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- March 15, 2010
- 06:02 PM
- 34 views
Altruism has 3 degrees of separation
One of the mysteries of human behaviour is why we sometimes act with completely selfless altruism. When asked to play totally anonymous games in which we can cheat without anyone else ever finding out, very often we don't.Instead, we play the game fairly, which results in a cost to ourselves (compared with what we could've had) and a benefit to the stranger. That's a mystery because a evolution says that organisms which don't act to maximise benefit to themselves - whatever the cost to others -........ Read more »
Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2010) Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913149107
- March 12, 2010
- 05:55 PM
- 63 views
Can going to church change your views of god?
Christians don't agree on the nature of their god. Their different ideas are many and varied, but one broad way of looking at it is that they tend to believe either in a personal god (one who takes an active, day-to-day interest in people's lives and also intervenes), or an impersonal, distant god (the sort of god who lights the blue touch paper at the moment of creation and then retires to a safe distance).So who believes in what kind of god? Well, that's the topic of a recent paper by Scott Sc........ Read more »
Schieman, S. (2010) Socioeconomic Status and Beliefs about God's Influence in Everyday Life. Sociology of Religion, 71(1), 25-51. DOI: 10.1093/socrel/srq004
- March 8, 2010
- 05:20 PM
- 58 views
People who are more anxious go to church more often and are less anxious (or something...)
Are religious people more, or less, anxious? The problem's not as simple as it sounds. In general, religion is supposed to make people less anxious. But, partly for this reason, the people who turn to religion are more anxious to start with. What's more, all religions may not be the same, and different aspects of religion might have different effects.It's a surprisingly under-researched topic, but a couple of new papers have looked into it. The one in this post is from Northern Ireland and I'll ........ Read more »
Lewis, C., Shevlin, M., Francis, L., & Quigley, C. (2010) The Association Between Church Attendance and Psychological Health in Northern Ireland: A National Representative Survey Among Adults Allowing for Sex Differences and Denominational Difference. Journal of Religion and Health. DOI: 10.1007/s10943-010-9321-3
- March 4, 2010
- 05:15 PM
- 105 views
Atheists are disagreeable and unconscientious
A new analysis comparing the personalities of religious and less religious people has found that religiosity is generally linked to agreeableness and conscientiousness. Well, that's the headline. To understand why this might be, you need to dig into the details of the study.Vassilis Saroglou, a leading expert in personality and religious psychology research, has done what's called a meta-analysis - statistically combing the results of dozens of older studies to discern the average. He looked at ........ Read more »
Saroglou, V. (2009) Religiousness as a Cultural Adaptation of Basic Traits: A Five-Factor Model Perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 108-125. DOI: 10.1177/1088868309352322
- March 1, 2010
- 05:07 PM
- 123 views
Is this why atheists are, on average, more intelligent?
There's a new paper out by Satoshi Kanazawa which is causing a bit of a stir. You might have seen something about it already - I'm a little behind the curve on this one, but on the plus side I have actually read the paper, unlike many other pundits!What's got people talking is the correlation between atheism and intelligence, although that isn't what the paper is actually about. It's already pretty well established that atheists tend, on average, to be more intelligent. This paper firms that fin........ Read more »
Kanazawa, S. (2010) Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent. Social Psychology Quarterly. DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602
- February 25, 2010
- 07:01 PM
- 102 views
A personal god boosts the placebo effect
The placebo effect is that spooky phenomenon that can cure people simply by convincing them they're getting real medicine (whereas they in fact are just taking a sugar pill). Although it's been reported in all sorts of areas of medicine, it's particularly potent for treating things like irritable bowel syndrome, pain, and depression.In fact, a recent analysis found that most of the effect of antidepressant medicine in people with depression was in fact due to the placebo effect (but the effect........ Read more »
Murphy, P., & Fitchett, G. (2009) Belief in a concerned god predicts response to treatment for adults with clinical depression. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(9), 1000-1008. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20598
- February 23, 2010
- 04:55 PM
- 79 views
Should we entrust children to the care of the devoutly religious?
The Catholic Church is in the news again - this time in Germany - as a result paedophile priests being outed after years of cover-ups. Traditionally, we have entrusted vulnerable children to the care of the devoutly religious, on the grounds that, of all people, they can be relied upon not to abuse those in their care. Does that assumption hold up? We can't extrapolate too wildly from the particular problems of the Catholic Church, but there are other data out there.So I took a look at the evide........ Read more »
Eshuys, D., & Smallbone, S. (2006) Religious Affiliations Among Adult Sexual Offenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 18(3), 279-288. DOI: 10.1007/s11194-006-9020-5
Ben-David S, & Weller L. (1995) Religiosity, criminality and types of offences of Jewish male prisoners. Medicine and law, 14(7-8), 509-19. PMID: 8667998
Stout-Miller, R., Miller, L., & Langenbrunner, M. (1998) Religiosity and Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor Assessment. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 6(4), 15-34. DOI: 10.1300/J070v06n04_02
- February 20, 2010
- 03:40 PM
- 110 views
How come Intelligence, religion, and fertility are linked?
Here's a new study looking at the connection between religion, fertility, and IQ at a national level. We know from previous studies that countries where people are, on average, more religious also tend to have higher average fertility and lower average IQ.The problem is that we also know that countries that have lower average IQ also have higher fertility. So teasing out the two factors is not obvious.This is what Charlie Reeve (University of North Carolina Charlotte) has investigated.What he fo........ Read more »
Reeve, C. (2009) Expanding the g-nexus: Further evidence regarding the relations among national IQ, religiosity and national health outcomes☆. Intelligence, 37(5), 495-505. DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2009.06.003
- February 15, 2010
- 04:55 PM
- 82 views
Religion makes you a fat non-smoker
You might have seen news reports about a recent study showing that religious people are no healthier than non-religious. The cynical among you might be wondering what on Earth's going on here, given that other studies have shown the opposite! A classic example of scientists proving whatever they want to, perhaps?Well, no. There's a good reason that this study has found something different, and that's because it's not asking quite the same question.You see, working out the relationship between re........ Read more »
Feinstein M, Liu K, Ning H, Fitchett G, & Lloyd-Jones DM. (2010) Burden of cardiovascular risk factors, subclinical atherosclerosis, and incident cardiovascular events across dimensions of religiosity: the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis. Circulation, 121(5), 659-66. PMID: 20100975
- February 11, 2010
- 04:57 PM
- 79 views
The brain surgery path to transcendence
Transcendence: the belief that you are connected in ineffable ways to the world around you, that you are not limited by your body but can go beyond it in mysterious ways.The feeling of transcendence seems to be linked to the right parietal lobe. Brain scans of meditating Buddhist monks show decreased activity in this area, and people with brain damage in the region report feeling more spiritual.Now a new study has taken a closer look in patients undergoing surgery for brain tumours. Using a sens........ Read more »
Urgesi, C., Aglioti, S., Skrap, M., & Fabbro, F. (2010) The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence. Neuron, 65(3), 309-319. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.01.026
- February 8, 2010
- 06:02 PM
- 114 views
Be religious and be free (or at least, let off with a lighter sentence)
Cherie Booth was in the news this week for giving a suspended prison sentence to a man who broke another guy's jaw in an assault, apparently on the grounds that he was religious. Here's the offending quote: “I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before," she told him at Inner London Crown Court. "You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at L........ Read more »
Heaton, P. (2006) Does Religion Really Reduce Crime?*. The Journal of Law and Economics, 49(1), 147-172. DOI: 10.1086/501087
- February 5, 2010
- 04:58 PM
- 99 views
Does prayer make you more forgiving... and why?
Widely reported earlier this week was a study on prayer and forgiveness. It's by the same crew that gave us the study last year on prayer and gratitude, and has (broadly speaking) the same methodological concerns (it only recruited students who already pray, and uses measures that are difficult to interpret).But, fair doos, this is an interventional study of the effects of prayer that is basically sound, and the authors deserve kudos for trying to assess this unfashionable area. So what did it s........ Read more »
Lambert, N., Fincham, F., Stillman, T., Graham, S., & Beach, S. (2009) Motivating Change in Relationships: Can Prayer Increase Forgiveness?. Psychological Science, 21(1), 126-132. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609355634
- February 2, 2010
- 03:36 PM
- 90 views
Bound to happen (especially if you're an Asian Christian)
Christians tend to be more fatalistic than the non-religious, which is not altogether surprising. In a post earlier this month I reviewed a study showing one of the consequences of that fatalism.This post is about an altogether weirder aspect of fatalism!It comes from a study by Ara Norenzayan (University of British Columbia) and Albert Lee (Queen's University, Ontario). They looked at religious students and found, lo and behold, they were more fatalistic than non-religious students.They also lo........ Read more »
Norenzayan, A., & Lee, A. (2010) It was meant to happen: Explaining cultural variations in fate attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. info:/
- January 30, 2010
- 05:02 PM
- 132 views
Bible belter
News this week that Pope John Paul II (that's the one just before the current one) used to spend his down-time whipping himself with a belt:As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself. In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel GandolfoAnyone familiar with the Catholic faith will know that this kind of behaviour........ Read more »
Henrich, J. (2009) The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religioncredibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(4), 244-260. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.005
- January 26, 2010
- 05:13 PM
- 137 views
Be religious and live forever!
OK, so the headline's a touch optimistic. Sadly we are all going to die some day, believers and non-believers alike. But, if you have the right kind of beliefs about god, you might at least be able to persuade yourself that you're not going to die.And those beliefs are? Fatalistic ones. In a survey of some 300 elderly Philadelphians, Laraine Winter and colleagues found that a high level of deference to God's will were linked to preferences for heroic medical interventions in hopeless cases.So, f........ Read more »
Winter L, Dennis MP, & Parker B. (2009) Preferences for life-prolonging medical treatments and deference to the will of god. Journal of religion and health, 48(4), 418-30. PMID: 19890718
Ai AL, Park CL, & Shearer M. (2008) Spiritual and religious involvement relate to end-of-life decision-making in patients undergoing coronary bypass graft surgery. International journal of psychiatry in medicine, 38(1), 113-32. PMID: 18624023
- January 19, 2010
- 04:04 PM
- 148 views
Bible done be the Word of God!
Religious fundamentalists in the US have got poor verbal skills. That's not too surprising given that they also tend to be poor and uneducated. What is surprising is that, even taking all this into account (and much more besides), they still come out worse than you'd expect.Darren Sherkat (Southern Illinois University), has analysed data from the General Social Survey, which is a regular US survey on a wide variety of topics - including (in some years) a test of verbal skills.The effect is prett........ Read more »
Sherkat, D. (2010) Religion and verbal ability☆. Social Science Research, 39(1), 2-13. DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.05.007
- January 12, 2010
- 05:45 PM
- 23 views
Religion makes you desirable... in the USA but not in Britain
The previous post took a look at some recent research on how competition for mates affects how religious people say they are. When a group of students in the US were subtly reminded that there's a lot of competition for potential mates, they responded by claiming to be more religious. One potential explanation for this is simply that being religious is seen as socially desirable.If this were true, then you would expect that people who are inclined to 'self enhance' (i.e. paint a rather flatterin........ Read more »
Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. (2009) Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Review. DOI: 10.1177/1088868309351002
- January 12, 2010
- 05:00 PM
- 150 views
Religion makes you look good... in the USA but not in Britain
The previous post took a look at some recent research on how competition for mates affects how religious people say they are. When a group of students in the US were subtly reminded that there's a lot of competition for potential mates, they responded by claiming to be more religious. One potential explanation for this is simply that being religious is seen as socially desirable.If this were true, then you would expect that people who are inclined to 'self enhance' (i.e. paint a rather flatterin........ Read more »
Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. (2009) Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Review. DOI: 10.1177/1088868309351002
- January 9, 2010
- 05:30 PM
- 186 views
Get religion and get laid
Humans adapt their mating strategies according to what they think their chances are. For example, when there are more men than women, people marry earlier and divorce less. When there are more women, the opposite applies. The supposition is that this this is because, when women are in a 'buyers market' they are more able to demand fidelity.What's more, when women are shown an array of attractive, promiscuous women, they're more likely to reject the notion that casual sex is OK.How does religion ........ Read more »
Li, Y., Cohen, A., Weeden, J., & Kenrick, D. (2009) Mating competitors increase religious beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.017
- January 6, 2010
- 05:15 PM
- 162 views
Atonement, self-punishment, and guilt
Atonement is a funny concept. Essentially, it's the idea that you can cancel out a wrongdoing not by doing a good deed, but by engaging in some act of self-punishment.Although the classic example comes from Christianity (the tortured death of Jesus) similar concepts of penance are widespread in other religions. Penance goes beyond the more normal concepts of justice (revenge and punishment) because it's voluntary.Perhaps there's more going on here than meets the eye. Rob Nelissen and Marcel Zeel........ Read more »
Nelissen RM, & Zeelenberg M. (2009) When guilt evokes self-punishment: evidence for the existence of a Dobby Effect. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 9(1), 118-22. PMID: 19186924
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