SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Here's a discovery that could make secular parents say hallelujah: Children who grow up in non-religious homes are more generous and altruistic than children from observant families. ...
A series of experiments involving 1,170 kids from a variety of religious backgrounds found that the non-believers were more likely to share stickers with their classmates and less likely to endorse harsh punishments for people who pushed or bumped into others.
The results "contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others," according to a study published this week in the journal Current Biology.
Worldwide, about 5.8 billion people consider themselves religious, and religion is a primary way for cultures to express their ideas about proper moral behavior — especially behavior that involves self-sacrifice for the sake of others.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Sunday November 08 2015, @01:37AM
study highlights, from the study:
•Family religious identification decreases children’s altruistic behaviors
•Religiousness predicts parent-reported child sensitivity to injustices and empathy
•Children from religious households are harsher in their punitive tendencies
N. 2 and 3 seem interdependent, if kid is sensible to things, his innate sense of justice (compensation) will want more punishment. Not mentioning 2 is a problem for 3.
Less empathy is also a problem, we don't want to end up like H.G. Wells' "The time machine". Still, empathy and altruism should go together.
Account abandoned.