<h1 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/04/30/religionandgenerosity/" title="Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers" rel="bookmark">Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers</a></h1>
<p class="byline"><span class="byline-prep byline-prep-author">By</span> <a href="mailto:yanwar@berkeley.edu?subject=RE:%20Highly%20religious%20people%20are%20less%20motivated%20by%20compassion%20than%20are%20non-believers" title="Contact the author">Yasmin Anwar</a>, Media Relations <span class="byline-prep byline-prep-published">|</span> <abbr class="published" title="Monday, April 30th, 2012, 10:00 am">April 30, 2012</abbr> </p>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>“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.</p>
<div class="wp-caption alignright" style="width:250px"><img src="http://www.berkeley.edu/news2/2012/04/PriestPraying250.jpg" alt="" height="350" width="250"><p class="wp-caption-text">Study finds highly religious people are less motivated by compassion to show generosity than are non-believers</p>
</div>
<p>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 <a href="http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/25/1948550612444137.full.pdf+html">findings</a> which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal <em>Social Psychological and Personality Science.</em></p>
<p><em></em>The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of
generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and
compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion
and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as
being non-religious or less religious.</p>
<p>“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of
their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they
will help that person or not,” said UC Berkeley social psychologist
Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. “The more religious, on the other
hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other
factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational
concerns.”</p>
<p>Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see
the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a
personal risk or cost.</p>
<p>While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and
generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly
religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others.
However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be
more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more
non-religious counterparts.</p>
<p>“We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts
generous behavior,” said study lead author Laura Saslow, who conducted
the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco, said
she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic,
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.</p>
<p>“I was interested to find that this experience – an atheist being
strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers –
was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” Saslow said.</p>
<p>In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004
national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed
with such statements as “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I
feel kind of protective towards them” were also more inclined to show
generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings
and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.</p>
<p>When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to
be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person,
non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead:
“These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with
pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals,
this relationship is particularly robust for less religious
individuals,” the study found.</p>
<p>In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two
brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed
portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given
10 “lab dollars” and directed to give any amount of that money to a
stranger. The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by
the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.</p>
<p>“The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity,”
Willer said. “But it did not significantly change the generosity of
more religious participants.”</p>
<p>In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to
report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played
“economic trust games” in which they were given money to share – or not –
with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person
playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that
they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which
had since doubled in amount.</p>
<p>Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary
compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers
than other participants in the study.</p>
<p>“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people
tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they
may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more
religious people,” Willer said.</p>
<p>In addition to Saslow and Willer, other co-authors of the study are
UC Berkeley psychologists Dacher Keltner, Matthew Feinberg and Paul
Piff; Katharine Clark at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sarina
Saturn at Oregon State University.</p>
<p>The study was funded by grants from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good
Science Center, UC Berkeley’s Center for the Economics and Demography of
Aging, and the Metanexus Institute.</p>
</div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>