“And Who Is My Neighbor?” II: Quest Religion as a Source of Universal Compassion

Abstract

Are those with a high-quest orientation to religion less likely to help a person if that person's behavior violates their values of open-mindedness and tolerance?If so, is it because they have antipathy toward the person or toward the behavior? To answer these questions, sixty undergraduate women were given the opportunity to help either of two same-sex peers win a monetary prize. About one peer, they knew nothing; from the other, they had received two self-disclosing notes. The first note either did or did not reveal that the discloser was intolerant of gays; the second revealed that the discloser wanted the money for an activity that either would or would not promote intolerance of gays. Participants scoring high on measures of quest religion helped the intolerant discloser less than the discloser who was not intolerant when their help would promote intolerance; they did not help the intolerant discloser less when their help would not promote intolerance. These results suggest that a high-quest orientation is associated with antipathy toward the value-violating behavior (intolerance), not toward the valueviolating person. The scope of the associated compassion seems relatively broad.

New Spirituality and Social Engagement

“…Therefore, most reasons were self-directed. A quest orientation is related to reduced intolerance and increased sensitivity to the needs of others (Batson et al, 2001). Our target groups scored significantly higher on the quest dimension than the comparison groups did, and the relation between quest and social engagement was significantly positive on almost all variables (although most correlations were weak).…”

Uncovering the relations among religiosity, empathic concern, and helping

“…The non-associative research has employed deception to create more "real" helping situations (Batson et al, 2008;Batson et al, 2001;Batson et al, 1999) in which participants, in a more realistic experimental situation, actually choose 18 whether to help a target person or not. Although Batson's series of studies employ a more realistic methodology, he does make the statistical error of employing median splits in his analyses.…”

“…However, they also conceded that such results were not conclusive and more research on the topic was necessary. A collection of studies identified a series of interrelations among intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religiosity and helping behaviors (Batson, Denton, & Vollmecke, 2008;Batson, Eidelman, Higley, & Russell, 2001;Batson et al, 1999). Similar to the previously discussed line of research on helping in-versus out-group members, these studies suggest that those who score highly on Allport's intrinsic motivation scale helped morality nonviolators more frequently than morality violators: when given the option, the highly intrinsically motivated helped heterosexuals win money to finance a road trip more than they helped homosexuals achieve the same goal.…”

Evaluating Implicit Sentiments for Sinners and Sins: A Cross-cultural Investigation

“…There are studies, however, that evaluated the degree to which participants can manifest favorability for a target person who simply holds beliefs that are contrary to those of the participant. Thus, the beliefs are not necessarily considered sinful (Batson, Denton & Vollmecke, 2008;Batson, Eidelman, Higley & Russell, 2001;Goldfried & Miner, 2002).…”

“…Some, however, have been experimental in nature (Batson et al, 1999;Batson et al, 2001;Batson et al, 2008;Goldfried & Miner, 2002;Mak & Tsang, 2008). But even in these experimental studies, participants had opportunities to rely on consciously-controlled processing to produce their sentiments for either sinful persons or sinful behaviors, and according to some researchers, it is likely they did so (Dovidio & Fazio, 1992;Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010).…”