A religious upbringing reduces the influence of genetic factors on disinhibition: evidence for interaction between genotype and environment on personality.

Information on personality, on anxiety and depression and on several aspects of religion was collected in 1974 Dutch families consisting of adolescent and young adult twins and their parents. Analyses of these data showed that differences between individuals in religious upbringing, in religious affiliation and in participation in church activities are not influenced by genetic factors. The familial resemblance for different aspects of religion is high, but can be explained entirely by environmental influences common to family members. Shared genes do not contribute to familial resemblances in religion. The absence of genetic influences on variation in several dimensions of religion is in contrast to findings of genetic influences on a large number of other traits that were studied in these twin families. Differences in religious background are associated with differences in personality, especially in Sensation Seeking. Subjects with a religious upbringing, who are currently religious and who engage in church activities score lower on the scales of the Sensation Seeking Questionnaire. The most pronounced effect is on the Disinhibition scale. The resemblances between twins for the Disinhibition scale differ according to their religious upbringing. Receiving a religious upbringing seems to reduce the influence of genetic factors on Disinhibition, especially in males.     

Risk aversion and religious behaviour: Analysis using a sample of Danish twins

Economics offers an analytical framework to consider human behaviour including religious behaviour. Within the realm of Expected Utility Theory, religious belief and activity could be interpreted as an insurance both for current life events and for afterlife rewards. Based on that framework, we would expect that risk averse individuals would demand a more generous protection plan which they may do by devoting more effort and resources into religious activities such as church attendance and prayer, which seems to be in accordance with previous empirical results. However, a general concern regards the problems of spurious correlations due to underlying omitted or unobservable characteristics shaping both religious activities and risk attitudes. This paper examines empirically the demand for religion by analysing the association between risk attitudes on the one hand, and church attandance and prayer frequency on the other controlling for unobservable variables using survey data of Danish same-sex twin pairs. We verify the correlation between risk preferences and religion found previously by carrying out cross-sectional analyses. We also show that the association between risk attitudes and religious behaviour is driven by the subgroup of individuals who believe in an afterlife. In addition, when re-analysing our results using panel data analyses which cancel out shared factors among twin pairs, we find that the correlation found between risk aversion and religious behaviour is no longer significant indicating that other factors might explain differences in religious behaviour. Caution is needed in the interpretation of our results as the insignificant association between risk aversion and religious behaviour in the panel data analyses potentially might be due to measurement error causing attenuation bias or lack of variation within twin pairs rather than the actual absence of an association.     

Temporal Dynamics of Religion as a Determinant of HIV Infection in East Zimbabwe: A Serial Cross-Sectional Analysis

Background

Religion is an important underlying determinant of HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa. However, little is known about how religion influences changes in HIV prevalence and associated sexual behaviours over time.

Objectives

To compare changes in HIV prevalence between major religious groups in eastern Zimbabwe during a period of substantial HIV risk reduction (1998–2005) and to investigate whether variations observed can be explained by differences in behaviour change.

Methods

We analysed serial cross-sectional data from two rounds of a longitudinal population survey in eastern Zimbabwe. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were developed to compare differences in sexual behaviour and HIV prevalence between religious groups and to investigate changes over time controlling for potential confounders.

Results

Christian churches were the most popular religious grouping. Over time, Spiritualist churches increased in popularity and, for men, Traditional religion and no religion became less and more common, respectively. At baseline (1998–2000), HIV prevalence was higher in Traditionalists and in those with no religion than in people in Christian churches (men 26.7% and 23.8% vs. 17.5%, women: 35.4% and 37.5% vs. 24.1%). These effects were explained by differences in socio-demographic characteristics (for Traditional and men with no religion) or sexual behaviour (women with no religion). Spiritualist men (but not women) had lower HIV prevalence than Christians, after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics (14.4% vs. 17.5%, aOR = 0.8), due to safer behaviour. HIV prevalence had fallen in all religious groups at follow-up (2003–2005). Odds of infection in Christians reduced relative to those in other religious groups for both sexes, effects that were mediated largely by greater reductions in sexual-risk behaviour and, possibly, for women, by patterns of conversion between churches.

Conclusion

Variation in behavioural responses to HIV between the major church groupings has contributed to a change in the religious pattern of infection in eastern Zimbabwe.     

Religion on Dover beach

How does transcendental religion flourish when a secular frame sets conditions of belief? This question is put in a case study of the Catholic Newman Society at the University of Melbourne (1955–65). The Society flourished in a secular University where Charles Taylor’s ‘immanent frame’ was supposedly in place. Explanations are found in the particular spirituality nurtured in the Society and in the contingencies of Australian Catholicism in the mid‐twentieth century, but also in the conventions of secular discourse in the University. Conclusions drawn from the case are: (i) that there are elective affinities between some forms of transcendental religion and a secular context; (ii) that social science dichotomies that separate the religious and secular obviate appreciation of elective affinities and hybridisation; (iii) that there are parallels between ethnographic inquiry and inner‐worldly spirituality that may help us develop a conversational ethnography.     

Testing theories of secularization and religious belief in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Several theoretical approaches have been proposed to explain variation in religiosity, including versions of secularization hypotheses, evolved cognitive biases, and cultural transmission. In this paper we test several theories that aim to explain variation in religiosity and compare them in a representative sample collected in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (N = 2022). These two countries represent a natural experiment in religiosity; despite their high level of historical, institutional and cultural similarity, their populations differ markedly in the rate of religious belief. We examine the predictive power of cognitive biases (anthropomorphism, dualism, teleology, mentalizing, and analytic thinking); institutional insecurity; and exposure to credibility displays of belief in childhood on various factors of religious belief. We find that individual differences in cognitive biases predicted 8% of the variance belief in God, but predicted 21% of the variance in paranormal beliefs and almost no variance in religious participation. Perceived institutional insecurity explains little variance in any of these variables, but cultural transmission, measured as exposure to credibility enhancing displays (CREDs) and church attendance in childhood, predicted 17% of the variance in belief in God and 30% of religious participation, and mediated 70% of the difference between these two countries in belief in God and 80% of the difference in religious practice. These findings suggest cognitive biases may explain the existence of belief in the supernatural generally, but cultural transmission through credible belief displays is a more plausible explanation for why people adopt and maintain a specific set of religious beliefs and practices.     

Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: Towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation

This article begins with a brief section updating my 1979 Ethnic and Racial Studies article ‘Symbolic ethnicity: the future of ethnic groups and cultures in America’. However, its main aim is to describe and develop the somewhat parallel concept of symbolic religiosity, which I conceive as the consumption of religious symbols apart from regular participation in a religious culture or in religious organizations, for the purpose of expressing feelings of religiosity and religious identification. Since I assume that symbolic religiosity develops mainly among the acculturating descendants of immigrants, I also explore the possibility of separating and then comparing ethnic and religious acculturation. I assume further that among religio‐ethnic groups like the Jews, and ethno‐religious groups such as Russian, Greek and other Orthodox Catholics, ethnic and religious acculturation proceed in divergent ways. This raises a number of interesting empirical questions about the differences between and similarities of ethnicity and religion among these groups and in general. The article concludes with speculations about what might happen to ethnicity and religiosity in the future. Most of my illustrative data in this article are drawn from studies and observations about American Jewry.     

The Recognition Signal Hypothesis for the Adaptive Evolution of Religion

Recent research on the evolution of religion has focused on whether religion is an unselected by-product of evolutionary processes or if it is instead an adaptation by natural selection. Adaptive hypotheses for religion include direct fitness benefits from improved health and indirect fitness benefits mediated by costly signals and/or cultural group selection. Herein, I propose that religious denominations achieve indirect fitness gains for members through the use of ecologically arbitrary beliefs, rituals, and moral rules that function as recognition markers of cultural inheritance analogous to kin and species recognition of genetic inheritance in biology. This recognition signal hypotheses could act in concert with either costly signaling or cultural group selection to produce evolutionarily altruistic behaviors within denominations. Using a cultural phylogenetic analysis, I show that a large set of religious behaviors among extant Christian denominations supports the prediction of the recognition signal hypothesis that characters change more frequently near historical schisms. By incorporating demographic data into the model, I show that more-distinctive denominations, as measured through dissimilar characteristics, appear to be protected from intrusion by nonmembers in mixed-denomination households, and that they may be experiencing greater biological growth of their populations even in the present day.     

Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model

Religious people nowadays have more children on average than their secular counterparts. This paper uses a simple model to explore the evolutionary implications of this difference. It assumes that fertility is determined entirely by culture, whereas subjective predisposition towards religion is influenced by genetic endowment. People who carry a certain 'religiosity' gene are more likely than average to become or remain religious. The paper considers the effect of religious defections and exogamy on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of 'cultural hitch-hiking', whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations.     

Discursive Formation,Ethnographic Encounter,Photographic Evidence: The Centenary of Durkheim's Basic Forms of Religious Life and the Anthropological Study of Australian Aboriginal Religion in His Time

Historical research on the work of Émile Durkheim has often been confined to textual analysis aiming to reconstruct his research in the context of anthropological discourses at the turn of the 20th century. As radical changes in the visual culture of the late 19th century shaped the formation of anthropology as an academic discipline, the ambition of this article is to elaborate the ways Durkheim's use of ethnographic data and visual material formed the foundation of the theoretical and methodological design of his approach to religion. By tracing features in his Basic Forms that emphasize visual material and prioritize religious practice, I submit that the photographic evidence given in Spencer and Gillen's account of Aboriginal religion allowed Durkheim to theorize religion primarily through ritual. Photography, as a visual means of representation, enhanced the study of religion by focusing on ritual without necessarily demanding consideration of its mythical narratives and cosmological accounts. Based on a thorough analysis of his Basic Forms, this article argues that Durkheim used the photographs of the Aborigines of Central Australia systematically and that this use of photographs consequently guided his ethnographic depiction and his selection of theoretical concepts and methodological procedures.     

Forward to the past: race,the colour scale and Michael Banton

This study examined differences in religious participation and spirituality among African Americans, Caribbean blacks (black Caribbeans) and non-Hispanic whites. Data are taken from the National Survey of American Life, a nationally representative study of African Americans, black Caribbeans and non-Hispanic whites. Selected measures of organizational, non-organizational and subjective religious participation were examined. African American and Caribbean blacks were largely similar in their reports of religious involvement; both groups generally indicated higher levels of religious participation than non-Hispanic whites. African Americans were more likely than black Caribbeans to be official members of their places of worship, engage in activities (choirs, church clubs) at their place of worship and request prayer from others. Black Caribbeans reported reading religious materials more frequently than African Americans. The discussion notes the importance of examining ethnic differences within the black American population of the United States.     

Race and Ethnic Differences in Religious Involvement: African Americans, Caribbean Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites

This study examined differences in religious participation and spirituality among African Americans, Caribbean Blacks (Black Caribbeans) and non-Hispanic Whites. Data are taken from the National Survey of American Life, a nationally representative study of African Americans, Black Caribbeans and non-Hispanic Whites. Selected measures of organizational, nonorganizational and subjective religious participation were examined. African American and Caribbean Blacks were largely similar in their reports of religious involvement; both groups generally indicated higher levels of religious participation than non-Hispanic Whites. African Americans were more likely than Black Caribbeans to be official members of their places of worship, engage in activities (choirs, church clubs) at their place of worship and request prayer from others. Black Caribbeans reported reading religious materials more frequently than African Americans. The discussion notes the importance of examining ethnic differences within the black American population of the United States.     

Spiritual Aroma: Religion and Politics

Anthropological studies of religion have been largely concerned with belief, with ritual, and with the general integrative significance of religious institutions for society. But many issues in the power relations of religious affiliation are still not clear. The political implications of religion involve grave practical as well as theoretical problems. Abstractly, religion and politics are often conceived as opposed; concretely, they interact. While religion can be a powerful political instrument, it can also adapt to political ends and generate its own political structures. In contrast to the broadly affirmative role assigned by anthropologists to religion in society is Karl Marx's thesis of religion as political ideology. Reasons for granting some validity to this position but also for questioning its basic assumptions are given. The whole analysis is illustrated by a wide range of examples, from Polynesian ethnography to the history of Christianity and of Islam, and the situation of religion in modem socialist states .     

Religion and depression: a review of the literature.

We reviewed data from approximately 80 published and unpublished studies that examined the association of religious affiliation or involvement with depressive symptoms or depressive disorder. In these studies, religion was measured as religious affiliation; general religious involvement; organizational religious involvement; prayer or private religious involvement; religious salience and motivation; or religious beliefs. People from some religious affiliations appear to have an elevated risk for depressive symptoms and depressive disorder, and people with no religious affiliation are at an elevated risk in comparison with people who are religiously affiliated. People with high levels of general religious involvement, organizational religious involvement, religious salience, and intrinsic religious motivation are at reduced risk for depressive symptoms and depressive disorders. Private religious activity and particular religious beliefs appear to bear no reliable relationship with depression. People with high levels of extrinsic religious motivation are at increased risk for depressive symptoms. Although these associations tend to be consistent, they are modest and are substantially reduced in multivariate research. Longitudinal research is sparse, but suggests that some forms of religious involvement might exert a protective effect against the incidence and persistence of depressive symptoms or disorders. The existing research is sufficient to encourage further investigation of the associations of religion with depressive symptoms and disorder. Religion should be measured with higher methodological standards than those that have been accepted in survey research to date.     

Religion Does Matter for Climate Change Attitudes and Behavior

Little research has focused on the relationship between religion and climate change attitudes and behavior. Further, while there have been some studies examining the relationship between environmental attitudes and religion, most are focused on Christian denominations and secularism, and few have examined other religions such as Buddhism. Using an online survey of 1,927 Australians we examined links between membership of four religious groupings (Buddhists, Christian literalists and non-literalists, and Secularists) and climate change attitudes and behaviors. Differences were found across religious groups in terms of their belief in: (a) human induced climate change, (b) the level of consensus among scientists, (c) their own efficacy, and (d) the need for policy responses. We show, using ordinal regression, that religion explains these differences even after taking into account socio-demographic factors, knowledge and environmental attitude, including belief in man’s dominion over nature. Differences in attitude and behavior between these religious groups suggest the importance of engaging denominations to encourage change in attitudes and behavior among their members.     

Religion and intensity of inbreeding in Tamil Nadu,South India

Abstract

A representative random sample of 11,628 rural couples and 8,998 urban couples from North Arcot District of Tamil Nadu in South India are under follow up since 1969 in a study of inbreeding eflFects. This paper describes the level of inbreeding and its relationship to religion of the couples. Wright's F for autosomal genes in the rural and urban areas were 0.0371 and 0.0205, respectively. The F for sex‐linked genes was significantly higher than that for autosomal and was 0.0411 in the rural areas and 0.0228 in the urban. Hindus had the highest inbreeding coefficients as compared to Muslims or Christians for both autosomal and sex‐linked genes, but there were significant variations among the different castes. The level of inbreeding among Muslims and Christians was similar and fairly high. Significant rural‐urban differentials persist in all religions. There is no appreciable change in the level of inbreeding over the past few decades in any religion, although minor declines are observed in certain castes in the urban areas.     

The Effect of Religion on Candidate Preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican Presidential Primaries

Thanks to the work of politics and religion scholars, we now know a lot about the relationship between religion and voting in American presidential general elections. However, we know less about the influence of religion on individual vote choice in presidential primaries. This article fills that gap by exploring the relationship between religion and candidate preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries. Using pre-Super Tuesday surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, I find that the Republican candidate who most explicitly appealed to religious voters (Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012) was the preferred candidate of Republican respondents who attended religious services at the highest levels, and that as attendance increased, so did the likelihood of preferring that candidate. I also find that identification as a born again Christian mattered to candidate preference. Specifically, born again Christians were more likely than non-born again Christians to prefer Huckabee to Mitt Romney, John McCain and Ron Paul in 2008, and Santorum to Romney in 2012. Although ideology was not the primary subject of this article, I find that ideology was also a statistically significant predictor of Republican candidate preference in both 2008 and 2012. This robust finding reinforces scholars’ prior work on the importance of ideology in explaining presidential primary vote choice. The overall findings of the paper provide evidence that religion variables can add to our understanding of why voters prefer one candidate over another in presidential primaries.     

‘Our bones are made of Iron’: the political ecology of Garhwali women's activism

In the Garhwal Himalaya of India's Uttarakhand State, a series of social movements emerged in the late 2000s to contest hydroelectric dams on a tributary of the sacred River Ganga. Within these opposition movements, men often took high‐profile leadership roles whereas women from a range of socio‐economic backgrounds formed the overwhelming base of participation at meetings, assemblies, and rallies. This article draws from event‐based participation and semi‐structured interviews to explore the diverse concerns that women gave to explain their engagements with opposition efforts. I counter essentialist frames and employ a feminist political ecology approach to argue that the gendered dynamics are attributable to historical, cultural, religious, and political‐economic influences. The article contributes to anthropologies of gender, environment, and social movements by taking an approach focused on disparities of practice and power that helps situate Garhwali women's roles in development contestations.     

Outside Points of View in the Construction of Balinese Ethnicity and Religion

The ‘outside points of view’ of Muslims, Indian Hindus, tourists and other non‐Balinese towards Balinese culture and religion are often invoked by Balinese religious leaders and urban intelligentsia. This has been described in the literature as ‘defensiveness’ related to the process of gaining state acceptance for Balinese religion as Hinduism. I argue for a more subtle reading of the importance of assumed outside points of view to transformations of Balinese practices and to the construction of Balinese identities, by analysing examples from fieldwork (2001–2003) and from Balinese media relating to current debates over cockfighting, the Balinese language, and Balinese religion. One must differentiate the importance of outside points of view to differently positioned Balinese, determine what specific practices are called into question by such assumed points of view, and clearly distinguish between the flow of cultural categories and concepts in a globalised world and the phenomenon of perceived interactions between religions and cultures. Furthermore, a wider cross‐cultural perspective reveals the limitations of understanding these processes as uniquely postcolonial or postmodern.     

Miracles in the waiting room of modernity: The canonisation of Dun Ġorġ of Malta

This study will focus on the persistence of ‘pre‐modern’ forms of religious belief in a secular age. By examining in detail the process of canonisation of St. George Preca, the first Maltese saint, this study will explore concepts of the self and relations to the body in a Catholic modernity. The focus on miracles and canonisation in a context other than that of a North Atlantic modernity also allows me to highlight the need to understand the complex relationships among: (i) the official church and believers; (ii) the local elite and the populace; and ultimately, (iii) between religion and science. Lastly, in keeping with the phenomenological and experiential imperatives shared with the contributors to this volume, I conclude this article by outlining what, through an intimate engagement with the religious beliefs of ‘others’, I have come to believe miracles are about: True body event.     

Religion and Identity: The Role of Ideological,Social, and Spiritual Contexts

Existing research demonstrates a positive relation between religion and identity among adolescents. A conceptual framework is presented suggesting that religion provides a distinct setting for identity exploration and commitment through offering ideological, social, and spiritual contexts. It is then suggested that the religious context promotes a sense of identity that transcends the self and promotes a concern for the social good and that religious institutions provide unique settings for adolescent identity formation. In addition to the potential developmental benefits of religion, negative consequences on identity development are considered. Finally, recommendations for empirical study are suggested.