Of course, lying is also socially destructive, which is why there are strong cultural pressures against lying. That creates a quandary, since you have to use your judgement about when to contravene social norms.
Vassilis Saroglou and Matthieu Van Pachterbeke, psychologists at Université catholique de Louvain, have previously shown that authoritarians (people characterised by conservative ideology and submission to established authorities) tend to disapprove of lying even when it might result in benefit to an associate and no overall harm to wider society.
So, they wanted to know whether religious people are the same and, even more importantly, whether there was an interaction between religion and authoritarianism. You see, religiosity and authoritarianism quite often go hand-in-hand, so it's not clear which is having the effect on lying.
The experimental set-up was straightforward. First the subjects (who were recruited by a student asking around friends and neighbours!) were given a word search puzzle to do.
This word search either had religious words to find, or non-religious words. That way, half the subjects were primed with religion, and half were not.
Then they were given a series of nine moral dilemmas to answer. Here's one, for example:
You visit a friend who has been hospitalized for one year due to late-stage cancer. He spent his life running a small industry. He is very proud of it, having started it from nothing and expanding it to having, one year ago, 60 workers in a familial atmosphere. The person handed the management of this firm on to his son just after his cancer diagnosis, hoping that his son would carry on his work. The patient asks you for news about the firm. You know that, aiming gains, his son sold the firm to a multinational that restructured it. Do you tell the patient or do you lie?
They weren't all explicitly about lying, although they did involve breaking the rules and not telling the whole truth in some minor way (like not reporting an acquaintance who is a foreign student to the police who are looking for him to deport him following a car accident).
For people who didn't get the religious prime, authoritarianism didn't matter. Authoritarians and non-authoritarians were equally comfortable in being a little bit disopbedient.
For non-authoritarians, the religious prime didn't matter. Religious priming didn't make non-authoritarians obey the rules any better.
But for authoritarians, there was an effect. Priming them with religion made them significantly more likely to obey abstract social norms, even to the detriment of their associates.
Now, it wasn't a huge effect, but then you wouldn't really expect to see a large effect from such a trivial set-up.
But it is a critically important effect. What it says is that religious activates authoritarianism - at least for these Belgians. Unprompted, the moral decisions of authoritarians and liberals were similar.
Subtly remind the authoritarians of religion, however, and they ramp up their moral righteousness!
Van Pachterbeke, M., Freyer, C., & Saroglou, V. (2011). When authoritarianism meets religion: Sacrificing others in the name of abstract deontology European Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.834
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
You see, religiosity and authoritarianism quite often go hand-in-hand,
ReplyDeleteIs that try for Western Buddhists, Hindus, Shinto-ists, Rastafarians and New Agers? Or are you thinking of studies that focused on Christians and then generalized?
Interesting study but broad generalization still leave me cold. Since religion has many components and flavors, I imagine varieties that don't attract the authoritarian geared types but instead, the rebels and thus if that religion was tested, the outcome would be different.
is that "true" (sorry)
ReplyDeleteWell, I don;t have the data :) (I'm sure there mus be some somewhere, will have to look around). But I suspect it would hold for most religions.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is that it's not really anything to do with the specific religious teachings. The link comes about because whereever you are in the world the traditional culture is usually associated with a religion.
So authoritarian types who want to maintain traditions and resist change often turn to religion as part of their worldview.
But that is the point, Tom.
ReplyDeleteReligions are niches and there are religions that fit the norm and thus you will see conservative (preservative) tendencies. But many religions are rebellious. Heck, even Christianity may have started that way. So the generalization is deceptive. And "deceptive" is something we want to discourage in the skeptic community, no?
"Religion" does not equal "Fit In". But it is that "Fit-in type of Religion" that angers atheists most, because it makes more demands and its impact are harder to avoid. The peripheral ones are just easier to laugh at and ignore. But their data should not be thrown out if you really want to understand something named "religion".
Well sure there are all sorts of religions that fit all sorts of needs, but at the end of the day it's not about the specific teachings of the religion. That's pretty much irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that all cultures have their traditional religion. Cultural conservatives will tend to latch onto that religion - and modify it to suit their own needs, of course.
So authoritarians tend to be religious not because religion intrinsically promotes authoritarianism, but because religion is embedded into traditional cultures.
"Culture", like "Religion" is just ripe for misunderstanding when used as a gross generalization.
ReplyDeleteEven though your island is smaller than the USA, it has a great many cultures made up of different classes, ethnic groups, languages, religions. So you would claim the each of these has their "traditional religion"? See, it gets very confusing.
In the USA, what are you going to cal the "traditional religion"? West Virginia Snake handling Baptist, Pentecostal Church of God in Illinois, Friends Meetings in Pennsylvania, Buddhist Sanghas in California, Jewish Temples in NYC, Episcopals in Chicago, Mormon churches in Utah or Black Methodist churches in Detroit.
I agree that authoritarian leaning folks tend to do what they were raise feeling was traditional, but that varies from family to family which make up thousands of subcultures which themselves interact in very complex ways.
Generealizations of religions and cultures is frought with wrong-headedness in my opinion and always loaded with agendas.
With my own lay thinking, I have wondered about these problems:
1. Does Culture Exist?
2. Religion Does NOT Exist?
I think actually that in many parts of the US there is quite a monoculture of protestant Christianity. In most of the world, it's even more straightforward.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I take your point about generalisation. It's actually a difficult line to walk. Without some generalisation, social science ust isn't possible - in fact science in general involves a lot imperfect generalisations (models). So you have to be able to talk in general terms sometimes, otherwise we'd never be able to establish any framework for understanding the world.
But I take you point about the dangers! At the end of the day, everyone is an individual.