Religious diversity, empathy, and God images: perspectives from the psychology of religion shaping a study among adolescents in the UK

Abstract

Major religious traditions agree in advocating and promoting love of neighbour as well as love of God. Love of neighbour is reflected in altruistic behaviour and empathy stands as a key motivational factor underpinning altruism. This study employs the empathy scale from the Junior Eysenck Impulsiveness Questionnaire to assess the association between empathy and God images among a sample of 5,993 religiously diverse adolescents (between the ages of 13-and 15-years) attending state-maintained schools in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and London. They key psychological theory being tested by these data concerns the linkage between God images and individual differences in empathy. The data demonstrate that religious identity (e.g. whether Christian or Muslim) and religious attendance is less important than the God images held by young people. The image of God as a God of mercy is associated with higher empathy scores; and the image of God as a God of justice is associated with lower empathy scores.

Religious Ambivalence: Suppression of Pro-Social Attitudes Toward Asylum Seekers by Right-Wing Authoritarianism

“…Religiosity has been associated, for example, with increased empathy, although not across the board. For example, religious participants who believed in a merciful God were higher in empathy and those who believe in a God of justice were lower (Francis, Croft & Pyke, 2012). Duriez (2004) has also shown that empathy and most of its sub-dimensions are associated with symbolic (versus literal) styles of religiosity, but was not associated with simply identifying as religious.…”

Religious Education in England: The Story to 2013

“…In most of the schools visited in collecting OFSTED evidence, pupils clearly understood the importance of learning about the diversity of religion and belief in contemporary society (OFSTED, 2010). This finding is supported by qualitative and quantitative research in English schools conducted as part of a European project (Ipgrave& McKenna, 2008;McKenna, Neill & Jackson,2009) and by a project on Young People's Attitudes Towards Religious Diversity in the United Kingdom conducted by the University of Warwick as part of the Religion and Society programme (eg Francis et al, 2012).…”

Belief in a Loving Versus Punitive God and Behavior

“…Unfortunately, the loving God scale they used consisted of semantic differential items (e.g., forgiving–unforgiving), in which the opposite end of the adjectives that described a loving God were often adjectives that describe a punitive God, and thus confounded beliefs in a loving with beliefs in a punitive God. Although we found other studies that explored how adolescents view God, they either combined measures of a loving and punitive God to form a single instrument (e.g., Francis, Croft, & Pyke, ), or provided insufficient information to draw conclusions (e.g., Meier & Meier, ).…”