© Good Housekeeping Religion May Make Kids More Judgmental

Turns out that religion may not make kids any nicer. At least that's according to a new study, which found that children from nonreligious homes are more generous and forgiving than children who grow up in families that practice a religion.

Since most religions promote generosity and self-sacrifice, researchers believed that "children reared in religious families should show stronger altruistic behavior," they wrote in the journal Current Biology. So they decided to test this theory out.

They conducted a series of experiments with 1,170 children from the United States, Canada, Jordan, Turkey, South Africa, and China. Aged from 5 and 12 years old, 24% of the kids were from Christian households, 43% were Muslim, 2.5% were Jewish, 1.6% were Buddhist, and 0.4% were Hindu. The rest included 0.2% who were agnostic, 0.5% who classified as "other," and 28% who were from "nonreligious" families.

First, researchers showed each child 30 stickers and told them they could keep the 10 they liked best. Then the children were told not every student would get some stickers. The most surprising finding: Kids from secular households shared more than their religious counterparts. And when the scientists looked closer, they found Christian and Muslim kids to have essentially the same scores, while the nonreligious children scored 23% to 28% higher in regards to their willingness to share.

Basically, the more devout the family, the less altruistic the child - a pattern that went for all religions in the study. And the older a child (and the longer they practiced a religion), the more pronounced this pattern was.

The second experiment involved showing kids scenarios involving bumping, pushing, and "interpersonal harm," and then the children rated each for "meanness." The researchers, led by University of Chicago neuroscientist Jean Decety, found that Muslim kids judged offenders harshest and pushed for the strongest punishments. Christian kids were second in their judgment and tied with secular children in their level of punishment, the researchers revealed.

The results "contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others," according to the study, which was funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The authors propose that these findings "call into question whether religion is vital for moral development." Additionally, their conclusion is that separating religion from morality "will not reduce human kindness - in fact, it will do just the opposite."