The moment of truth. No pressure, kid. Photograph: Allen Donikowski/Getty Images/Flickr RM
Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study.
Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.
They found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism.
“Overall, our findings … contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.
“More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it will do just the opposite.”
I am amazed at these findings and question their study. All Christian children are taught lessons about giving is better than receiving and to help others as did the good Samaritan. Being kind to someone is at the root of Christianity. Being selfish should not be on their agenda
A central belief of Christianity is that “Jesus died for our sins”, which doesn’t provide much incentive for the little bathplugs to grow an altruistic bone, does it? As for kindness being at the root of Christianity? Can you say w.i.t.c.h.?
Vicky, it studied Christian *and* Muslim. It seems you might be similar to the religious parents in the study who thought that their kids religiousness increased their kids empathy and sensitivity for justice. But the abstract from the study indicates that the kids are actually harsher, and the study methods look sound:
“Here, we assessed altruism and third-party evaluation of scenarios depicting interpersonal harm in 1,170 children aged between 5 and 12 years in six countries (Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, USA, and South Africa), the religiousness of their household, and parent-reported child empathy and sensitivity to justice. Across all countries, parents in religious households reported that their children expressed more empathy and sensitivity for justice in everyday life than non-religious parents. However, religiousness was inversely predictive of children’s altruism and positively correlated with their punitive tendencies. Together these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior.”
This study definately confirms my suspicions . Religious guilt can be a strong focus for anxiety with its attendant acting-out problems all across the various denominations.
Religion/power
and greed/power have surely caused all wars?
What kind of research was undertaken? Which age groups were researched? Some more information about context and circumstance would be helpful.