A recent survey seems to suggest that those who attend church/temple/mosque/whatever more often than their less observant co-religionists are more likely to believe or participate in suicide bombings. 

However, those who truly are believers and who pray seem less likely to do so than their better attending pretenders, who apparently get wrapped up into ritual over what the religion actually teaches.

Just something to makes you want to go “hmmm.”  Think about this survey next time you go blaming some religion for making people do idiotic, murderous things.

News Release
February 18, 2009
For Immediate Release

Contact: Barbara Isanski
Association for Psychological Science
202.293.9300
bisanski@psychologicalscience.org
 

Study Suggests Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion, Spur Support for Suicide Attacks

In a new study in PsychologicalScience, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science,psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for SocialResearch along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of BritishColumbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationshipbetween religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicideattacks.  Suicide attacks are an extreme form of “parochialaltruism”—they combine a parochial act (the attacker killingmembers from other groups) with altruism (the attacker sacrificing themselvesfor the group).

While the relationship between religion and popular support for suicide attacksis a topic of frequent conjecture, scientific study of the relationship israre. The researchers found that the relationship between religion and supportfor suicide attacks is real but is unrelated to devotion to particular religiousbeliefs or religious belief in general. Instead, collective religious ritualappears to facilitate parochial altruism in general and support for suicideattacks in particular.

The researchers surveyed Palestinian Muslims about their attitudes towards religion,including how often they prayed and went to mosque. The researchers found thatdevotion to Islam, as measured by prayer frequency, was unrelated to supportfor suicide attacks. However, frequency of mosque attendance did predictsupport for suicide attacks.  In a separate survey of Palestinian Muslimuniversity students, the researchers found again that those who attended mosquemore than once a day, were more likely to believe that Islam requires suicideattacks, compared to students who attended mosque less often.

A similar pattern of results was found in research carried out with otherreligious groups. In another experiment, the researchers conducted phonesurveys with Israeli Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza and asked themeither how frequently they attended synagogue or how often they prayed to God.All participants were then asked if they supported the perpetrator of a suicideattack against Palestinians. Analysis of the responses showed that 23% of thoseasked about synagogue attendance supported suicide attacks while only 6% ofthose queried about prayer frequency supported suicide attacks.

In the last experiment, the psychologists surveyed members of six religiousmajorities in six nations (Mexican Catholics, Indonesian Muslims, Israeli Jews,Russian Orthodox in Russia, British Protestants and Indian Hindus) to see ifthe relationship between attending religious services and support for acts ofparochial altruism holds up across a variety of political and culturalcontexts.  These results also showed that support for parochial altruismwas related to attendance at religious services, but unrelated to regularprayer.

This study indicates that religious devotion does not cause support for suicideattacks or other forms of parochial altruism. However, the findings suggestthat regularly attending religious services may make individuals more prone tosupporting acts of parochial altruism. The researchers theorize that collectivereligious rituals and services create a sense of community among participantsand enhance positive attitudes towards parochially altruistic acts such assuicide attacks. Although, the researchers note, the greater sense ofcommunity, developed via religious services, may have many positiveconsequences. They observe, “Only in particular geopolitical contexts isthe parochial altruism associated with such commitments translated intosomething like suicide attacks.”

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