Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates
dc.contributor.author | Shariff, Azim F. | |
dc.contributor.author | Rhemtulla, Mijke | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-03-20T17:34:25Z | |
dc.date.available | 2014-03-20T17:34:25Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2012-06-18 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Shariff, A. F., & Rhemtulla, M. (2012). Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates. PLoS ONE, 7(6). http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0039048 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/13309 | |
dc.description.abstract | Though religion has been shown to have generally positive effects on normative ‘prosocial’ behavior, recent laboratory research suggests that these effects may be driven primarily by supernatural punishment. Supernatural benevolence, on the other hand, may actually be associated with less prosocial behavior. Here, we investigate these effects at the societal level, showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates. These effects remain after accounting for a host of covariates, and ultimately prove stronger predictors of national crime rates than economic variables such as GDP and income inequality. Expanding on laboratory research on religious prosociality, this is the first study to tie religious beliefs to large-scale cross-national trends in pro- and anti-social behavior. | |
dc.publisher | Public Library of Science | |
dc.rights | ©2012 Shariff, Rhemtulla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
dc.subject | Behavior | |
dc.subject | Crime | |
dc.subject | Criminal Punishment | |
dc.subject | Government laboratories | |
dc.subject | Research laboratories | |
dc.subject | Religion | |
dc.subject | Social research | |
dc.subject | Violent crime | |
dc.title | Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates | |
dc.type | Article | |
kusw.kuauthor | Rhemtulla, Mijke | |
kusw.kudepartment | Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis | |
kusw.oastatus | fullparticipation | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0039048 | |
dc.identifier.orcid | https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2572-2424 | |
kusw.oaversion | Scholarly/refereed, publisher version | |
kusw.oapolicy | This item meets KU Open Access policy criteria. | |
dc.rights.accessrights | openAccess |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as: ©2012 Shariff, Rhemtulla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.