Welcome to Reasonable Doubts,
your skeptical guide to religion.
(Music)
You're listening to Reasonable Doubts,
the radio show and podcast for those who
won't just take things on faith.
I'm Jamie Beahan
and for this special episode
of Reasonable Doubts, we're featuring a
lecture I gave in February
to the Grand Traverse humanists in
Traverse City, Michigan.
The lecture was entitled;
“Does religion make us better?",
a critical review of the religious
pro-sociality hypothesis.
Longtime listeners will no doubt
recognize many of the studies
talked about in this lecture.
A previous RD-extra and our episode “The Skeptics Toolkit to Psychology of Religion”
discussed these findings.
But this lecture is a bit different,
mostly in the trivial
and, I'm sure, disappointing fact that I
am presenting the findings rather than
our resident doctor professor Luke Galen.
But I think this lecture has some merit
in that it finally collects a wide range
of studies, discussed over several years
on the show, into one convenient place
hopefully making it easier for fans of
the show to review the information
or share with a friend and please do
share. This is important research and I
know doctor Galen would agree with me
in thinking that it hasn't gotten as
much attention as it deserves.
So you'd be doing us
and the cause of skepticism
a great favor by sharing this lecture
on whatever blogs or social media you
frequent and never underestimate
the power of good old
word-of-mouth sharing either.
And please visit doubtcast.org to share
any comments or questions or feedback
you may have about the episode.
So be sure to tune in next week for
the Doubtcasters review
of the New Christian propaganda film
“God's not dead”.
Should be a good one. Until then, take
care and keep doubting.
(Music)
(Applause)
Thank you for coming and thank
you for the privilege of
allowing me to speak to your group. My
name is Jeremy Beahan.
I teach World Religions and Introduction
to Philosophy along with a handful of
other subjects
at Kendall College of Art and Design.
I'm also the producer and cohost
of the Reasonable Doubt Podcast which
at its peak was the top atheist podcast
on iTunes for several years,
won the People's Choice
podcasting award
for best religious inspirational podcast
which was - (Laughing) - different.
People look at me funny
when I mention that.
I'm speaking tonight on the issue of
“Does religion make people better?”
and we're approaching
this not so much from a philosophical
perspective, as you usually
hear this question grapple with,
but we're approaching this
from an empirical standpoint.
What can science actually tell us
about how religion affects morality.
The subtitle here's a skeptical review
of the religious pro-sociality hypothesis.
So, that might take some explanation.
You might guess from that subtitle that
this is going to be a bit have been
informationally dense talk tonight.
But I don't have to tell you
that in our culture
there's an overwhelming assumption
among the general public
that being religious is necessary
to be a happy and ethical person.
We have plenty of preachers
and pundits and ordinary people
reminding us daily that without God
society will quickly de-evolve
into wickedness and anarchy.
What you may not be familiar with
as much however is the growing body
of social psychology research
that at first glance actually
seems to support this notion.
The more technical term for the
hypothesis that religion makes us good
is known as the religious
pro-sociality hypothesis.
My task tonight is to present you with
an overview of this research
and to acquit you with the tools
necessary to think critically about it.
Because as we're about to see the
religious pro-sociality hypothesis
really does indeed
have some support.
But when we look at the evidence
more closely, we're going to
discover little devils
within the details.
But first I have to
give you a quick disclaimer:
I don't get any credit or blame
for what I'm about to say this evening.
This is not my research
that I'm reporting on, this is actually
doctor Luke Galen's research.
He is a professor of psychology of religion
at Grand Valley State University and
almost all what I'm going to be drawing
from tonight comes from his paper
in the Psychological Bulletin of
the American Psychological Association
called: “Does religious belief promote
pro-sociality, a critical examination”.
How did I get involved in this topic?
He put me in charge of
writing up a summary of his research,
kind of distilling pages
upon pages and pages of review
into something coherent
that the average consumer
could actually understand.
So that was my task writing up
his review and free inquiry,
since Luke Galen
doesn't like their leave the house
too often or interact
with ordinary human beings.
(Laughing)
He kind of appointed me
to be his spokesman.
He jokingly refers to me
as Galen's Bulldog.
I guess I'm Thomas Henry Huxley
to his Darwin.
So I've been glad to have
the opportunity to do interviews
and talk to groups like this
about this research because I think it
needs to get out there.
All right,
before we go any further
let us define
what we mean by pro-sociality.
I hate that word already.
I am barely into this lecture
and tired of saying it,
but the term pro-social refers
to any kind of positive social behavior
and this runs the gamut from generosity
in the form a charitable giving
or time spent volunteering to personal
qualities perhaps
such as positive personality traits:
being helpful, being honest and there's
actually an impressive array of
scientific studies that support this
hypothesis, that try to show
that the religious exhibit greater
pro-sociality than the non-religious.
In effect this has even become the subject
of a number a popular books.
One you may have heard of
is “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics
and Atheists” by David Myers
or more recently “American Grace, How
Religion Divides and Unites Us”.
So the general public is being told
that the data are in
and religion makes you happy, happier,
healthier and more helpful.
That this is a conclusion that is not
just philosophy or religion. It's science.
In fact even some atheists
are getting in on this.
A seemingly overwhelming case
for the pro-social effects
of religion has been enough to
convince people here like Jessie Bering,
an atheist psychologist and actually a
pretty good author.
Enough to convince him that religion
is beneficial, at least for others.
In a recent Slate article
entitled *“Don't trust the godless”(,
Jesse Bering confessed; "Even as an
atheist, I have more confidence
in religious people
and now science is backing me up.”
A fuller quote is up here; "This is a
difficult confession to make
because on the surface I'm sure
it sounds wildly, wildly hypocritical.
Still here it goes; "I trust religious people
more than I trust atheists."
Trustworthiness is a different thing
altogether from intellect
and I suppose
I'm the ever so social pragmatist
in my dealings with other people."
So pretty serious claim,
if you get even atheist psychologists
saying; "Don't trust the godless".
Before we go any further though
we're going to have to look at
what are the kind of methods
that are used in pro-sociality research.
We're going to see a variety of different
experimental setups and methods
for conducting this kind of research.
This would include self-reports,
what people say about themselves and
third-party ratings of individuals,
laboratory tests of behavior,
lab studies of economic games
– we’ll talk about those more later -
priming studies, where people are presented
with the religious concept subconsciously
- usually where they will not realize
they've been primed by the concept
and then we'll see what happens -
and also spirituality scales.
Scales are meant to design, to detect
the level of one's spirituality
and then we compare their behaviors on that.
What I'm going to try to highlight
is some other pitfalls
that researchers face
in each of these types
of research methods.
Let's start with the top report data;
"Will being religious
make you a better person?"
Well, the fateful
certainly seem to think so.
When asked to give an assessment of
their own character and values,
religious individuals
tend to report being...
having a more grateful disposition;
they rate themselves as more helpful;
they claim to value forgiveness
more highly than the non-religious;
And many studies actually take
these self-reports at face value.
The fact that believers
think they're more moral
is actually taken as evidence
that they do exhibit
these pro-social traits. Big question is:
"Should we take believers at their word?
No. Not if their evaluations
are based on a self-serving bias
rather than a realistic assessment
of their own character.
Self-report data tend to be
unreliable by its very nature.
People are prone to forming positive
illusions about themselves. We all do it.
We tend to inflate our responses on
questionnaires as a result
to make ourselves look better.
Sometimes this is just concern
over our own personal self-image.
Social psychologists call this
self-enhancement.
Or sometimes we want to make
a good impression with others
or good impression for our group in particular.
This is sometimes referred
to as impression management.
While this is a widespread tendency
and it's by no means restricted
just to the religious.
What's interesting is, this tendency
might be more pronounced
in those who have
a strong level of religious belief.
Highly religious people tend to view
themselves as better than others, generally.
Even better than
other religious individuals.
And they also evaluate themselves more
highly than non-religious individuals
on attributes that have absolutely
nothing to do with religion.
So for example they might
score themselves higher
on measures of intelligence
or being a good worker.
Things that do not seem immediately
related to their religious morality.
Those high in intrinsic religiosity
actually have been shown to have
a higher degree of self-enhancement
and impression management.
Just one example: if you prime a
Christian with self-esteem primes,
you'll see them actually rating themselves
as living up to Christian principles
more often than their fellow believers.
If however you do the reverse
and you offer up an assessment that
questions their high self-esteem
or make them write about something
that they don't like about themselves,
those who are high
in intrinsic religiosity
- that means the level of belief -
they are more likely
to resort to self-deception
as a compensating strategy.
Also highly religious people
are particularly
concerned with presenting themselves
as moral persons
and particularly threatened
when that self-image is challenged.
So, I guess the big question is;
"Why do researchers even rely
on these self-reports some of the time?"
Well, because at least in some cases
these positive self-assessments are actually corroborated by others:
their family, their colleagues, their peers.
So, third-party evaluators
rate religious individuals
as being nicer, more cooperative
and highly altruistic
and empathetic as well.
To some this is proof
that the self-reports are not
self-delusion, they're not moral hypocrisy.
They are correct assessments
of their character.
But I think we can still
be a little skeptical here.
When we're talking
about a predominantly religious society,
where about 80 to 95%
of people are religious
and around 75% are at least
nominally Christian,
it's a good bet that a significant
proportion of those subjects, families
and peers are also religious,
meaning there's a possibility
of in-group bias at work here.
And actually there is some evidence
to support that.
In-group favoritism is a well-studied
phenomenon in social psychology.
Again, this is not just religious
people here, this is all of us.
It is natural for individuals to
derive self-esteem from the groups
they’re associated with.
It's natural to provide
a positive image to the public
for those who share their identity.
So, consistent with the predictions
of social identity theory,
we see believers tend to show more
favoritism towards other individuals
and speak more poorly of non-religious
and this even includes
those from different religious groups.
Often the favoritism
- and here's the key point here -
often the favoritism is extended
to other religious individuals,
regardless of whether or not
they behaved well or poorly,
are still be reviewed more favorably,
even when they've been up to no good.
I'll give you an example here
of when sometimes believers will rate
religious individuals more highly
than non-religious individuals, even when
they exhibit the exact same behaviors.
I was a part of this study
which was published in 2011.
I was a participant and so in front of a
camera I wore two different T-shirts,
I wore three actually:
just a plain white T-shirt
then in the other condition
I wore a Jesus fish T-shirt
and then third condition
I wore a Darwin fish T-shirt.
And then I read
the exact same script each time
which was I was presenting myself
as a college student
who was using my spring break to help
in disaster relief organization
and talking
about my positive experiences.
No mention of religion or anything else.
What we found in this study
was that people rated me
as more likable,
more intelligent, more trustworthy
and more kind,
and more moral overall
when I was wearing the Jesus fish.
So exact same behaviors but a subtle cue
that I might be religious makes
people evaluate my behavior better.
Most studies that rely on peer-rated
ratings do not adequately control
for this tendency for in-group bias
and that's the problem.
Ideally researchers would ensure
that participants are completely unaware
of the religious identity
of those they're rating.
Then we have more reason to trust
their evaluations as accurate,
but this sadly is rarely the case.
However in studies
that do, and most studies
where the raters
are actually aware of their targets
religious identities
a clear bias emerges
and that suggests
an in-group bias
when the people know they're religious,
they rate them more positively.
There is an interesting twist to all of this:
non-religious individuals do not appear
to rate their fellow non-believers
as any more pro-social than they do the
religious. For some reason this
in-group bias doesn't seem to be affecting
the non-religious to the same degree.
Now should the fact
that non-religious people also rate
the religious highly, indicate that
these judgments are based on a clear
added assessment of their character?
Are atheists really going to have
a pro-religious bias? Actually it's quite
possible that they would
if their judgments have been swayed
by a strong religious,
pro-religious cultural stereotype.
And again, there is evidence to suggest
that's the case.
Here's more evidence
for a pro-religious stereotype,
that we can find by looking at
similar studies that are conducted
in different cultures than our own.
For example some report that happiness,
life satisfaction
and personality measures
like agreeableness
are more closely associated
with religion in the United States
than in the United Kingdom or Northern
Europe where religion is less dominant.
To give you one specific example:
this particular study here
asks people to rate their impressions
of people just from looking at photographs
of faces and smiling faces were judged
to be more religious
than non smiling faces.
That was in the United States.
In the United Kingdom
the exact opposite was true and
tends to be a general relationship
between religion and self-control,
mental well-being,
psychological adjustment,
social support.
In general in societies where the
non-religious are the majority
the non-religious are rated more favorably
on all those particular measures.
So, again evidence that there
is a cultural bias at work here.
I think by now it should be clear that
self-report data doesn't provide
reliable evidence for the religious
pro-social reality hypothesis.
Self-evaluations on religious subjects
are vulnerable to self-enhancement,
impression management, distortions and
others and they are contaminated
quite possibly by a widely-held
pro-religious cultural stereotype.
It might be better
instead of trusting self-reports
to look at experimentally
controlled measures of behavior
or, if you prefer the way Jesus might say
it, we should judge believers
by their fruit not by their words.
Let's look at
what their actual deeds tell us.
Well, for one religious individuals
claim to value forgiveness
more than others
but actually any effect of their religiosity
on actual forgiveness
has been found to be negligible.
This is just one study
that shows that the comparison
of self-reports with controlled experiments
on behavior reveal how often believers
fail to live up to their high opinion
of themselves.
Those in high in intrinsic religiosity again
- this is a measure of belief -
reported a more grateful disposition
but don't do not perform
better than anyone else in studies
measuring reciprocal behavioral
gratitude: "Will they give back?"
High intrinsic religiosity doesn't seem
to reduce aggression
here is the scary detail:
it tends to make people think
they're less aggressive
than they really are.
Fundamentalists in particular report
higher levels of altruism
towards everybody
but in reality they are
more willing to help friends
or like-minded individuals.
They're not as likely to help strangers
or what is sometimes called
'value violators',
perhaps like a homosexual or
something like that,
that is clearly on the wrong side
of the divide on some culture war issue.
We have to remember again
that everyone tends
to overestimate
how moral they actually are.
So, this is really common to find a gap
between how individuals predict
they'll behave
and how they actually behave.
If we were to take everybody in this
room we would probably
see the exact same phenomena.
We are no different.
It's just that the fact
seems to be more pronounced
in religious populations.
As we said before, highly religious do
show a greater tendency
towards self-enhancement
on questionnaires and this disjunction
between self-reported measured behavior
is actually wider in the religious
than in the rest of the population.
In fact the greatest gap
we can see
between altruistic beliefs and
altruistic behaviors
is actually found
in those who rate religion
as more important to them personally.
What's funny is that sometimes
the experimental evidence
is so contrary
to our stereotypes about religion
that some researchers
put a spin on this conclusion.
What they're publishing
is showing no positive effect for religion
but their abstracts or the way
they interpret the data
speaks in glowing terms. For example
this particular study here.
McCullough & Worthington in 1999 said that
"Even if religious people
are no more facile
at forgiving in real life situations
than are less religious people,
they do you desire to be forgiving and
go on about how great it is that they
want to be good forgiving people."
I'd like to argue to you that praising
the leaders for their moral intentions
kind of misses the point.
It's not that we just desire to be
better - and that's good -
in some cases they already
think they're superior.
And there are major dangers in having an unrealistic assessment
of one's own character and limits
Let's move on to a different type of study:
religious priming studies.
Although religious individuals do not seem
to behave as morally as they report,
it would still be very odd.
I personally would find it strange
if religion didn't have some impact
on moral behavior.
After all, scriptures and sermons abound
with exhortations to love thy neighbor,
to do unto others
as you would have them do onto you
and I think frequent exposure
to these messages
would result in pro-social behaviors.
So priming studies are a useful way
of seeving this out.
Again participants are primed somehow.
Maybe they have to unscramble
a word bank
and it has religious words in it.
Or perhaps they have to read
a portion of Scripture
and write a response to it.
Sometimes it can be really subtle:
symbols in the room,
a crucifix in the room,
jewelry or clothing.
Sometimes it's just the context.
Conducting the experiment in a
church instead of,
say, a high school gymnasium
or something like that.
Well the good news of priming studies
is that this is the best evidence
we can find for the religious
pro-sociality hypothesis.
There's a lot of data supporting it.
There are good studies
showing greater honesty and generosity
amongst the religious,
increased sharing,
increased cooperation,
better self-control in distressing situations
and greater resistance to temptation.
So why are religious concepts so good at
priming these kinds of behavior?
Several studies cited a possible
mechanism here.
'Supernatural surveillance' they called it.
The belief that one's actions
are constantly and inescapably
being observed by a divine being.
Thinking that this is a strong
reminder to us
to be aware of our actions
and perhaps that's why
religious concepts prime
these pro-social behaviors.
God might be watching after all.
But I wont to share
some curious details
that aren't as often shared
in these priming studies.
Neutral religious works
like Bible, the Cycle ????
or Chapel don't seem to promote
any helping behavior.
It seems to be only positive words
like heaven, miracle or bless
that have that effect on people.
Even more interesting
the positive effects
don't seem to be dependent
on the participants level of religiosity.
You can be just kind of religious
or you could be a hardcore fundamentalist
and the priming affects you the same way.
Also, non-religious people respond
positively to religious primes
and to the exact same degree
as their religious counterparts.
If you were to look at all those symbols,
you would act more morally too.
Even more interesting:
priming secular concepts, like civil
or court, seem to have
the same power to promote
honesty or lower hypocrisy
as religious primes do.
And religious destructive atheists:
the distrust they have for us
goes down
when the religious are primed
with concepts of secular authority.
That's really interesting.
Why would that possibly be?
Well, one idea, not exactly sure,
but one idea is that the leaders know
that atheists do not live their lives
as if God is watching them.
So without the supernatural monitoring
they may wonder
what reason we have
for behaving well.
But this distrust can be ameliorated
when we are reminded
that morality can be
monitored in different ways.
So these kind of pacific primes
remind everybody;
"Oh wait, there is a social order,
there is something keeping these
evil atheists in check." And so their negative impressions go down.
Amazingly even the presence of a mirror
or just pictures of eyes in the laboratory
will actually have these same effects
which actually really boost
that notion of supernatural surveillance.
Obviously this has implications
for the religious pro-sociality hypothesis.
Religious concepts do not seem
to prime pro-social behavior like honesty
because they're religious.
It may be that any concepts that are
associated with morality in a particular
culture trigger greater concern
for protecting your reputation.
Again since there's a widespread
cultural stereotype
that religion is linked to morality here,
religious concepts will activate moral
behavior, but as we pointed out
secular primes do just as well.
While the positive effects
of religious priming
are the stuff of headlines, what you don't
usually hear about is the dark side
of religious primes.
Numerous studies demonstrate
that socially undesirable behaviors
also manifest when subjects
are exposed to religious messages.
So for example, participants
who read passages from the Bible
depicting God sanctioned violence,
administer more electrical shocks
than the control group
in studies of aggression.
We should note this works
on non-believers as well.
Even a non-believer reading
those passages from the Bible
will also become more vicious
in their behaviors toward somebody.
It's just that the effect seems to
be more pronounced for believers.
Especially disturbing is this subgroup
of religious believers
high in intrinsic religiosity
and also high in levels of submissiveness.
This group was very disturbing
because they became the most vengeful
after being primed with religious words.
They really seemed to go off the rails.
So I guess what I'm saying is:
it doesn't affect all people equally.
Certain personality characteristics
come into play here too
to either aggravate
or kind of mute these responses.
I'd like to share this study real quick.
Experiments where people were assigned
to read the biblical version
of the golden rule
actually had no effect on diminishing
Christians’ homophobia.
So, negative attitudes
towards homosexuals
were not at all diminished
by reading what we think
is a very positive prime,
right, the golden rule. Strangely enough
reading the Buddhist version
of the golden rule actually increased
their homophobic responses.
If they read another religious text
telling them to be merciful
and do onto others as you would have
them to do want to them,
they wanted to do that even less.
This is perhaps
because the moral imperative
was coming from this
distrusted out-group source.
Likewise unscrambling words associated
with Christianity increased
racial prejudice
towards african-americans
that was found by Johnson,
lead author Johnson in 2010.
And attitudes toward all out-group
members became more negative
when experiments were conducted
in a church setting rather than
than in a civic context.
This is a strange paradox
we're looking at here.
Religious priming seems to increase
both pro-social behaviors like honesty and
sharing, and non pro-social behaviors
like aggression and prejudice. This will
make more sense I think to us when we
consider another curious,
but consistent finding in this literature
that the kindness of religious individuals
is typically not
extended universally to everyone.
Instead the primary beneficiaries
of a religious pro-sociality
are usually other believers. This can be
most clearly seen in economic games.
So, to save a little bit of time
I'm not going to go into how all of
these games work, but they basically
start with people trading or exchanging money.
Those games are designed
to encourage cooperation and trust.
So basically
if the players work together,
they will both get further along,
but one player
might have the opportunity to make off
with more money if they deceive or lie
or cheat the other players.
So this is all trying
to assess cooperation, trust,
giving, that sort of thing.
The economic games shown
in behavioral economic studies where
the religiosity of the participants is none.
- so we actually know what they are -
a general trend emerges:
religious individuals cooperate more
and give more money
than non-religious participants.
So they do that overall.
They give more and they trust more
than the non-religious.
The pro-sociality hypothesis is true.
It's just has that twist:
they only give it to those
who share their religious identity.
For example this study, Ahmed, 2009
found the clergy students
exchanged greater money offers
than non clergy students,
but only to those from their own
religious group.
These findings are almost,
well, they are most likely due
to that previous phenomenon
we mentioned of in-group favoritism.
But there also might be something else
going on here. This might be that
pro-religious cultural stereotype
happening again, because notice:
non-religious participants
did not show the same in-group favoritism
in those economic games.
They also trusted
religious participants more
than their non-religious peers
and allocated more money to them overall,
even though that money
would not be reciprocated.
Yeah, it's amazing
how ingrained that stereotype is.
This pattern of preferential treatment
is not limited
to behavioral economic studies.
It constitutes a general trend
across the entire literature.
In fact a new word had to be coined
just to explain it.
One researcher who is very popular in
this by the name of Saroglou
coined the term "minimal prosociality",
meaning the greater helping on the part of
the religious that extended to friends
an in-group members
but not too out-group members
who threatened religious values.
So, I guess the correct way to say it
or was consistent with most of the evidence
in these economic games
are that religious people
are ‘minimally pro-social’.
And actually if we take this idea
of limited pro-sociality seriously
it explains a lot of other trends
that we see in the data.
For example across different cultures
we see that religiosity
is weakly but still positively correlated
with the value of benevolence,
charity, helping people out
and yet at the same time is negatively
related with the value of universalism,
helping out, you know, your neighbor,
your stranger,
the Good Samaritan, that type of thing.
Again it seems like a contradiction,
but when you take the idea of limited
or minimal pro-sociality seriously,
it tends to make more sense.
It's that in-group favoritism again.
Also it might explain things
like why religious primes
increase ethnic prejudice
and derogation of out-group members,
because religious concepts activated
in-group bias in people's minds.
This also plays through
religious research on giving.
This one conclusion
I'm not as sure about,
but it is very clear that religious
organizations themselves
are the largest source of charitable giving.
Religious people give way more to charity
than the non-religious and that finding
has held up across the board.
But as other studies note,
many of the recipients of these,
even ones that are labeled secular,
tend to be religious
or some religious organization.
So all this money is exchanging hands
within the in-group.
This would be really
interesting one to test
if we can tease out that in-group favoritism
would we still see a charity gap
between the non-religious
and the religious? We might, actually I
suspect, we probably would
and for this reason
there's another aspect
to religious charitable giving,
and that is generosity
measured as a function
of religious importance
was smaller than those measured as a
variation in religious attendance.
That is church attendance
seems to be the key factor
in how much a religious person will give.
If you actually
measure religiosity by belief,
how much conviction do you have
that God exists
we'll see that
that predicts giving to a lesser degree
then church attendance.
I think what's going on here is
when you're actually in the building,
you're given an opportunity
to give, right?
The plate is passed around
and there's social pressure for you
to put something in that plate.
I still think the religious should get
credit for this, but they get credit for
building institutions
that support charitable giving.
It may not be the belief,
the religious belief,
that's really motivating this behavior.
So I guess that kind of brings up
an interesting question here.
How actually are we measuring religiosity
because, as we just saw,
depending on how we measured it,
we might get different effects.
Typically the methodology
that's employed here is to compare
a general population of people
to highly religious people
and weekly religious people.
And then the atheists agnostics
or all the nones, we call them,
those who declare no religious affiliation,
are mixed into that sample as well.
There are different ways
again of measuring
intrinsically religiosity as I
mentioned is a measure
of metaphysical belief or commitment.
Extrinsic religiosity, as I call it,
is often a measure of behavior,
how often do you pray,
engage in rituals.
That sometimes includes another way
that is measured
is measuring religiosity purely
through church attendance alone.
So whenever you see a study
that says religious people are better
at XYZ, the next question you should ask is;
"Better compared to whom?"
And the reason is:
how one measures religiosity
has a major impact on your findings.
For example, frequent church attendance
has been linked
to modestly lower rates of mental
illness such as depression,
but the effect is negligible
when you measure
religiosity as strength of belief.
Again, people have better mental health
because they're
in a congregation of people, they have a
support social support network,
like-minded people to talk to. The belief
doesn't seem to be as important.
Studies that control
for purely social factors
find a greatly diminished
or non-existent effect
of religious beliefs
on pro-social measures.
So you can see how we measure religion
and who we compare our groups to
is very important in this debate.
Most frequently
the strongest pro-social effects
are associated with church attendance
and social contacts
rather than just metaphysical belief.
So it appears that group affiliation
drives many of these behaviors.
Could a committed secular group
- like this one right here -
have effect on its membership
similar to that of a church?
In this book that I mentioned earlier -
unfortunately it's buried on page 472 -
you have to get
through all the good stuff
to finally see this qualification,
but Robert Putnam mentions
"even an atheist
who happens to become
involved in the social life
of a congregation is much more likely
to volunteer at a soup kitchen
then the most fervent believer who prays alone."
And then it goes on to say
- or slightly before that on page 465 -
he says: "Religious belief turns out to be
utterly irrelevant to explaining the religious
as in good neighbourliness."
That should've been on page 1.
But both reviewers in that book
didn't get that far.
You can guess how it was depicted
in the popular press.
In fact that's a major problem.
The problem with most studies is
that they are lumping all nonbelievers
together, without considering how
confident they are in their non-belief,
whether or not they attend groups
like you do right here,
how involved they are
with the community overall.
They're just all dumped
into one pool: the non-religious.
And then they're compared with weekly
religious and highly religious,
typically highly religious people
who are in a church context.
When you do that, you do get
what's called a linear effect.
If pro-social, being happy, healthy
and more helpful is all on this axis,
and religiosity on this one,
we would see as religiosity rises
the more religious you get,
the more happy, helpful
and honest you are as an individual.
But what we're kind of doing is
we're cutting off half of our sample.
The few studies that compare
highly religious people
with the confidently non-religious
actually show
what's called a curvilinear effect
between religiosity and pro-sociality.
To explain what's going on
with this curvilinear effect,
- I should have had noticed, but I didn't -
Essentially what we do, what we've
done is we've expanded our sample.
So before the atheists and agnostics and
humanists were getting lost in this side of
the curve now we brought it out
and we actually see that it's the
less confident, the weekly religious,
the weekly secular in the middle
that tend to have poor
ratings on pro-social measures.
Oh, here's what I was looking for.
Nominal believers,
not atheists, show the highest levels
of depression actually,
the poorest mental health
and they generally report
less satisfaction with life.
And fact is, this is true of the
cross-cultural data on this too.
The world value survey found that both
those who claim religion is very important
and those who claim
that it wasn't important at all,
tended to be the happiest.
So curvilinear effects
are also found in the moral realm,
for example physicians, Doctors
Without Borders and that sort of thing
highest membership is going to be
highly religious and totally atheist.
This is true when
Milgrams famous obedience trials
- if you're familiar with those studies -
where we get to see
just how much will somebody
obey the experimenter.
When those were replicated,
it was the extreme believers
and the extreme non-believers
that were most likely to disobey the
researchers unethical orders.
So actually being highly
religious or highly non-religious
seems to give you a little
bit more moral integrity.
Part of the hypothesis
why this might be is because
these pools of individuals, they're so
certain of their world view
that they're not as kicked around
by the pressure of social conformity as others.
So it appears that confidence in one's worldview
and regular affiliation with like minded people
are far more important to well-being
and moral integrity
than your particular beliefs
about metaphysics. Sorry guys,
even some non-believers are sad to hear
that sometimes, they want to believe that
believing the right thing, having the
right grasp on reality
will make you a better person
and it doesn't seem that metaphysical
beliefs are all that important.
But sadly studies are not designed to
notice curvilinear effects a lot of times
And when they aren't, they can give
the impression that atheists are in danger
of poor physical or mental health
and this is exactly what we see with the military's spiritual fitness scale, that they have.
I don't know if anybody has
ever heard of that?
The US military has a spiritual fitness
dimension in their instrument
that they use to assess
a soldier's wellness and mental health.
And they conclude that soldiers
have the greatest resiliency
when they are spiritual,
when they are religious
and this has prompted
some superior officers
to go find their underlings
who are non-religious
and to pressure them into prayer meetings
and other religious services, right,
because it's bad for their health.
They might be in a suicide risk.
However though an examination of the
actual question items on the spirituality scale
shows a major flaw in the way
these concepts are measured.
And it's going to be my last major point
about how this research is conducted.
"Criterion contamination"
this is where the pro-sociality literature
defines spirituality in a way
that kind of begs the question.
So for example, usually when we
make a prediction
of some sort of criterion, you want the
items used in the prediction
to not contain elements
of what is being predicted.
If you flip the conclusion
and you put it in your premise,
you're arguing in a circle, right?
But yet we see
this happen all the time,
we see the reverse
happening all the time.
For example this right here.
Religiously engaged individuals
have greater social networks,
but religious engagement
was defined by having church social contacts.
So really all this is saying
- I mean it sounds really good, right? -
Doesn't it? Wow? Religious
engagement really benefits us.
All this is saying, is;
"Socially engaged religious people
are socially engaged religious people."
That is all that is said .
Many spirituality scales measure concepts
that do not necessarily refer
to supernatural believes either.
For example, these are all the things
that will get you a high rating as a
spiritual person on these fitness scales.
"I believe there is
a larger meaning to life.
It's important for me
to give something back to my community."
If you answer yes to that,
you're labeled as religious on this scale.
"I believe that humanity
as a whole is basically good."
If you have a positive humanistic outlook,
you might say you're going to score
on that spirituality scale too.
"I'm concerned about those
who will come after me in life."
So numerous studies including this
military spiritual fitness assessment
claims to demonstrate that religiosity is
related to pro-social outcomes,
but they are really
just criterion contamination effects.
Having pro-social traits here
is what defines being religious.
Just begging the question.
And as we know many atheists
with a broader sense of meaning
would score ‘spiritual’ on these same scales.
This artificially inflates the apparent
relationship between religiosity
or spirituality and these positive
pro-social outcomes.
All right.
So, tying it all together.
The question; “Does religion make us
better?” actually doesn't admit
of a simple answer. You've already seen
evidence showing: "yes and no"
or "yes in particular ways and no and other
particular ways".
Unfortunately this stuff just doesn't
work in a sound bite
and we live in a sound-bite culture.
The conclusion one reaches depends
on the measure of religiosity being used;
the way pro-sociality is defined.
We have to be cognizant of a host of
complicating factors if we're going to be accurate.
Really this is like a minefield for a critical thinker.
Even the most experienced critical thinker
is going to run into problems
with how complex this data is.
So we came up with 10 questions for
thinking critically about religious pro-sociality
that will help people in the future
to think more carefully about these studies.
Number 1: has the research controlled
for the possibility that stereotypes
- such as the expectation that
religious individuals will be more pro-social -
have those stereotypes affected
self-reports and ratings?
2: Are the results based on evidence
that have been compromised
by in-group favoritism or bias?
3: When pro-social effects follow
the priming of religious concepts,
will those same effects follow secular prime?
That's a great one
for the priming study.
Number 4: is the study also able
to detect potential negative
as well as positive effects
for religious primes?
5: Is the research based on self-reports
or does it also measures actual behaviors?
If it doesn't measure actual behaviors,
it's worthless.
6: could the context of this study have
an impact on the results? For example,
would this study get the same results in
the United States as opposed to
other nations in Northern Europe that
are predominately non-religious?
7: are the results solely attributable to
religious belief itself
or is there a group affiliation effect
going on?
If church attending believers are compared to non church attenders,
the sources of any differences
might be unclear.
Number 8: does the study conflate non-believe with low religiosity
or do we have a clear measure
of the non-believers?
By the way, for we gonna fulfill number 8
we need more research on secularists.
So we need more researchers willing
to study communities like this
and answer surveys and that sort of things.
If you ever see those things pop up in your inbox.
Please take'm.
You will help us all.
Number 9: do the religious groups
under comparison allow
for an examination of curvilinear effects?
That is, if you're comparing a church group,
you got to compare it with an equal group like this.
Number 10: has religion or spirituality
been defined in a way that
would also include
pro-social behavior
just from the definition?
I think if you watch for those things
you're going to have a leg up
on most other people who are paying attention
to this particular research.
I hope you got something out of that.
I hope that brings a little more clarity
to this often confusing debate
and a last thing I just wont to put
in another plug for my podcast:
if you happen to enjoy what you heart tonight,
found it enlightening at all,
both I and the author of the
the Psych Review, Luke Galen,
we both work
on this podcast "Reasonable Doubts",
you can find it at doubtcast.org.
It is one of the most informationally dense
podcasts you'll find
that still manages to be funny from time to time.
I thank you very much.
(Applause)
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