People Who Donate to Religions Are More Likely to Punish Selfish Behaviour, New Study Finds

[The Straight Story]

People Who Donate to Religions Are More Likely to Punish Selfish Behaviour, New Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — When subconsciously exposed to religious ideas and concepts, religious people are far more likely to actively punish those they believe are acting selfishly and unfairly, a new study has revealed.

The research, led by Dr Ryan McKay from Royal Holloway, University of London, is published Nov. 24 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

In the experiment, a series of words were flashed on a computer screen so quickly that they could not consciously be perceived by participants. Previous studies have indicated that priming participants with religious concepts promotes moral and fair behaviour, especially among the religious, and the researchers wanted to investigate if such priming also promotes the punishment of unfair behaviour. Historically, religion carries formidable material, physical and emotional costs and risks, from sacrificing crops to risking infection by ritual piercing.

"The fact that religions are so successful is a biological puzzle in the sense that evolutionary processes eliminate practices which squander energy or resources. And yet religions prosper despite encouraging this behaviour," says Dr McKay. "One possibility is that these 'costly' religious practices persist because they promote and enforce cooperative behaviour within religious groups. Our study reveals that for those who financially support religious institutions, subliminal religious messages strongly increase the costly punishment of unfair behaviour, even when such punishment is to their individual material disadvantage."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101124085942.htm

[T Wolf]

1. Then WHY are so many fundies so deluded and seduced by the wealthy to do their bidding?

And if you pointed out to them that they were working COOPERATIVELY, they would throw themselves off a cliff.

[MrModerate]

2. I haven't read the published article itself, but the media report of it is pure piffle.

"Religious ideas and concepts" -- never defined by ScienceDaily -- could be just about anything. More to the point, they are quite likely to have been "moral" ideas and concepts, which a lot of people don't have the perspective to distinguish from "religious" ones.

And even failing that, if the concepts were explicitly religious without being moral (good luck with that, by the way), simply triggering association with religious teaching experiences is likely to have reinforced behaviors characterized as religious without it being meaningful in defining the individuals' relationship to religion.

Atheists seldom maintain (at least I don't) that religion is pointless, just that it's preposterous. Any institution that brings like-minded humans together in a cooperative relationship is just as likely to induce the reported behavior as is a religious institution.

I call a bullshit alert on this study.