Does Religion Make You Nice?Does atheism make you mean?
By Paul BloomPosted Friday, Nov. 7, 2008, at 7:05 AM ETSo, this is a puzzle. If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well—better, in many ways, than devout ones.
The first step to solving this conundrum is to unpack the different components of religion. In my own work, I have argued that all humans, even young children, tacitly hold some supernatural beliefs, most notably the dualistic view that bodies and minds are distinct. (Most Americans who describe themselves as atheists, for instance, nonetheless believe that their souls will survive the death of their bodies.) Other aspects of religion vary across cultures and across individuals within cultures. There are factual beliefs, such as the idea that there exists a single god that performs miracles, and moral beliefs, like the conviction that abortion is murder. There are religious practices, such as the sacrament or the lighting of Sabbath candles. And there is the community that a religion brings with it—the people who are part of your church, synagogue, or mosque.
The positive effect of religion in the real world, to my mind, is tied to this last, community component—rather than a belief in constant surveillance by a higher power. Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others. This is the moral of sociologist Robert Putnam's work on American life. In Bowling Alone, he argues that voluntary association with other people is integral to a fulfilled and productive existence—it makes us "smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy."
The Danes and the Swedes, despite being godless, have strong communities. In fact, Zuckerman points out that most Danes and Swedes identify themselves as Christian. They get married in church, have their babies baptized, give some of their income to the church, and feel attached to their religious community—they just don't believe in God. Zuckerman suggests that Scandinavian Christians are a lot like American Jews, who are also highly secularized in belief and practice, have strong communal feelings, and tend to be well-behaved.
American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "[S]cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."
The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.
Response from Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff
Paul Bloom tackles a critical issue in his thought-provoking piece on religion's contribution to a moral and happy populace. We wish to clarify two issues that directly pertain to the evidence in our Science article that Bloom cited.
First, surveys asking people to report on their own virtuous behavior can be unreliable. Many people tend to inflate reports of their own good deeds, but research shows that this may be especially true for the religious. When we set aside these surveys, and instead consulted experiments of actual behavior, we found that only in contexts where the reputations of participants are at stake—either in the eyes of their community or their deity—do religious folk tend to act more generously than their nonreligious peers. Strip away accountability and religious people are no 'nicer' than the non-religious.
Our word jumble experiment is a good example of this. Though participants who played a word game which unconsciously aroused thoughts of religion did indeed become more generous, when you look at the control condition, where participants received a neutral word jumble, believers and non-believers were equally generous. Moreover, religion is not the only motivator of good behavior. A third condition had participants complete a word jumble that primed secular justice, rather than religion. Those receiving this prime became just as generous as those who received the religious one. These studies, and other pertinent evidence, do not support Laura Schlessinger's claim that morality requires a belief in God. One need not travel to Denmark to see that religion has no monopoly on morality.
Second, we hope to urge a note of caution to Bloom's endorsement of the 'community component' of religion. Bloom argues that the capacity to build social bonds, not belief in a moralizing God, is what accounts for religion's positive effects on trust and emotional well-being in the United States. This may be so, but let's not forget that communal solidarity can benefit members while wreaking havoc on those who fall on the wrong side of group boundaries. For example, studies measuring popular support for suicide attacks show that religious attendance contributes to support whereas religious belief does not. In a religiously diverse world, the community component of religion is both the proverbial arsonist and the fire department.
Were American atheists to form moral communities in the way that religious folk do, it might make them happier. But it would also make them likely to adopt many of the unsavory aspects of groupishness that many of their banded religious brothers exhibit. Religion is not the only thing that can poison everything.
--Azim Shariff PhD student in the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
--Ara Norenzayan Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Additional comments from article author Paul Bloom:
I appreciate the thoughtful response by Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan, and I recommend their excellent Science article to anyone interested in reading more about these issues.
We agree on some main points. It might make you happier to be part of a community, and you might be generous to the other members, but the downside is that belonging to a group can lead to indifference -- or worse -- toward those outside of that group. And, of course, even people who are thought to be immoral and unpatriotic by most of their fellow citizens can live good and happy lives. As an atheist living in the United States, I certainly hope that this is true.
I'm puzzled, though, as to why Shariff and Norenzayan are so skeptical about the survey results that I mention. After all, they are strong advocates of the view that religion makes people more generous. As they put it in their Science article, they defend "the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people." Presumably, then, they believe that religion has effects outside of their word jumble laboratory studies. Doesn't their own theory predict that a church-going Christian should be, on average, more generous than a solitary atheist?
Shariff and Norenzayan propose that the effects of religion arise through additional accountability--people want to seen as nice in the eyes of their community and their deity. I agree with them about the importance of community-though, as I discuss in the article, the benefits of religious association are likely more general than they propose. We are better, happier people when we are surrounded by those who care about us.
Our big disagreement is about God. There is no evidence that, when you factor out community, those who believe in a deity are any better than those who don't. The important part of religion is the people who are around you, not the gods above.
--Paul Bloom
Find this discussion here
(11/13)
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Response from Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff
Paul Bloom tackles a critical issue in his thought-provoking piece on religion's contribution to a moral and happy populace. We wish to clarify two issues that directly pertain to the evidence in our Science article that Bloom cited.
First, surveys asking people to report on their own virtuous behavior can be unreliable. Many people tend to inflate reports of their own good deeds, but research shows that this may be especially true for the religious. When we set aside these surveys, and instead consulted experiments of actual behavior, we found that only in contexts where the reputations of participants are at stake—either in the eyes of their community or their deity—do religious folk tend to act more generously than their nonreligious peers. Strip away accountability and religious people are no 'nicer' than the non-religious.
Our word jumble experiment is a good example of this. Though participants who played a word game which unconsciously aroused thoughts of religion did indeed become more generous, when you look at the control condition, where participants received a neutral word jumble, believers and non-believers were equally generous. Moreover, religion is not the only motivator of good behavior. A third condition had participants complete a word jumble that primed secular justice, rather than religion. Those receiving this prime became just as generous as those who received the religious one. These studies, and other pertinent evidence, do not support Laura Schlessinger's claim that morality requires a belief in God. One need not travel to Denmark to see that religion has no monopoly on morality.
Second, we hope to urge a note of caution to Bloom's endorsement of the 'community component' of religion. Bloom argues that the capacity to build social bonds, not belief in a moralizing God, is what accounts for religion's positive effects on trust and emotional well-being in the United States. This may be so, but let's not forget that communal solidarity can benefit members while wreaking havoc on those who fall on the wrong side of group boundaries. For example, studies measuring popular support for suicide attacks show that religious attendance contributes to support whereas religious belief does not. In a religiously diverse world, the community component of religion is both the proverbial arsonist and the fire department.
Were American atheists to form moral communities in the way that religious folk do, it might make them happier. But it would also make them likely to adopt many of the unsavory aspects of groupishness that many of their banded religious brothers exhibit. Religion is not the only thing that can poison everything.
--Azim Shariff PhD student in the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
--Ara Norenzayan Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Additional comments from article author Paul Bloom:
I appreciate the thoughtful response by Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan, and I recommend their excellent Science article to anyone interested in reading more about these issues.
We agree on some main points. It might make you happier to be part of a community, and you might be generous to the other members, but the downside is that belonging to a group can lead to indifference -- or worse -- toward those outside of that group. And, of course, even people who are thought to be immoral and unpatriotic by most of their fellow citizens can live good and happy lives. As an atheist living in the United States, I certainly hope that this is true.
I'm puzzled, though, as to why Shariff and Norenzayan are so skeptical about the survey results that I mention. After all, they are strong advocates of the view that religion makes people more generous. As they put it in their Science article, they defend "the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people." Presumably, then, they believe that religion has effects outside of their word jumble laboratory studies. Doesn't their own theory predict that a church-going Christian should be, on average, more generous than a solitary atheist?
Shariff and Norenzayan propose that the effects of religion arise through additional accountability--people want to seen as nice in the eyes of their community and their deity. I agree with them about the importance of community-though, as I discuss in the article, the benefits of religious association are likely more general than they propose. We are better, happier people when we are surrounded by those who care about us.
Our big disagreement is about God. There is no evidence that, when you factor out community, those who believe in a deity are any better than those who don't. The important part of religion is the people who are around you, not the gods above.
--Paul Bloom
Find this discussion here
(11/13)