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Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study)

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 (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)01167-7.pdf), 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."

Almost 1,200 children, aged between five and 12, in the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa participated in the study. Almost 24% were Christian, 43% Muslim, and 27.6% non-religious. The numbers of Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other children were too small to be statistically valid. They were asked to choose stickers and then told there were not enough to go round for all children in their school, to see if they would share. They were also shown film of children pushing and bumping one another to gauge their responses.

The findings "robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households". Older children, usually those with a longer exposure to religion, "exhibit[ed] the greatest negative relations".

The study also found that "religiosity affects children's punitive tendencies". Children from religious households "frequently appear to be more judgmental of others' actions", it said. Muslim children judged "interpersonal harm as more mean" than children from Christian families, with non-religious children the least judgmental. Muslim children demanded harsher punishment than those from Christian or non-religious homes. At the same time, the report said that religious parents were more likely than others to consider their children to be "more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of others".

The report pointed out that 5.8 billion humans, representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious. "While it is generally accepted that religion contours people's moral judgments and pro-social behaviour, the relation between religion and morality is a contentious one", it said.

The report was "a welcome antidote to the presumption that religion is a prerequisite of morality", said Keith Porteus Wood of the UK National Secular Society. "It would be interesting to see further research in this area, but we hope this goes some way to undoing the idea that religious ethics are innately superior to the secular outlook. We suspect that people of all faiths and none share similar ethical principles in their day to day lives, albeit may express them differently depending on their worldview".

According to the respected Pew Research Center, which examines attitudes toward and practices of faith, most people around the world think it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person. In the US, 53% of adults think that faith in God is necessary to morality, a figure which rose to seven of 10 adults in the Middle East and three-quarters of adults in six African countries surveyed by Pew.

Source: The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study)

All religion should be banned and people should be told the true word of God.

Children tend to imbibe values taught to them by their parents and elders.
Religion, I believe, is incidental.

Not surprising. Teach kids to be irrational and believe in a judgmental god and that's what happens. They behave that way with others. Teach them to understand others and things around them and they turn out alright. And morals don't need religion. Or a belief in god. People can recognize what morals make sense because they improve their life. Not because they fear punishment from god.

It's not either or.

Christians reading the bible know that you are to accept your fellow men and women as children of God. We may not agree with the sins we see being committed, but to be mean to someone because of some perceived wrong doing is completely hypocritical and not Christian. Sadly there are many wolves in sheep's clothing who call themselves Christian and defame the name.

Well, the Christian kids were nicer to start with. Then they got picked on by the non-Christian kids. God gave the Christian kids the smarts to thwart the meanness of the non-Christian kids, as a protection. Kids are kids. Christian kids are still kids. They often use their God-given extra smarts to carry their meanness further than is necessary to protect themselves from the non-Christian kids. Once they beat up a few non-Christian kids, the non-Christian kids want to find out where they get their strength, and the Christian kids convert them.

Are you non-Christian? Do you have kids you love? Teach your kids to be Christian so that they get extra smarts from God. They'll get picked on, of course, by other non-Christian kids. But their smarts will help them to be able to beat the non-Christian kids just like other Christian kids do.

Do your kids a favor. Make them to be real Christians.

:)

Care to explain how deceiving kids into turning their backs on God and start worshipping man, is doing them a favor?

Yea, and many children now are like little demons or puppets that retarded adults use to get away with crime or spread their propaganda.  Many adults themselves are little more than children as far as their intelligence, morals, and reasoning ability goes.  It's a result of life being too easy, survival of the fittest is removed and we've had what is essentially genetic trash populating the earth for some time.  How about a study showing the effects of children being used by these so-called parents, evil adults, that use their children like tools when they're not busy leeching off them emotionally.

Adding to that, every fucking time particularly religious parents go around hitting their kids they're basically teaching children that it's okay to teach people bullshit as long as you can back it up with violence and unfortunately that's how our societies have operated for thousands of years, I'm not at all surprised by this study.

And parents that don't beat their property once in a while, are opening their property up for beatings in the school of hard knocks of life, later.

Moral parents, who beat their property in love and guidance, only when necessary, are giving their property a gift of correction that will help them (the property) throughout life. The prisons are full of former kids that weren't lovingly beaten as children by their owners in the years of their childhood.

:)

All religions are equally silly from a dogma standpoint. Only 2 however are responsible for most of the carnage, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. That is 100% verifiable historical fact. Everything else is relativist pap.

They are atheism and agnosticism, of course.    ;)

Just kidding. Atheists and agnostics aren't smart enough to be able to put a war together, or to fight one, or to protect themselves from one.

:)

I agree that two religions are responsible for almost 99.99% of the religious violence committed in the past 1,000 years or so. The result? These two religions have adherents from two-thirds of the world population now. Religions grow using violence, genocide and ethnocide. Those religions, which don't employ these tactics will find themselves sidelined.

Instead of using defenceless children as punch bags as outlet for your latent aggression. Why not encourge them to take up physical sports to increase their self-defense, such as Judo.
Funny old Christians. Always finding a way to justify your violence.  ::)

This is why I can't truly get along with people like that, it's hypocrisy of the finest order, they preach peace and love and then go around hitting their own children claiming it's good for them, of course, children everywhere are seeing through the hypocrisy because they can always sniff it out at an early age.

I actually remember seeing a good video about an Imam who was talking about a son being arrested for selling Marijuana. Apparently one of the dad's had a son who did it and their son said "Well why is it okay for you to sell alchohol?" even the Imam was saying how hypocritical this was and that they should be setting a better example, first time I'd actually seen someone religious properly redeem themselves slightly.

Well, the kid has a point about marijuana. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal:
So why is it that some people are created more equal in their ability to allow and dis-allow others in their actions? For the same reason that kids are property. They can't fend for themselves in the real world.

Some kids can and do fend for themselves by age 14. Age 18 is simply a standard age that kids are thought to be adults by. Before that age, they are property of their parents or others.

If you are of the family of government, government can keep all its "kids" as property no matter their age. Stop being a citizen, so that you can be an adult, no longer property of your government. Rather, be a man or a woman. After all, what "greaterness" are government people than you that they have the right to order you around?

:)

Makes sense. They have an innate feeling of superiority over those heathens.

I noticed this when i was young. But not all kids off course. But the meaner are the religious adult guys.

They always judge you in the outside, like when you have earrings or tattoos.

"Science is a discussion, Religion is a sermon"

But let us not judge them either. We and them have own reasons why we say such.

I noticed this as well but not all kids were this way

Some were somewhat skeptical about how they were raised some don't know any better but that doesn't mean they can change how they preceive the world in their eyes

Religious children are taught to be well behaved. They are punished for doing the opposite. They are more conscious of their own and also others' action, hence "more judgmental". The study examines religious kids in response to bad behaviour, but have they repeated the test with video showing good behaviour? I believe religious children has a higher expectation of other children's behaviour. When others do not meet their expectations, estrangement and hostility develops.

Sometimes these punishments can make them psychopaths. A large number of the serial murderers and rapists in the United States hail from ultra-religious families. Ever heard of Robert Hansen? He was a serial killer from  Anchorage, Alaska. He killed more than 30 women, after raping them. He was from ultra-religious background. There are other examples as well.... such as Christian Longo, Gary Ridgway, Pedro Alonzo Lopez, and John Floyd Thomas Jr.

The devil and his demons don't target people they already have. It is the Christians and other religious people that they tempt more.

:)

How true it is. There are also testimonies of those from Satanic groups, like witches, that say they will actually put curses on churches, and/or actually try to seduce members of the church so the whole church will fall/fail.

Solomon says in Proverbs 26:2:
:)

Which goes back to what you wrote. The people more likely to be tempted, sin, and thus fall under curse, would be the church members.

70% of all studies was found to be wrong, ironically this was given by another study. the probability of this study being right might be 70%, 60% or even 100%. this study left out a lot of factors making it so biased and inaccurate.

All the verse means is that if someone speaks ill of you and it is not true, don't worry about it, because it won't stick. People see people for who they really are. A comparative truism is "by your fruit, people will know you.

Video: RELIGIOUS KIDS LESS ALTRUISTIC? EXPERIMENT REFUTED: "Violent Extremism" Propaganda and Bad Science!  (https://youtu.be/Gp4lzapO7lw)

- Discusses the article below, and points out the irony that the researchers had to lie to the children to do the study to determine "how mean" children are.

They also didn't even ask the children if they were religious, they just asked the parents. Though there may be a correlation, of religions/faith, it will never be 100% that the child matches the parent. Adults may say they're religious because they grew up that way and don't even practice it, let along talk to their children about religion.

Here’s Why That Study Claiming Religious Kids Are Less Altruistic Stinks. Updates (http://wmbriggs.com/post/17238/)

https://i.imgur.com/AzGVE7D.png

"Welcome Guardian readers. You should understand this poor study is one of thousands, all of which make similar mistakes. See the comment at the bottom of this article for more resources.

Heard about that scientific study which scientifically shows non-religious kids are scientifically more altruistic than unscientific religious kids? The Guardian summarized it thusly: “Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds: Religious belief appears to have negative influence on children’s altruism and judgments of others’ actions even as parents see them as ‘more empathetic’.”

Scientifically speaking, this is crap. Here’s why.

The scientific science “study” The Guardian cites is the peer-reviewed article “The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World” in the journal Current Biology by Jean Decety and a bunch of others. Biology? Never mind.

Authors gathered kids, 5 to 12, from the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa and asked them a bunch of scientific questions, scientifically quantified those questions, produced scientific statistics, and then made scientific propositions about the whole of the human race. Say, are there differences in behavior between 5- and 12-year-olds? That doesn’t sound like a scientific question, so never mind.

Here’s how to you can replicate their study at home. First, define altruism. Go on, I’ll wait.

Have a definition in mind? I’m sure it’s correct and matches everybody else’s definition in precise detail, details like no-greater-love, supreme sacrifice, kindness, patience, love, and so on, right? Well, maybe not, but never mind. Instead, think about how you would quantify your definition. Quantification makes your definition scientific. Science means unquestionable truth.

Was your answer about quantification the “Dictator game”? Like this (from the Supplementary description)?:


Yes, this scientifically captures every possible nuance of the scientific concept of altruism, doesn’t it? Science science science science. Science. It must be science! Scientists wrote this, peer scientists reviewed it, and scientists nod sagely when reading it.

Now define “religiosity” for kids. I’ll wait again.

Have it? Ha ha! That was a trick question. The authors never assessed the “religiosity” of kids; they did it for the kids’ “caregivers” instead. How? The authors asked parents to name their religion. They also asked parents questions like “How often do you experience the ‘divine’ in your everyday life?” They took pseudo-quantified answers from these and combined them scientifically with a quantification of religious attendance and derived a complete scientific quantification of “religiosity.” This was assigned to each kid in the study.

After that, “Children completed a moral sensitivity task programmed in E-prime 2.0 and presented on ASUS T101MT Touchscreen computers…” My goodness! How scientific! An ASUS T101MT! Just think how dramatically the results might have changed had they used an ASUS ROG G752! Or an ACER C910-C37P!

You know what happened next. Wee p-values through the terrible abuse of regression on the pseudo-quantified answers. A picture showing one of these is at the top. Notice the wee p-values? That makes the findings scientific.

All those dots are the answers to the pseudo-quantifications for each kid. The flat surface is the regression (expressing this and nothing else: the change in the central parameter of a normal distribution representing uncertainty in “altruism”; did you think it was something different?). Notice almost none of the dots are near this flat surface? That means this model has no real predictive value.

Which, scientifically speaking, means this study is crap. And where I use “science” in the old-fashioned, pre-government-grant way.

Finally, no paper would be complete without wild, over-reaching theorizing about cause. The authors say their findings “contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others”. Idiots everywhere are taking this literally. I’m too tired to make a joke about science. You do it.

This study is so bad that it’s good. I mean, it stinks to high heaven; nearly everything is wrong with it, start to finish. Yet it’s good because it takes so much effort to dissect, and the effort reduces the critic to such a sputtering mess that the criticism is bound to sound like an old fart yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.

Why I am Right Update P-values are rotten evidence for anything (click here to learn), (2) Regression is deeply flawed and not what you think (click here, here, or here to learn), (3) Probability models do not prove cause (click here, (4) Asinine studies like this are common (click here) or here).

And most importantly, don’t throw a temper tantrum and (for you men) cry like a little girl or say that I am a bad person. Show—exactly—where I am wrong and the authors right. If you cannot do this, keep your mouth shut. (I am too tired and too surly this morning to put this more politely)."

While the proverb you are saying is mostly true, Solomon's proverb doesn't say that, although it may be including it.

:)

That's exactly what catholic church does to it's enemies.

Then anyone who is an enemy of the Catholic Church (which is anyone who is not Catholic and includes Christians) should make sure no curses have a right to fall on them.

Indeed, this is a problem hiding within a solution.  How do we figure the study that refutes the study?  There is the 70%, but then there is the other argument of the other 70%.

The Catholic Church holds that the Bible is part of the Word of God (the Papal Bulls being the rest, and more important part of it). Although the Catholic Church doesn't encourage people to read the Bible, yet because of the great amount of literacy around the world, they don't disallow it. Disallowing it wouldn't work, and would only prove them to be against real knowledge.

The result is that there are many Christians in the Catholic Church, even among the higher echelons. In fact, the priests of many Catholic parishes around the world (those that are not under direct control of the Vatican), often preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of sins, accurately. The main Church doesn't mind too much, as long as they get their money, and maintain some authority. After all, you can't convert everyone away from Jesus.

:)

Christianity is simply Catholicism without the Papacy. The Papacy detracts from the work of Jesus Christ by expressing that good works are necessary for salvation. Because of this, there are many Christians in the Catholic Church, because the people don't recognize what the Papacy is doing.

:)

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2901167-7 (you'll have to pay for the full text)

Prosocial behaviors are ubiquitous across societies. They emerge early in ontogeny [ 1 ] and are shaped by interactions between genes and culture [ 2, 3 ]. Over the course of middle childhood, sharing approaches equality in distribution [ 4 ]. Since 5.8 billion humans, representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious [ 5 ], religion is arguably one prevalent facet of culture that influences the development and expression of prosociality. While it is generally accepted that religion contours people’s moral judgments and prosocial behavior, the relation between religiosity and morality is a contentious one. 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.

We know how in human sciences the perspective of the observer can affect the result of the investigation and I bet all the authors of this study are atheist.

However, even if the results might be controversial, this study gives a powerful blow against all religions. When believers give up on trying to prove that their god exists (not other people's god or gods, of course), the next argument is on the social benefits of religion (nothing like putting the fear of god in the bones of the oppressed to put them in order). Well, even the most basic ones are rejected by this study, on the contrary.

Of course, the study has to be attacked by religious people. It could threat the job of many priests of hundred of religions that sell (directly or indirectly, all religious institutions are paid by societies) tickets to "heaven".

It would be important to have more studies like this, to confirm the results and determine what are the exact causes beyond them. I have no doubt that atheist are much more tolerant, they don't assume they have the truth in their pocket. And since they think there is no life but this one, they completely reject the idea of punishing or killing others for any religious moral code, for any religious idea or to receive any after life "payment". That removes the "fun" of many aggressive attitudes and, especially, wars.

Actually, saying to someone "do this and god will pay you", is like attributing debts to god. "I can't pay you, but god will, believe me". Not even the scammers on this forum would dare to try this line.

This is how Christians teach kids to be real Christians:

Jesus camp for kids (very disturbing):
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

Christian child abuse (al-Qaeda style):
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3gPpPoWEBg

Raising a monster.  Christian Home Schooling:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEPn9spdr5A

Brainwashing children: Jesus Camp - 2006 Documentary (full version):
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_u4U7-cn8


I'm sure Muslims and Jews are doing the same to their kids.

perfectly agreed, childeren must be taught about morals , not being taught about fearing of holy stuff like god, hell etc.. God never gives punisment , society give punisment. Children must know this reality first..

Ok so you actually admitted that Christians are just abusive sinners. Thanks

Anyway it's not really surprising. Religious people are all more or less contemptuous twarts.

Ahahah xD

Well I'm laughing but that IS disturbing.
It's totally crazy though. Is it even legal?

I'm more or less sure something like this would be totally prohibited in Europe I hope!

The need to rebel from what is forced upon you runs deep!  ;D I'll attest to this as well as going to the other extreme when I started out on my own.

For me, all religious things must be banned all over world.. including god, Prophets etc.