a study reveals the atheist or more compassionate and generous the highly
religious people andy's reprisals not at all
we always hear about how a how generous religious people are what would their
donations at center and the idea that eighty s and bike
by continuation often liberals are less generous with the nation's but there was
a study in the social psychological and personality science journal
which really show that that's not the case
first researchers analyzed data from an old for national survey of thirteen
hundred americans where they said they were supposed to analyze the statement
when i see someone being taken advantage of i kinda feel protective towards them
and it turns out that the less religious participants who agreed with the
statement were more likely than those who were more religious to give to
charity that's example number one
they remember to is
a hundred and one american adults were asked to watch
one of two separate videos one was kind of a neutral video in another showed
children living in poverty poverty afterwards they were given ten lab
dollars
to give any amount they want to a total stranger and according to u_c_ berkeley
social psychologist and co-author of the study rob will ur
me compassion inducing video
had a bigger effect on the generosity of the least religious that is that those
who watched the
uh... sad video
those who were at least religious ended up getting the most to the total
stranger that example number two
and then in the last experiment we had two hundred-plus college students asked
to report how compassionate they felt at that moment
then they played some economic trust games where they were given money to
share
and with strangers one of these kind of studies and when they were uh... told
that
uh... they were going to be able to give a portion of or rather
they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of
their money to them and they were told that they can either give some of that
money back ricky bit those who released religious gave the most money
back so three separate examples here
that clearly show
less religious people are more likely to be compassionate and generous
towards others while highly religious people are less likely to show and the
fee for their fellow citizens
and arguments
with the study
norms of the study now met on any arguments with the the study a blog
what's your conclusions though so why do you think this would be
i think what's going on here it flies in the face of the conservative claims that
america is losing morality because of lack of religion because clearly we see
plenty of morality and these three studies from those who are least
religious i think what's going on here is if you follow the information about
the study
to learn about how it was done
i think that what's going on is that those who are more religious tend to be
more empathetic or generous with people they considered to be within their
tribe so to speak with their group and when you see the average random person
that does not cause the same sense of empathy and compassion because you don't
see them as part of your religion whereas those who are least religious
don't care about that they're not going to quote the classify people
based on whether they are inner or out of your particular religion that's my
thought
that's your conclusion
i mean i think that they can assigned to the conclusion of this make sense of it
right so at the spirit of the conducted a little bit differently in
let's say the people who are shown to be uh... the chips hungry starving children
happened to be uh... christians
cleavage showing their across town in the united states you think that uh...
but the more religious folk might be more willing to think it might have been
different on what do you think
yeah i'm i'm also thinking that maybe you all
religious people or more religious people have
of sort of institutional
sort of charity giving thing as part of what the deal with their church so maybe
they just uh... have this mindset where they're already doing a lot of things to
give back
and they're sort of like
trained mentally to not react react is much to these things because
in contrast to the atheist they're probably not seeing things like this or
they're not involved with giving idealized thoughts along those lines the
list which would be that the the highly religious people are less affected
that less inclined to give after seeing something like this because in their
minds if they had a
already go to church on sunday high-priced people exactly i'd already
and doing my part so i don't really feel the need to give this money yeah back to
be on the eight could be any number of reasons i think we should
i wish the researchers here have some explanations uh... for why they thought
that was the case but uh... studying bottomless though because it is
fascinating david patten dot com contact us to leave a voicemail it to one
nineteen david p
today on the bonus show we're gonna have a debate about modern art louis heston
uson very strong views about modern art
also talk about walmart being fined for not paying some over time
and a computer glitch that simon twelve hundred people to jury duty accidentally
let's take a break david packing dot com slash may want
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