When God Sanctions Killing; Effect of Scriptural Violence on Aggression

From the March 2007 issue of "Psychological Science"
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0956-7976
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/psci/18/3

When God Sanctions Killing
The Effect of Scriptural Violence on Aggression

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Authors:

Brad J. Bushman
http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/brad.bushman/home

Robert D. Ridge
http://enabling.unc.edu/ridge.html

Enny Das
http://www.fsw.vu.nl/English/index.cfm/home_page.cfm/subsectionid/77BA9727-83F5-437C-AC07F3AEAFD72C11/fileid/C96324C2-BED8-470D-B1DFD31C598A4664/pageid/011136C2-A6FC-4DD7-B552076C33A5F940

Colin W. Key*
Gregory L. Busath*

*No link provided. It is assumed these are research assistants for the other authors. For instance, Key did his masters thesis under Dr. Ridge. Both are from the Department of Psychology at Brigham Young University - http://fhss.byu.edu/psych/

ABSTRACT—Violent people often claim that God sanctions their actions. In two studies, participants read a violent passage said to come from either the Bible or an ancient scroll. For half the participants, the passage said that God sanctioned the violence. Next, participants competed with an ostensible partner on a task in which the winner could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones (the aggression measure). Study 1 involved Brigham Young University http://www.byu.edu/webapp/home/index.jsp students; 99% believed in God and in the Bible. Study 2 involved Vrije Universiteit–Amsterdam http://www.vuamsterdam.com//home/index.cfm students; 50% believed in God, and 27% believed in the Bible. In Study 1, aggression increased when the passage was from the Bible or mentioned God. In Study 2, aggression increased when the passage mentioned God, especially among participants who believed in God and in the Bible. These results suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers.

So, I'm going to make 2 more posts on this. I understand that the article is pretty thick, and a lot of the stats in it go over my head too 😉. The first post will outline the article and the experiments, I will try to add useful commentary to better understand some of the more rarefied concepts in experimental psychology. The second will be more of a commentary on the article and what it means, especially in light of the way violence and religion are discussed on these forums 🙂

Hurray for the summer and too much free time 💃

Intro:

Since the attacks of 9-11, there has been an increase of interest in both the general public and the scientific community about the effects of religious belief on violent behaviour.

In the past, there has been research that has shown a link between experiencing violent media and aggressive behaviour. Further replication of these studies found that the aggression was increased if the viewer identified with the individual committing the violence (such as seeing a soldier from one's own country, or supporting a cause they believe in, kill an enemy of that country/cause). Aggression also in increased in instances where the violence appears to be justified (A man kills another man for sleeping with his wife). This has been studied primarily in TV and video game media, however, little has been studied about the effects of written word on this aggression.

Before I explain the Hypotheses, I want to linger at this. By saying "experiencing violence increases aggression" nobody is saying that playing violent games or watching violent movies makes you violent. No real scientist would promote the idea that games or TV make kids violent and aggressive the way the media promotes, but, there are studies that show odd trends. If this is a major issue of contention to people we can go over it more.

Anyways, given what is known about media effects on aggression, the authors posed 2 hypotheses:

1) Greater aggression will be seen in people exposed to a Biblical description of violence than those exposed to secular descriptions of the same violence. (Identification increases aggression)

2) Aggression will be greater when the violence is sanctioned by God than when it is not. (Justification increases aggression)

The experiment was then divided into two identical studies, one done at Brigham Young, the other at Vrije Universiteit.

Study 1:
-248 American Students, 95m 153f
-99% Believed in God and the Bible
-97% Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Study 2:
-242 Dutch students, 110m 132f
-18% Catholic
-11% Protestant
-12% Muslim
-8% Christian (I suppose other than Catholic or Protestant, or didn't specify)
-2% Hindu
-1% Jewish
-8% other
-40% no religious affiliation

-50% Believed in God
-27% Believed in the Bible

Procedure

Each Study was then divided into 2 groups. One of these groups would read a biblical description of violence (Judges 19-21) whereas the other half would read the same description as if it were a scroll that had been found in an archaeological dig in 1984. The hope was that people would not necessarily recognize the obscure judges passage instantly as being biblical. There is no evidence that it did not work.

The story involves a group of people avenging the rape and murder of a woman of their faith by destroying a village and starting a war that eventually left thousands dead.

There was then a second manipulation, for half of the people in both the biblical and secular violence groups, a passage that specifically had God justifying this violence was added.

This first part of the experiment is based on the idea of subconscious priming. This is something that has been shown to produce reliable results in the patterns of human thinking. By presenting people with words or pictures, you activate every single memory that the person has associated with that idea, only the most salient and relevant one gets through to conscious thought however. But, even though you never consciously thought about those other things, they are still "primed", meaning that they will be more accessible to conscious thought than they were prior. So, say you are a fan of the Ali G show. Now me just saying that name, whether you are a fan or not, has primed all of your memories of that person. It is likely that you have thought of Borat, maybe some of his anti-semitic remarks. Possibly you would be more likely to tell a marijuana joke, or laugh about Butros Butros Gali's name. The same principal is at work here. Even though people are not consciously enraged or angered by what they have read, they would be more likely to make aggressive decisions or show aggressive behaviour due to it being primed. Again the hypotheses being that 1) the biblical description of violence will have a greater effect on the priming of aggressive behaviour and 2) the sanctioning of violence by God will increase the priming of aggressive behaviour.

In the second part of the experiment, subjects are lead to believe that they are competing in a response time test against another person. Each time they lose, they are blasted with noise over earphones. However, when they win, they believe their opponent gets the same. There is also a 0-10 scale by which the subject is able to determine the level of violence that his opponent hears when they lose. 0 being no noise, 10 being a quite uncomfortable blast. Aggressive behaviour in this experiment was described as using the 9-10 level. In reality, the subject is being tested at random intervals against a computer. There are trials the subject cannot win where they will be blasted with a random level of noise, thus very rarely the highest levels (20% odds).

While this may seem a hardly relevant test of aggression, please remember, scientists aren't aloud to indoctrinate children into extremist ideologies to see what the effects are. These experiments have been shown as reliable demonstrations of human aggression.

Results

Study 1 - Brigham Young University

People reading biblical passages were more aggressive than those who read secular passages.

People who read violence justified by God were more aggressive than those who read unjustified passages.

Men were more aggressive than women

Study 2 - Vrije Universiteit

Those who believed in God were more aggressive than those who did not although in both believers and nonbelievers, depictions of violence justified by God increased aggression.

Secular depictions of violence, whether justified by God or not, showed no different between believers or nonbelievers in aggression produced.

Men who believed in God were more aggressive than those who did not when God sanctioned the violence. Whereas women were the same regardless of whether God sanctioned the violence or not.

That's not too much, it's a pretty short paper...

You should be careful, I've got hammed for posting subscription guarded material before in the GDF. You are making the website liable for copyright infringement. Personally, I think that is stupid, but that's the way of things. You'd do better to simply attach it to e-mails to people who want to see it, or just e-mail the links.

Discussion - I decided to just copy & paste this from the article:

We found compelling evidence that exposure to a scriptural de-
piction of violence or to violence authorized by deity can cause
readers to behave more aggressively. In Study 1 (religious sam-
ple), aggressive responses were greater when a violent depiction
was attributed to a scriptural source than when it was attributed to
an ancient scroll and were also greater when the violence was said
to be sanctioned by God than when God was not mentioned. In
Study 2 (nonreligious sample), this latter finding was replicated
among the believers, and to a lesser extent even among the
nonbelievers. In addition, the findings of Study 2 show that the
justification of violence by God increases aggressive behavior
when the words can be attributed to a scriptural source, but not
necessarily when the passage is from a secular source.
Assuming that a religious, or believing, audience identifies
with scriptural characters more than does a nonreligious or
unbelieving audience, our results further confirm previous re-
search showing that exposure to violent media causes people to
behave more aggressively if they identify with the violent
characters than if they do not (e.g., Huesmann & Eron, 1986).
Furthermore, to the extent that our manipulation of God either
sanctioning or not sanctioning the violence represents a valid
operationalization of justification, we have further evidence that
violence perceived as justified produces more aggression than
does unjustified violence (Berkowitz, 1993). This work extends
these findings from the visual arts to the literary arts.
This work also supports theories proposed by scholars of
religious terrorism who hypothesize that exposure to violent
scriptures may induce extremists to engage in aggressive actions
(e.g., Juergensmeyer, 2003). It is notable that we obtained evi-
dence supporting this hypothesis in samples of university stu-
dents who were, in our estimation, not typical of the terrorists
who blow up civilians. Even among our participants who were
not religiously devout, exposure to God-sanctioned violence
increased subsequent aggression. That the effect was found in
such a sample may attest to the insidious power of exposure to
literary scriptural violence.

Does this ultimately mean that one should avoid reading re-
ligious canon for fear that the violent episodes contained therein
will cause one to become more aggressive, or that individuals
who read the scriptures will become aggressive? Not necessar-
ily. Violent stories that teach moral lessons or that are balanced
with descriptions of victims' suffering or the aggressor's remorse
can teach important lessons and have legitimate artistic merit
(e.g., Stossel, 1997). Moreover, Nepstad (2004) argued that
``religion has historically played a significant role in curbing
violence, constraining aggression, and promoting reconciliation
and understanding between groups'' (p. 297), presumably be-
cause the overriding message of the scriptures is one of peace
and love. Taking a single violent episode out of its overall con-
text (as we did here) can produce a significant increase in
aggression. To the extent that religious extremists engage in
prolonged, selective reading of the scriptures, focusing on vio-
lent retribution toward unbelievers instead of the overall mes-
sage of acceptance and understanding, one might expect to see
increased brutality. Such an outcome is certainly consistent with
our results: People who believe that God sanctions violence are
more likely than others to behave aggressively themselves.

They hit the nail right on the head in the article. Nothing in this is saying that all religious belief will always cause violence. However, in all faiths, be it Christian or Buddhist, there have been theologians over time that have been able to selectively read passages in order to justify violence in the name of their religion.

It is when people are exposed to that alone as faith that issues arise. A Souther Baptist, or Wahhabist Muslim are probably not in a situation where they are exposed to the more generous side of their faith that is seen in more secular societies, and the mere exposure to the violent and intolerant scriptures has been quite clearly shown here to raise aggression in people.

The problem arises when individuals do commit violent acts. People look everywhere for who or what is to blame, and religion is a very easy target given its past of violent traditions. However, there are places and times where it is right to criticize religion, and one of those times is when they indoctrinate with violent passages and ideals, because that CAN be the cause of aggressive bahaviour.

Originally posted by Nellinator
That's not too much, it's a pretty short paper...

You should be careful, I've got hammed for posting subscription guarded material before in the GDF. You are making the website liable for copyright infringement. Personally, I think that is stupid, but that's the way of things. You'd do better to simply attach it to e-mails to people who want to see it, or just e-mail the links.

I know, its lame

Bushman has it up on his site for download

http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/brad.bushman/recent_publications

so I can't imagine the problem

hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes

Are Baptist Christians ??? ..First time heard of this sect 😕

Originally posted by Fatima
Are Baptist Christians ??? ..First time heard of this sect 😕

I have always assumed so, yes...

maybe I am wrong... I thought they were the very fundamentalist sect from the bible belt.

Originally posted by inimalist
I have always assumed so, yes...

Yes, Baptists are the largest protestant denomination in America. And I really hate the word "fundamentalist" because it doesn't describe what the plain reading of the word would suggest. It implies legalistic practices and other such nonsense.

Originally posted by inimalist
hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes

I'm almost certian you are. Nell is right.

Originally posted by Fatima
Are Baptist Christians ??? ..First time heard of this sect 😕

Well, if he put it on his site for download, then it is allowed, so we needn't worry. That is just a rare occurance.

What they found might be accurate, but I feel that the study itself has little value for multiple reasons. For one, studies involving only 400 people seem to me likely subjects to chance. Also, the last part about the test and deciding how your opponent is punished reminds me very much of the famous experiment where they believed they killed the subject, which would probably influence the outcome, too. There are probably more points but those I found weird.

Religion doesn't kill; people do. If one is predisposed to violent resolution of problems and dissatisfaction with one's life, that person will ingest just about anything in their cultural environment to justify their behavior. Religionism's particular draw (for those so inclined) is that it puts "God" on Your Side.

Originally posted by Mindship
Religion doesn't kill; people do. If one is predisposed to violent resolution of problems and dissatisfaction with one's life, that person will ingest just about anything in their cultural environment to justify their behavior. Religionism's particular draw (for those so inclined) is that it puts "God" on Your Side.

Well, that's the point, this study tries to prove that there is indeed a connection.

Right. But I'm saying it's not limited to religion, ie, religion should not be particularly red-flagged.

Originally posted by Mindship
Right. But I'm saying it's not limited to religion, ie, religion should not be particularly red-flagged.

Possibly. There should be studies regarding that. I would say such a general statement is relatively unfounded though.

Originally posted by Bardock42
What they found might be accurate, but I feel that the study itself has little value for multiple reasons. For one, studies involving only 400 people seem to me likely subjects to chance. Also, the last part about the test and deciding how your opponent is punished reminds me very much of the famous experiment where they believed they killed the subject, which would probably influence the outcome, too. There are probably more points but those I found weird.

I think you may be surprised what type of conclusions can be drawn from a sample size of 200 people, especially when done twice. You are of course correct, as more research is done a better and more nuanced understanding of the phenomena will be obtained, however, this result was consistent across 400 people from radically different environments and was predicted based on at least a decades worth of research into aggression.

The second experiment you are refering to is the Milgram experiment. There are a couple of reasons those results are not relevant here. First and foremost, Milgram was studying obedience whereas this experiment was looking at aggression priming. People delivered shocks in the Milgram study based on instruction by a researcher, and often "against" their own expressed will. In this study there was no coercion from an experimenter encouraging stronger blasts, so the aggression is completely from within the person. Milgram and other variations of it also screened for aggression beforehand, which makes the results of the Milgram experiment that much more interesting and terrifying.

Originally posted by Mindship
Right. But I'm saying it's not limited to religion, ie, religion should not be particularly red-flagged.

I think I would disagree with this. By no means do I think some abstract thing called religion causes violence. However, there are very specific things in the nature of religious affiliation and belonging that seem to make the violent depictions that much more effective at eliciting aggression, and the divine justification for such action only intensifies the effect.

I'd say the concept of "red flag" is a misnomer in general, however, the qualities of selectively quoted religious passages are much more effective at generating aggressive behaviour than the secular equivalent.

Again I will draw the distinction between aggression and violence. Just because someone has been subconsciously motivated to make louder noises at an opponent does not mean that this person would be willing to commit acts of violence. However, there ARE studies linking high levels of aggression to violent behaviour (if somewhat corelational).

Originally posted by Bardock42
Possibly. There should be studies regarding that. I would say such a general statement is relatively unfounded though.

The statement is unfounded simply because these laboratory conditions cannot be applied to a more complex real world condition so directly. One must always try to get a holistic idea of what is happening when violence occurs, however, this study does shine a light on a possible cause for aggression in some cases that is of course going to be exacerbated by 7000 other variables in any individual's life.

Originally posted by Mindship
Right. But I'm saying it's not limited to religion, ie, religion should not be particularly red-flagged.

And yet a lot of people do a lot of blind swinging when they hear extreme (insert here) and happen to be going through what they consider a crisis.

Really f'd up actually

Right. But I'm saying it's not limited to religion, ie, religion should not be particularly red-flagged.

Originally posted by inimalist
I think I would disagree with this. By no means do I think some abstract thing called religion causes violence. However, there are very specific things in the nature of religious affiliation and belonging that seem to make the violent depictions that much more effective at eliciting aggression, and the divine justification for such action only intensifies the effect.

As I wrote in my first post...

Religionism's particular draw (for those so inclined) is that it puts "God" on Your Side.