Male vs. female religiosity difference
A few years ago Bryan Caplan argued that the cross-cultural male-female sex difference was due some innate differences. And specifically the differences he postulated explained why the less religious a society was the greater the sex difference. I took data from Rodney Stark’s original paper (N = 54 nations), log-transformed the proportions of males and females who claimed to be religious, and plotted them along with the sex ratio (sorted by increasing male religiosity from left to right). As you can plainly see, the trends converge as the societies become progressively more religious and the sex ratio attenuates. Full disclosure, I discarded China from the list of nations because it was such an outlier of irreligiosity compared to every other nation and I didn’t want to change the scaling too much. Stark has a follow up paper which explores this pattern of greater sex differences in religiosity with decreased traditionalism in the social milieu.
As Bryan notes Stark has his own particular model for why this sex difference persists. I have some issues in the details with Bryan’s hypotheses, but I think he’s going in the right direction. That being said, I wonder if some of the differences across societies might be viewed through individual vs. group dynamics. In societies where religions are personal choices, and “switching” or “defecting” does not entail high costs, then it is rational to “shop around” for the best bundle of characteristics which are congenial to your own preferences (or, one can opt-out of the whole institution). Some sort of neoclassical inspired rational choice model might work very well in these societies; the United States is probably one such culture (about 16% of Americans “switch” in their lifetime according to the Religious Identification Survey). But a society like Saudi Arabia or even Italy is far less of a rational individualist utopia; traditional religions operate like monopolies and there are powerful group level pressures to conform at the expense of personal actualization. Men and women have the same cognitive biases, but they’re channeled and express in very different ways.
Finally, I was curious as to insights from the Pew Religious Landscape Survey. Trends were hard to spot; whatever group level effects I’m alluding to might be extant only on the scale of national cultures. But, I did notice that when there were two Protestant denominations which split on liberal-conservative lines, such as the American and Southern Baptists, or the Presbyterian Church in America and Presbyterian Church USA, the conservative denomination had proportionately more males. One hypothesis might be that the constraints, or disincentives via social sanction and ostracism, are low enough in the more liberal sects that they suffer high male defection rates vis-a-vis their conservative counterparts. Unfortunately the N for the GSS to answer these questions just isn’t there, so I’ll have to dig elsewhere….
Labels: Religion
“I discarded China from the list of nations because it was such an outlier of irreligiosity”
That’s one hell of an outlier — one sixth of the population. What are the numbers when you factor that “outlier” back in?
In a (currently unpublished) doctoral study I supervised, male female differences in religiosity correlated with Simon Baron Cohen’s EQ empathizing quotient – and inversely with the SQ systemizing quotient (EQ is pretty much identical with the Big 5 Trait Agreeableness).
This personality difference ‘explained’ the sex difference in religiosity. In other words, equal-scoring on the EQ and SQ was associated with equal religiousness scores; and whether the subjects were males or females made no measurable difference. (But males and females have different average scores for both EQ and SQ – females higher for EQ and males higher for SQ.)
Assuming this is correct, the next question would be how differences in empathizing/ agreeableness and for systemizing might translate into differences in religiousness.
Potentially higher EQ might lead to an increased interest in social interactions leading to Church membership; and/ or a more social/ less abstractly-systemizing (lower SQ) outlook on the world leading to a more anthropomorphic and animistic interpretation of the world.
Or, to reverse causality (which is, I think, more plausible) – less empathic and more systemizing individuals are more likely to become atheists, because they are probably not interested in the sociability of churches, nor are they likely to interpret the world as if it were a set of social and personal relationships.
or a more social/ less abstractly-systemizing (lower SQ) outlook on the world leading to a more anthropomorphic and animistic interpretation of the world.
yes. i believe a large proportion of atheists simply don’t find god as intuitively plausible as the normal human.
Here’s an interesting question: if EQ types/women are both more susceptible to peer group pressure and more instinctively drawn to the idea of consciousness existing in everything, what happens when they are raised and socialised as atheists? Does atheism function as if it were a religion, with women locked into it socially and more likely to stay and men more likely to drift away to somewhere else, either actual religion or apathetic apathy? Or is the EQ “theory of mind” factor so strong that they tend to drift towards theism?
If the latter, is there any hope for an atheist world?
Potentially higher EQ might lead to an increased interest in social interactions leading to Church membership; and/ or a more social/ less abstractly-systemizing (lower SQ) outlook on the world leading to a more anthropomorphic and animistic interpretation of the world.
This makes sense. Furthermore, I suspect that people with high SQ can conceive of the world running as a system, according to the laws of physics. High Systemizers see patterns in things that might seem chaotic and requiring of a metaphysical explanation to low SQ types.
EQ is pretty much identical with the Big 5 Trait Agreeableness
Really? I am high in both SQ and Agreeableness. Am I just weird, or perhaps this is the B-brain that Baron-Cohen talks about? I think EQ may be narrower than Agreeableness. For instance, Agreeableness doesn’t require facility in reading the emotions of others.
Really? I am high in both SQ and Agreeableness. Am I just weird, or perhaps this is the B-brain that Baron-Cohen talks about? I think EQ may be narrower than Agreeableness. For instance, Agreeableness doesn’t require facility in reading the emotions of others.
These are all average patterns, of course there are outliers. You can have both, and in fact you have the best of both worlds! ;)
There was a bit about autistic women in the Times; one of their problems was that they had a strong desire to interact but poor ability to interact successfully, so social isolation bothered them more than the men.
As an aside, the pen-and-paper RPG Blue Rose, which attempted to mimic the female-slanted fantasy genre, listed the differing traits of romantic fantasy from the remainder of the genre, and one of the principal ones was that the protagonist aims to enter a group, rather than be a lone wanderer. Given who likely reads the books, I don’t think this is a coincidence.
Another point to consider is the fact that women are more whole brained than men. better interhemispheric communication…generally means that women have better access to the “black box”
It is estimated that we are only consciously aware of about 10% or less of what our brains process. Women seem to be a bit more aware of some of this other 90% giving rise to the famous “woman’s intuition”. This is probably why
psychics, fortune tellers etc tend to be women. These may people who just happen to have access to a bit more of the black box.
So generally, women tend to be more aware of a feeling of “otherness”. Some feeling that there is some other power outside of our conscious control. This is likely what is generally interepreted as “God”.
Maybe higher male variance in IQ, coupled with members of more conservative/literal religions being dimmer leads to the conservative religions being more male?
why
psychics, fortune tellers etc tend to be women
Most of the people they fool are women too. Men who are good at tricking women aren’t after money. They have lots of sex.