well. Since 2000, however, holiday giving has fallen in real terms as income has continued to rise. While gift giving remains normal in household cross sections, it behaves like an inferior good in the post-2000 national time series.
Moralistic supernatural punishment is probably not associated with social complexity
Aaron Lightner, Theiss Bendixen & Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evolutionary theories of religion frequently assume that the presence of moralizing gods is positively associated with social complexity. An influential source of evidence for this assumption comes from researchers using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample's moralizing high gods variable as a proxy measure of their outcome of interest (the presence of moralizing gods). In this paper, we critically assess the common assumption that moralizing gods are associated with complex societies. We first discuss the high god variable's coding criteria, which is defined by whether or not a god is the creator or director of the universe, regardless of power or omniscience. We then show that these criteria, which are not relevant to the question about whether gods are moralistic or punitive, has led researchers to underestimate the presence of moralizing gods by systematically producing false negatives - inferring that truly present moralizing gods are absent because moralizing high gods are absent. We then use datasets that include both moralizing gods and moralizing high gods to show that researchers risk inferring false negatives more frequently among lower levels of social complexity. As we also show, this likely leads to a spurious positive association between social complexity and the presence of moralizing gods. We then briefly discuss the ethnographic data and historical biases that might have strengthened this spurious association. We therefore question the widely assumed positive association between morally punitive gods and social
Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan
Oeindrila Dube, Joshua Blumenstock & Michael Callen
NBER Working Paper, November 2022
Abstract:
Religious adherence has been hard to study in part because it is hard to measure. We develop a new measure of religious adherence, which is granular in both time and space, using anonymized mobile phone transaction records. After validating the measure with traditional data, we show how it can shed light on the nature of religious adherence in Islamic societies. Exploiting random variation in climate, we find that as economic conditions in Afghanistan worsen, people become more religiously observant. The effects are most pronounced in areas where droughts have the biggest economic consequences, such as croplands without access to irrigation.
The gendered nature of Muslim and Christian stereotypes in the United States
Caroline Erentzen et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the increasing diversity of religious affiliations in the United States, little research has explored the nature and structure of religious stereotypes of Muslims in America. The present research explores the gendered dimensions of stereotypes of both Muslims and Christians, using a multimethod approach. In Study 1, participants engaged in visual representations of intersectional and superordinate identities using Venn diagrams and slider tasks. Study 2 elicited open trait listings for religious, gender, and intersectional groups, with the most common traits reported for each group. In a conceptual replication, Study 3 asked participants to rate each group for the applicability of the most common traits identified in Study 2. Across the three studies, we found clear and consistent support for intersectionality effects. Unique stereotypic traits were identified for each intersectional group that were not present in either religious or gender superordinate identity. Stereotypes of Christians as a superordinate group contained a balanced representation of Christian men and Christian women traits. In contrast, Muslim stereotypes were strongly influenced by androcentric assumptions, with approximately 80% of the traits ascribed to Muslims overlapping with those of Muslim men. In addition, Muslim women were rated as significantly different from both Muslims and Muslim men on all trait evaluations. This was not observed with Christians, who showed little differentiation by gender. This research provides a rare systematic analysis of the gendered nature of religious stereotypes of Christians and Muslims and contributes to the developing literature on intersectionality and prototypicality.
The politics of church shopping
Shay Hafner & Andre Audette
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent political science literature notes that the relationship between religion and politics is not a one-way interaction: religion influences political beliefs and political beliefs influence religious practices. Most of these studies, however, have relied on aggregate or indirect methods of assessing individual-level religious decisions of where to attend worship services. This paper utilizes an original, nationally representative survey conducted through YouGov to directly ask about respondents' views on politics in church and how it influences their religious behaviors. We find that many respondents admit church shopping, both inside and outside of their denomination, and that politics influences their choice of congregation to attend. After examining the demographics of those who church shops for political reasons, we conclude by discussing the implications of religiopolitical sorting for tolerance and partisan reinforcement.
Religious Violence and Coalition Politics in History
Desiree Desierto & Mark Koyama
George Mason University Working Paper, November 2022
Abstract:
We model how coalition-based politics determines the intensity of religious persecution and violence. A coalition of elites provides political support to the ruler and, in exchange, the ruler shares rents and sets policy on religious persecution. In equilibrium, persecution is more intense the larger the size of the ruler's coalition. For empirical applications, we analyze key historical events in early modern England, 16th century Japan, and the Roman Empire.