Comments on Epiphenom: Atheists are disagreeable and unconscientious

I have mostly met atheists online and I have to sa...

2011-02-25T22:56:13.092Z

I have mostly met atheists online and I have to say that they have been the most rudest, heartless, brutal people I have ever met. Very ill tempered. It has been a rare moment that I have me a kind atheists.

Its possible to speculate much about this. So its ...

2010-03-13T12:25:31.840Z

Its possible to speculate much about this. So its possible to say anything. Maybe the non-religious are more realists, maybe the religious. Its hard to study because we dont have common views about truth(realism) at all in psychology. I think we shouldnt see these studies very scientific and argue for religious or for non-religious. There are better studies which are more strics. See for example brainstudies by Newberg.

http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=185

That's a good point, and in fact Saroglou has ...

2010-03-07T20:35:41.231Z

That's a good point, and in fact Saroglou has himself written about how self-reported pro-social differences seem to mostly disappear when tested in a blinded fashion (i.e. in experiments). It's certainly hard to explain how the non-religious could be less conscientious, when they tend to be better educated and higher earners - both of which are concrete, real-world examples of conscientiousness.

Self-reported questionnaires like the ones used fo...

2010-03-07T13:30:54.408Z

Self-reported questionnaires like the ones used for assessing personality traits always contain some biases. Perhaps religious people perceive themselves as agreeable and conscientious but really aren't. Maybe less religious people and atheists view themselves more realistically without self-righteousness?

I appreciate your open disagreeableness and pleasa...

2010-03-06T19:53:44.574Z

I appreciate your open disagreeableness and pleasant ego very much James. David Mc

The lack of distinction between non-believers in g...

2010-03-05T17:20:27.714Z

The lack of distinction between non-believers in general vs. atheists in particular cannot be emphasized enough when interpreting this information. Is it any surprise that someone with a low conscientiousness score might also not be particularly concerned with the truth/falsity of religious claims?

Not that I want to dismiss this too much. I consider it an open question whether moderate religion is "good for" people (my gut feeling is that it's not, but I have little more than intuition and frail slippery slope-style arguments to back this up). While that obviously doesn't affect the truth value of religious claims, it's a really good question to ask and I'm open to the idea that there may be some distinct positive effects. (Not that I could reap the benefits of them in any case, because even if I found out that religious people were ten times as healthy and twenty times as happy, it's not like I could just make myself believe something that I knew wasn't true...)

Anyway, I'm proud to be disagreeable, personally ;D

Verquer: Actually, Galen also found that atheists ...

2010-03-05T13:55:39.755Z

Verquer: Actually, Galen also found that atheists are less agreeable and less conscientious (I blogged his study here). And Saroglou also found that the religious are less open.

But there is an important difference between Galen's work and Saroglou's.

A meta-analysis (what Saroglou has done) is statistically powerful, but because it combines a number of studies with different definitions of religion/non-religion, it can be difficult to work out what the findings actually mean. Just as there is a difference between the normal religious and the fundamentalists, so there is also a difference between the 'non-religious' and the self-declared atheists.

Galen was looking specifically at members of the Center for Inquiry, Michigan (he's done some follow-up work looking at a wider group, but still members of atheist organisations).

Neno: the best primer I've found on the web fo...

2010-03-05T13:47:41.971Z

Neno: the best primer I've found on the web for the Five-factor model of personality is actually wikipedia (here).

FYI to other readers: Author: Vassilis Sar...

2010-03-05T10:50:07.310Z

FYI to other readers:

Author: Vassilis Saraoglou
Institution: Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium)
Position: Director of the Centre for Psychology of Religion
Journal: Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 2010 Actual Article: prepub version here!

Now I am utterly confused. The statement that reli...

2010-03-05T07:42:47.243Z

Now I am utterly confused. The statement that religious people score higher on agreeableness and conscientiousness than non-religious people seems to directly contradict Luke Galens findings. I seem to remember a doubtcast in which he states that the only strong distinction between beliefers and non-beliefers was the score in the character trait openess (where non-beliefers scored significantly higher). Could you commment on this?

I would also be interested in seeing the working d...

2010-03-05T03:48:54.586Z

I would also be interested in seeing the working definitions (not the dictionary definitions, the ones used in the outlines of the studies) for agreeableness and contentiousness. The obvious correlation between fundamentalism and contentiousness in these studies makes me question whether or not it's unbiased. That might be because I'm an atheist or it might be because from my (admittedly limited) sample size of a 100 or so atheists I don't see that much hedonism.