Are They Really More Righteous?

New research shows that religious and non-religious people are equally likely to misbehave. The only difference between the groups is that religious people show stronger emotional reactions to moral and immoral deeds.

“To our knowledge, it’s the first study that directly assesses how morality plays out in people's everyday lived experience," said Dr. Linda Skitka.

Dr. Skitka is a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the co-author of a paper describing the research, said in a written statement.

For the study, a team of researchers, recruited 1,252 men and women between the ages of 18 and 68. 

The team was led by psychologist Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Cologne in Cologne, Germany, 

The study participants, all of whom were from the U.S. or Canada, completed an initial survey to indicate their level of religiosity -- from "not at all" to "very much." The survey also showed where the men and women fell on the political spectrum, from "very liberal" to "very conservative."

Next, the subjects received surveys via text message five times a day for three days. In these surveys, the men and women described any moral and immoral acts they had committed, witnessed, been the target of, or heard about within the past hour -- examples included "I gave a homeless man an extra sandwich that I had," or "I caught my teenage son looking at hard core porn." 

For each act, they described what had happened and how they had felt about it.

What did the researchers find? Religious and non-religious people alike reported experiencing around the same number of moral acts. 

Furthermore, no difference was found between liberals and conservatives. 

People reported committing good deeds more often than bad ones, and reported hearing about bad deeds more often than good ones.

The researchers also found that people who benefited from good deeds often "paid them forward," doing something good for someone else later on.