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{"id":324,"date":"2010-01-09T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2010\/01\/get-religion-and-get-laid.html"},"modified":"2010-01-09T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T22:30:00","slug":"get-religion-and-get-laid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2010\/01\/get-religion-and-get-laid.html","title":{"rendered":"Get religion and get laid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

What\u2019s more, when women are shown an array of attractive, promiscuous women, they\u2019re more likely to reject the notion that casual sex is OK.<\/p>\n

How does religion fit into this? Douglas Kenrick (Arizona State University), who\u2019s an expert on human mating strategies, has set out to investigate this.<\/p>\n

He started with a hypothesis. He suspected that when women face more competition they would also report being more religious. The idea is that being more religious will somehow force prospective partners to be more faithful.<\/p>\n

Now, to me that doesn\u2019t really make sense. You would expect women in a competitive marketplace to want other people (especially men) to be more religious \u2013 but not themselves. If women are in a position to demand fidelity, then men would respond by claiming to be religious (in an attempt to persuade women that they are a good, faithful \u2018catch\u2019). But if men were in demand, then they could demand less \u2018religiously virtuous\u2019 relationships.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>But that\u2019s really a moot point, because Kenrick didn\u2019t find what he expected to.<\/p>\n

What he did was to show students pictures of 6 attractive men or six attractive women (the ruse was that they were helping improve a fictional dating service). He then asked them about their religiosity.<\/p>\n

It turned out that neither men nor women said they were more religious after seeing pictures of the opposite sex. But both men and women reported being more religious after seeing pictures of the same sex.<\/p>\n

So, when you remind people of the competition, they get to thinking that the mating odds are stacked against them. And they respond (at least, these US students respond) by claiming to be more religious.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a puzzling result if you start from the assumption that people assert their religiosity in order to advertise their secular fidelity. Why on earth should women claim to be religious, when that might make them less attractive to potential mates?<\/p>\n

So if these responses aren\u2019t about advertising fidelity, what can explain them? I think it\u2019s simple. In the USA, religion is a social norm. Atheists are outsiders. So, if you want to make yourself look attractive, then you claim to be religious.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there\u2019s some great evidence that that\u2019s exactly what happens \u2013 which is the topic of the next blog post.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________________________
$\"ResearchBlogging.org\"$ <\/a><\/span>
Li, Y., Cohen, A., Weeden, J., & Kenrick, D. (2009). Mating competitors increase religious beliefs Journal of Experimental Social Psychology<\/span> DOI: 10.1016\/j.jesp.2009.10.017<\/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":"