Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers

[trotsky]

http://news.berkeley.edu/2012/04/30/religionandgenerosity/

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.

...“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.

[ymetca]

1. Preaching to the choir, unfortunately

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

--Jackson Browne

[FBaggins]

2. So?

This doesn't say that highly religious people are less likely to be generous... it just says that the motivation for their generosity is less likely to be compassion.

This is hardly surprising. Similarly, it wouldn't surprise me to find that less-religious people are less likely to be deontologically motivated in their generosity.

[Skittles]

3. explain that second assertion please

[FBaggins]

4. Faith impacts motivation

Depending on the religion involved, a believer could easily think that they have a moral duty to help the poor... and would thus do so without the need for compassion to drive the behavior. A less-religious person might be less motivated by "moral duty" (perhaps even rejecting the existence of it - which is not to say that all atheists reject it). Note that we aren't discussing which is more likely to be generous... merely which motivation is more likely to drive that generosity.

Similarly, which religion we're talking about could impact these findings. Buddhists connect closely with compassion... which many Christians could be motivated by altruism instead.

[Skittles]

5. nonsense

less-religious people, as you call them, donate simply because it is the right thing to do, not because they think it will buy their way into heaven

and by the way, the idea that "religious people" necessarily have MORALS, or that "less religious" people are less likely to have morals, is utterly ridiculous

[Curmudgeoness]

10. THIS

I was just going to say the same thing.

[Igel]

11. Religions deal with works differently.

One may say you get a greater reward for praying in one place instead of another. Or that a certain amount of charity is obedience and that's rewarded. Some count mitzvoth. Some try to make bargains with their god, or turn prayer wheels to lay up reward.

Another may say you have to do good deed, but there's no reward in such because God's love is unconditional. Or differently conditioned, at least.

Now, I don't know that less religious folk are all that concerned about "heaven," but the guy didn't say that less religious people did things because it earned them celestial brownie points. The reverse, in fact.

There's a sharp distinction between "moral duty" and morals. Morals are just judgements about what's right and wrong. They can be good, bad, indifferent, warped; abundant or sparse. When I say somebody has good morals, as with many other utterances it's not an objective judgment about the state of the world but a speech act declaring my opinion. I like languages that place the utterer in the dative to show that it's his perceptions, not some dictum of universal truth. (The same holds for "it's hot in here" or "that's good wine" or "he's a bad president." They're personal, subjective judgments expressed in absolutist terms. Recognize it, and often what turns out to be a fight to the death over some aspect of truth becomes a difference in opinion, nothing more, and you know the saying, de gustibus, etc.)


Something that's deontic is imposed from without. Deontic modality is what must happen: Rain must fall. Epistemic modality is what is felt but not obligate: "A mother must love her infant" or a composer "must compose." Some languages take pains to distinguish the two, and they're more salient; I've been told that Korean is one such language, but that's hearsay. English used to do modality better: "If I fall into the water, I shall drown" is radically different from "If I jump into the water, I will drown." One is suicide, one isn't. "Yes, I shall marry you" is not a cause for joy, because the person is stating, flat out, it's an obligation accepted only out of duty; "Yes, I will marry you" is, at least if you like the person, a cause for joy, at least most of the time.

A deontic obligation is one that's imposed from without, as the force of gravity is imposed. I knew sabbath-keepers who abided by the rules when people were watching; it was an external obligation. It wasn't entirely for show, but other things were more pressing. Same for kids who laid off the sugar at home, or kept it in their pants. Until they weren't watched. Then the sabbath-keepers would go to strip clubs or work in the morning, the health-food kids would buy 10 lbs of candy and snarf it down in a couple of weeks, or the nice kid would be promiscuous. Deontic obligations only work if you're being watched.

A lot of less religious people would feel the need to abide by a set of external rules less. They would feel less moral obligation, less deontic obligation. They simply don't recognize the need for the external code.

It goes all fuzzy at a given point because a lot of folk internalize deontic obligations and convert them into epistemic virtue, that is, something that is done because of subjectively imposed requirements. A composer may feel the urge to compose a symphony to celebrate nature, a mother the urge to love her newborn. Nobody can require that of them. Similarly, a person may feel compelled for internal reasons to help another. However, when there's an external code that matches the internal code, it's a question as to which is being followed--and if it has to be explained to another, which code will be given as justification.

If I give $200 to help a poor mother buy a headstone for her 1-month-old baby, I might say I did so because I felt sorry for her. Or because if we love God we love our fellows, and we're commanded to love God. What I feel is the same either way; it's the verbiage that lays on the act as a patina that differs.

For a less-religious person, however, it'll be mostly epistemic virtue that drives the generosity, and there's not a whole lot of excuses given to cover it up. My mother was not religious, but internalized the teaching she got as a kid. If generous, it was because she wanted to be generous.

[safeinOhio]

7. I try and get it right the first time.

I can't just do harm and then pray for forgiveness.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. The virtue of highly religious people is nothing but their own PR

They have a holy book that says they should be kind to their neighbors, but elsewhere it tells them to be bastards (Leviticus, especially) and the giant Rorschach test reveals their true nature. They gravitate toward their own preferences.

Then, at evaluation time, they turn around and use the behavior of Jesus as though it was their own.

[hrmjustin]

9. Unfortunately I have encountered many religious people who lack compassion.

[Lordquinton]

12. There's many religious groups who use good acts

For their gain, like forcing prayer on people they feed (of course they can not eat and be free from it)
Altruistic acts are invalidated when the proselytizing comes in.