Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers

[tradeunionsupporter]

Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers


ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2012) — "Love thy neighbor" is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430140035.htm

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Anyone surprised?

[NGNM85]

This might also have to do with the fact that religiosity tends to correlate with Right-wing ideation, and Right-wingers tend to be less compassionate.

[hatzel]

Anyone surprised?

I guess you could say I'm somewhat surprised, yeah. Not that an individual's motivation for helping somebody is particularly important (the 'what' is always more important than the 'why' imho), but it's interesting to see that atheists - those who often consider themselves to have embraced 'reason' and 'logic' and all that stuff - are apparently driven by wholly irrational emotionalism, as opposed to the arguably more reasoned logic of the 'highly religious.' That's certainly a fascinating claim, perhaps the exact opposite of what one would expect...

[Ostrinski]

Yeah I'm not religious and I basically hate all living things

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I guess you could say I'm somewhat surprised, yeah. Not that an individual's motivation for helping somebody is particularly important (the 'what' is always more important than the 'why' imho), but it's interesting to see that atheists - those who often consider themselves to have embraced 'reason' and 'logic' and all that stuff - are apparently driven by wholly irrational emotionalism, as opposed to the arguably more reasoned logic of the 'highly religious.' That's certainly a fascinating claim, perhaps the exact opposite of what one would expect...

Using reason and logic doesn't mean you are a sociopath.

[El Oso Rojo]

, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.


I have personal experience this actually, my dad and his side are fundementalists christains and instead of saying those people need help, they said they were being punsh for practicing voodoo and other "ungodly things".

My dad one time said that if people in Uganda was following god laws they would be stone, and also he was kinda being less compationate for the fact my sister cat had died and yammer on getting to somewhere to get cash, which is understandable since he live in the hood.

[hatzel]

Using reason and logic doesn't mean you are a sociopath.

...what exactly does that have to do with anything? I don't remember ever saying anything like that...

:confused:

[corolla]

...what exactly does that have to do with anything? I don't remember ever saying anything like that...

:confused:

Well, you did suggest that having compassion for other people was 'wholly irrational emotionalism'..

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

What I meant by the sociopath thing is that you can still be driven by emotions even if you think rational.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Yeah I'm not religious and I basically hate all living things
If that were true you wouldn't be a commie.

[Klaatu]

Many people join one religion or another because they are "lost-souls," meaning that they have some sort of mental problem. Others just find themselves in church every Sunday, because that is the way they were bought up. Still others want their kids to be "good Christians," etc. And yet these same people continue to vote for criminals like Mitt Romney, doofuses like George Bush, and self-proclaimed 'saviors of society' like Ronald Reagan.

God help us. :crying:

[hatzel]

^^^^^
Buzzword stuff with no clear connection whatsoever to this thread. Oh, religion subforum, how I have missed ye...

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Many people join one religion or another because they are "lost-souls," meaning that they have some sort of mental problem. Others just find themselves in church every Sunday, because that is the way they were bought up. Still others want their kids to be "good Christians," etc. And yet these same people continue to vote for criminals like Mitt Romney, doofuses like George Bush, and self-proclaimed 'saviors of society' like Ronald Reagan.

God help us. :crying:

I would say it is more psychological (as in how they deal with life) and material than mental (as in disorders).

[l'Enfermé]

I guess you could say I'm somewhat surprised, yeah. Not that an individual's motivation for helping somebody is particularly important (the 'what' is always more important than the 'why' imho), but it's interesting to see that atheists - those who often consider themselves to have embraced 'reason' and 'logic' and all that stuff - are apparently driven by wholly irrational emotionalism, as opposed to the arguably more reasoned logic of the 'highly religious.' That's certainly a fascinating claim, perhaps the exact opposite of what one would expect...
There's absolutely nothing irrational about compassion. Though it's odd you're surprised at this, the majority of RevLeft's members are what you would call rationalists that have embraced "reason" and "logic" and all that stuff, yet also atheists, and this is also true of most of the far-left in the 20th century.

There is certainly nothing surprising about the fact that two-faced religious hypocrites are fuckfaces.

[Ostrinski]

If that were true you wouldn't be a commie.im a commie cause its cool

[NGNM85]

I guess you could say I'm somewhat surprised, yeah. Not that an individual's motivation for helping somebody is particularly important (the 'what' is always more important than the 'why' imho), but it's interesting to see that atheists - those who often consider themselves to have embraced 'reason' and 'logic' and all that stuff - are apparently driven by wholly irrational emotionalism, as opposed to the arguably more reasoned logic of the 'highly religious.' That's certainly a fascinating claim, perhaps the exact opposite of what one would expect...

Right, because wanting to help people who are suffering is just crazy nonsense. Epic fail.

[Left Leanings]

People who are avowedly religious, perhaps tend to be less motivated towards charitable actions by compassion, because of their immature morality.

In Christianity, for example, one must be charitable because: not to be so, is to risk punishment from the Deity; and to be so, is to be rewarded by the Deity.

This is the morality of the playground. A child is told not to pull another child's hair, and this can be enforced in one of two ways. First, if the child pulls the hair of another, they can be threatend with a disciplinary sanction (go to your room; stand in the naughty corner etc). Second, if they refrain from pulling another child's hair, they can be rewarded (given sweets, or a gold star etc).

But the more mature moral position, is to realize that the fundamental reason not to pull another child's hair, is not out of out of fear, or for reward, but because it hurts them.

Atheists generally are more motivated by compassion, cos they have surpassed the unsophisticated and immature morality of the reiligious.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

"The Lords works in mysterious ways."- Therefore we should not question or lament why some things are such and such, it´s not ours to question or understand. This is what a lot of religious people repeat time and again. Many of them also firmly believe that God takes care of those who deserve his care and attention. By this reasoning I think it´s easy to see why compassion becomes futile for many of them.

[Azraella]

Compassion and morality are incredibly complex subjects, there are a lot of things I consider immoral that go beyond the scope of compassion and it's simply painful sometimes to do. The other thing is that emotion drives everyone's moral decisions; there is a level of disgust that influences moral reasoning and this is true for everyone. Acting in complete rationality is inhuman and it lacks another essential element in moral reasoning: empathy. Religious people do not lack empathy or compassion, otherwise them wanting to "save your soul" and all of that other good stuff would be nonexistant. They really do care about your spiritual health. As I said, motivation is way more complex than simple blanket statements.

Another fun statement: morality is the result of our lower order brain functions. It is based on irrational feelings about something. There is no way to get above the "is-ought" fallacy.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

People seem to beleive that religion=catholicism.