Religious Attendance Moderates the Environmental Effect on Prosocial Behavior in Nigerian Adolescents

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature linking religious attendance to prosocial behavior (PB). The main purposes of the present study were to estimate genetic and environmental influences on the frequency of religious attendance (FRA) and to explore whether and how FRA moderates genetic and/or environmental influences on PB. As part of the Nigerian Twin and Sibling Study, 2860 (280 monozygotic male, 417 monozygotic female, 544 dizygotic male, 699 dizygotic female, and 920 opposite-sex dizygotic) twins (mean age = 14.2 years; SD = 1.7 years; age range = 12-18 years) completed a questionnaire regarding FRA and a PB scale. Similar to the findings from western twin samples, FRA showed substantial shared environmental influences of 74% (95% CI = 69%, 78%), with absence of genetic effects. The phenotypic correlation between FRA and PB was modest but positive and significant (r = .12; p < .01), suggesting that PB is higher among more frequent attenders than among less frequent attenders. The results of gene-environment (G × E) interaction model-fitting analysis revealed that FRA changed individual environmental experiences rather than genetic effects on PB such that while genetic variance was stable, non-shared environmental variance declined, leading the total phenotypic variance of PB to decrease with increasing levels of religious attendance.

Moderating Effects of Religiosity in the Genetic and Environmental Etiology of the Big Five Personality Traits in Adulthood

“…The present findings are both consistent and at odds with a previous twin study that examined the moderating role of religious attendance (Hur et al, 2019) and religious upbringing (Boomsma et al, 1999). Consistent with the present finding on Agreeableness, Hur et al (2019) found that environmental influences on prosocial behavior, which is moderately positively correlated with Agreeableness (e.g., Hilbig et al, 2014;Graziano & Tobin, 2009), was smaller for those from religious families.…”

“…Because religious activities provide family members with more opportunity to interact and share experiences and because religious fathers and mothers tend to be more involved in childrearing (Pearce & Axinn, 1998), such reduced genetic and increased shared environmental influences in religious families make sense. Related to that study, Hur et al (2019) demonstrated that frequent religious attendance showed the influence of environment-environment interaction on prosocial behavior, which could be likened to Agreeableness, indicating that nonshared environmental influences decreased among Nigerian adolescents with more frequent religious attendance. However, these previous studies have several limitations.…”

The Nigerian Twin and Sibling Registry: An Update

“…For example, coefficients of assortative mating for educational achievement (Hur, 2016) are comparable, as are developmental changes in sex differences in cognitive abilities (Hur, te Nijenhuis et al, 2017), heritability of prosocial behavior (Hur & Rushton, 2007;Hur, Taylor et al, 2017) and measures of family environment (Hur, Taylor et al, 2017;Kendler & Baker, 2007). Furthermore, the finding of Hur et al (2019) that religious attendance shows a large shared environmental influence with negligible amount of genetic effects was also consistent with reports from many western twin studies (e.g., Kirk et al, 1999). To detect genetic and environmental moderators of prosocial behavior, religious attendance and family cohesion were examined.…”

“…A for PB was stable but E declined with increasing levels of religious attendance. Hur et al (2019) Genetic similarity and distance among Australian, Midwestern American and the Netherlands populations and Nigerians…”

Prososyallik, Empatik Eğilim ve Dindarlık Arasındaki İlişkiler Üzerine Bir Araştırma

“…Bu çerçevede yapılan bir araştırmada geçmiş yedi günde kiliseye gittiğini ifade eden 526 katılımcının %58.7'sinin "neredeyse her zaman" ihtiyaç halindeki kişilere yardım etmeye eğilimli oldukları; buna karşın kiliseye gitmeyen 826 kişiden ancak %31.4'ünün bu şekilde davrandığı tespit edilmiştir (Akt: Batson vd., 2017, 400). Kiliseye devam sıklığı ile diğerkâmlık ve prososyallik arasındaki pozitif ilişkiyi ortaya koyan birçok çalışma mevcuttur (Clark -Warner, 1955;Cline -Richards, 1965;Crosby -Smith, 2015;Cappellen vd., 2016;Hur vd., 2019).…”