{"id":52,"date":"2013-03-10T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2013\/03\/calvinists-can-wait-but-catholics-live-for-the-moment.html"},"modified":"2014-11-11T21:27:45","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T20:27:45","slug":"calvinists-can-wait-but-catholics-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2013\/03\/calvinists-can-wait-but-catholics-live.html","title":{"rendered":"Calvinists can wait, but Catholics live for the moment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

OK, here\u2019s the deal. I\u2019ll give you \u00a35 right now \u2013 but if you can wait till next week, I\u2019ll give you \u00a36. Which offer would you take?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the sort of dilemma that mirrors a host of real life problems, and how people react to questions like this reflects their approaches to these challenges. It\u2019s called temporal discounting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Researchers in Rome, Bologna and Leiden ran these kinds of tests on 40 Dutch Calvinists and 49 Italian Catholics. Ninety Atheists from both countries formed the control group.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

What they found is shown in the graphic on the right.<\/p>\n

Atheists, on the left, showed pretty much the same rate of temporal discounting whether they were Italian or Dutch.<\/p>\n

The Dutch Calvinists, however, showed low temporal discounting, while the Italian Catholics showed high temporal discounting.<\/p>\n

That means that the Calvinists were more likely than the Catholics to say that they were prepared to wait for a larger reward. The Catholics were more likely to take the money and run.<\/p>\n

Now, they did find that Italians as a group tended towards high temporal discounting, but that this didn\u2019t explain the difference between the two religious groups (because the atheists from the two countries were so similar).<\/p>\n

The authors reckon this is probably something to do with the differences in religious teachings. They point out that both Catholic and Protestant teaching encourage asceticism, but Protestantism only teaches against immediate enjoyment and consumption \u2013 not against long-term accumulation.<\/p>\n

More interesting to consider is the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Calvinists believe that our fate is already decided, and therefore our actions are not so much the cause of our afterlife fate, but rather should be taken as evidence of God\u2019s pre-planned fate for us.<\/p>\n

Because there is no hope of \u2018forgiveness\u2019 in this way of thinking, Calvinists are going to be strongly motivated not to slip up even once. They write: <\/p>\n

The protestant view of predestination gives a strong reason to behave virtuously not only in general but also in the specific context of intertemporal decision making: insofar as the short-term option is conceived as a form of impulsive self-indulgence, whereas the long-term alternative is seen as indicative of moral fibre and self control, Calvinists will have a much stronger incentive to opt for the latter than Catholics, thus showing lower time discount rates<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I don\u2019t know enough about Calvinism to judge whether it is likely. And I wonder if it is, in practice, any different from the concepts of forgiving versus unforgiving gods (and an unforgiving God is, of course, also a feature of many Catholic and Protestant sects).<\/p>\n

But certainly food for thought! <\/p>\n

\n

\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>
Paglieri, F., Borghi, A., Colzato, L., Hommel, B., & Scorolli, C. (2013). Heaven can wait. How religion modulates temporal discounting Psychological Research<\/span> DOI: 10.1007\/s00426-012-0473-5<\/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":"

OK, here\u2019s the deal. I\u2019ll give you \u00a35 right now \u2013 but if you can wait till next week, I\u2019ll give you \u00a36. Which offer would you take? It\u2019s the sort of dilemma that mirrors a host of real life problems, and how people react to questions like this reflects their approaches to these challenges. […]<\/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-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCalvinists can wait, but Catholics live for the moment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"OK, here's the deal. I'll give you \u00a35 right now - but if you can wait till next week, I'll give you \u00a36. 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