Angry God, angry people
Feb. 28, 2007
Courtesy Association for Psychological Science
and World Science staff
New re­search may clar­i­fy the re­la­tion­ship
be­tween re­li­gious in­doc­tri­na­tion and
vi­o­lence, a top­ic that has gained new no­to­ri­ety
since the Sept. 11 at­tacks.
In the stu­dy, psy­chol­o­gist Brad Bush­man of the
Uni­ver­si­ty of Mich­i­gan in Ann Ar­bor, Mich. and
col­leagues sug­gest that vi­o­lence sanc­tioned by God in
scrip­tures can in­crease ag­gres­sion,
es­pe­cial­ly in be­liev­ers.
A detail from Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine
Chapel.
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The find­ings ap­pear in the March is­sue of the re­search
jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence.
The au­thors worked with un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents at
two uni­ver­si­ties: Brig­ham Young in Pro­vo, Utah, where
99 per­cent of stu­dents re­port be­liev­ing in God and the
Bi­ble; and Vrije Uni­ver­si­teit in Am­ster­dam, where
just half re­port be­liev­ing in God, and 27 per­cent in the
Bi­ble.
The par­ti­ci­pants read a par­a­ble adapted from a
rel­a­tively ob­scure pas­sage in the King James Bi­ble. It
de­s­c­ribes the bru­tal tor­ture and mur­der of a
wom­an, and her hus­bands sub­se­quent re­venge on her
at­tack­ers.
Half the par­ti­ci­pants were told that the pas­sage came from
the Old Tes­ta­ment; the oth­er half, that it was an an­cient
scroll un­earthed by ar­chae­o­lo­gists. In
ad­di­tion, half the par­ti­ci­pants from both the
Bi­ble and the an­cient scroll groups read an ad­justed
ver­sion that in­clud­ed the verse: The Lord com­manded
Is­ra­el to take arms against their broth­ers and chas­ten them
be­fore the LORD.
Par­ti­ci­pants were then paired up and in­structed to
com­pete in a sim­ple re­ac­tion game that meas­ures
ag­gres­sion. The win­ner gets to blast his or her part­ner
with a noise that can be about as loud as a fire alarm.
The Brig­ham Young stu­dents were more ag­gres­sivethat is
loud­erwith their blasts if they had been told the pas­sage they had
read was from the Bi­ble rath­er than a scroll, the
re­search­ers found. Like­wise, they were more ag­gres­sive
if they had read the ad­di­tional verse that de­picts God
sanc­tion­ing vi­o­lence.
At the more sec­u­lar Dutch school, the re­sults were
sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar, the sci­en­tists said.
Al­though the stu­dents were less like­ly to be
in­flu­enced by the source of the ma­te­ri­al, they
blast­ed more ag­gres­sively when the pas­sage they read
in­clud­ed Gods sanc­tion­ing of the vi­o­lence. This
held true even for non­be­liev­ers, though to a less­er
ex­tent.
The find­ings shed light on the pos­si­ble ori­gins of
vi­o­lent re­li­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism, the
re­search­ers said, and fit with the­o­ries hold­ing that
vi­o­lent scrip­tures help lead ex­trem­ists to
ag­gres­sion. To the ex­tent re­li­gious
ex­trem­ists en­gage in pro­longed, se­lec­tive
read­ing of the scrip­tures, fo­cus­ing on vi­o­lent
ret­ri­bu­tion to­ward unbe­liev­ers in­stead of
the over­all mes­sage of ac­cept­ance and
un­der­stand­ing, wrote Bush­man, one might ex­pect to
see in­creased bru­tality.
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