Thinking from God’s perspective decreases biased valuation of the life of a nonbeliever
Religious belief is often thought to motivate violence because it is said to promote norms that encourage tribalism and the devaluing of the lives of nonbelievers. If true, this should be visible in the multigenerational violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis which is marked by a religio...
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Published in | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 113; no. 2; pp. 316 - 319 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
National Academy of Sciences
12.01.2016
National Acad Sciences |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Religious belief is often thought to motivate violence because it is said to promote norms that encourage tribalism and the devaluing of the lives of nonbelievers. If true, this should be visible in the multigenerational violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis which is marked by a religious divide. We conducted experiments with a representative sample of Muslim Palestinian youth (n = 555), examining whether thinking from the perspective of Allah (God), who is the ultimate arbitrator of religious belief, changes the relative value of Jewish Israelis’ lives (compared with Palestinian lives). Participants were presented with variants of the classic “trolley dilemma,” in the form of stories where a man can be killed to save the lives of five children who were either Jewish Israeli or Palestinian. They responded from their own perspective and from the perspective of Allah. We find that whereas a large proportion of participants were more likely to endorse saving Palestinian children than saving Jewish Israeli children, this proportion decreased when thinking from the perspective of Allah. This finding raises the possibility that beliefs about God can mitigate bias against other groups and reduce barriers to peace. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Author contributions: J.G., H.S., S.A., and N.A. designed research; J.G. performed research; J.G. and H.S. analyzed data; and J.G., H.S., S.A., and N.A. wrote the paper. Edited by Lee D. Ross, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved November 25, 2015 (received for review June 20, 2015) |
ISSN: | 0027-8424 1091-6490 |
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.1512120113 |