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Belief In Hell Predicts a Country's Crime Rates Better Than Other Factors

Posted by Soulskill on from the also-correlates-with-air-conditioner-sales dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Religion is often thought of as psychological defense against bad behavior, but researchers have recently found that the effect of religion on pro-social behaviors may actually be driven by the belief in hell and supernatural punishment rather than faith in heaven and spiritual benevolence. In a large analysis of 26 years of data consisting of 143,197 people in 67 countries, psychologists found significantly lower crime rates in societies where many people believe in hell compared to those where more people believed in heaven."

36 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. Savvy study author ... by ubrgeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Shariff noted that because the findings were based off of correlational data, they do not prove causation."

    Must be a regular /. reader :)

    --
    Bark less. Wag more.
    1. Re:Savvy study author ... by Guy+Harris · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Shariff noted that because the findings were based off of correlational data, they do not prove causation."

      And the paper itself even explains with some detail:

      First and foremost, these findings are correlational, and thus reverse-causation and third variable explanations need to be discounted before causal claims can be firmly endorsed.

      (I.e., "A is correlated with B" does not necessarily mean "A causes B"; B could cause A or C could cause both A and B.)

    2. Re:Savvy study author ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm definitely going with higher crime rates (and overall shitty living conditions) work to destroy faith in a "benevolent" creator, so this is entirely an expected result.

      You're definitely going with idiocy? Or do you just not understand the distinction between heaven and hell?
      From TFAbstract (and heavily hinted in TFS):

      ... showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates.

      The regions with strong belief in a benevolent creator* have high crime.
      The regions with strong belief in a vindictive creator* have low crime.

      *Your use of "creator" seems a peculiar choice in this context. The existence of an afterlife, whether of reward or of punishment, is in no way contingent on a "creator" as such, or even a group of creators. Do try to expand your scope beyond the monotheistic/Abrahamic religions.

    3. Re:Savvy study author ... by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Atheist countries"? ACs are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with their lies. The closest you can get to an "atheist country" is France and maybe a few of the scandinavian countries. And they're actually nice and friendly... unless of course you pull the "asshole American" routine on them, in which case they will toss you out pretty quickly.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    4. Re:Savvy study author ... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Where can I get hired to turn our crap like this and never have to produce on solid thing that can be measured against the real world?

      Trick is, you can dig at the softness of the soft sciences all you want; but it's a knife-fight-in-a-telephone-booth to get a decent tenure track job in them. For every one who gets to bullshit in public, there are probably 20 or more grading freshman philosophy papers for $12,000/year.

      How's that for true hell? A brutal, dog-eat-dog competition, with no real world metrics against which to measure yourself? An endless, inter-subjective void, with nothing but brutal struggle for the few jobs that exist, and lots of Derrida. Flee crying back to the hard sciences while you still can, grasshopper...

    5. Re:Savvy study author ... by metrix007 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wow, way to miss the point and look like a pompous ass.

      --
      If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
    6. Re:Savvy study author ... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Atheist countries"?

      It's amazing some people consider a term for not believing in magic as derogatory.

    7. Re:Savvy study author ... by pastafazou · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm going to have to disagree with you. Crime rates and poverty levels throughout the United States show now correlation whatsoever. South Carolina has a violent crime rate of 1414.3 violent crimes per 100K, and a poverty rate of 13%. West Virginia has a violent crime rate of only 275.2 violent crimes per 100K, and their poverty rate is 15% Even Mississippi, at 22% poverty, only has 291.3 VCper100K. Delaware is only 9% poverty, but has more than double the violent crimes at 689.2per100K. It also helps to look beyond the borders of the US. Many impoverished countries have lower crime rates than the USA, while others have high crime rates. Interestingly, crime rates in across the United States have been declining steadily for the past three years, and gun sales across the states have been up significantly too. It's possible that the fear of different forms of punishment (getting shot, going to hell, jail, execution, etc) influences the crime rates.

    8. Re:Savvy study author ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Atheist countries"?

      Yes, like the USA.

      The Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary) was the first treaty concluded between the United States of America and Tripolitania, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796 and at Algiers (for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797. It was submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.

      The treaty was a routine diplomatic agreement but has attracted later attention because the English version included a clause about religion in the United States.

      As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

      The treaty is cited as historical evidence in the modern day controversy over whether there was religious intent by the founders of the United States government. Article 11 of the treaty has been interpreted as an official denial of a Christian basis for the U.S. government.[3]

    9. Re:Savvy study author ... by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Informative

      China is pretty atheist, if you actually ask what the younger generation believe personally.

      From my experience, if you ask surface level "what do you believe", you will generally get an answer "Chinese are buddhist"; but if you probe what they actually believe you tend to get a very atheistic worldview. The older generation may or may not believe in buddhism, although tradition seems to be big there so Im not really sure what the dominant belief system is for that generation.

      Not to mention that in order to get a government job you have to affirm atheism.

      There are indeed atheist countries out there, whether or not you want to acknowledge it.

    10. Re:Savvy study author ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In Wisconsin where I live, a scandal involving the Milwaukee Police Department brought to light numerous instances of cooking their reporting data specifically to reduce incidences of violent crime and thus make Milwaukee appear to not only be safer than it really is, but to make MPD seem much more effective than it really is. Some of the misreporting has been genuinely atrocious; knifings get reported as domestic disturbances, for instance. The local rag, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has been carrying stories of the corrupt abuses regularly (in relatively palliative language of course, wouldn't want to upset the officials).

      So forgive if me if I laugh at your sincere belief in the stats you quote. There is no reliable data when the credibility of the reporting agencies is so heavily damaged. It's the tragedy of opacity. It will undermine everything we thought we knew if we let it.

    11. Re:Savvy study author ... by catchblue22 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What about largely secular nations like the Netherlands? Norway? Sweden? Don't they have very low crime rates?

      And what about the US Southern states, where religion is fire and brimstone? Don't many of those areas have very high crime rates?

      --
      This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
    12. Re:Savvy study author ... by starworks5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It has been shown that once you have a basic level of needs taken care of, the GINI wealth inequality accurately correlates with high crime.

    13. Re:Savvy study author ... by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Informative

      Atheist generally is a term for those who do not believe in a God. This is both its common meaning, and its etymological meaning: atheos, meaning "without gods".

      Atheists may or may not believe in supersitions; perhaps the term you are looking for is something like "naturalism" (as opposed to "supernaturalism") or "secular humanism"

    14. Re:Savvy study author ... by Barsteward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They go the point where they wanted to throw away their common sense and pass the blame to something else for running their life. If it goes well its god's plan, if it goes shit then its god's plan, they have abdicated responsibility for their lives.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    15. Re:Savvy study author ... by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

      The crime rate also dropped during the second world war in the UK.

      It's often said that that's the case, but as with many beliefs about crime rates, it's not true. Crime in every category soared during the war years, ending with almost double the crime rate at the end of war compared with before the war.
      http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/historical-crime-data/rec-crime-1898-2002

      This, despite the fact that most of the young men had been drafted into the army. So with the most usual offending category either out of the country, or at least under disciplined regimes in an army camp, one would have expected a drop in crime. But it didn't happen.

      And it wasn't just looting and black-marketeering either. Every kind of crime was up.

    16. Re:Savvy study author ... by volpe · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, 0.0999[...] (I can't do the symbol here, because /. doesn't do Unicode) is not the same as 0.1 It's never 0.1. The more decimals you add, the closer you get, but like the speed of light, it can never be reached.

      Wrong. 0.09999... == 0.1 for the same reasons 0.999999... == 1:

      Let:
                X = 0.09999...
      Then:
          10X = 0.9999...

      (10X - X) = 0.999999... - 0.0999999...
      (All 9's in hundredths place and beyond cancel out)

      9X = 0.90000000...
      X = .1
      QED

    17. Re:Savvy study author ... by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "... showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates."

      I don't believe this for an instant.

      By *every* measure, religiosity is lower in Canada than the US. Moreover, Canada is generally more pluralistic in terms of faith. Both would contribute to significantly lower "belief in heaven" *and* "hell".

      Yet the crime rate in Canada is much lower than the US. There are a few categories where it is higher, like car theft, but their relative increase is dramatically less than the relative decrease of all violent crime (30% more vs. 3x less).

      I realize this is a single counterexample, but I suspect this is true for most countries in the western world, and would not be surprised if this were true for much of the planet.

    18. Re:Savvy study author ... by Warma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One counter-example is not enough to make a correlation vanish. He didn't say anything about causes, just correlations.
      Though I also would like to have the poster show some studies describing the GINI & crime -link.

  2. Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? by Eponymous+Hero · · Score: 4, Funny

    what about those of us who long ago realized hell is all there is and we're there now, broadcasting live -- HI MOM!!!

    --
    insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
  3. Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As an atheist, I didn't used to, but then I spent a few weeks in Arkansas. If that's not hell, I don't know what is...

  4. Yes, but Belief in Heaven Increases Crime Rate by Galestar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I'm reading this right, the actual statistics show that belief in Heaven increases crime by approximately the same rate as belief in in Hell decreases it.
    So the net result is that believing in both has not statistical signifigance.

    Belief in chart:
    Heaven, Hell, Net Effect
    0, 0, None
    0, 1, Less Crime
    1, 0, More Crime
    1, 1, None


    The headline is making a very dangerous and intentional omission of fact here. http://www.plosone.org/article/slideshow.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039048&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039048.t001

    --
    AccountKiller
  5. How does this reconcile with other data? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm curious how this is consistent with http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf which makes a convincing case that religion in an area is correlated with more social primes, including more crime. Putting these together it looks like more religious countries generally have more crime and violence, but controlling for religiosity levels, belief in hell is correlated with a reduction in crime rates. But clearly more research needs to occur.

    1. Re:How does this reconcile with other data? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      Almost every single sentence you've wrote is wrong as far as I can tell. See Zuckerman's paper I referenced earlier for a very long list of references showing that crime is not reduced by religiosity. There are complicating factors (for example, in a worse off society people may be more inclined to turn to religion) but your claim that there are "numerous studies" backing up this sort of position is simply false. Moreover, if this sort of claim were at all true then one would expect Sweden to be in absolutely awful shape since it is even less religious than Russia and China, yet Sweden is extremely well off.

      As to your claim about philosophy, many prominent philosophers, such as Kant, Bentham, and Rahls would disagree. All three would see humans as having innate instincts for moral good. And in fact, studies have shown that many mammals will instinctively help other members of their species even when they have not encountered them before. For example, when another rat is hurt or trapped, nearby rats will help free them http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/12/08/helping-your-fellow-rat-rodents-show-empathy-driven-behavior. The instincts for basic moral behavior run deep.

      At a temporal level, the claim is also questionable. It is pretty clear that over time, religiosity has gone down. But over the last few hundred years, the overall violence level when measured by the percentage of the population that dies violent deaths has gone down. There's an excellent book about the decline of violence among humans, The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker, which I strongly recommend.

      By the way, the first major proponent for National atheism is Carl Marx. This is something to think very strongly about, though I very much doubt that people will do so even after reading that statement.

      Ok. So first of all, his name was "Karl". Second, the that's just not true. Marx was born in 1818, when the French revolution was already over. During the French Revolution, major proponents of atheism included Jacques Hébert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_H%C3%A9bert and Chaumette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Gaspard_Chaumette. Curiously, the bloody Robespierre strongly favored deism. But let's pretend that your claim was true for a moment and that Karl Marx really had been the first proponent of national atheism. Would this matter? Not really. This is in essence the genetic fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy- who comes up with an idea doesn't impact whether the idea is valid. For example, the mathematician John Nashh is schizophrenic- that doesn't make his math incorrect. And even if the genetic fallacy were valid, Marx's idea of national atheism, a forced destruction of religion, is extremely different than a secular society that simply doesn't care much about religion, (like say Sweden).

    2. Re:How does this reconcile with other data? by terjeber · · Score: 5, Insightful

      BZZZZ! WRONG!. On all accounts, but that is not surprising. There is a strong correlation between education level and religiosity. The less education one have, the more religious one tends to be. The correlation is particularly strong in hard sciences.

      The most atheistic countries in the world are probably the Scandinavian countries and some of the Benelux countries. These all have significantly lower crime rates than the countries where religion has a more prominant position. If you look at the US and The Netherlands for example, it is interesting to see that the religious US has higher crime rate, higher divorce rate, higher teen pregnancy rate, more children born out of wedlock etc, than the rather atheist Netherlands. Oh, and the Dutch also have a more libereal drug legislation. So, comparing the US and and Netherlands less religion and more drugs leads to less crime, less divorce and in general more "moral" behavior as determined by the traditional Christian "moral code".

      Guess what happens to people with no moral guide lines?

      What a childish and inane statement. Shows a serious lack of brains right there. Moral guidelines have nothing to do with religion. Adults, as opposed to sniveling children, don't need a big bogey man behind the door to scare them into moral behavior. Thinking adults can actually act morally based on philosophy or self-interest. Please grow up. Santa doesn't exist. There is no God. stop using a divine entity as an excuse for inexcusable behavior. It is inexcusable to be unable to device a set of moral rules without the scary bogeyman forcing you to.

      Oh, and if you want to take moral guildelines from someone, the Abrahamic God is the last place to look. That dude is a shitbag and deserves only contempt. Even the idea of a divine entity demanding a loyal subject murder his oldest son for him is abhorrent. If God stepped down tomorrow and asked of me what he asked of Abraham, I would spit him in the face. If he continued his insane demands I would have him comitted or I would slay him. You see, slaying divine entities is easy.

  6. Hell and the Devil by BSAtHome · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Little Boy: The Devil is evil?
    Pastor: Yes my boy.
    Little Boy: But why is the Devil evil? He punishes all the bad people.
    Pastor: >slap

    Let us all go to hell. At least there is a party there...

  7. Re:So religion is an evolutionary strategy by Galestar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Religion, no. Hell, yes. If humans believe in both Heaven and Hell there will be no net effect on the crime rates.

    Ha! Suck it fundamentalist deists! You're on the no statistical significance side of the evolution fight this time!

    --
    AccountKiller
  8. Huh by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to Table 1 of the study, the choices of religious affiliation include "Roman Catholic," "Other Christian," and "Muslim."

    That would seem to ignore much of the world's population, beginning with Jews and continuing on to the various religions that believe in reincarnation.

    They claim to have drawn their data from publicly available sources. I'd love to hear how they spun that data to achieve their sample.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  9. Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who else believes in hell?

    Well, let's look at The Fine Paper:

    The same pattern also emerges for three out of the four religious groups that form national majorities–predominantly Roman Catholic, predominantly non-Catholic Christian, and predominantly ‘Other,’ which comprises of either unaffiliated majorities, or more localized majority religions such as Hinduism, Shintoism and syncretic religions that combine Islam and Christianity with traditional indigenous religions (see Figure 1). The only exception to this observation is predominantly Muslim countries in Asia, for which the uniformly high levels of both belief in heaven and hell (Ms = 93% and 91% respectively), produce insufficient variance for prediction.

    So presumably some flavors of "Other" believe in a hell of some sort (for example, "being reincarnated as something in the "sucks to be you" category" might fill the bill), as does Islam. I don't see "IL" in Figure 1, so, unless I've missed something, there's no country where Judaism is a national majority (I'm assuming it's still a national majority in Israel), so I'm not sure it addresses the "Judeo" part of that.

    (Oh, and the data point for the US is a fair bit above the line, meaning a higher crime rate for the US's value of {believers in hell} - {believers in heaven} than the line would predict. I don't know whether that's significant; if it is, maybe hell is a less effective deterrent here in the City on the Hill.)

  10. Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    If there's good then there's evil. If there's a God then there's a Devil. If there's a Heaven then there's a Hell.

    It might help if you took a comparative religion course. Many people believe in God without a belief in a Devil. This applies for example to many liberal Christians. In Judaism, the closest thing to the Devil is "Satan" who acts more as a prosecuting angel or a gadfly in the heavenly court. This interpretation is based on pretty old sources including the actual mentions of Satan in the Old Testament, especially the book of Job.

    Similarly, many forms of Christianity have a notion heaven without any notion of hell. This is common among Christians who ascribe to universal reconciliation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_reconciliation and similar beliefs. Some other groups believe that there is either heaven or oblivion- this belief is common among Jehovah Witnesses for example. Similarly, many forms of Judaism have a notion of purgatory but no equivalent of hell. Indeed, there's a belief common among Orthodox Jews that no matter how bad you are you won't suffer for more than a year in the afterlife. This is related to the tradition of saying, Kaddish, the prayer for the dead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaddish for 11 months- one wants to ease their suffering but one does not want to imply that that someone was so bad that they were being punished for a full year.

    In the other direction, you have some belief systems that have a notion similar to hell but no equivalent of heaven. For example, in some forms of Buddhism, there are very unpleasant things one can be reincarnated to to suffer for milllenia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) but there's no real equivalent of heaven. So one can not only have a belief in heaven with no belief in hell, one can have a belief in hell with no belief in heaven.

  11. The "noble lie" by jcohen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It would follow that, in order to achieve these socially desirable ends,e.g., lower crime rates, governments and religions should instill and promulgate belief in a vengeful God and in divine punishment. Plato had much the same idea in his Republic when he introduced the idea of the "noble lie", a constructed mythology that would be taught to all in order to promote social harmony and love of the State. Excellent for the myth-makers, who shape our minds for our own good -- and their own benefit.

    --
    "Imaginary solutions to real problems."
  12. I doubt it because .... by giampy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I really doubt it because it's a rather well know fact by now (e.g. research by Zimbardo et. al) that the majority of people that commit crimes don't actually think about the future before committing them. They don't even think a few months in advance, let alone at what happens after life ...

    --
    We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
  13. Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, the Western concept of Hell is mostly based on Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost -- likewise the concept of alien beings being white with halos and dove's wings, and others being red with forked tails, goat's horns and pitchforks is something that comes from popular culture and not theological treatises.

    Added to this, if you look in the Christian Bible or any of the Jewish religious works, you'll see that earlier works only refer to Abaddon or Hades, and even later works rarely refer to Hell (8 references, mostly in Matthew, also in Mark, Luke, James and 2 Peter, with the Matthew and Mark ones paraphrasing the same sermons). Original references to Hell in the Bible are attributed to Jesus, Paul, James and Peter. Of these, Peter describes it as gloomy (similar to Hades), James as fiery, Jesus and Paul purely as a place Angels and Humans can be exiled to, possibly with a gate and wall.

    What am I getting at here? Mostly that this study is likely mostly useless, as the entire concept of what Hell is and who goes there and for what varies wildly throughout history and geography/culture. Nowadays, most people apply the Yin/Yan dichotomy to Heaven and Hell; others have labelled Hell as being "not Heaven", and then of course there's the "Heaven's Prison" and "Place of Eternal Torment" depictions mentioned in the Bible.

    I'd be more interested in seeing this study done looking at belief in a benevolent creator and belief in a malignant rebel; the results may be the same, but that's in no way guaranteed.

  14. Detroit by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

    People who live in Detroit? All they have to do is open a window and look outside.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Detroit by AdamWill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I also do not like $LOCATION. Where's my funny points?

  15. DUH! by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People that believe they will suffer dire consequences are less likely to commit a crime. Really? Imagine that.