Weekly Numbers and Demographics Report
by Deanna Cantrell
My mother always said, ÔÇ£little pictures have big earsÔÇØ when referring to children and how one should behave around them.┬á ItÔÇÖs quite true, children are like sponges, they soak up their environments and observe the world around them.┬á This is the primary way they learn.┬á Theists often say that morality comes from religion, implying that nontheists are amoral.
A new study set out to measure altruism in children.┬á The sample size was 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. Is this wishful thinking, or do they see what they want to see?┬á This is because religiousness was found to be inversely predictive of childrenÔÇÖs altruism and positively correlated with their punitive tendencies.┬á Together these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences childrenÔÇÖs altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior.
The data
In the sample, 23.9% of households identified as Christian, 43% as Muslim, 27.6% as not religious, 2.5% as Jewish, 1.6% as Buddhist, 0.4% as Hindu, 0.2% as agnostic, and 0.5% as other. Results from an independent samples t test, comparing altruism in children from religiously identifying (Msharing = 3.25, SD = 2.46) and non-religiously identifying (Msharing = 4.11, SD = 2.48) households indicated significantly less sharing in the former than the latter (p < 0.001). To further investigate these effects within specific religions, three large groupings were religious identification on meanness rating (F(2, 767) = 6.521, p = 0.002, h2 = 0.017; Figure 3). Post hoc Bonferroni-corrected paired comparisons showed that children in Muslim households judged interpersonal harm as more mean than children from Christian (p < 0.005) and non-religious (p < 0.001) households, and children from Christian households judged interpersonal harm as more mean than children from non-religious households (p < 0.01).
Moreover, children from religious households also differ in their ratings of deserved punishment for interpersonal harm (F (2, 847) = 5.80, p < 0.01, h2 = 0.014); this was qualified by significantly harsher ratings of punishment by children from Muslim households than children from non-religious households (p < 0.01). There were no significant differences between children from Christian households and non-religious households.  Religiousness positively predicted parent-reported child sensitivity to injustice and child empathy, even after accounting for age, SES, and country of origin (bstandardized = 0.194, p < 0.001; bstandardized = 0.89, p < 0.01, respectively).
Results from a univariate analysis of variance, with parent-reported justice sensitivity as the dependent variable and religious identification as the independent variable and age, SES, and country of origin as the covariates, revealed a significant main effect of religious identification on childrenÔÇÖs justice sensitivity (F(2,795) = 15.44, p < 0.001, h2 = 0.04; Figure 4). Children from Christian households were significantly higher in parent-rated justice sensitivity than children from Muslim households (p < 0.001) and non-religious households (p < 0.001).
What does this mean?
The study found that children who come from religious households are not only less altruistic, they also call for harsher penalties when they have been harmed.┬á Imagine that:┬á that old biblical eye for an eye message may be causing some harm.┬á Further study is required on this subject with larger sample sizes, however, this does bode well for nontheists.┬á Altruism is costly to self, there is no inherent reward.┬á It could be argued that theism is based around a model that emphasizes reward.┬á So, when no reward is offered the propensity for do-gooding decreases.┬á Dan Barker recently said during a speech, ÔÇ£Believers are outspired whereas nonbelievers are inspired.ÔÇØ┬á What he meant was theists find their inspiration and instruction from a book, nonbelievers find our inspiration and direction from within.
