Thiruchselvam: Religiosity Study Published in SCAN

[rug]

FEBRUARY 24, 2017

Assistant Professor of Psychology Ravi Thiruchselvam was the co-author of an article published in Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience (SCAN), a leading journal in human neuroscience.

“In God we trust? Neural measures reveal lower social conformity among non-religious individuals” is based on a study conducted with his co-authors Yashoda Gopi ’16, Leonard Kilekwang ’16 and Jessica Harper ’15. James Gross of Stanford University is also a co-author.

The article explores why some people are religious and others are not. The research focuses on one possible reason – how sensitive a person is to social influence, in particular, how much he or she values other people’s opinions when forming personal views.

The study examined the idea that religious and non-religious people differ in the weight they place on other people’s opinions. The researchers found that when forming personal views, the brain responses of non-religious individuals were less affected by what their peers believe.

Thiruchselvam said the findings highlight a novel link between religiosity and social influence.

http://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/thiruchselvam-religiosity-study-published-in-scan

Full article:

https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/scan/PAP/10.1093_scan_nsx023/3/nsx023.pdf?Expires=1488463041&Signature=KqoENNhDfqv0s8Exj9dUBbQUf-P4RLUItLWDbd3WdvApNPFPgVbtYmNQU0y4-Oyjho1gs6U-pc4YyqClUUtz-ZTlyaNS2ulkD4slsEFNS~DQ6Sohmx-S7W5CXASqOeHaNvXXHF0OU86BDu134Khm9~G1~I28CY7U4Wp1zhIs99scwbCT-rUXiX37gT8dYaijHAWmCR0OukPIvVggYlC5ujZGfHlMVCTmnmcwCZFONCfQqkseIUBgy~7DzAm0ifXjiG24qadLLSBay~UbVYDdfk~QWVcFhhJM24CdmzoLMqz7dw99sX0rHWVTNT8XACyZdny-Q38Myz6FMRb5gQqQAg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIUCZBIA4LVPAVW3Q

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. However, looking at just one country probably doesn't show much

The USA having a significant religious majority, it's not that surprising that they found lower social conformity among non-religious individuals. It would be far more useful to run a similar experiment in a country with a rough 50-50 split between religious and non-religious, or a country with a non-religious majority.

[rug]

2. I agree, not much beyond that country.

I would very much like to see the correlation between the non-religious and social conformity in China, Japan and Korea (both of them).

[Bretton Garcia]

3. Personally, I'd admit:

Last edited Mon Feb 27, 2017, 06:33 AM - Edit history (1)

I feel social conformity is slightly overrated.

I bet most innovators and inventors feel the same way.

Total conformity to old ideas makes progress impossible.

You guys might for once be partly right here however. Atheism and conformity might be linked more in atheist, say Scandinavian, countries.

Non-conformity to popular opinion though, is an explicit principle of Science. Everyday people opposed the idea that the earth moved around the sun; that whales were not fish, but mammals; and so forth.

Science was constantly attacked by popular opinion; in return it attacked conformity to popular opinion. To say, the "idols of the tribe," or herd.

In fact, I like the part, the kind of atheism that is nonconformist, and based on science. If parts of atheism became simply, slavishly conformist, I wouldn't follow that part so much.