Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have shown that dogmatism promotes empathy only in religious people.
Dogmatism is expressed in the inability to reconsider one's own beliefs when faced with conflicting circumstances. Although this personality trait can manifest itself in relation to any values, it is known that, in general, dogmatism is more characteristic of religious people. It is also often expressed in the denial of the benefits of some of the provisions of evidence-based medicine, such as vaccination. Therefore, the mechanisms that underlie this worldview avoidance are important for population health. Until now, however, the mental content of dogmatism in religious and non-religious individuals has not been studied enough.
To fill the gap, the authors of the new work conducted two experiments. Scientists were interested in the connection of dogmatism with two types of cognition - analytical, corresponding to plasticity and criticality of thinking, and moral. Normally, these strategies complement each other: the first expands the choice and allows for a more comprehensive assessment of information based on the available arguments, the second - to determine the affective component through introspection (reflection) and empathy (model of the human psyche). In practice, conclusions drawn from different approaches can contradict and create internal conflict. The researchers suggested that analysis and the prospect of accepting someone else's point of view would be less associated with dogmatism regardless of religiosity, and attention to moral aspects would distinguish religious people.
In the first phase, 405 Internet users, half of whom identified themselves as Christians and 153 as non-religious, completed questionnaires on internal consistency, moral concern, and analytical ability. The results confirmed that dogmatism is more typical for religious people. The latter also showed a pronounced prosociality. Nonreligious respondents, as expected, performed better on the critical thinking tests and were also less likely to be empathic.
Relationship between the level of dogmatism, critical thinking and empathy in religious and non-religious people / & copy; Jared Parker Friedman et al., The Journal of Religion and Health, 2017
The researchers then examined whether the trend would continue after the inclusion of the perspective of acceptance of a foreign point of view and religious fundamentalism. For this, 527 other Internet users underwent a procedure similar to the previous one, but with additional methods. The results of the first experiment were confirmed: religious people showed a great inclination towards dogmatism, prosociality and empathy, non-religious people - critical thinking. Curiously, the degree of fundamentalism correlated negatively with the accuracy of responses to the questionnaire with analysis tasks and positively with empathy. Whereas the dogmatism of non-religious respondents was still poorly associated with empathy. Regardless of religiosity, dogmatism remained loosely associated with a willingness to accept counterarguments.
The article was published in The Journal of Religion and Health.
Denis Strigun
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