When God Sanctions Killing, the People Listen

[Pappa]

From 2007. Study here:

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New research published in the March issue of Psychological Science may help elucidate the relationship between religious indoctrination and violence, a topic that has gained renewed notoriety in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In the article, University of Michigan psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers.

The authors set out to examine this interaction by conducting experiments with undergraduates at two religiously contrasting universities: Brigham Young University where 99% of students report believing in God and the Bible and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam where just 50% report believing in God and 27% believe in the bible.

After reporting their religious affiliation and beliefs, the participants read a parable adapted from a relatively obscure passage in the King James Bible describing the brutal torture and murder of a woman, and her husband's subsequent revenge on her attackers. Half of the participants were told that the passage came from the Book of Judges in the Old Testament while the other half were told it was an ancient scroll discovered in an archaeological expedition.

In addition to the scriptural distinction, half of the participants from both the bible and the ancient scroll groups read an adjusted version that included the verse:

"The Lord commanded Israel to take arms against their brothers and chasten them before the LORD."

The participants were then placed in pairs and instructed to compete in a simple reaction task. The winner of the task would be able to "blast" his or her partner with noise up to 105 decibels, about the same volume as a fire alarm. The test measures aggression.

As expected, the Brigham Young students were more aggressive (i.e. louder) with their blasts if they had been told that the passage they had previously read was from the bible rather than a scroll. Likewise, participants were more aggressive if they had read the additional verse that depicts God sanctioning violence.

At the more secular Vrije Universiteit, the results were surprisingly similar. Although Vrije students were less likely to be influenced by the source of the material, they blasted more aggressively when the passage that they read included the sanctioning of the violence by God. This finding held true even for non-believers, though to a lesser extent.

The research sheds light on the possible origins of violent religious fundamentalism and falls in line with theories proposed by scholars of religious terrorism, who hypothesize that exposure to violent scriptures may induce extremists to engage in aggressive actions. "To the extent religious extremists engage in prolonged, selective reading of the scriptures, focusing on violent retribution toward unbelievers instead of the overall message of acceptance and understanding," writes Bushman "one might expect to see increased brutality"

[Audley Strange]

First criticism. LORD is not god. Which suggests to me at least the trigger is not belief in deity so much as belief in something. That is to say I think you could find appropriate words "For the King" perhaps or "Fatherland" which would have the same effect, dependent of group and culture.

So I read through the rest of it to find any evidence that they had tried different ideological motivators, nothing there. Poor show.

[JimC]

First criticism. LORD is not god. Which suggests to me at least the trigger is not belief in deity so much as belief in something. That is to say I think you could find appropriate words "For the King" perhaps or "Fatherland" which would have the same effect, dependent of group and culture.

So I read through the rest of it to find any evidence that they had tried different ideological motivators, nothing there. Poor show.

In countries with a substantial christian historical heritage, I suspect "LORD" will trigger the god reflex well enough...

[rasetsu]

The God Effect

At first glimpse, what the New York Times dubbed the God Effect seems to support Prager's proposal. In what is known as the Dictator Game, Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan (S&N hereafter) gave participants ten dollars and told them that they could keep or share as much of it as they wanted with a second player, whom they would never meet. Under such conditions participants keep all or most of the money for themselves, and that is just what S&N's control participants did.

By contrast, S&N primed religious concepts in the minds of participants in their experimental group by having them unscramble short lists of words to produce sentences. The lists included words like "divine" and "prophet," which were used in non-religious senses in the unscrambled sentences -- such as "her dress was divine." The point about such priming procedures is that the effects that they induce are, presumably, unconscious. Crucially, when their participants in the experimental group played the one shot, anonymous Dictator Game, they were significantly more generous than the controls, leaving on average $2.38 more. The religious primes seemed to have elicited greater generosity.

At Second Glimpse, Glimpses Matter

At second glimpse, however, S&N's findings cause as many problems for the view that religion makes people more moral as they provide evidences for it. Although twenty-four of their fifty student participants were non-believers, those atheists and agnostics, like all of S&N's participants, had been assigned to the control and experimental groups randomly. S&N found that these participants were just as susceptible to the unconscious God Effect as religious participants were.

More importantly, though, in a second study S&N provided evidence that the effects on their participants may not have been due to anything uniquely religious. This study was like the first, but S&N incorporated additional checks on their methods. Instead of students, their participants were community members (with fewer atheists), and they were questioned about the experiment afterward. S&N also used the scrambled sentences task to produce neutral primes for their control group and legal primes for a third group. Using words like "civic," "jury," and "contract," the latter condition yielded sentences like "he drives a Civic."

This second study replicated the God Effect, but it also revealed a comparable legal institutions effect. Participants in that third group proved just as generous as those who had had religious concepts primed. The questioning of participants afterward supported the unconscious impact of priming, since seventy-five of seventy-eight participants were unaware of anything connected with religion in the experiment.



Other studies suggest that any conditions that reduce anonymity in such economic games or that even unconsciously cue concerns about reputation generally will engender more moral behavior. A picture of two eyes on the wall, as opposed to a picture of flowers, was, for example, sufficient to significantly increase the payments for drinks in a lounge using the honor system. Religious concepts have what it takes to inspire better conduct, but the eyes have it too.

— Popular Psychology: Are Religious People More Moral than Atheists?