Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers

[bananas]

5. Science and Spin Are Very Bad Bedfellows

The findings of the studies:

- Religiosity is correlated with trait compassion; the more religious, the more compassionate.

- The findings in the second study, which involved inducing feelings of compassion, were similar for generosity, except that the more religious were more prosocial even after accounting for compassion.


Much more in these two blog posts:

http://icbseverywhere.com/blog/2012/05/science-and-spin-are-very-bad-bedfellows/

Science and Spin Are Very Bad Bedfellows
May 3rd, 2012
by Barbara Drescher.

It seems that the best motivation for me (to write) is frustration.

A press release by UC Berkeley about a study that was recently published on the relationships among religiosity, compassion, and prosocial behavior has been making the rounds over the last couple of days, waved by proud atheists as evidence of superiority and bashed by the more skeptical as bad science (even though most haven’t appeared to have read the study). The latter has been exacerbated by the fact that the majority of reports include very big mistakes.

I’m going to analyze the study, but I will post that separately since it is likely to be long and I also want to discuss the incredible mess of BS this has become. In that post I will also discuss the reasons some of the errors that seem minor here are actually quite serious.

<snip>

http://icbseverywhere.com/blog/2012/05/are-atheists-more-compassionate-or-prosocial-than-highly-religious-people/

Are Atheists More Compassionate or Prosocial Than Highly Religious People?
May 4th, 2012
by Barbara Drescher.

I hope I grabbed your attention with that title, but do not expect to find the answer to that question here. What I am going to discuss today is a study that many people seem to think answers that question, but it doesn’t.

As I noted in my last post, the study I’ll be discussing was grossly misreported, starting with its press release. Since the study itself appears to be behind a pay wall for most people, I’ll describe as much detail as I can in a blog post as I discuss the study’s validity and findings of the study, published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science and titled “My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals”.

<snip>

They found:

<snip>

- Religiosity is correlated with trait compassion; the more religious, the more compassionate.

<snip>

- The findings in the second study, which involved inducing feelings of compassion, were similar for generosity, except that the more religious were more prosocial even after accounting for compassion.

<snip>