Way to worship
Social and Institutional Origins of Political Islam
Steven Brooke & Neil Ketchley
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Under what conditions did the first Islamist movements organize? Which social and institutional contexts facilitated such mobilization? A sizable literature points to social and demographic changes, Western encroachment into Muslim societies, and the availability of state and economic infrastructure. To test these hypotheses, we match a listing of Muslim Brotherhood branches founded in interwar Egypt with contemporaneous census data on over 4,000 subdistricts. A multilevel analysis shows that Muslim Brotherhood branches were more likely in subdistricts connected to the railway and where literacy was higher. Branches were less likely in districts with large European populations, and where state administration was more extensive. Qualitative evidence also points to the railway as key to the movement’s propagation. These findings challenge the orthodoxy that contact between Muslims and the West spurred the growth of organized political Islam, and instead highlight the critical role of economic and state infrastructure in patterning the early contexts of Islamist activism.
White religious iconography increases anti-Black attitudes
Simon Howard & Samuel Sommers
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies have found that activating religious concepts via priming techniques can increase individuals’ anti-Black attitudes. To date, however, no research has examined whether priming religious images rather than words leads to similar effects, or whether activation of different components of religiosity produces comparable patterns of anti-Black prejudice. In the current study, we examined these questions by subliminally exposing participants to images that represented religious (e.g., church) or supernatural concepts (e.g., Jesus) before their racial attitudes were assessed. We also examined whether such effects depend on the racial depiction of a supernatural agent. In Experiment 1, exposure to an image of White Jesus increased White individuals’ anti-Black attitudes relative to exposure to images of Black Jesus, a concrete religious object, and a nonreligious object. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, as well as provided evidence that the increase in White individuals’ anti-Black attitudes was because of exposure to White portrayals of Jesus and not simply an effect of being primed with White male figures generally. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment?
Mark Landau et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, March 2018, Pages 71-82
Abstract:
The perception that God controls one's life can bolster motivation to pursue personal goals, but it can also have no impact and even squelch motivation. To better understand how religious beliefs impact self-regulation, the current research built on Compensatory Control Theory's claim that perceiving the environment as predictable (vs. unpredictable) strengthens commitment to long-term goals. Perceiving God's intervention as following an understandable logic, which implies a predictable environment, increased self-reported and behavioral commitment to save money (Studies 1–3), excel academically (Study 4), and improve physical health (Study 5). In contrast, perceiving God as intervening in mysterious ways, which implies that worldly affairs are under control yet unpredictable, did not increase goal commitment. Exploratory mediational analyses focused on self-efficacy, response efficacy, and confidence in God's control. A meta-analysis (Study 6) yielded a reliable effect whereby belief in divine control supports goal pursuit specifically when it signals the predictability of one's environment.
Association of Religiosity With Sexual Minority Suicide Ideation and Attempt
Megan Lytle et al.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, forthcoming
Methods: Survey data were collected from the 2011 University of Texas at Austin’s Research Consortium data from 21,247 college-enrolled young adults aged 18–30 years. Respondents reported sexual identity as heterosexual, gay/lesbian, bisexual, or questioning. Two sets of multivariable models were conducted to explore the relations of religious importance and sexual orientation with the prevalence of suicidal behavior. The first model was stratified by sexual orientation and the second model was stratified by importance of religion. To explore potential gender differences in self-directed violence, the models were also stratified by gender identity. The main outcome measures were recent suicidal ideation, recent suicide attempt, and lifetime suicide attempt.
Results: Overall, increased importance of religion was associated with higher odds of recent suicide ideation for both gay/lesbian and questioning students. The association between sexual orientation and self-directed violence were mixed and varied by strata. Lesbian/gay students who viewed religion as very important had greater odds for recent suicidal ideation and lifetime suicide attempt compared with heterosexual individuals. Bisexual and questioning sexual orientations were significantly associated with recent suicide ideation, recent attempt, and lifetime attempt across all strata of religious importance, but the strongest effects were among those who reported that religion was very important.
Religious versus reflective priming and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy
Rinad Bakhti
Applied Cognitive Psychology, March/April 2018, Pages 186-191
Abstract:
The effect of religious priming has been studied in relation to a number of variables, most extensively with prosocial behavior. The effects of priming on cognitive domains, however, are relatively understudied. The present study examined the effects of religious priming, compared with reflective and neutral priming, on the conjunction fallacy. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of the 3 priming conditions. Priming was presented through the scrambled sentence task in which participants were required to rearrange words of a religious (e.g., pray), reflective (e.g., reason), or neutral (e.g., paper) content. The conjunction fallacy was measured by a task containing 1 problem. Results indicated that those undergoing the religious prime were significantly more likely to commit the conjunction fallacy compared with those in the reflective priming group. Situations in which reasoning is integral may benefit from knowing the immediate effects of religious versus reflective stimuli in the environment.
Execution, Violent Punishment and Selection for Religiousness in Medieval England
Edward Dutton & Guy Madison
Evolutionary Psychological Science, March 2018, Pages 83–89
Abstract:
Frost and Harpending, Evolutionary Psychology, 13 (2015), have argued that the increasing use of capital punishment across the Middle Ages in Europe altered the genotype, helping to create a less violent and generally more law-abiding population. Developing this insight, we hypothesise that the same system of violent punishments would also have helped to genotypically create a more religious society by indirectly selecting for religiousness, through the execution of men who had not yet sired any offspring. We estimate the selection differential for religiousness based on genetic correlation data for conceivably related traits, and compare that to the actual increase in religiosity across the Middle Ages. We further explore other mechanisms by which religiousness was being selected for in Medieval England, and conclude that executions most likely contributed substantially to the increase in religiosity, but that other selection pressures also played a role.
Faithful Strategies: How Religion Shapes Nonprofit Management
Lapo Filistrucchi & Jens Prüfer
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the strategies employed by Catholic and Protestant nonprofit hospitals in Germany and traces them back to the theological foundations of those religions. Using a unique data set, we find that Catholic nonprofit hospitals follow a strategy of horizontal diversification and maximization of the number of patients treated. By contrast, Protestant hospitals pursue a strategy of horizontal specialization and focus on vertical differentiation, putting in more sophisticated inputs and producing more complex services. These effects increase if the environment of a hospital gets more competitive. We present a model that rationalizes the strategic differences as a result of the difference between Catholic and Protestant values identified in the literature. We then test alternative explanations to the observed empirical differences and show that none of them is supported by the data.
How Far Does Social Group Influence Reach? Identities, Elites, and Immigration Attitudes
Michele Margolis
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Identification with a social group can operate as a powerful heuristic, allowing an individual to easily make political judgments. But, a person can identify with multiple groups, which may be mobilized toward different political ends. How do opinions and behaviors change when a person’s identities are in competition with each other, creating cross-pressures? The Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) — a broad coalition of evangelical Christian leaders supporting liberal immigration policies — has been working to mobilize evangelical Christians on immigration; however, many evangelical Christians also hold competing partisan identities that push them to maintain their existing conservative immigration opinions. Using both panel and experimental data, I show that while the EIT can influence evangelicals’ immigration attitudes, these changes in opinion do not correspond to an increased willingness to act politically in support of reform. Instead, I find the that EIT has been more successful at demobilizing evangelical opponents of immigration reform.
Religious Pluralism and the Transmission of Religious Values through Education
Danny Cohen-Zada & Todd Elder
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze the role of formal religious education in the intergenerational transmission of religious values. We first develop a model of school choice in which the demand for religious schooling is driven partly by the desire of parents to limit their children's exposure to the influences of competing religions. The model predicts that when a religious group's share of the local population grows, the fraction of that group's members whose children attend religious schools declines. In addition, it shows that if the motivation to preserve religious identity is sufficiently strong, the fraction of all children that attend a given denomination's school is an inverse u-shaped function of the denomination's market share. Finally, the model implies that the overall demand for religious schooling is an increasing function of both the local religiosity rate and the level of religious pluralism, as measured by a Herfindahl Index. Using both U.S. county-level data and individual data from ECLS-K and NELS:88, we find evidence strongly consistent with all of the model's predictions. Our findings also illustrate that failing to control for the local religiosity rate, as is common in previous studies, may lead a researcher to erroneously conclude that religious pluralism has a negative effect on participation.
Political Campaigns and Church Contributions
Daniel Hungerman et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2018
Abstract:
We combine a new dataset of weekly Catholic church donations with a new dataset of presidential-election campaign stops to explore the impact of stops on donations. We find that stops increase donations, with a campaign stop generating 2 percent more donations in the following week. Our results suggest that this effect is of short duration. Further, it does not appear to vary based on the political language used by the parish in its own church bulletins. However, the effect does appear to vary based on the religiosity of the candidates themselves, with Catholic candidates generating the largest increases.
Socially Advantaged? How Social Affiliations Influence Access to Valuable Service Professional Transactions
Timothy Gubler & Ryan Cooper
University of California Working Paper, February 2018
Abstract:
This paper investigates how social affiliations between real estate listing agents and home sellers impact the types of transactions agents engage in and their subsequent career outcomes. We argue that increased trust and improved information flows allow service professionals to gain access to valuable transactions through social affiliations, which aids them in building reputation. Using a unique approach that pairs data from the Utah Multiple Listing Services with data on LDS church congregation boundaries in Utah, we find that affiliations provide agents access to more valuable homes which improves career performance. Strikingly, improved career performance results in reduced incidence of entrepreneurship. These results imply that social affiliations can lead to important competition benefits for professionals, which help them build reputation, although they reduce entrepreneurial activity.