Study shows religion is a potent force for cooperation, conflict

[Tank]

Study shows religion is a potent force for cooperation, conflict

Across history and cultures, religion increases trust within groups but also may increase conflict with other groups, according to an article in a special issue of Science.

"Moralizing gods, emerging over the last few millennia, have enabled large-scale cooperation and sociopolitical conquest even without war," says University of Michigan anthropologist Scott Atran, lead author of the article with Jeremy Ginges of the New School for Social Research.

"Sacred values sustain intractable conflicts like those between the Israelis and the Palestinians that defy rational, business-like negotiation. But they also provide surprising opportunities for resolution."

As evidence for their claim that religion increases trust within groups but may increase conflict with other groups, Atran and Ginges cite a number of studies among different populations. These include cross-cultural surveys and experiments in dozens of societies showing that people who participate most in collective religious rituals are more likely to cooperate with others, and that groups most intensely involved in conflict have the costliest and most physically demanding rituals to galvanize group solidarity in common defense and blind group members to exit strategies. Secular social contracts are more prone to defection, they argue. Their research also indicates that participation in collective religious ritual increases parochial altruism and, in relevant contexts, support for suicide attacks.

They also identify what they call the "backfire effect," which dooms many efforts to broker peace. In many studies that Atran and Ginges carried out with colleagues in Palestine, Israel, Iran, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan, they found that offers of money or other material incentives to compromise sacred values increased anger and opposition to a deal.

The results of the research are not surprising to me but it's good to have one's gut feel backed up by some objective work.

[Sandra Craft]

I liked this comment: New study finds grass is green, sky is blue.   

[Tank]

I liked this comment: New study finds grass is green, sky is blue.   

I didn't notice that 

The critical thing here is what can be learned to prevent the conflict activation aspect. The attitude of confrontation presented by the USA to Iran is a classic example of where the group rhetoric has drowned out any possibility of a reasoned and compromised solution.

[Gawen]

Not only between different world religions, sacred values sustain intractable conflicts (not necessarily war) within even a single church, denomination, sect, what have you. In the last 12 years, I know of four churches in my city that suffered a mass exodus due to this. One of those churches split and one of the splits...split.

The article is nothing new and only confirms what everyone should know, the grass is green, the sky is blue...unless you hold a sacred value believing otherwise.

[Sweetdeath]

Wait... What are the Israelis and Palastinians still fighing for?

Is it something idiotic?

[Tank]

Wait... What are the Israelis and Palastinians still fighing for?

Is it something idiotic?

No. The Palestinians are fighting for their homeland. The fact that they are using completely the wrong tactics to get it back is the issue.