Children from religious homes are the least generous, a new study shows
Children brought up in non-religious surroundings are more likely to be generous than those from religious surroundings, a new study has shown.
By comparing the tendency of non-religious and religious children to share with other children, scientists from the University of Chicago found that the former were much more likely to give to others.
The research, published in the journal Current Biology, also found that religious children were more likely to judge someone's misdeeds and want to punish them as a result.
They asked more than 1,100 children from all mainstream religions to play a game in which they had to individually decide how many stickers to share with an anonymous person from the same school and who belonged to a similar ethnic group.
The results revealed a clear trend, and there was actually a sliding scale, so that the more religious the family they came from, the less generous the child. Socioeconomic status, country of origin and age also played a role, but none of them as much as religion.
“Overall, our findings cast light on the cultural input of religion on prosocial behavior and contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others,” the researchers write in the report.
More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that the secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness—in fact, it will do just the opposite.
And in the spirit of generosity, new research by City Philanthropy shows that London's doing very well on the charitable front, with cash contribution to charity estimated at £5.6bn a year – 29 per cent of all private giving in the UK.