Three Children Sitting On Stairs, Aaqrabâte, Syria. Photo Credit: Samer Daboul / PexelsAccording to a study published in Current Biology in 2015, children raised without religion tend to be kinder than children brought up in very religious households.
The study was a collaborative effort between numerous academics from seven different universities that are spread out all over the world.
“Overall, our findings … contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others. More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it will do just the opposite,” the researchers said in the study.
The research involved nearly 1,200 children between the ages of 5 and 12. The children were from a variety of different cultures, including children from the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, and South Africa. Of those who participated in the experiment, nearly 24% were Christian, 43% Muslim, and 27.6% non-religious. Children who were Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic or other less ubiquitous religions were not statistically significant enough to have their results included.
In the study, the children put in situations where they would have an opportunity to share with others. They were also shown video footage of children fighting and pushing each other while researchers gauged their reactions.
The results of the study “robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households,” according to the researchers.
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