TruthBook Religious News Blog

Religion's link to altruism grows from a believer's desire to look good in God's eyes, a new study finds
By J. Peder Zane - Staff Writer
Published: Thu, Dec. 25, 2008

After analyzing three decades of research, Canadian scholars have concluded that religion can make people more honest while inspiring them to help people they don't know, even when that exacts a personal cost.

While most people are willing to put themselves out for their families, their friends and even their country, religion makes them more likely to make sacrifices for strangers, to engage in what the authors call "prosocial" behaviors.

"Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers," University of British Columbia social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff report in the journal Science. "Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religion and greater trust."

It is not empathy or compassion that makes the religious more likely to do unto others, the authors conclude, but a heightened concern about their own reputation. It is this "egoistic" desire to look good in the eyes of others or to avoid feelings of guilt that drives their admirable conduct.

To illustrate this, they cite a classic good Samaritan study. In this experiment, a lone subject lay on the ground in obvious need of attention. As prescreened people passed by on their way to participate in another study, researchers noted who stopped to lend a hand.

"Recorded offers of help," the authors write, "showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context."

On the other hand, in experiments where people's actions were not anonymous, where they were seen and judged by others, the religious were more likely to do the right thing. This helps explain studies that have found that believers tend to be more charitable than atheists -- more likely, for example, to donate blood or give money to the homeless.

The definition of ethicseth

The key dynamic in play here is the age-old definition of ethics: It's not what you do when everybody is watching but how you act when nobody is.

The religious, the authors contend, are more likely to be good in certain situations because they believe they are being watched by an omnipresent eye in the sky.

"The cognitive awareness of gods is likely to heighten prosocial reputation concerns among believers," they write. Even when no people are around, they want to look good in the eyes of God.

The Science paper also reports that the mention of religious ideas encourages truthfulness. When students were asked to unscramble faith-based words before taking a test, they were less likely to cheat. They were also more generous when religious ideas were invoked before experiments involving money.

Labels: altruism, Ara Norenzayan, Azim Shariff, ethics, God, J. Peder Zane, prosocial behavior, religion

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Religion not the only path to altruism

The courts, police, credit records also promote prosocial behavior

Religion and its promotion of empathy get undue credit for our unselfish acts. Instead, it’s our less-than-virtuous psychological perception that a moral authority is watching us that promotes altruism, a new review essay suggests.

The essay is based on two psychologists’ re-examination of dozens of studies that have dealt with the relationship between religious participation and so-called prosocial behavior, a term that includes charity, cooperation, volunteerism, honesty, trust and various forms of personal sacrifice. The Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan is a classic example.

The upshot is surprising: While religion can play a role in fostering altruism, it is far from the only institution capable of doing so and it might not work the way we assume, says review co-author Azim Shariff, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia.

Labels: altruism, Azim Shariff, prosocial behavior

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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Speaker Stresses Values of People Doing Good

February 9, 2008

By Cary McMullen

To give credit where credit is due, Stephen Post attributes his scholarly work on altruism and the widespread recognition it has garnered to a simple bit of advice from his Irish mother. Whenever he was bored or morose as a kid, she would tell him, "Stevie, why don't you go out and do something for someone," Post told an audience at Florida Southern College on Friday.

Post is professor of bioethics, philosophy and religion at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and the author of "Why Good Things Happen to Good People." He delivered the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Florida Center for Science and Religion at FSC, which was devoted to the topic "Angels and Devils: The Theory and Praxis of Good and Evil in Science and Religion."

In a lecture that was by turns intellectual, inspirational and humorous, Post marshalled a host of data from scientific studies to support his thesis that unselfish actions toward others have mental and physical health benefits. Or, as Post put it, "It's good to be good, and science says so."

Post cited one study in which a researcher followed people who had high indications of anger on a psychological profile test. Their mortality rate by age 50 was 20 percent. For those in the lowest quartile of indications of anger, the mortality rate was 2 percent, he said.

Post was tapped by British-American philanthropist Sir John Templeton several years ago to found the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, which facilitates studies on the interface of science, health and love. Post devoted a good bit of his lecture to questions of happiness and love. The key to happiness, he said, lies in practicing altruistic virtues, such as helping others and practicing forgiveness. Noble purposes and actions yield more enjoyment of life, he said.

"I believe even in the deserts of life, if you plant a rose and stick with love, in the long run you're going to be better off and be blessed for your efforts," he said.

Responding to a question, Post said people should not pursue altruism just so they can be healthier.

"If you're getting into religion for self-benefit, that would be inauthentic. All science can give us is statistics, not promises. We 'do unto others' because they're deserving of it," he said.

Post called the late 20th-century "an intellectual hellhole" because of ideas that cast suspicion on notions of unselfishness. He mentioned existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre and biologist Richard Dawkins, author of "The Selfish Gene" and one of several recent writers who have written harsh critiques of belief in God. Attributing the moral category of selfishness to the biochemical process of reproduction was "ridiculous," he said.

"In our contemporary society, for a lot of people, the gene has taken the place of the soul. If you want to know your ultimate essence and destiny and nature, it's your genotype, baby. ... So don't get to be feeling too genuine about yourself," Post said, describing Dawkins' views.

Labels: altruism, Cary McMullen, happiness, health, Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, Stephen Post

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Odyssey Catholics

December 28, 2007

Young and restless, tenuously connected to their faith

Please click on "External source" for complete article, and interviews with three "millenials."

By GREG RUEHLMANN

Justin Brandon has been weighing his options. The 25-year-old San Francisco resident recently applied to Stanford’s highly competitive MBA program, but even if admitted, he isn’t sure he wants to leave his job at Better World Books, the promising dot-com where he has coordinated online marketing since June.

Brandon isn’t used to feeling so content about a job. In the three years since he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, he has done extended volunteer work in Puerto Rico, served as a video production assistant at Notre Dame, shot documentary films in Ghana and Haiti, and worked as a search quality technician for Google in Silicon Valley.

“Every year,” he said, “part of me wants to move cities or switch jobs.”

Brandon and his restless ventures represent a generational trend among some young college-educated men and women who are free to choose flux over stability. Some social scientists have dubbed these post-college years the “odyssey years” -- a nomadic period when young adults move from one job to another, from one city to the next, delaying marriage, children and permanent career tracks longer than previous generations. Spiritually, they tend to be seekers, a characteristic that applies even to many with deep roots in a traditional religion such as Catholicism and no great desire to venture too far from the fold.

“Catholicism was a deep part of my experience at Notre Dame. It is what opened my eyes to the wider world. It sparked [my journey] and has influenced my way of going about it,” Brandon said.

According to a number of studies, the same holds true for a significant proportion of other young Catholics who belong to the so-called “Millennial generation,” the still-forming group that follows Generation X and includes those born in the period from the late 1970s to the late ’80s. These include 29-year-olds Nicole Shirilla and Ed Fians. Shirilla began medical school this fall in Pittsburgh after teaching in Baton Rouge, La., working in South Bend, Ind., and traveling to Rwanda and Sri Lanka as a filmmaker. Fians plans a springtime move from Chicago to New York City -- his second stint there, and the fourth time he will have decamped for a different state since 2001.

These three Millennials -- unwed at an age their parents are likely to have been married, and still discerning a career path several years after graduation -- believe that Catholicism has informed their journeys. And vice versa: Their journeys have informed their faith. In the fluid world of the odyssey years, their stories split and converge in fascinating ways on issues of religious practice, commitment, community and convictions -- all those things, in other words, that relate to their identities as Catholics.

Their stories reinforce the view expressed recently by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Citing the work of Princeton University scholar Robert Wuthnow, Brooks wrote that today’s children “graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself. Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing about recent encounters with Millennials still in college, noted, “I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.”

According to another recent D’Antonio study (coauthored with Vincent Bolduc), the Millennial generation mixes “personal autonomy with new-found concerns for the common good.” More than other generations, they are likely to rely on individual conscience when making moral decisions than on the church’s teaching authority. But the church’s social teaching, particularly its exhortation to help the poor, strongly resonates with 91 percent of Catholic Millennials.

Millennials are demonstrating their altruism through ever-increasing involvement in community service, but they are also integrating it into their shifting career choices.

Indeed, wonders Darrell Paulsen, a church professional well acquainted with Catholic Millennials, what will they find if and when they decide it’s time to engage more deeply with their church? Paulsen, who coordinates marriage preparation at the University of Notre Dame, hears frequent complaints from the young professional couples he directs. He knows that the Millennials are unlikely to hang around if they don’t find what they need, and parishes will be the losers.

“Lots of parishes put up walls to participation for young people,” he said. Among other problems, “they give them trouble for being away from the church, or for cohabitating.”

Yet, Paulsen insists, parishes can’t afford not to welcome these Catholics at a significant moment of “settling,” such as marriage, baptism of a child or the decision to put down roots. “People are out there,” he said. “They’re spiritually hungry, but they want a place where they feel nurtured, not just where they’re told they are wrong. If they think they’re going to be yelled at, or put to sleep or just asked for money, they’re not going.”

That, Paulsen suggests, makes for one of the few easy choices in a Millennial’s young life.

Labels: altruism, career, Catholic, church, community, Greg Ruehlmann, millenials

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Diversity may not be the answer

Gregory Rodriguez:

Just existing together won't erase mistrust; instead, we should work toward creating an identity that includes everyone.

August 13, 2007

People all over the planet are on the move, and whether anyone likes it or not, with each passing year Western nations will become more racially and ethnically diverse. But is that a good or a bad thing?

I've always suspected that what's beneath all that celebrating is a deep fear and an article of faith. Armed with hate crime statistics and gang stories, the media love to keep us informed of all types of racial and ethnic conflict. But through it all, assorted do-gooders, foundation program officers and government functionaries still promote the belief that the best solution to the conflicts created by social diversity is diversity itself. That's why they arrange those cheesy multiculti community events and tiresome inter-ethnic "dialogues" in which the African American activist meets the Korean American activist, white kids go to day camp with kids of color, etc., etc. The idea is that more contact breaks down barriers and helps us achieve Rodney King's dream that we'll all just get along.

But according to a provocative new study by Robert Putnam, one of America's preeminent political scientists, it's just not true. No, Putnam isn't regurgitating so-called conflict theory -- the notion that diversity strengthens group identities, thereby increasing ethnocentrism and conflict. He's not predicting racial Armageddon. What he did find in analyzing a massive survey of 30,000 Americans, however, is a whole lot more interesting and complex than either "Kumbaya" or "Crash." Diversity, he argues, is turning us into a nation of turtles, hunkered down with our heads in our shells.

According to the study, there is a strong positive relationship between interracial trust and ethnic homogeneity. In other words, the less diverse your community, the more likely you are to trust the people in it who are different from you. The flip side is also true: The more ethnically diverse the people you live around, the less you trust them. So interracial trust is relatively high in homogenous South Dakota and relatively low in wildly diverse Los Angeles. But don't think it's just because we don't trust people of different races.

In addition to asking respondents what they thought of people from different backgrounds, the survey inquired about whether respondents trusted people of their own race. The answer was surprising. It turns out that in the most diverse places in the country, Americans tend to distrust everyone, those who do look like them and those who don't. Diversity, therefore, does not result in increased conflict or increased accommodation, but in good old-fashioned anomie and social isolation.

According to Putnam, residents of diverse communities "tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less" and to spend more time sitting in front of the television.

Putnam considered and had to reject all kinds of other explanations for his findings. In the end, some adhere to this pattern more than others, but the numbers are discouraging all around: Diversity depresses trust and sociability somewhat more in poorer neighborhoods, but altruism suffers somewhat more in richer areas. It seems to affect sociability more among conservatives, but it's also a problem among liberals. The effect is felt more among whites, but nonwhites are not immune. Twentysomethings seem a bit less distrustful than older generations but not enough to alter the overall pattern. Women are equally as affected as men.

None of this means that we are doomed by diversity. But it does suggest that simply celebrating it and promoting it is not going to help us get along. Putnam points to a need for everyone to construct new social identities. He recalls growing up in a Midwestern town in the 1950s, when religious affiliations acted as strong social barriers between neighbors. Three decades later, he says, Americans had "more or less deconstructed religion as a salient social division." Although it was still personally important, religion's power as a social identity had diminished significantly.

More important, perhaps, whites and nonwhites alike will have to create a more generous and expansive sense of "we." If, as the study suggests, increased diversity leads us to withdraw even from our own kind, we may indeed find some sense of togetherness and common purpose in a truly broad, overarching identity called American. Maybe once we achieve that, we'll volunteer more, vote more and be more willing to pay to fix our bridges.

Labels: altruism, diversity, Gregory Rodriguez, religion, Robert Putnam

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Friday, July 13, 2007

The Early Science of Altruism

By Brandon Keim
July 12, 2007

Treat others as you'd like to be treated: that's the Golden Rule, present in some variation in just about every major culture and religion -- and, perhaps, coded into the structure of our brains.

The biological aspects of altruism are a new and exciting field of scientific research. Perhaps the insights gained in these early days will someday help us understand our own virtues and vices, and illuminate some way of nourishing a healthier, happier society -- or, from another perspective, a healthier, happier superorganism.

That, at least, is the hope -- and Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was kind enough to talk with me about research into human altruism and what it all might mean for our future....

Traditionally, with language, object, and face recognition, we know a fair amount about those. But it’s more challenging and difficult to investigate altruism or attitudes or moral cognition.... But scientists have pressed forwards, and it’s a burgeoning literature now.

On animal studies into altruism, Grafman cautions that they involve behaviors more limited than our own: when animals help each other out -- when, for example, one bird combs another for parasites -- the reward, such as a reciprocated grooming, is almost immediate. Altruism in humans is more far-sighted, and may not involve any reward at all.

Studies have shown that altruistic behavior activates the pleasure centers that reward our most basic, immediate urges for food and sex -- something that has helped to preserve these tendencies, said Grafman, but not enough to explain the complexities of our selflessness.

It feels good, for lack of a better way to say it, so you’re more likely to do that again. But that isn’t selective *for* altruistic behavior. It gets fired off in response to lots of activities.... It's not unique to altruism. There must be other brain areas that the system partners with, leading to human behaviors in particular.

That’s likely to be an area in the prefrontal cortex. Certainly in the frontal lobes we seem to have structures activated when people feel more bonding to another person or entity. That area is also activated during altruistic behavior.... That area is very important for altruistic behavior, particularly when you have to overcome constraint -- for example, you want to give, but it’s going to cost you something. The anteriopolar prefrontal cortex is one of the most evolved areas of the brain, and it’s just a very very important part for overcoming primitive responses -- [i.e.,] I’m going to do something for that person and get something immediately back....

No animal gives to an institution, whereas we’re willing to donate to United Way, which will distribute money in the future, in a way you’re not aware, to other entities, and you won’t get anything directly back.... So that, in some sense, is an internalized agreement. You give, and you'll be rewarded because you have a belief system that says it’s good. That’s human. That is human.

There’s another approach that has forced this into the open: neuroeconomic research. It's an area that’s taken classic economic experiments and put people in a brain scanner while doing these kinds of tasks. It's pushing this whole literature about higher-level human behavior. Much of economics is concerned with human economic behaviors in societies -- that's a social behavior.... Another component to this is evolutionary psychology, biology. It’s a good thing, but challenging and frightening -- the more we make this mundane, it takes the magical aspects out of that, in terms of why people give.... It’s big for day to day life.

A lot of our mores -- from religions, for example, ethics, principles -- were first put into the bibles of different religions: the Koran, New Testament, a variety of other documents serve as foundations for religious, general cultural practices. Many ethical principles, people believe to some degree, were handed down by higher authority; if that’s the case, we’re making an argument, that the brain developing in such a way that it enacts these behaviors partly because of the way that the biology of the brain is designed. It forces people to think about the issue in a more experimental way -- a testable way, rather than a more mystical one. And a lot of people live lives based on mystical ideas.

This will cause people to debate and think, and that’s good. We’ve always done that, without biology, as new ideas come. Now biology is going to put in its two cents. That alone makes it provocative. Then there are other issues that come up. In a sense, also provocative: the more we know, the more we can record information related to these kinds of behaviors, the better we can assess or predict them in others, without people telling us what they're going to do.

Labels: altruism, biology, brain, Brandon Keim, Golden Rule, Jordan Grafman, neuroeconomic research, principles, reward