Religious Children Are More Selfish Than Non-Religious Peers

[naomi24]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/religious-children-are-more-selfish-than-nonreligious-peers-study-finds-a3109176.html

This doesn’t surprise me. How about you?

[Old_Geezer]

The punitive part isn't surprising but the altruistic part, yes. I think that the article needs more details such as definition of "religious children" and why they are all lumped into a single group.

[KARL]

It did not really surprise me when it came out some days ago - having thought about it I think it may even have been predictable. Tell children in increasing detail that they and all others are to conform and that the penalty for non-compliance is either eternal damnation or forfeiture of a place in paradise, how likely are these children to have compassion for those who transgress or generally be supportive of those who are their challengers in the competition for "purest" more correct-than-thou status which the adults too often are preoccupied with and the children cannot fail to notice ?

As for punishment/revenge, just look at the judgements handed out in the USA where mouthing/expressing religious clap-trap in public is as de rigueur as wearing/displaying a poppy in the UK around this time of year.

[Mosaic]

Two of the worst specimens of human I ever encountered used religion as part of their kit for bullying people. One of them was a female replica of the Monty Python obese man, and her greed extended to anything and everything. Truly a monster to have to work with.

[jim360]

I'm surprised that the source paper states its conclusions almost as baldly as the article in the OP does. Normally there's a certain amount of weaselling in studies such as this: "suggestive of further work", "preliminary study" etc., but here it's "Our findings robustly demonstrate [that religious children are selfish gets]". The raw data (http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2040068276/2053595203/gr2.jpg ) seems to me to be not strongly correlated enough to support such strong conclusions, and seems to me to be better interpreted as "most children just haven't quite got the hang of altruism yet".

[benhilton]

The full survey is here :
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822%2815%2901167-7.pdf

The children were 5 - 12 yrs old . No Europeans ( I don't count Turkey as European when it comes to religious matters ) , no Latin Americans and no-one from the world's largest-population religious country , India .
Read the survey - how they can conclude such a sweeping statement is beyond me .

" The Negative Association between Religiousness
and Children’s Altruism across the World " Across the world ? You have got to be kidding me .

[naomi24]

benhilton, I haven't read your link - I'm tired and tomorrow is another day - but is geographical location really so relevant? A Roman Catholic is a Roman Catholic, a Muslim is a Muslim, a Hindu is a Hindu. No?

[birdie1971]

Naomi - "... is geographical location really so relevant? A Roman Catholic is a Roman Catholic, a Muslim is a Muslim, a Hindu is a Hindu. No?"


No.

Not when it is being reported that they are doing "bad" things. Then the undesirable behaviour is due to negative influences external to religion such as tradition (non-religious variety), culture (non-religious variety) and corrupting secular influences, most often described as "western". Geographical location is of vital importance in this scenario. They're different in other countries you see.

Of course, when "good" things are being reported, geographical location is immaterial. The praiseworthy deeds are due entirely to the religious beliefs of the individual or persons involved and no external influences are relevant. In this scenario, they bask in the reflected glory, safe in the knowledge that their particular religion is nothing but a force for good in the world.

QED.

Come on. Do keep up.


;-)

[goodlife]

Do you really know who is giving you advice ( Proverbs 15:28)

[Old_Geezer]

Advice is simply that, advice. It needs to be considered before acceptance or rejection. So the actual giver is of lesser importance. One can see examples of advice rejection in many threads here.

[naomi24]

Birdie, //Come on. Do keep up.


;-) //

MTH. :o)

[benhilton]

Avoid the altruistic Hindus of India , avoid the left-leaning countries of Latin America , avoid the cradle of social democracy by selecting Turkey as your European representative and headline only one part of your survey to give the result that you were looking for ....
...Come on , do keep up.... ;-):o) ...

[naomi24]

benhilton, so we're back to geography. Really? Come on. Do keep up. ;o)

[birdie1971]

Naomi -

I have to ask. What is "MTH"? I've tried Googling it but to no avail.

On a similar note, I'm coining CODKU [Cod-koo]. It has a ring to it. You heard it here first people ;-)

[jennyjoan]

I have read the caption and as I said before in another post - refuse to go into this R&S site - I know I know my decision. but hope anybody on the site gets happiness - no matter where they or what station they are at - as long as they happy in mind and body which is hard in any religion.

I have answered above and am sorry didnt read the link so my answer may not equate.

[naomi24]

Birdie, sorry, 'Must Try Harder'. 'MTH' was something my teachers would write when the quality of homework fell below expectation.

CODKU?

[jim360]

"Come on, do keep up" Naomi!

[Hypognosis]

I saw this story only yesterday and had half a mind to start a thread about it, which would have generated a chorus of "do keep up"s and I wouldn't have got the joke!

jim's link didn't work because the left bracket touched the http and fooled the parser, or some such (I'm probably making this up). I always hit return so links start on a new line.

http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2040068276/2053595203/gr2.jpg

Shame on me for not delving into the study's methodology. Shame on them for the selective geography. Maybe it was a low-budget affair and whatever "stickers" are, they're only impressive enough to children for them to be selfish with them in certain parts of the world. If westerners only behaved in an equivalent way in response to sweets, say, there would probably have been a lot of parental backlash and negative publicity.

[Hypognosis]

I usually like 3D graphs but I can't even read that one. I think the negative slope is so shallow they've had to resort to orthographic projection to try and exaggerate it.

Self undermining, if you ask me.

[naomi24]

Haha! Thanks Jim. MTH. :o)

[grasscarp]

I don't know how one "study" involving interacting with children who will all have had many other factors in their lives other than being in a religious or non religious family can draw such conclusions. It involves other factors such as their position in the family and family size, affluence, upbringing, way the survey was conducted, their experiences of life. For example a child from a poor background from a large family may well be unwilling to share some stickers.
And what does this prove? Absolutely nothing and definitely does not deserve the headline "Religious Children Are More Selfish Than Non-Religious Peers".