Unknowns
Beyond War and Contracts: The Medieval and Religious Roots of the European State
Anna Grzymala-Busse
Annual Review of Political Science, 2020, Pages 19-36
Abstract:
Where does the state come from? Two canonical answers have been interstate wars and contracts between rulers and the ruled in the early modern period. New scholarship has pushed back the historical origins of the European state to the Middle Ages, and focused on domestic institutions such as parliaments, universities, the law, inheritance rules, and cities. It has left open questions of the causes of territorial fragmentation, the structural similarities in state administrations, and the policy preoccupations of the state. One answer is a powerful but neglected force in state formation: the medieval Church, which served as a rival for sovereignty, and a template for institutional innovations in court administrations, the law, and the formation of human capital. Church influence further helps to explain why territorial fragmentation in the Middle Ages persisted, why royal courts adopted similar administrative solutions, and why secular states remain concerned with morality and social discipline.
Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?
Orestes Hastings & Kassandra Roeser
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two well-known findings are that the religious are happier than the non-religious, and people are less happy when they lose their job. We investigate a link between these by asking whether religion buffers against the negative effect of unemployment on happiness. Although theorized or implicitly assumed in many studies, empirical demonstrations of a causal, moderating effect of religion have been infrequent and often not strong methodologically. We conduct individual-level fixed effects models to test for the buffering effect in the US context using recent panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys. Religious service attendance, belief in life after death, and trying to carry one’s religious beliefs over into other dealings in life all substantially buffered the effect of unemployment on happiness. Praying daily, believing God exists, identifying as a religious person, and having a religious affiliation did not. We discuss these results in the context of prior work and existing theory. To further support a causal interpretation of these findings, we also conduct a secondary analysis showing that unemployment does not appear to increase or decrease religiousness. This paper makes an important sociological contribution to the growing field of happiness research and to our understanding of how religion matters to people during hard times.
Opiate of the Masses? Inequality, Religion, and Political Ideology in the United States
Landon Schnabel
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study considers the assertion that religion is the opiate of the masses. Using a special module of the General Social Survey, I first demonstrate that religion functions as a compensatory resource for structurally disadvantaged groups — women, racial minorities, those with lower incomes, and, to a lesser extent, sexual minorities. I then demonstrate that religion — operating as both compensatory resource and values-shaping schema — suppresses what would otherwise be larger group differences in political ideology. This study provides empirical support for the general “opiate” claim that religion is the “sigh of the oppressed creature” and suppressor of emancipatory political values. I expand and refine the theory, however, showing how religion provides (1) compensatory resources for lack of social, and not just economic, status, and (2) traditional-values-oriented schemas that, rather than just distracting people, shape their politics in accordance with the content of religious belief systems.
God Values the Lives of My Out-Group More Than I Do: Evidence From Fiji and Israel
Michael Pasek et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does God want people to favor coreligionists or to treat in-group and out-group members equally? To test people’s beliefs about God’s moral preferences, we conducted three preregistered studies. Study 1 was a field study with Christian and Muslim Fijians (N = 188). Study 2 was an online study with Jewish Israelis (N = 384). Study 3 was a field study with Christian and Hindu Fijians (N = 539). Across studies, participants indicated whether an in-group member should sacrifice his life to save five in-group members (in one dilemma) or out-group members (in a second dilemma). For each dilemma, they then indicated what God would prefer. Participants believed that, compared with themselves, God would more strongly approve of an in-group member saving out-group members. Results generalize results from previous studies with Muslim Palestinians, providing cross-cultural evidence that religious believers think God prefers more universal moral reasoning than they do themselves.
Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in the West: Assessing the Effects of the French Headscarf Ban
Aala Abdelgadir & Vasiliki Fouka
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In response to rising immigration flows and the fear of Islamic radicalization, several Western countries have enacted policies to restrict religious expression and emphasize secularism and Western values. Despite intense public debate, there is little systematic evidence on how such policies influence the behavior of the religious minorities they target. In this paper, we use rich quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the effects of the 2004 French headscarf ban on the socioeconomic integration of French Muslim women. We find that the law reduces the secondary educational attainment of Muslim girls and affects their trajectory in the labor market and family composition in the long run. We provide evidence that the ban operates through increased perceptions of discrimination and that it strengthens both national and religious identities.
An objective Bayesian analysis of life’s early start and our late arrival
David Kipping
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Life emerged on Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the selection effect that if the evolution of intelligence is a slow process, then life’s early start may simply be a prerequisite to our existence, rather than useful evidence for optimism. In this work, we interpret the chronology of these two events in a Bayesian framework, extending upon previous work by considering that the evolutionary timescale is itself an unknown that needs to be jointly inferred, rather than fiducially set. We further adopt an objective Bayesian approach, such that our results would be agreed upon even by those using wildly different priors for the rates of abiogenesis and evolution — common points of contention for this problem. It is then shown that the earliest microfossil evidence for life indicates that the rate of abiogenesis is at least 2.8 times more likely to be a typically rapid process, rather than a slow one. This modest limiting Bayes factor rises to 8.7 if we accept the more disputed evidence of 13C-depleted zircon deposits [E. A. Bell, P. Boehnke, T. M. Harrison, W. L. Mao, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112, 14518–14521 (2015)]. For intelligence evolution, it is found that a rare-intelligence scenario is slightly favored at 3:2 betting odds. Thus, if we reran Earth’s clock, one should statistically favor life to frequently reemerge, but intelligence may not be as inevitable.
Papal visits and abortions: Evidence from Italy
Egidio Farina & Vikram Pathania
Journal of Population Economics, July 2020, Pages 795–837
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of papal visits to Italian provinces on abortions from 1979 to 2012. Using administrative data, we find a 10–20% decrease in the number of abortions that commences in the 3rd month and persists until the 14th month after the visits. However, we find no significant change in the number of live births. A decline in unintended pregnancies best explains our results. Papal visits generate intense local media coverage, and likely make salient the Catholic Church’s stance against abortions. We show that papal visits lead to increased church attendance, and that the decline in abortions is greater when the Pope mentions abortion in his speeches.
Epistemic justifications for belief in the unobservable: The impact of minority status
Telli Davoodi et al.
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children hold beliefs about religious and scientific entities, such as angels or germs, that they cannot directly observe or interact with. Given their limited opportunities for first-hand observation, children's beliefs in these entities are a clear example of cultural learning and are likely to vary based on cultural factors. In the present study, we investigated variation in the epistemic stance of 4–11-year-old children growing up in a religious minority in China (N = 47), a religious majority in Iran (N = 85), and a religious majority in the U.S. (N = 74). To assess the role of community status as a domain-specific, as opposed to a domain-general, factor contributing to children's beliefs about unobservable entities, we compared children's beliefs about religious unobservable entities with their beliefs about scientific unobservable entities in these three communities. In all three communities, younger and older children were confident that unobservable religious and scientific entities exist. However, compared to children in Iran and the U.S., children from the religious minority group in China were more likely to justify their ontological beliefs about religious entities by appealing to the source of their beliefs. These results highlight the impact of community status on learning from testimony about unobservable entities. Additionally, the results show that under certain circumstances – notably when holding minority beliefs – tracking the source of beliefs serves as a central epistemic justification.
Religious Overclaiming and Support for Religious Aggression
Daniel Jones et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Agentic self-enhancement consists of self-protective and self-advancing tendencies that can lead to aggression, especially when challenged. Because self-enhancers often endorse aggression to defend or enhance the self-concept, religious self-enhancement should lead to endorsing aggression to defend or enhance one’s religion. We recruited three samples (N = 969) from Mechanical Turk (n = 409), Iran (n = 351), and the U.S.–Mexico border region (n = 209). We found that religious (but not secular) self-enhancement in the form of religious overclaiming predicted support for, and willingness to engage in, religious aggression. In contrast, accuracy in religious knowledge had mostly negative associations with aggression-relevant outcomes. These results emerged across two separate religions (Christianity and Islam) and across three different cultures (the United States, Iran, and the U.S.–Mexico border region). Thus, religious overclaiming is a promising new direction for studying support for religious aggression and identifying those who may become aggressive in the name of God.