Religious Beliefs Reduce Hostility, Despite What The Media Sensationalizes

The diversity of religion remains an intricate and perplexing topic. Yet recent findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology address the positive aspects of religious influence on believers.

"Based on our premise that most people's religious beliefs are non-hostile and magnanimous, we hypothesized that being reminded of religious beliefs would normally promote less hostile reactions to the kinds of threats in everyday life that usually heighten hostility," said researcher Karina Schumann, the article's lead author, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, in a news release.

To further test this hypothesis, researchers had participants receive a simple reminder regarding their religious belief system, such as "which religious beliefs system do you identify with?" or not.

Next, they were then exposed to either threatening experiences (such as thinking about their own death or failing at an academic assignment) or not. They were then given a chance to judge and assign punishments for transgressors, criminals and worldview critics.

Nine different experiment revealed that among 910 participants-made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus-religious groups were significantly less hostile and threatening in many circumstances than non-reminded participants were.

"Our research suggests that people generally associate their religious beliefs with Golden Rule ideals of forgiveness and forbearance, and that they turn to them when the chips are down, in threatening circumstances," concluded York U psychology professor Ian McGregor, the article's second author. "This research contributes to the current dialogue on religion by demonstrating that even brief religious belief reminders not accompanied by any explicit beliefs or injunctions tend to promote more magnanimous, less hostile choices in threatening circumstances."