[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Joe Rogan on Tucker Carlson and Ukraine Aid

Joe Rogan on 62 year-old soldier with one arm, one eye

Jordan Peterson On China's Social Credit Controls

Senator Kennedy Exposes Bad Jusge

Jewish Land Grab

Trump Taps Dr. Marty Makary, Fierce Opponent of COVID Vaccine Mandates, as New FDA Commissioner

Recovering J6 Prisoner James Grant, Tells-All About Bidens J6 Torture Chamber, Needs Immediate Help After Release

AOC: Keeping Men Out Of Womens Bathrooms Is Endangering Women

What Donald Trump Has Said About JFK's Assassination

Horse steals content from Sara Fischer and Sophia Cai and pretends he is the author

Horse steals content from Jonas E. Alexis and claims it as his own.

Trump expected to shake up White House briefing room

Ukrainians have stolen up to half of US aid ex-Polish deputy minister

Gaza doctor raped, tortured to death in Israeli custody, new report reveals

German Lutheran Church Bans AfD Members From Committees, Calls Party 'Anti-Human'

Berlin Teachers Sound Alarm Over Educational Crisis Caused By Multiculturalism

Trump Hosts Secret Global Peace Summit at Mar-a-Lago!

Heat Is Radiating From A Huge Mass Under The Moon

Elon Musk Delivers a Telling Response When Donald Trump Jr. Suggests

FBI recovers funds for victims of scammed banker

Mark Felton: Can Russia Attack Britain?

Notre Dame Apologizes After Telling Hockey Fans Not To Wear Green, Shamrocks, 'Fighting Irish'

Dear Horse, which one of your posts has the Deep State so spun up that's causing 4um to run slow?

Bomb Cyclone Pacific Northwest

Death Certificates Reveal FBI 'Revised' Murder Stats Still Bogus

A $110B bubble on $500M earnings. History warns: Bubbles always burst.

Joy Behar says people like their show because they tell the truth, unlike "dragon believer" Joe Rogan.

Male Passenger Disappointed After Another Flight Ends Without A Stewardess Frantically Asking If Anyone Can Land The Plane

Could the Rapid Growth of AI Boost Gold Demand?

LOOK AT MY ASS!


Religion
See other Religion Articles

Title: Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430140035.htm
Published: Apr 30, 2012
Author: staff
Post Date: 2012-05-01 05:21:47 by Tatarewicz
Keywords: None
Views: 413
Comments: 22

ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2012) — "Love thy neighbor" is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious.

"Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not," said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. "The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns."

Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost.

While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others. However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious counterparts.

"We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts generous behavior," said study lead author Laura Saslow, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco, said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.

"I was interested to find that this experience -- an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers -- was replicated in three large, systematic studies," Saslow said.

In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with such statements as "When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them" were also more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.

When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead: "These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals," the study found.

In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 "lab dollars" and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger. The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.

"The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity," Willer said. "But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants."

In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played "economic trust games" in which they were given money to share -- or not -- with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled in amount.

Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers than other participants in the study.

"Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people," Willer said.

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.

#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)

For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Nonsense - poopaganda - pure shit - published by the mind fuckers themselves - a cult of psycho-babble.

noone222  posted on  2012-05-01   5:29:02 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 1.

#14. To: noone222 (#1) (Edited)

For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Nonsense - poopaganda - pure shit - published by the mind fuckers themselves - a cult of psycho-babble.

It is interesting in that one of the most hostile groups toward religion has been Psychiatry and Psychology. Part of the problem is that the Psychs are materialists whose faith is founded upon a reverence for matter over spirit. In other words their entire worldview is founded in the belief that all life and existence emanates from physical matter, despite there being no proof and thus it is rightly named faith or quackery - your choice, and so they reject and even deny the existence of the non-material i.e., the spiritual - that quantity we call the human soul or more generally the life force. Since it conflicts with their assumptions, rather than to rationally explore it, they reject it out of hand and then falsely call that unexplored rejection science.

"In short, the nature of the hallucinations of Jesus, as they are described in the orthodox Gospels, permits us to conclude that the founder of the Christian religion was afflicted with religious paranoia." Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Binet-Sangle: La Folie de Jesus (The Madness of Jesus), 1910

"No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started… It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind." John B. Watson, behavioral psychologist

Or it's rejection comes from the general intellectual laziness and dishonesty of Psychology and Psychiatry.

Note the materialist bias in the next:

"This dogma (the soul) has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched the soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into a relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience." John B. Watson, behavioral psychologist

"The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them." Statement delivered at the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University

"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas..." G. Brock Chisholm, psychiatrist and co-founder of the World Federation of Mental Health

Original_Intent  posted on  2012-05-01 14:43:20 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: noone222, Tatz, 4 (#1)

Nonsense - poopaganda - pure shit - published by the mind fuckers themselves - a cult of psycho-babble.

Agree.

The term highly religious has no real meaning.

I'd much rather associate with spiritual, rather than religious, people.

That's just me.

Lod  posted on  2012-05-01 17:43:38 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest


[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]