Who cares more about the needy: Religious people or unbelievers?

Young Turks – conservative and liberal – mingle on a Friday afternoon near Eyup Mosque By Alex Fradera “The believer is not the one who eats when his neighbour beside him is hungry” said the founder of Islam, but many unbelievers see this as the norm: that religious people rarely do the good demanded by their faith. Some evidence seems to support this cynicism. Surveys on tackling inequality and support for welfare often find that the religious show less enthusiasm for helping the poorest in society. This would seem to reflect badly on the faithful, but new research in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics involving Turkish Muslims offers some redemption. The findings suggest that the religious may be taking a pragmatic approach that expresses their compassion for the needy while remaining consistent with their beliefs about a just deity … and in fact, from a practical perspective, this approach may lead to surprisingly good outcomes. Ceyhun Elgin and colleagues from Boğaziçi University in Turkey, presented 550 students with a survey that asked them to tackle a resource-sharing problem. This involved a shipwreck where two parties, named Friday and Robinson, had become stranded on neighbouring islands: Island A and Island B, respectively. Each island had 12 fruit plants, and due to a quirk, each plant could only be tended (and consumed) by one person. For reasons unexplained, Robinson can only get 20 fruit from each plant (perhaps he...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Morality Religion Source Type: blogs