Religious Children Are Less Generous, Study Finds

The surveys that the parents of the children have answered, as well as the behavioral conduct that children have evinced during certain experiments have proven that the more religious the kid’s background is, the less generous he is.

The study included 1,170 children between ages 5 and 12, from six countries-Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. The remaining 6% of the kids belonged to other religions. But what the study showed was the two groups of children were significantly less altruistic than nonreligious children in the exercises given to the children.

A new study has people of all faiths and the non-religious alike talking.

Religious upbringing is also associated with more punitive tendencies in response to anti-social behaviour, the findings showed.

Belying common perception, a new study has found that children from religious families are less likely to share their possessions with others than children from non-religious families. “Our study goes beyond that by showing that religious people are less generous, and not only adults but children too”.

The data showed that children who were more religious were less likely to share with others than non-religious children.

“In our study, kids from atheist and non-religious families were, in fact, more generous”, Professor Decety said. Moral sensitivity was measured by having children watch short animations featuring a character either accidentally or purposefully bumping into another character.

“Some past research had demonstrated that religious people aren’t more likely to do good than their nonreligious counterparts”, said Jean Decety of the University of Chicago, in a statement.

The parents of these kids were asked to identify the religion of their children, and their level of involvement in religious practices. Almost 43 percent of the children were Muslim, 27 percent were nonreligious and 24 percent were Christian. The generosity of non-religious children increased as they got older, according to the results. However, to the contrary, the team found that religious children were most likely to deem interpersonal harm as more mean and deserving of harsher punishment than non-religious children.

Dr Hughes said he did not think Australian children from religious households were less altruistic and more judgemental. Children from religious households also determined harsher punishments for wrongdoers in the moral sensitivity task. “They challenge the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development – suggesting the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it does just the opposite”.

The study was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.