Bryan Caplan reviews a survey which suggests that women are more religious cross-culturally than men. If you've been involved in the Freethought movement this won't surprise you. Here's an important point:
Once people admit that this gender gap exists, the most popular explanation is that women are "socialized" to be more religious. Stark and Miller put this theory to the test. If the socialization hypothesis is true, they reason, then the gender gap should be larger in more traditional societies where socialization pressure is more intense. Make sense to me.
Survey says: Dead wrong. In fact, the gender gap is smallest in the most traditional societies, and largest in the least traditional societies! In societies that approve of single motherhood, with a high abortion rate, low fertility, and high female labor force participation, the religiosity gap between women and men is especially large.
How to interpet this? Since I focus on genetics I think it is easy to conceptualize this as a norm of reaction, different environments result in different outcomes starting with the same biological material. In a traditional society it seems plausible that social constraints are strong. One can analogize this to the differential reaction of individuals to variation in resources (some individuals may respond more negatively toward deprivation, others more positively toward resource abundance). Genotypes which might react the same in environment x may respond very differently in environment y. My previous post on innate atheism is also applicable insofar as one ca view religiosity as threshold trait, and particular environments may simply result in saturation of religiousness (e.g., Saudi Arabia).
So what are the roots of male vs. female difference? I know the general paradigm used by researchers who presented the original results, they're economically oriented rational choice types. I think a problem with this paradigm is that they too often view these issues rationally, as if minds are not bounded and biased by arational incoherences and illusions. These researchers operate from intuitions derived a priori instead of availing themselves of the psychological literature which draws upon empirical research which outlines how people really think. Caplan says something which I find interesting:
Men and women have different cognitive orientations - a difference that is in large part genetic. As the Myers-Briggs personality test powerfully confirms, men are more Thinking, and women are more Feeling. (Or if you prefer the Five Factor Model, men are less Agreeable).
On a deep level, then, men are more inclined to want some hard proof that religious claims are true, while women are more willing to take religious teachings on faith because they sound nice. Burn me at the stake if you must, but it's true.
I think there is a serious problem here: Caplan seems to assume that religious beliefs emerge out of some social matrix and that women "take on faith" their truths. The cross-cultural similarities of cognitive representations of the divine point to another possibility: that religiosity emerges from natural human psychology, and in particular gods are simply agents which humans intuitively sense "must be there" because of their agency detection biases. So to male fvs. emale differences, why? I believe women have, on average, greater social intelligence and are likely to see more agency in the universe around us because of this. Men are not as religious less because of their innate skepticism, but because a greater proportion lack a powerful intuition of divine agency in the universe around us. There are other factors, but I suspect his is a large component. One might test this by studying males and females who are matched on the autism spectrum, I predict that most of the intersex difference in religiosity will disappear.
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Two points. First, the use of the term religiosity is judgemental. It implies excessively, obtrusively, or sentimentally religious. I use that term frequently for the more common manifestations of religiousness in US socieity. It may or may not be appropriate or intended in your post.
Second, I suspect a tendency toward more religiousness in women might be consistent with a perceived tendency to be more oriented toward family and social concerns. I don't know what the source of this real or perceived tendency is, but the two seem related. I also wonder about religiousness versus public acceptance of religion. In many parts of the southern US, membership in a church can be important for social and busines reasons.
But if it's high empathizing vs high systemizing that makes women more religious, couldn't you say the same of men -- that their view of things as machines & tools would lead them to see the world as designed by a First Designer?
As for personality explanations, the one meta-analysis of sex differences cross-culturally found the same pattern of dimorphism (whatever the cause): highest in Individualist Western countries, lowest in Collectivist non-Western countries.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/women-in-science-part-3595726061058.php
To test norm of reaction, you could look at s-S Africans or NE Asians raised in the West.
I suspect a tendency toward more religiousness in women might be consistent with a perceived tendency to be more oriented toward family and social concerns.
why? you are connecting religiosity and family. why?
Actually, I was connecting a tendency toward religiousness (not religiosity) and a tendency toward family/social orientation. I do not know whether these tendencies are real or perceived. I make this connection because the practice of religion is a social phenomenon. In many areas, especially in the southern US as I noted, belonging to a church is much like belonging to a tribe or other social structure. I think it is a mistake to identify the practice of religion solely with religious belief.
I think it is a mistake to identify the practice of religion solely with religious belief.
that's fine, but that's not the point of this post. my focus is on acceptance of supernatural agents. i can use that term instead of 'religiosity' if you want, i don't really care about the semantics. i hold that cross-cultural females are more likely to believe in these agents than males. they are the necessary precondition for religion as we understand to a second n-order approximation.
One of the most convincing theories of the universality of religion in human populations is the idea that two overlapping cognitive structures in our brains produce religious feeling. The two structures are, roughly, our ability to determine cause and effect, and our social ability to impute intent and emotion. If it is true that, in our overlapping bell-curves, women tend to be slightly more attuned to the feelings/intentions of others, then it would stand to reason that they would also have correlatingly higher rates of religiosity.
Your environmental explanation of phenotypic expression makes complete sense to me. But I think the focus should be on the men, in your analysis, not the women. The difference in the gap between men and women in religiosity is more likely that traditional environments socialize typically less religious men to be more religious; and more open/free societies allow men not to be religious.
I am still curious (I've asked this before) what the measures of 'religiosity' are? Is it practice or attendance? or experience of the transcendant? If you'll excuse a brief forray into the anecdotal, I wonder because in my experience, most men I know have religious-like experiences (including the sense of awe that many scientists report in doing their word); it seems what they reject about religion is as much its social structures and hierarchies as its irrational claims.
" ... acceptance of supernatural agents ..."
I don't have access to the original work, but neither your post nor the one you link to mentions anything about belief in a supernatural agent as such. It says that women are more religious than men, whatever that might mean. I was trying to point out that the practice of religion involves more than belief in supernatural agents, and, in fact, might have more to do with other factors than "belief" as such. While it is true that religion almost always refers to belief in a supernatural being, saying that women are more religious than men might not necessarily mean that they are more inclinded to believe in supernatural agents than are men. They might be more inclinded to identify themselves as religious or to engage in behavior that might be identified as religious because of other factors. Maybe they are identified as religious because they attend church regularly. Maybe they attend the church their parents attend, and it's the only time they get to see them. Maybe they get to socialize with other women, but have little time to do it outside of a church-related function. Maybe the local church has a daycare facility. Unless the original study deals explicitly with belief in a supernatural agent, I am not willing to take the step that you have taken.
Regarding the use of "religiosity" versus "religiousness," I find it constructive to be aware of the nuances of the meanings of words. I suspect that the original study has absolutely nothing to do with whether women are more inclinded to religiosity than men.
I don't have access to the original work, but neither your post nor the one you link to mentions anything about belief in a supernatural agent as such.
stark tends to focus on god belief. he often decomposes church attendance as distinct. but yeah, i'll look at up. i'm not interested in the semantic argument.
If "god belief" is the subject, then I agree with your characterization, except I stand by my objection to the use of "religiosity" to describe it. "Religiosity" has a meaning distinct from "religiousness" and that meaning is pejoritive. I admit to using "religiosity" to describe the public practice and speech of most of the loudest of the "religous" right in the US, but I intend its pejoritive meaning. Perhaps you do as well.
I think many people go to churches for the social interaction and networking rather than any particular dogma. Belonging is the desired goal, and the religious is just the means to that end. Given that women are supposedly more social than men, it seems plausible to suggest that women may care more about being in a group with others than men do.
A common explanation of much religious belief is that it is strongest among relatively powerless people whose lives are dominated by forces beyond their control and beyond their understanding. According to this argument, as people gain more control over their lives and become more confident in their futures with modernization, they become less religious. But women are more likely than to men to lack control of their lives and to accede to submissiveness and passivity.
This does not explain all religious belief (there are activist religions) but it's a major factor.
Socrates - a man - knows a whole lot about the metaphysics of love (see Platon "Sympoison"). But the LAST word he has given to a woman: Diotima.
This - for me - is fantastic, because: If you look at indo-european people whereever you want, you see, that women have a far more important position in society and religion than in monotheistic religions.
So I think there is a whole lot in inborn gender differences concerning religion and metaphysics.
Every true man - like Socrates - knows: Without a woman - in the last stance - you cannot have an intelectual fullfilled life. A woman can teach you more than hundred libraries. (Ok, ok: "But beware of all the Xanthippes, ok ...")
If you think in categories of sociobiology everything is clear: Women - as mothers - must think much more in categories of protection, empathy - and soul. Because: CHILDREN, at least CHILDREN HAVE souls. Men must think much more in categories of fighting and destroying. But the innermost experience of life is NOT - - - fighting and destroying.
I like the autism experiment you envision.
I'm wondering about how the data were collected - is there a difference in likely female vs. male responses to questions formed in particular ways? If you ask a large number of men and an equal number of women a question like "do you believe in God?", and you get a difference in "no" responses, can you reliably extrapolate to a difference in actual belief in supernatural agents?
If you accept Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen theory that autism is an extreme form of the male brain your prediction is obviously correct because a male and a female who are matched on the autism spectrum would be matched on the "mental masculinity spectrum" too.
Razib,
I agree with you. I've always felt that belief in god is a result of our "agency seeking" which tells me that the difference in men and women is more likely a genuine 'cognitive' difference than just female gullibilty.