{"id":1,"date":"2014-11-07T22:50:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T21:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/?p=1"},"modified":"2014-11-11T20:18:22","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T19:18:22","slug":"it-hurts-atheists-and-christians-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2014\/11\/it-hurts-atheists-and-christians-feel.html","title":{"rendered":"It hurts! Atheists and Christians don’t feel each others pain, but with a twist."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Christians<\/a>
Christians and atheist faces in pain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For many\u00a0people, their religion is like a badge of social identity. You feel an affinity with people who share a religion \u2013 not surprising given that you will share many cultural and social touch points.<\/p>\n

But will you feel their pain? If shown a picture of a Christian grimacing, will you mentally flinch? What about an atheist<\/p>\n

Siyuan Huang & Shihui Han at Peking University, Beijing, strapped electrodes to the heads of a bunch of Christians and atheists to see how they reacted to pictures of people \u2013 Christians and atheists \u2013 in pain. To keep it balanced, they used the images of the same 10 models for both Christians and atheists. They just swapped the symbols hung round their necks for some participants.<\/p>\n

What they found was that both Christians and atheists had an emotional reaction to the images of people in pain \u2013 but that, in both groups, the reaction was stronger for images of people from their own group.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s interesting enough, but there\u2019s a\u00a0 twist.<\/p>\n

They measured the reaction at different time points. That\u2019s what\u2019s shown in the graph below. P2, N2 and P3 represent the magnitude of the response at different intervals \u2013 P3 is about 0.4 seconds after P2.<\/p>\n

\"Neural<\/a>
Neural responses to pain images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can see that, at P2 and N2, Christians and atheists are quite similar. They have a response, but the response is greater to the \u2018in-group\u2019\u00a0 \u2013 atheists respond more strongly to the images of atheists in pain, and Christians more strongly to the images of Christians in pain.<\/p>\n

At P3 it\u2019s quite difference. At this time point, the Christian response to atheists images virtually disappears. For atheists, remarkably, the response to christian images is as strong as the response to atheist images.<\/p>\n

Huang and Han reckon that this is because the early responses are purely instinctive. The later response occurs after some mental and evaluation and appraisal. It reflects that the responder is applying some judgment beyond the instinctive.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a gold star for atheists, right? I mean, instinctively they empathize less with Christians but at least after a moments reflection they share their pain.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t forget that this study was done in China. In China, Christians are a decided minority whereas atheists \u2013 at least in terms of affiliation \u2013 are in the majority.<\/p>\n

So maybe what we\u2019re seeing here is simply that people from minority groups have a stronger in-group identity. That\u2019s been shown in other studies \u2013 minorities tend to stick together. There\u2019s one easy way to check this, of course, and that\u2019s to do a similar study in a country where atheists are a minority.<\/p>\n

But the take home from this, I think, is to be aware of just how powerful religious identity is as a component of our social identity.<\/p>\n

\n

\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>Huang, S., & Han, S. (2014). Shared beliefs enhance shared feelings: Religious\/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses Social Neuroscience<\/span>, 1-11 DOI: 10.1080\/17470919.2014.934396<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many\u00a0people, their religion is like a badge of social identity. You feel an affinity with people who share a religion \u2013 not surprising given that you will share many cultural and social touch points. But will you feel their pain? If shown a picture of a Christian grimacing, will you mentally flinch? What about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":1816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11,12],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-effects-of-religion-psychological","tag-empathy","tag-in-group-favouritism"],"yoast_head":"\nIt hurts! Atheists and Christians don't feel each others pain, but with a twist.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For many\u00a0people, their religion is like a badge of social identity. 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