Religion As a source for research ideas
Direct my steps by Your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me.
Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I may keep Your precepts.
Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes.
Rivers of water run down from my eyes, because men do no keep Your law.
-Psalm 119: 133-136
If you remember from Predictably Irrational, at some point we carried out a cheating study that assessed the value of moral reminders. In the experiment, we asked participants to complete a test, told them they’d receive cash for every correct answer, and made sure they knew they had ample room to cheat. Now here’s the kicker: prior to starting, we had half the participants list ten books off their high-school reading list, and the other half recall the Ten Commandments, a manipulation that turned out to have a marked effect on the results: While many in the first group deceitfully reported a higher number of correct answers, no one in the second group cheated.
How do we explain the findings? A tempting conclusion to draw would be to equate the religious with a higher morality; however, this argument doesn’t hold, since in a follow-up study with atheist participants, the Ten Commandments had the exact same effect. Rather, what was at play here was the power of a moral reminder: Prime a person to think about ethics right before they have an opportunity to cheat, and they’ll avoid immoral behavior.
This experiment also suggests to me that religion can be a good source of ideas for social science research. If you think about religion as a social mechanism that has evolved over time, then you can ask what purpose its many rules serve and how they can help us to better understand human nature.
For example, though religious leaders may not have understood the exact psychology of moral reminders, they’ve certainly had enough of an intuitive sense of their importance to circulate the Ten Commandments and emphasize a whole score of other religious tenets, statutes, and regulations. Whether or not they could cite the causes for it, somewhere along the line they gathered that a good way to keep people in check was to present them with a moral benchmark to keep in mind.
Given religion’s role in society and the way it evolves over time, I think we could benefit from using its wisdom to direct social science research. The key is to zero in on a religious tenet and ask why it’s there and what it suggests about human behavior, and to then empirically test the hypothesis with the hopes of deriving science from religious texts.
God bless.
Which god?
Individuals about to be primed have to believe that cheating is immoral and not accepted within their social circle. Otherwise, you could use religion to explain away why you are cheating… the examples are plenty, from terrorism to stealing. For example, in Colombia, hit men in the era of Pablo Escobar would pray/cross themselves before killing someone. Obviously that priming didn’t work.
“The key is to zero in on a religious tenet…”
One to zero in on is Mindfulness in Buddhism, also known as Watching in Christianity e.g. “He began mindfully fixing his attention in front of himself”, or “I say unto all: Watch”.
“…and ask why it’s there…”
The answer as to why Mindfulness/Watching is there will come from the understood experience (i.e. wisdom) derived from sincerely practicing it.
“…and what it suggests about human behavior…”
Both the practice and resistance to practicing Mindfulness/Watching suggest much about human behavior. Try being Mindful of your peripheral vision for just a couple of minutes and discover what it suggests about your will and ability to choose. In his book “The Mind & The Brain” J.M.Schwartz writes: “…the truly important manifestation of will, the one from which our decisions and behaviors flow, is the choice we make about the quality and direction of attentional focus. Mindful or unmindful, wise or unwise — no choice we make is more basic, or important, than this one.”
I remember this discussion in the book, but can’t recall whether you also looked at other moral primes. For example, would a moral primer from another religious tradition be equally as effective? Would a moral primer from a non-religious source (say Aristotle or some legal principle) be effective?
I think what you’re finding with this study is that moral primers which are socially and culturally relevant are highly effective, but as demonstrated with its effectiveness on Atheists, these primers work independently of religious symbolism. They work because people either consciously or unconsciously can associate a moral principle with its value in various social constructs. This is the same reason that you will see signs in libraries that say, “Silence is Golden.” If we wanted to flatter ourselves we could claim that god designated silence as being golden and that we’re doing god’s work by being silent, but the reality is that people acknowledge this rule because of its social value, not its divine inspiration. The same trend can be applied the most basic and collectively agreed upon principles which traditionally have been traced to a religious conception – i.e. don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, the golden rule, and many other foundational concepts. As societies have evolved, grown bigger, and become more interdependent, these values emerge across ALL cultures, including non-Judeo-Christian cultures, as necessary for promoting social stability. I agree that religious ideas may have cultural application, but we ought not give these ideas more credit than is due. Sourcing our social processes to religious texts and traditions means providing tacit support to the notion of divine inspiration, and thereby validating the myriad divinely inspired ideas which promote endless damage to even ‘civilized’ societies such as our own. If there is anything to be done concerning the relationship of our secular values to our religious heritage, it should be a tireless endeavor to discredit the innumberable instances of religious texts and traditions either implicitly condoning or directly advocating…. racism, bigotry, ethnocentrism, sexism, homophobia, child abuse, spouse abuse, cruel and unusual punishment, violence against non-believers, and the list really does go on and on. Instead, let’s focus our attention on decoding our moral hierarchies in terms of their real-world value – i.e. their cultural, social, and humanistic advantages. Then we may have some real progress towards becoming a truly moral society.
Interesting … Are you suggesting Bankers should have plaques on their desks… Think not only of your self interest and bonuses but consider the rest of society that enables you to exist…Arrr Men….
Also how do you describe abhorant behaviour by those who are immersed in and surrounded by ‘Moral Reminders’. Too may examples to quote but what about Roman Catholic Priests, Muslim Imman’s, Protestant Preachers. All are reported to be have been in appalling acts against women, children both believers and non believers.
By their own standards many would go to hell if they really believed in it. And there Superiors in the Religious Organisations would as well for turning a blind eye.
So the organisations that develop up around rigid codes of belief seem destined to be flawed as they don’t reflect ever changing reality or fundamentally what people are like…
Do people who follow Religious beliefs rigidly become evil because of ‘moral reminders’ or do the bad ones seek positions of power ..any how ..any way..
It is the power plus the rigid moral system that corrupts them…Milieu Control
The abhorrent behavior of those in religious positions as opposed to the paradoxical pangs of conscience suffered by atheists presented with the Ten Commandments is actually a good indication of what’s going on. In my opinion, the moral compunction in the cheating study is a form of risk management. The subject, regardless of his or her conscience religious beliefs, may feel an emotional and deep seated fear of being caught (whether that means caught by the establishment or caught by a divine being), and being reminded of that fear, irrational though it may be, follow a more “moral” course of action. However, if you’ve spent a decade as both a mafioso and a Catholic, you’ve probably been faced with the two conflicting moralities for a long time, and have learned to ignore the “thou shalt not kill” parts.
I don’t think that Dan’s claim is that religion makes people good. I’ve been a lifelong devout Christian, and I’ve seen many cases of religion causing people to be worse than they were when they came to it. There’s a reason that these test subjects were reminded of the Ten Commandments minutes before the experiment as opposed to weeks before the experiment, and that’s because there is a deep-seated response that jumps, and then subsides. But when you’re confronted over and over without being internally motivated towards a lasting change in behavior and attitude, the vague threat of some sort of theoretical punishment in an unseen future life does seem to lose its sting.
If religion does bring about lasting positive moral change in people, it’s because they choose to listen to the message and adapt it into their lives. Those who don’t want to change, just incorporate the symbology into their everyday actions, but don’t change the actions. Paul describes it in Second Timothy 3:5 as “Having a form of godliness, but denying its power.” Religion doesn’t necessarily make them worse, it just doesn’t make them any better. And yes, religion can then be used an excuse for violence and oppression, but if religion wasn’t there, the leaders in question would have just used something else.
Might I suggest the following reading with regards to the role of science and religion in the development discourse:
http://www.globalprosperity.org/initial_considerations.html?SID=4
Dan, do you think or have you seen such a marked effect in other behavioral areas? For example, if you prime subjects with 10 keywords or concepts related to passivity (let’s say) and then give them every opportunity to argue… what would we see?
I think we may see similar results. Not to discredit anything… my point would be that priming may be a means of effecting all shorts of behaviors (this could be used for both manipulative and positive action). Your thoughts?
Correct link (above).
Deuteronomy 6:4-12
Thanks for your sharing.so wonderful!wish you have a lovely day and Happy New Year.
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Bullshit as a source for research ideas?!
Yes, I perfectly agree with what Prof. Ariely says about the religion and some moral benchmark to keep in mind. Actually what we forget is that people ( here I refer to judéo-christian scriptural tradition) from centuries observed human nature and concentrated this wisdom in books ; just take the example of Qoelet or the lettres of St. Paul – in spite of the difference in the style of these 2 writings I can found in both a deep understanding of human nature, based on a spiritual experience. Spiriutal writings as for example that of the fathers of desert and Philocalia (orthdox christian tradition) spoke about attentiveness in greek nepsis – it is a mental attitutde allowing a person to be conscient about herself – a kind of continuum cognitive self-reminderTEN Commandments – and yes this kind of reminder has impact on daily life behaviour, can even change some trait of character if this owrk on oneself is did it under the supervision of a spiritual father. The biblic anthropology is telling us a lot of truths about human nature, but we refuse to accept it and to be wise&happy, we prefer to be irrationnaly and to complain or to excuse ourselves or more often to accuse the others(including God). I deeply believe that if each of us would take himself seriously, every day life moment would be a wonderful experience and we would become a littel bit less irrational, more wise and consicent about what’s really happing woth us and arround us.
And for those who confond religion or God, and spiritual life with the unworthy religious leaders – it is a methodological mistake to identify them it, it suggests to me that people doing this mistake never experienced a religious feeling.
Rationally yours,
Nicole
sorry for my english mistakes
When I read the chapter discussing cheating and the effect that recalling the 10 commandments had on the cheating rates I was bit concerned that it would add unwarranted strength to the idea that religion is or should be the primary source of our moral understanding or moral code and therefore it had a real and legitimate place in all our lives. But what is a bit over shadowed in the discussion is the idea that a professional code could and does have a similar effect on the cheating rates thereby forcing religion off of its all powerful throne. No doubt religion is a fertile place for behavioral research and loaded with examples of human behavior good, bad, and ugly but for me the most important thing to remember about religion is that it is in essence a power struggle where the church or leaders want their flock to follow them and submit to that power. Oftentimes women are seen or viewed as secondary and must be kept in their place. Any disruption in the order could lead to cracks or crumbling of the overall foundation and harm the ability of the leaders to exercise their power. Objectors and objections must be dealt with quickly, usually by invoking the “word of god” which simply and solidly implies that is the end of the story. Religion is ultimately about getting power, keeping power, and exerting that power on others. Although religion is rife with power struggles and the intense belief systems to keep the powerful on top those same struggles can be found in most all corporations and business dealings. Therefore I don’t see religion as having a unique view of behavior but I do see religion as having a very long history of exploiting humans because of their nature. Any research focusing on religion needs to also focus on how and why that exploitation has been allowed to continue and how easily such a system is forgiven in the name of god.
I found this chapter in “Irrational” very intriguing and I think there is a larger truth at work here in our culture -
As we “drift” further and further from our Judeo-Christian roots (no apologies for those who don’t belive this, but there’s no denying our history)and moral benchmarks, we should expect to experience more Enron and Madoff-type issues down the road.
Maybe this is the inevitable path of a post-modern culture?
But I think Dan recognizes a very significant point that we need to address this otherwise we pay some serious consequences for the order of law which we all take for granted now. Issues like property rights, a messed up court system, etc., that will be whittled away, almost without us recognizing it…