Greater Being
Dare to know! The existential costs of a faith in science
Dunigan Folk et al.
Journal of Positive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explored the differing dimensions of science beliefs and how they relate to existential benefits such as meaning in life and feelings of significance. Across two studies involving American adults and American STEM workers (N = 1001), scientism and scientific reductionism were negatively associated with existential benefits. In contrast, optimism towards science was positively associated with existential benefits. Our findings suggest that a dogmatic view of science does not serve as a substitute for the meaning and significance that religion often provides. The results also highlight the importance of treating faith in science as a multi-dimensional construct.
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Fasting and honesty: Experimental evidence from Egypt
Dina Rabie, Mohamed Rashwan & Rania Miniesy
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of religious fasting on truth-telling using a laboratory experiment in Egypt. While fasting-induced religiosity may promote truth-telling, the physiological and psychological changes during fasting, due to alimentary abstention and self-control exertion, may reduce honesty, especially when fasting is augmented with effort. We examine this question by tracing individual truth-telling decisions, in the absence and presence of additional effort, both before and during Ramadan. We find that neither effort nor fasting alone affects honesty, but exerting effort while fasting reduces honesty. We provide suggestive evidence on the mechanisms potentially driving this negative effect on honesty.
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Ready to help, no matter what you did: Responsibility attribution does not influence compassion in expert Buddhist practitioners
Enrico Fucci et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Within western social psychology and neuroscience, compassion is described as being conditioned by cost-benefit appraisals, such as the attribution of responsibility for the causes of suffering. Buddhist traditions maintain the possibility of cultivating and embodying unconditioned and universal forms of compassion. Whereas a growing body of empirical literature suggests that Buddhist-inspired compassion-based programs foster prosociality and well-being in healthy and clinical populations, there is no evidence that such compassionate disposition toward others can become unconditioned from moral judgment. To address this question, we collected and integrated self-report and behavioral data from expert Buddhist practitioners and trained novices using a previously validated within-subject experiment that manipulates contextual information to influence moral judgment toward suffering others and a newly designed approach-avoidance task. We found that context manipulation impacted responsibility and blame attribution in both groups and that experts’ reported willingness to help was higher and less influenced by context, compared to novices. Partial correlation networks highlighted a negative relationship between blame attribution and willingness to help in novices, but not in expert practitioners. Self-reported willingness to help was correlated to reaction times when approaching suffering stimuli. Approach behavior was modulated by context in novice, but not in experts. This study provides initial evidence of a dissociation between moral attributions and prosocial attitude in expert Buddhist practitioners and challenges established evolutionary accounts of compassion in western psychology.
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What Drives Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men to Go to Work in Israel?
Yossi Perelman, Chen Goldberg & Meir Yaish
Sociology of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Only about half of the ultra-Orthodox men in Israel dedicate their lives mainly to religious studies, while the rest participate in the labor market. Utilizing siblings with different labor market outcomes sampling, we collected retrospective data on ultra-Orthodox men who earn a living (N = 107), matched to their brothers (N = 103) who study in yeshiva as a way of life. Our logit model indicates that aspirations for upward mobility are positively associated with the likelihood of an ultra-Orthodox man entering the labor market, whereas the preference for religious studies and economic support of wives are associated with a decrease in an ultra-Orthodox man’s chances to join the labor market. Just as important, our findings show that among the group of men who study in yeshiva as a way of life, there is a subgroup that leads a less conservative lifestyle than is customary in ultra-Orthodox society and has relatively high personal aspirations.
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The Intersections among Race, Religion, and Science in Explaining Mental Health Conditions
Daniel Bolger et al.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, February 2024
Abstract:
Racial minority groups in the United States often seek out religious support for mental health struggles. Yet past studies have often overlooked religion as a key explanatory factor shaping racial-ethnic differences in perceptions of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. The authors examine whether views of the relationship between religion and science shape agreement with different explanations for mental health conditions. Drawing on a national probability survey collected in 2021 (n = 3,390), the authors find that individuals who draw boundaries between religion and science had higher odds of rejecting biological and social explanations of mental health conditions, whereas individuals who see religion and science as collaborative had higher odds of affirming biological and social explanations. Belief that we trust science too much (and religion not enough) helped explain Black respondents’ support for religious explanations. The findings underscore the importance of beliefs about religion and science in understanding racial-ethnic differences in views of mental health.
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“The Graves Cannot Be Dug Fast Enough”: Excess Deaths Among US Amish and Mennonites During the 1918 Flu Pandemic
Daniel Eash-Scott, Daniel Stoltzfus & Robert Brenneman
Journal of Religion and Health, February 2024, Pages 652–665
Abstract:
Estimating the lethal impact of a pandemic on a religious community with significant barriers to outsiders can be exceedingly difficult. Nevertheless, Stein and colleagues (2021) developed an innovative means of arriving at such an estimate for the lethal impact of COVID-19 on the Amish community in 2020 by counting user-generated death reports in the widely circulated Amish periodical The Budget. By comparing monthly averages of reported deaths before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stein and colleagues were able to arrive at a rough estimate of “excess deaths” during the first year of the pandemic. Our research extends the same research method, applying it to the years during and immediately preceding the global influenza pandemic of 1918. Results show similarly robust findings, including three notable “waves” of excess deaths among Amish and conservative Mennonites in the USA in 1918, 1919, and 1920. Such results point to the promise of utilizing religious periodicals like The Budget as a relatively untapped trove of user-generated data on public health outcomes among religious minorities more than a century in the past.
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Razing the Church: The Enduring Effect of Nazi Repression in Poland
Volha Charnysh & Ricardo Pique
MIT Working Paper, October 2023
Abstract:
Repression against religious elites and organizations is a common yet understudied phenomenon. We address this gap in the literature by analyzing the nature and long-term consequences of repression in Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII. We leverage the exogeneity of the border between the directly-incorporated Warthegau and the General Government in a spatial regression discontinuity design to show that repression in the Warthegau targeted the Catholic Church, perceived as a locus of Polish identity. We further show that the removal of Catholic clergy had an enduring negative effect on church attendance. At the same time, more repressed areas demonstrate higher support for nationalist parties in elections held when WWII repression was salient. The results suggest that repression against elites both achieves its goals of reshaping behavioral norms and backfires by strengthening nationalism. We consider the supply and the martyrdom channels through which the targeting of religious elites may produce this counterintuitive pattern.