Parental religiosity is associated with changes in youth functional network organization and cognitive performance in early adolescence

Brooks, Skylar J; Tian, Luyao; Parks, Sean M; Stamoulis, Catherine

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-22299-6

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 115 publications

(103 reference statements)

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“…Specifically, we match church membership in 1971 in the respective county 23 to the county of birth of the individuals in our sample and interact the effect of the lottery with the individuals' county religiosity. 24 Table 18 reports the estimation. First, we see that prior religiosity has a positive and mostly significant effect on the display of crosses.…”

Section: Prior Religiositymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It can also reduce the cognitive impairment associated with old age (22) and the pains associated with poverty (23). All those benefits notwithstanding, religiosity comes with costs, too, like reduced cognitive flexibility (24), less trust in science (25), less educational mobility (26), slower economic growth (27), more prejudice (28), higher levels of aggression (29), and extremist intergroup violence (30), including support for suicide attacks (31). Understanding the causal effect of war on religiosity is, therefore, consequential and timely.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Available here: https://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Downloads/CMS71CNT_DL2. asp24 Note, that only a subsample of our data provides information on the county of birth. Thus, the sample size of our data reduces by more than fourfold.…”

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confidence: 99%

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War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery

Mill,

Ebert,

Berkessel

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Does war make people more religious? Answers to this classic question are dominated by the lack of causality. We exploit the Vietnam Draft Lottery -- a natural experiment that drafted male U.S. citizens into military service during the Vietnam War -- to conclusively show that war increases religiosity. We measure religiosity via religious imagery on web-scraped photographs of hundreds of thousands of gravestones of deceased U.S. Americans using a tailor-made convolutional neural network. Our analysis provides compelling and robust evidence that war indeed increases religiosity: people who were randomly drafted into war are at least 20 % more likely to have religious gravestones. This effect sets in almost immediately, persists even after 50 years, and generalizes across space and societal strata.

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Section: Prior Religiositymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery

Mill,

Ebert,

Berkessel

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Religiosity and spirituality can also influence empathy directly or through other domains. Recent work based on a large cohort of pre/early adolescents has reported associations between parental religiosity and changes in youth brain circuits that overlap with those supporting empathy 74 . Non religious beliefs on spirituality but not overall religiosity have been positively associated with empathy and altruism 75 , though some aspects of empathy have also been linked to being religious 76 .…”

Section: Environmental Factors and Their Impact On The Development Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Multidomain Environmental and Mental Health Factors on the Development of Empathetic Behaviors and Emotions in Adolescence

Smith¹,

Stamoulis²

2023

Preprint

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Empathy is at the core of our social world, yet multidomain factors that affect its development in socially sensitive periods such as adolescence, are incompletely understood. To address this gap, this study investigated associations between social environmental and mental health factors, and their temporal changes, on adolescent empathetic behaviors (and, for comparison, callous unemotional (CU) traits), in the early longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample (baseline: n = 11062; 2-year follow-up: n = 9832, median age = 119 and 144 months, respectively). Showing affection towards the youth, liking school, having a close friend and importance of religious beliefs/spirituality in the youth’s life were consistently positively correlated with empathetic behaviors/emotions across assessments (p<0.001, Cohen’s f =0.06-0.10). Positive family dynamics and cohesion, living in a neighborhood that shared the family’s values, but also parent history of substance use and (aggregated) internalizing problems were additionally positively associated with one or more empathetic behaviors at follow-up (p<0.001, f =0.06-0.09). In contrast, externalizing problems, anxiety, depression, fear of social situations and being withdrawn were negatively associated with empathetic behaviors and positively associated with CU traits (p<0.001, f =0.06-0.44). The latter were also correlated with being cyberbullied and/or discriminated against, anhedonia and impulsivity, and their interactions with externalizing and internalizing issues. Significant positive temporal correlations of behaviors at the two assessments indicated positive (early) developmental empathetic behavior trajectories, and negative CU traits’ trajectories. Negative changes in mental health adversely moderated positive trajectories and facilitated negative ones. These findings highlight that adolescent empathetic behaviors/emotions are positively affected by multidomain protective social environmental factors, but are also highly vulnerable to negative factors in the same domains, as well as bully victimization, discrimination and mental health problems, which instead facilitate the development of CU traits.

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“…Religiosity and spirituality can also influence empathy directly or through other domains, e.g., parent and family behaviors, peer relationships, and community. Recent work based on a large cohort of pre/early adolescents reported associations between parental religiosity and changes in youth brain circuits that overlap with those supporting empathy [76]. Non-religious beliefs on spirituality but not overall religiosity have been positively associated with empathy and altruism [77], though some aspects of empathy have also been linked to being religious [78].…”

Section: Environmental Factors and Their Impact On The Development Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of multidomain environmental and mental health factors on the development of empathetic behaviors and emotions in adolescence

Smith,

Stamoulis

2023

PLoS ONE

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Empathy is at the core of our social world, yet multidomain factors that affect its development in socially sensitive periods, such as adolescence, are incompletely understood. To address this gap, this study investigated associations between social, environmental and mental health factors, and their temporal changes, on adolescent empathetic behaviors/emotions and, for comparison, callous unemotional (CU) traits and behaviors, in the early longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample (baseline: n = 11062; 2-year follow-up: n = 9832, median age = 119 and 144 months, respectively). Caregiver affection towards the youth, liking school, having a close friend, and importance of religious beliefs/spirituality in the youth’s life were consistently positively correlated with empathetic behaviors/emotions across assessments (p<0.001, Cohen’s f = ~0.10). Positive family dynamics and cohesion, living in a neighborhood that shared the family’s values, but also parent history of substance use and (aggregated) internalizing problems were additionally positively associated with one or more empathetic behaviors at follow-up (p<0.001, f = ~0.10). In contrast, externalizing problems, anxiety, depression, fear of social situations, and being withdrawn were negatively associated with empathetic behaviors and positively associated with CU traits and behaviors (p<0.001, f = ~0.1–0.44). The latter were also correlated with being cyberbullied and/or discriminated against, anhedonia, and impulsivity, and their interactions with externalizing and internalizing issues. Significant positive temporal correlations of behaviors at the two assessments indicated positive (early) developmental empathetic behavior trajectories, and negative CU traits’ trajectories. Negative changes in mental health adversely moderated positive trajectories and facilitated negative ones. These findings highlight that adolescent empathetic behaviors/emotions are positively related to multidomain protective social environmental factors, but simultaneously adversely associated with risk factors in the same domains, as well as bully victimization, discrimination, and mental health problems. Risk factors instead facilitate the development of CU traits and behaviors.

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Parental religiosity is associated with changes in youth functional network organization and cognitive performance in early adolescence

Cited by 4 publications

References 115 publications

War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery

War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery

Effects of Multidomain Environmental and Mental Health Factors on the Development of Empathetic Behaviors and Emotions in Adolescence

Effects of multidomain environmental and mental health factors on the development of empathetic behaviors and emotions in adolescence

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