Religious affiliation and group identification

This table is taken from Gallup. It shows the percentages of Americans who strongly agree ("very" or "extremely") that they identify with the listed group. It was apparent to me that identifying with one group is correlated with identifying with others groups, so I calculated correlations across the six religious categories:

Pearson Correlations

U.S./ethnicity .45

U.S./religion .48

U.S./worldwide religion .66

ethnicity/religion .96

ethnicity/worldwide religion .88

religion/worldwide religion .92

First, there is an strong, general tendency to identify with multiple categories. (The average of the six correlations is .73 which is very high.) For example, Mormons have high levels of patriotism and ethnocentrism as well as religious identification. All groups tend to be patriotic, but comparatively speaking, the non-religious groups (atheists, agnostics, and those with no religion) are less patriotic, and they have low absolute levels of identifying with their ethnicity or any religious group. (You might respond that not identifying with a religion is obvious for an atheist or someone with no current religious affiliation, but John Derbyshire, for example, has expressed a fondness for the church of his youth. I have always identified with my childhood faith, both when I was a non-believer, and even now after switching denominations.)  

You can also see that, among the groups, ethnic solidarity and religious identification really go hand-in-hand. The correlations are through the roof.

If you're looking for group lovers, search among Mormons, not atheists.    

Another point--isn't it interesting that the most conservative groups are the most group-oriented but the least collectivist--in the political sense. Atheists and Jews are the most liberal, but are at the bottom on group-orientation. (This finding for Jews deserves its own post.) Mormons are the most conservative but identify with groups the most. Evidently, hunger for belonging is expressed by liberals in love of the State.

Measures of religiosity

I often use attendance at religious services as a measure of religious commitment (because it is usually the only question available) but there could be many reasons to go church: to please your parents, because you like some girl there, to find business opportunities, etc. How well does the measure actually tap sincere commitment?

Teenagers--individuals who are often forced to go to church--were asked in the Add Health Study: 1) frequency of church attendance, 2) frequency of prayer, and 3) importance of religion to self. I correlated the measures for 6,504 individuals:

Pearson Correlations

Church attendance-Importance .69
Church attendance-Prayer .66
Importance-Prayer .76 

Getting correlations this high from survey data is rare (frankly, it feels good when it happens). Cronbach's alpha--a measure of how well the measures hang together--is .88 which indicates that the measures are tapping an underlying concept--religiosity.

The numbers are this high even though some of the teenage religious involvement is coerced. I conclude that any one of these questions is an adequate measure of religiosity.  

Gender-atypical behaviors in kids and homosexuality

If a child shows gender-atypical behaviors, how well does that predict that he will develop a homosexual orientation?

According to a study by Sandberg et al., 23 percent of boys and 39 percent of girls act in at least 10 different ways that are categorized as gender-atypical. Since research puts gay men at about 3 percent of the population, and lesbians at about half that, most boys and girls who at times act like members of the opposite sex will not become homosexuals.

White attitudes toward multiculturalism

In this new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers report that whites implicitly associate multiculturalism with exclusion. They are less likely to see it as being something they are a part of. Whites with a high need to belong are less attracted to multicultural organizations. I interpret this to mean that socially independent whites are more enthusiastic about organizations that devalue their race. Overall, whites as a group do not buy the propaganda that multiculturalism is inclusive.

Media-types are hacks

Journalists are a bunch of clueless sub-mentals. A constant refrain on MSNBC is that the American people are foursquare against not raising the debt limit. Clearly the opinions of typical Americans are shallow and poorly based, but according to a recent poll of a national probability sample of 904 people, 60 percent oppose raising the debt ceiling.

Don't rely on the media for facts. Do your own homework because these people are hacks.

More on migraines

As a follow-up from my post on migraines, this is from Salon.com:

Why do migraines disproportionately afflict women?

Hormones, probably. About 18 percent of women suffer from migraines, compared with just 6 percent of men. Doctors have proposed several explanations for the disparity, including different levels of external stress and gender-related differences in the psychological response to pain. The best research, however, now suggests that sex hormones are to blame, and loads of circumstantial evidence support this theory. In women, the headaches typically begin after puberty and tend to decrease in both frequency and intensity after menopause. (Migraines are one of the few neurological disorders to subside with age.) They are also more common during menstruation and less common during pregnancy. Intriguingly, doctors treating male-to-female transgendered people have noticed that after their patients begin hormone therapy, they start to experience migraines with the same frequency as genetic females.

Although the research is still unsettled, there is growing scientific evidence that estrogen is the primary culprit. Migraines occur when inflammation around the brain triggers trigeminal nociceptors—cells responsible for pain sensations around the face—to transmit chemical signals. Nancy Berman and Kenneth McCarson, neurology researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center, have shown that in mice these cells have estrogen receptors. Also, rats exposed to estrogen exhibit significantly worse migraine symptoms—except for nausea, since rats don't vomit—than their estrogen-starved counterparts at the same level of inflammation. At a biochemical level, they've documented changes indicating that pain signals are stronger when estrogen receptors are activated. Such evidence suggests the possibility that men might experience the inflammation associated with migraine just as often as women but their pain receptors have a less forceful response to it.

Interesting, but my favorite part is the male-to-female "transgendered" people. A guy's junk is removed, and he's pumped with hormones, but doctors refer to his status as a social construction--"gendered." Hilarious.

Adult religious affiliation among those with no religion as teenagers

Do children with no religion remain that way as adults, or do they eventually join up with some religion?

Out of those who had no religion at age 16, I calculated the percent who still had no religion in their 20s, 30s, 40s, etc. I also computed the percent who had switched to Protestantism--by far the most popular choice.

Percent of all those with no religion at 16

Ages 20-29
Stayed unaffiliated 67.6
Switched to Protestant 22.1

Ages 30-39
Stayed unaffiliated 54.4
Switched to Protestant 33.5

Ages 40-49
Stayed unaffiliated 48.4
Switched to Protestant 37.1

Ages 50-59
Stayed unaffiliated 37.8
Switched to Protestant 44.6

Ages 60-69
Stayed unaffiliated 36.7
Switched to Protestant 52.3

Ages 70-79
Stayed unaffiliated 30.9
Switched to Protestant 58.3

Ages 80-89
Stayed unaffiliated 26.2
Switched to Protestant 59.5


While two-thirds still had no affiliation in their 20s, by the end of their lives all but 26 percent had switched, and 60 percent of the total had joined some Protestant denomination.

(In order to maximize sample size, all survey years since 1973 were used, so age groups are from multiple cohorts.)

Liberal education predicts skepticism about the Bible, net of IQ

Half Sigma has done an interesting GSS analysis that shows that of the following three choices: 1) "the Bible is a book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men"; 2) "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally"; or 3) "the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word"-- a disproportionate percentage of high-IQ college graduates choose answer number 1. He concludes from the results that the Christian Right's view that liberal professors increase the skepticism of students is therefore false.

He would be correct if the Christian view were that a liberal education were the only cause of biblical skepticism. But I don't know of any Christian who claims this. A liberal education would be added to a list of other items like the influence of the wider culture--both elite and popular--and the dominance of the naturalistic worldview that non-mechanistic events are not possible. (Of course, a Christian would also include stubbornness/rebelliousness.)

Using the same GSS question, I created three dummy variables: 1) fables vs. literal word, 2) fables vs. inspired word, and 3) inspired word vs. literal word. The predictors are years of education and Wordsum--the proxy for IQ.

Logistic regression coefficients

Fables vs. literal word
Education .19*
IQ .23*

Fables vs. inspired word
Education .04*
IQ .05*

Inspired word vs. literal word
Education .16*
IQ .22*

In all three models, greater education predicts the more liberal position, net of the influence of IQ. The strength of the net influences of education and IQ are similar in each model. While the larger IQ coefficients makes it look like IQ is the more powerful predictor, the coefficients reflect the scale of the predictors, and education has twice as many categories as Wordsum. (The influence of education is actually probably a little stronger than IQ.)

Notice also how the coefficients in the fables/inspired word model are tiny: Smarter people and more educated people are only a little bit more likely to take the fable position. (In Half Sigma's table, very low-IQ people are more likely to think the Bible is a book of fables than average or above-average respondents. Based on his table, Half Sigma's conclusion really should be that the fable view is the view of geniuses and retards.)

The valid conclusion to draw from GSS data is that the Christian view is correct: liberal education (among other things) does increase skepticism.

Political orientation of young evangelicals remains stable

Some strategists argue that Republicans need to become more moderate since young people, even young evangelical conservatives, are more liberal than previous generations. The number of young people who voted for Obama is frequently hyped.

I generated the above graph which is of born-agains ages 18-29 (sample size = 4,446). The political orientation of this demographic has remained stable across four decades. As you move left to right, you can see small changes, but they are probably just noise.

Marriage equality for all!

Prominent law professor Jonathan Turley makes the case for legalized polygamous marriage. 50,000 polygamists are waiting for their turn. They're living in the shadows, folks. Let's regularize their status so they can spread even more! It's the era of "whatever consenting adults want to do." J.S. Mill, the new God! Happy day.

Sex differences in migraine headaches

What does the Michele Bachmann migraine story teach us about society? According to many feminists in the media, the predictable lesson to be learned is that we still have a sexism problem. But the much more interesting (and valid) story is that men and women really are different in fundamental ways. Research shows that, compared to men, women are three times more likely to suffer from migraines, and that the medical problem is roughly 50 percent heritable (meaning that half of the variation in the illness is explained by variation in genes).

Old news: Liberal family researchers report conservative results

In this new study from American sociology's flagship journal American Sociological Review, self-assessment of overall health of women at age 40 is significantly higher if they had no children out of wedlock. Single mothers experience higher levels of stress, psychological distress, and social isolation. According to the authors, Hispanic women escape the negative effects because their cohabiting more closely resembles marriage, and they have closer kinship networks. Overall, cohabiting or getting married after the nonmarital birth does not mitigate the negative effects. Only an enduring marriage to the biological father improves health. (They adjust for selection effects.)

By the way, it puts a smile on my face to see IQ as a control: not surprisingly, it predicts better overall health.

Atheists and liberalism

I was curious if atheists might have moved right politically in the past decade. Here are the percentages of atheists who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate minus the percent of the general population who did (GSS data):

Eighties +16.8 (n = 56)
Nineties +20.7 (n = 121)
Last decade +12.3 (n = 191)

Atheists are still more liberal than the overall population, but perhaps a little less so nowadays. On the other hand, I suspect they have gotten more liberal on social issues. Here is the percent who think a women should be able to get an abortion for any reason minus the percent for the total population:

Nineties +34.1 (n = 96)
Last decade +36.0 (n = 103)
This decade +44.7 (n = 41)

Atheists are more socially liberal than generally liberal, and this appears to be on the increase. They have reached the Jewish level of lifestyle liberalism.

Personality traits and academic achievement

One practical use of research on IQ and personality is deciding how much to invest in a child's education. If it is clear he is going to be an average student, public school might be all he needs. If an ordinary school is not going to maximize his potential, spending a lot of money for a better one makes sense. I never attended anything but public schools and was rarely challenged. (Let's not even get into the fact that my mind was conditioned into a naturalistic view of the world from the earliest grades. That's a subject for another post.)

We all know that IQ is highly predictive of academic success, but HBD-ers should not fall into the trap of believing it is everything. Personality traits matter as well.

This new study published in Personality and Individual Differences reports that conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and grit (or perserverance) all predict academic achievement. The reasons seems obvious enough except for agreeableness. I suspect that disagreeable students are punished academically for being less cooperative. 

UPDATE: I forgot to list negative emotionality. It lowers academic achievement. Being controlled by anger, depression, and anxiety, I'm sure, impairs function in many areas.

Since I'm already setting off anti-Christian readers, I'll get one more item off my chest. There's a meme floating around which is Internet crankery; the idea that Jesus was not a real person. The belief is based on outdated history from about a century ago. Mainstream historians--many of them non-believers--today agree he was a real person.

Encyclopedia Britannica popped into my head as a random encyclopedia, so I looked up "Jesus Christ." It says, "Jesus, also called Jesus of Galilee or Jesus of Nazareth (born c. 6–4 bc, Bethlehem—died c. ad 30, Jerusalem)... He was born a Jew in Bethlehem before the death of Herod the Great in 4 bc, and he died while Pontius Pilate was Roman governor of Judaea (ad 28–30)."

By contrast, the same encyclopedia uses words like "flourished during early 2nd millenium"  for Abraham or "flourished 14th–13th century bc" for Moses where there might be some question about whether these were actual individuals.

Mex-Am fertility is now driving their growth

Here's a good analysis by Pew which shows that even if the U.S. closed its border today, we would still see amazing growth in the Mexican-American population since their age structure is so young, and since they have so many babies--especially immigrant parents. (They don't mention shorter generations, but that is part of the story as well). (Just last night, I took my wife to the ER for a kidney stone and sat next to a Mex-Am mom with six kids. Don't tell me a little Hispanic women has no power.)

The authors project that, based on current trends, Hispanics will be 29 percent of the total population by mid-century. That is more than double the size of any other ethnic group. Add blacks and Jews, and you're--what--about 45 percent of the country. That means that conservatives will have to get the vote of just about every non-Jewish white person to win elections. Given the white proclivity for self-destruction, good luck with that.

I'm not a moral philosopher, but I can't resist a word concerning the first anonymous comments in the last post. (Thanks for your indulgence. The next post will return to our regularly scheduled un-PC data analysis.)

The model of God as a non-transcendent boss man who capriciously makes up moral rules is clearly incorrect. God is a transcendent being, outside space and time. He does not create morality. It is a necessary part of His essence, His nature. Objective goodness/morality that humans--even atheists--intuit (imperfectly) is in the nature of God.

Physical laws offer a nice analogy. The laws that compel matter and energy to behave in certain ways are in the nature of the universe. Similarly, the moral laws that obligate human behavior are in the nature of God.

My years as an atheist taught me how they think: "Let's fool ourselves and pretend that life has objective meaning, value, and morality."

IQ, SES, and incarceration

This graph is taken from a new study of more than 11,000 people. You can see that, while increasing SES  lowers the risk of incarceration only a little bit, increasing IQ lowers the risk sharply.

So much for the liberal claim that social class is everything.  

Blacks are disproportionately born-again

Think of a born-again Christian, and you probably imagine a white person. According to the GSS, blacks are much more likely to fall into that category. The figures look like this: 34 percent of whites, 62 percent of blacks--well over half--and 38 percent of Hispanics. (Keep in mind that born-agains belong to many different denominations. For example, 28 percent Hispanic Catholics say they had a "turning point in their lives when they committed themselves to Christ.") Blacks are an important reason why evangelicals are not uniformly conservative. The expanding Hispanic populaiton is liberalizing born-agains as well.