I seem to remember another similar study about travelers helping people broken down beside a road. In that study, it was found that Republicans were more willing to assist motorists with left/liberal bumper stickers on their vehicles than Democrats were to help motorists with right/conservative bumper stickers.

This is such frogwash. It never ends. The most selfish, naive, power-mad people on the surface of our globe will stop at nothing to convince themselves that they're actually nicer than religious people... Who actually think about virtue as a practice and an obligation.

I hate Godless lefties.

My uncle used to be a preacher. His marriage broke up over his affair with one of his parishioners. One of his daughters has been a prostitute, the one who got married to a seminary student at 14 because she was pregnant. The other one has AIDS. It occurs to me that relying on something outside yourself to resist temptation is just asking for trouble.

Not sure what to make of the Science Daily article; even after reading it and the abstract, the conclusions seem kind of vague.

Here's one question: How does one establish a baseline for compassion among the test subjects? Were the experiments described in the journal somehow measuring amount of compassion, or changes in feelings of compassion?

Here's another: Was compassion measured as something felt or as an action taken? Only the third experiment in the Science Daily article seemed to link compassion with an actual action.

Just food for thought -- I'd want to see more details about the research before saying much else about it.

They did three experiments. The first one was not an experiment in the traditional sense.

In the second and third they gave "lab money" to people to see how they would distribute it.

You can't give play money to people and then draw any conclusions on their behaviors. You have to give them the opportunity to walk away themselves with that *real* money.

Psychology seems a field fraught with research issues, from difficult methods and weak results, to non-replication and outright fraud.

This sounds like a bullshit thesis. But when it gets replicated, let me know.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-undone/29045

Is Psychology About to Come Undone?

If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals: Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year. The project is part of Open Science Framework, a group interested in scientific values, and its stated mission is to “estimate the reproducibility of a sample of studies from the scientific literature.” This is a more polite way of saying “We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.”

For decades, literally, there has been talk about whether what makes it into the pages of psychology journals—or the journals of other disciplines, for that matter—is actually, you know, true. Researchers anxious for novel, significant, career-making findings have an incentive to publish their successes while neglecting to mention their failures. It’s what the psychologist Robert Rosenthal named “the file drawer effect.” So if an experiment is run ten times but pans out only once you trumpet the exception rather than the rule. Or perhaps a researcher is unconsciously biasing a study somehow. Or maybe he or she is flat-out faking results, which is not unheard of. Diederik Stapel, we’re looking at you.

So why not check? Well, for a lot of reasons. It’s time-consuming and doesn’t do much for your career to replicate other researchers’ findings. Journal editors aren’t exactly jazzed about publishing replications. And potentially undermining someone else’s research is not a good way to make friends.

Brian Nosek knows all that and he’s doing it anyway. Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is one of the coordinators of the project. He’s careful not to make it sound as if he’s attacking his own field. “The project does not aim to single out anybody,” he says. He notes that being unable to replicate a finding is not the same as discovering that the finding is false. It’s not always possible to match research methods precisely, and researchers performing replications can make mistakes, too.

But still. If it turns out that a sizable percentage (a quarter? half?) of the results published in these three top psychology journals can’t be replicated, it’s not going to reflect well on the field or on the researchers whose papers didn’t pass the test. In the long run, coming to grips with the scope of the problem is almost certainly beneficial for everyone. In the short run, it might get ugly.

I'm with RPM, this is really vague... But Crid hit on the idea of obligation...

If I'm getting the gist of all this, the presupposition is that Emotional Responses are somehow SUPERIOR to obligational requirements that a religion might have.

The unfinished part of that idea is What IF an Emotional Response ISN'T generated? then you get nada.

So the religious type will always give, as it is an obligation, whereas the non religious give if they FEEL connected to the person or thing receiving.

Obviously, both are needed.

Seems like the wrong end of the telescope is being looked through.

From the perspective of the person IN NEED, do they actually care where the help comes from? If they are in fact helped, isn't that a good thing?

So who was actually more generous? This article doesn't say.

If you look up the Sermon on the Mount, you'll note that not once does Jesus utter the word "compassion"

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5-7&version=NIV

"The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns"

Hmmm, let's see what JC had to say about generosity & reputational concerns:

"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you"

Really? We're going to worry about what might be in people's heads when they do compassionate things? Oh, no, they don't have the right motivation! Tell them to shove it!

Obviously, less religious people don't do their good deeds because of God. Am I the only one who thinks "duh", here?

If someone saves me from drowning, I don't give a damn what their motivation was.

jerry, that article is an extension of a series of articles and examination of scientific studies which found that most of them were wrong.

One very good paper related to this is: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer

In summary, you get a startling study and journals then only publish articles supporting that result. Moreover, researchers make subtle confirmation errors "replicating" the results. Over time, however, the ability to replicate the results declines.

One interesting example of this is that the vaunted theory finding a positive relationship between symmetry and male reproductive success is most likely simply not true.

Swissy, did you see my apology to you last week for the other thing? Sincere.

This study is saying atheists are acting on feelings, i.e. are acting on something other than rationality and reason. Hard to imagine.

I just went and saw it Crid, thanks... though I obviously misjudged the room.

From the perspective of the person IN NEED, do they actually care where the help comes from? If they are in fact helped, isn't that a good thing? -- SwissArmyD at May 1, 2012 9:28 AM

"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. -- Matthew 6:1

Thanks Martin -- didn't know that passage ever existed.

My last company had an XMas setup that they would give to the local retirement home and local "needy children". They also wanted us to take our gifts over and do the whole give them personally thing. But there was no visits scheduled the rest of the year.

I would always drop the gifts for the retirees and the children, but I found it hypocritical that there was no effort with either group with regular visits or support year round.

Freekin' liberal, leftist, atheists (I roll my eyes). They are obsessed with convincing the rest of the world that they're more generous, compassionate... holier-than-thou... than their Christian neighbors. I guess actual evidence of their moral superiority is hard to come by, so they are forever contriving these asinine experiments to come up with something they can trumpet.

So the "research" showed that the "nonreligious" and "less religious" participants more conspicuously displayed their "compassion" when giving away "lab money" - i.e. someone else's money, not their own. A typical Progressive two-fer: Self-righteously parading their presumed superiority... by giving away someone else's money.

According to the article, "Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost." (emphasis added).

So the "researchers" really didn't even address "compassion" as they themselves define it. But how could they? The relationship between compassion and personal risk or cost is a concept rarely pondered by the Progressive mind.

I wonder whose money they spent to conduct these "studies" to demonstrate how generous they are. Not likely any of their own.

What difference does this make anyway? Should we not, as individuals, willingly do what we believe is right, and leave others alone to do the same... or not... as they choose?

You share this information to reassure us about the validity of the site?

Reading the article summary, it strikes me as an indication of "superior" charitable behaviour by religious people ie. they are more likely to exhibit charity even if they do not feel close to the person benefiting.

If someone thinks that's a negative thing, he/she might be the type who thinks that it's fine to act greedy and nasty - provided that you offer lip service to the correct causes and doctrines.

Is a non-religious person who is not particularly compassionate (or who is tired or preoccupied by a serious personal problem) thus justified in being uncharitable?

Should you help people only when you are really "feeling it"?

@Ms Alkon: I don't assume all atheists are on the left. I am aware that you are an atheist but as far as I know you are not a liberal leftist.

"Freekin' liberal, leftist, atheists" refers to those atheists who are freekin', liberal leftists, and not to those who aren't. Perhaps the inadvertent comma after "leftist" confused my meaning. If so, my mistake.

Can you not see that "studies" like this are not scientific? How could they even begin to control for the gazillions of possible confounding variables that would affect the subjects' observed responses, or for the cognitive biases that influence the researchers interpretations? They can't.

Were the study subjects aware that they were participating in an experiment? Were they informed about the experiment's objectives and the purpose of the procedures? Were some of the subjects aware of the researchers' personal biases on the questions addressed by the experiment? Were they paid to participate? Wouldn't any of these factors affect the way they choose to respond? Most likely.

Conclusions from experiments like this, whether funded and conducted by atheists or devout Christians or hoity-toity academic institutions, are nothing more than the interpretations, i.e. the opinions, of the researchers filtered through their own political, social and religious biases. And surely we have no illusions about the political, social and religious biases that dominate most institutions of higher learning in the U.S.A. today.

The comments I posted are obviously my subjective opinions, and not any attempt at objective analysis; like your comments about my prejudice and assumptions.

Thanks for your reply. I feel honored to have received your attention ;)

Amy spends more effort ripping religion and believers than any believers I know spend attempting to convert others.

Interesting.

Regardless of the study, I know who I like to associate with. My church. It's unfortunate that all people, and all religious people do not operate in the same vein, but we collect goods all year round for those "in need" (and distribute them), have ministries for inmates and needy. I work with youth outside my church and help wherever I can.

No, I'm unlikely to pick up someone on the side of the road because I don't have faith that others are good and I shuttle two children most of the time, which can be a magnet for predators. However, I have picked up my son's school mates to and from school to assist with their transport without request. I'm not saying that I'm perfect, or striving to be, but I do know I do the best that I can. I did more as a single woman.

In short, my point is that being "religious" doesn't mean being compassionate or good. Belief in a higher being or that Jesus existed is the only requirement that a lot of Christians meet. I see it every week.

"Amy spends more effort ripping religion and believers than any believers I know spend attempting to convert others. Interesting."

Obviously, you don't know very much. You haven't noticed the attempts to teach Creationism in American schools, or the National Day of Prayer, sanctioned by Federal institutions, which obviously nods at Christianity.

I am the first to note that America is what it is because of British Protestants, but I am also one of the few, apparently, that note that government is a business which needs to ignore all religion, lest it be forced to acknowledge all of them.

If you think the law should treat you differently because of your religion, speak up. Say why.