Religiosity and single-parent kids

With religion's prohibition against abortion, I wondered if religious people might be more likely to have children and not be married. Using GSS data, I looked at white households with minor-age children. Here is the breakdown of marital status by church attendance (sample size = 611):

Never attends
Married 54.1
Widowed 5.2
Separated 6.2
Divorced 17.7
Never Married 16.8

Attends weekly
Married 76.5
Widowed 4.9
Separated 2.0
Divorced 9.5
Never Married 7.1


Religious people with kids at home are more likely to be married, and are less likely to be separated, divorced, or never-married. All comparisons are significantly different except for the widowed category.

Racial differences in autism

Dr. Charlton asked about data concerning racial differences in autism. I merged the four National Health Interview Surveys from the past decade (sample size = 43,774) which yielded 193 autistic kids. The rate for whites is 4.5 per 1,000. It's 4.1 per 1,000 for blacks. I don't see much of a difference here.

Digit ratios and celebrity worship

A new study in Personality and Individual Differences looked at Korean teenagers and found that girls with more feminine digit ratios are much more likely to worship celebrities. The authors interpret this to mean that celebrity worship is a form of submissiveness seen in feminine girls ("feminine" meaning the girls were feminized by sex hormones prenatally):

The current study tested the hypothesis that digit ratios would be associated with celebrity worship, especially among adolescents. Our sample consisted of 45 male and 61 female participants aged 12–14 years (M = 13.20, SD = 0.71). We measured the digit ratios on the participants’ right hands and used the 23 items of the revised Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) to explore the degree to which participants engaged in celebrity worship. The average digit ratio was 0.95 (SD = 0.04) among male participants and 0.97 (SD = 0.05) among female participants. The mean CAS scores were 50.06 (SD = 20.63) for male participants and 64.49 (SD = 18.04) for female participants. The digit ratios for the entire sample were positively correlated with CAS scores (r = 0.29, p < 0.005). However, the digit ratios were positively correlated with CAS scores among female (r = 0.51, p < 0.001) but not male (r = −0.13, p = .394) participants. Our research found evidence of a significant positive correlation between 2D:4D ratios and celebrity worship in females but not in males, which indicated that females with lower digit ratios were less likely to worship celebrities.

I thought it was a sexist society that makes girls but not boys go crazy for rock stars.

Religious preference and nihilism

The MIDUS Study asked participants if they agree that they have a sense of direction and purpose in life. Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree (7). Here are the means by religious preference (sample size = 3,978):


Mean nihilism score

No religious preference 2.54
Agnostic 2.49
Buddhist 2.46
Episcopalian 2.24
Atheist 2.23
Lutheran 2.22*
Roman Catholic 2.20*
Methodist 2.19*
Presbyterian 2.17*
Jewish 2.09*
Pentecostal 1.93*
Mormon 1.91*
Born-again Christian 1.90*
Jehovah's Witness 1.71*

*significantly lower than those with no religious preference


Lower levels of nihilism are associated with having a religious affiliation and especially with belonging to a more conservative faith. For example, the gap between those with no religious preference and Jehovah's Witnesses is more than sixth-tenths of a standard deviation--a fairly large difference.

Atheism and nihilism

I categorized GSS participants as atheists or non-atheists, and as nihilists or non-nihilists. Nihilists answered strongly agree, agree, or neutral to the question that life serves no purpose. With a sample size of 3,708, I found that 17.8 percent of atheists versus 8.2 percent of everyone else are nihilists. This difference is statistically significant. So atheism more than doubles the risk of believing that life is without purpose.   (On the other hand, the vast majority--more than 80 percent--of atheists believe life serves a purpose.)

Attitudes toward blacks by race/ethnicity

Drug Use Trajectory participants were asked: "Based on your experience, a person could be counted on to do what they say if that person was Black." Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree" (5). Here are the means by race/ethnicity (sample size = 1,795):

Mean "can't count on blacks" score

Whites 1.61
Hispanics 1.90*
Black Hispanics 2.28*
Blacks 2.88*

*significantly higher than whites

Blacks--both Hispanic and non-Hispanic--are much less likely to agree that blacks can be counted on. The gap in attitude between blacks and whites is huge--1.1 standard deviations. Whites have nicer views of blacks than Hispanics do, and they have a much more positive view of blacks than blacks have of themselves. So much for the idea that white attitudes make blacks feel bad about themselves.

Religiosity and tax fraud

Here's a study that uses World Values Survey data and finds that greater religiosity is associated with less acceptance of tax fraud:

Religion provides an important basis for social integration and the prevention of deviant behavior, such as tax fraud, a crime that costs society billions of dollars in lost revenue. The literature on tax fraud and tax fraud acceptability (TFA) has neglected religiosity as a social bond that may deter this type of behavior. Furthermore, existing work is based on the United States; there are no systematic cross-national studies. In particular, there is no research exploring the "moral communities" hypothesis that religiosity's effect on deviance will vary according to the strength of national moral communities. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature by analyzing data on 45,728 individuals in 36 nations from the World Values Surveys. We control for other predictors of TFA, including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results determined that the higher the individual's level of religiosity, the lower the TFA. Results on the moral community's hypothesis were mixed. However, in a separate analysis of individual nations, the presence of a "moral community" (majority of the population identifies with a religious group) explained 39 percent of the variation in the presence or absence of the expected religiosity-TFA relationship. Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA.

Racial differences in antisocial personality disorder

A reader asked if I know of data on racial differences in psychopathy. I did find a sample of young adult South Floridians (called Drug Use Trajectories) which recorded DSM-IV diagnoses. Here are the percentages diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (APD) by race/ethnicty (sample size = 1,792):

Percent with APD

Non-Hispanic white 12.3
Non-black Hispanic 13.2
Black Hispanic 30.8*
Black 19.0*

*significantly higher than non-Hispanic whites


Blacks--both Hispanic and non-Hispanic--have significantly higher numbers than whites or non-black Hispanics. Keep in mind that many of the Hispanics in this sample are Cuban. The pattern of findings suggests that race matters, not ethnicity or culture.

Focus on money by political orientation

In his wonderful political novel The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that socialists obsess about their own money more than anyone. Anecdotally, the flaming lesbian socialist professor whose office is next to mine is constantly on the phone with someone talking about her investments. (I can see why she worries. She has a lot more money than the rest of us. Her salary is 20 percent higher than any faculty I know.)

The General Social Survey asked respondents who is in charge of family finances (sample size = 208). This might not be the perfect measure of concern for money, but it's the best one I could find.

Twelve percent of liberals compared to 24 percent of conservatives said their spouse takes care of the money. (Gender is not a factor. Also--most couples share the responsibility.) So, by this measure, twice as many conservatives don't focus on money.

Coulter on the best illegal immigration candidate

Merry Christmas to me when mainstream pundits start sounding like us race realists. From Ann Coulter:

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die.

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

By the way, Ann goes on to conclude that Bachmann and Romney are the best on illegal immigration, but that only Romney can win.