No, growing up religious won’t make you a selfish jerk
September 12, 2016
Last year the journal Current Biology published a study claiming religion makes kids stingy. While parents in religious homes said their children were angels, researchers decided the opposite was true.
The study looked at more than a thousand children from several different countries. Most were either Muslim, Christian, or nonreligious. The kids were presented thirty stickers and allowed to choose ten for themselves. The question was how many they would share from their own collection.
Surprisingly, children from religious homes shared fewer than those from nonreligious homes. So, concluded the researchers,
Our ?ndings robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from nonreligious households. Moreover . . . those children with longer experience of religion in the household exhibit[ed] the greatest negative relations.
In other words, growing up religious makes you a selfish jerk. And the longer your exposure the greater the effect. That’s exactly how many in the media read it ( e.g., e.g., and e.g.). But, well, no. Not only was the study itself iffy from the start, it turns out the researchers flubbed the data by failing to control for the differences in the children’s countries—societies as diverse as Jordan, China, and the U.S.
Last month Current Biology published a followup that fixed the findings. “When the analysis was corrected, the conclusions changed,” NPR reported, adding:
A child’s country (and presumably culture) made a significant difference in how many stickers she shared with her peers, but the religious identification of her household did not.
The correction comes amid a larger conversation about the reliability of scientific research. Writers like Ronald Bailey, William A. Wilson, Sonia van Gilder Cooke, and Daniel Sarewitz all serve as helpful guides. What’s clear from their work is that popular research is more contaminated by confirmation bias, manipulation, and sometimes even fraud than any would care to admit.
A number of pressures combine to produce this outcome, but sensationalism is central. Research that upsets received understanding is privileged, causing researchers and editors to introduce and overlook faults in the interest of making a splash.
That effect is amplified in the wider media, where there’s great flexibility in interpreting and reporting the findings. Suddenly reluctance to share stickers is magnified into an across-the-board indictment of religious upbringing. And all for clicks (plus some self-validation, no doubt).
So where does that leave us when consuming news? After all, it took Current Biology nine months to publish its correction. Meanwhile, the erroneous study was marshaled as evidence that faith is anti-social and destructive.
Science is fundamentally provisional and can be treated accordingly. If a study hits the wire tomorrow claiming x, y, or z, there’s no obligation to grant it binding authority immediately (or ever). No one need ever let another’s conclusion force their own. Reason works on consent, and reasonable people can withhold judgment if they choose.
This is where sensationalism ends up working against itself. The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim. And a few studies by grant-hungry researchers and click-happy editors can only mean so much.
http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/joeljmiller/religious-selfish-jerk/ |
