{"id":434,"date":"2009-03-12T21:14:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/why-women-are-more-religious-part-1-it-aint-pascals-wager.html"},"modified":"2014-12-07T05:28:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T04:28:39","slug":"why-mean-are-less-religious-part-1-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/why-mean-are-less-religious-part-1-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Why women are more religious. Part 1: It ain’t Pascal’s Wager"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s a new analysis<\/a> of the 2007 Pew Survey on the USA Religious landscape, confirming some very old news: women are more religious than men on virtually every measure. And here\u2019s a write up<\/a> of it that\u2019s rather more surprising:<\/p>\n

Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, flips the question around: Why are men less religious?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cStudies of biochemistry imply that both male irreligiousness and male lawlessness are rooted in the fact that far more males than females have an underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses, especially those involving immediate gratification and thrills,\u201d Stark argued in a 2002 paper in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The upshot is that some men are shortsighted and don\u2019t think ahead, Stark said, and so \u201cgoing to prison or going to hell just doesn\u2019t matter to these men.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now hold on a minute here! That\u2019s a pretty bold claim, and needs some pretty powerful evidence to back it up. Unfortunately the evidence is circumstantial. What\u2019s worse, recent studies have proved Stark to be just plain wrong.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s back up a moment to see where Stark is coming from. In 2002 he co-wrote a study with Alan Miller (Hokkaido University) that looked at survey evidence on religion from around the world. What they showed was that women are more religious than men in every society, and the gap in religiousness was greater in more liberal societies than in more traditional ones. They also found some evidence linking a bigger gap to religions with a greater fixation on reward and punishment in the after life.<\/p>\n

Given that men are more likely to take risks than women, they proposed that men are less religious because they are willing to take a gamble on there not being an afterlife. Classic Pascal\u2019s Wager<\/a>, in other words.<\/p>\n

In 2007 sociologists Jeremy Freese (Harvard) and James Montgomery (University of Wisconsin-Madison) ripped that argument to shreds.<\/p>\n

Never mind the fact that Pascal\u2019s Wager is a pretty dodgy to start with, Stark\u2019s argument assumes that everyone makes the same risk assessment. Everyone has the same answer to the question: \u201cWhat\u2019s the odds of going to hell if I don\u2019t go to Church today?\u201d It\u2019s just that men are prepared to take that risk, whereas women aren\u2019t. Technically, this is called risk preference<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Whereas what in fact probably happens is that men judge the risk to be lower. I don\u2019t believe, therefore I judge the risk of going to hell to be pretty much zero, therefore I don\u2019t go the church. This is called risk assessment<\/span>, and has nothing to do with men being more prepared to take risk.\"Frees_2007_Expected_utility\"<\/a>But even going along with Stark\u2019s assumptions, Freese & Montgomery show that his argument is bogus. Stark frames it in economic terms, and so they use a standard economic model to test it. Here\u2019s the choices open to you. R is reward, C is cost (i.e. all the time spent in Church when you could\u2019ve been doing something else), and P is punishment.<\/p>\n

What they show is that risk-takers should be more motivated by the idea of heaven than of hell. And the opposite applies to the risk averse \u2013 the idea of hell should put the fear of God into them!<\/p>\n

In other words, if Pascal\u2019s wager was important, and if women are more risk averse, you should only find more women than men in the group of people who believe in hell but not in heaven. In fact, almost no-one believes only in hell. And anyway, when Freese & Montgomery looked at data from the international World Values Survey, they found that women were more religious than men whether or not they believed in heaven or hell (or both). Pascal\u2019s wager makes no difference.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But so far this is all very theoretical \u2013 and economic theory at that (which doesn\u2019t have a great reputation right now!). So here\u2019s some hard data from Louise Roth at the University of Arizona. She took a look at both international and US survey statistics, and found pretty much the same thing wherever she looked.<\/p>\n

The data I\u2019ve pulled out are from the US General Social Survey. They show church attendance and prayer according to whether people believe in the afterlife or not. What you need to look at here is the gap between the \u2018men\u2019 column and the \u2018women\u2019 column.<\/p>\n

As expected, there is a gap \u2013 women are more religious than men. But the gap is actually smaller among those who believe in an afterlife!<\/p>\n

These numbers are the exact opposite of what Stark\u2019s theory predicts. Far from being unconcerned with life after death, it seems that the best way to get men involved in religion is to promise them life eternal!<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s not Pascal\u2019s wager, then must be something else that\u2019s attracting women to religion. But what? I\u2019ve been looking at that too \u2013 with a bit of luck I\u2019ll cover it in my next post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________________________________________
\n\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>Jeremy Freese, James Montgomery (2007). The Devil Made Her Do It: Evaluating Risk Preference as an Explanation of Sex Differences in Religiousness. Advances in Group Processes: The Social Psychology of Gender. Oxford, Elsevier<\/span>, 187-230<\/span><\/p>\n

Louise Marie Roth, & Jeffrey C. Kroll (2007). Risky Business: Assessing Risk Preference Explanations for Gender Differences in Religiosity American Sociological Review, 27<\/span> (2), 205-220<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a new analysis of the 2007 Pew Survey on the USA Religious landscape, confirming some very old news: women are more religious than men on virtually every measure. And here\u2019s a write up of it that\u2019s rather more surprising: Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, flips […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy women are more religious. 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