RETRACTED: The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World
Authors: Kang Lee
Jason M Cowell
Xinyue Zhou
Jean Decety
Bilge Selcuk
Randa Mahasneh
Susan Malcolm-Smith
Journal: Current Biology (2015)
Discipline: BIOLOGY & BIOCHEMISTRY
Keywords: Prosocial behaviors; middle childhood; sharing; religion; culture
Affiliations: The Child Neurosuite, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Electronic address: ., The Child Neurosuite, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA., Erick Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5R 2X2, Canada., Department of Educational Psychology, Hashemite University, Zarqa 13133, Jordan; College of Education, Qatar University, 2713 Doha, Qatar., Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa., Department of Psychology, Koc University, Rumelifeneri Yolu 34450, Turkey., Department of Psychology, Sun-Yat Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.

Abstract:  Prosocial behaviors are ubiquitous across societies. They emerge early in ontogeny and are shaped by interactions between genes and culture. Over the course of middle childhood, sharing approaches equality in distribution. Since 5.8 billion humans, representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious, religion is arguably one prevalent facet of culture that influences the development and expression of prosociality. While it is generally accepted that religion contours people's moral judgments and prosocial behavior, the relation between religiosity and morality is a contentious one. Here, we assessed altruism and third-party evaluation of scenarios depicting interpersonal harm in 1,170 children aged between 5 and 12 years in six countries (Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, USA, and South Africa), the religiousness of their household, and parent-reported child empathy and sensitivity to justice. Across all countries, parents in religious households reported that their children expressed more empathy and sensitivity for justice in everyday life than non-religious parents. However, religiousness was inversely predictive of children's altruism and positively correlated with their punitive tendencies. Together these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children's altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior. 

Retracted: Yes

PubPeer comments:
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 The original results look like they were likely affected by issues of collinearity between the predictors that the authors didn t report testing for. Now after the Sharif et al reanalysis, it looks like the original authors made a number of statistical errors and poor statistical choices (e.g. using OLS for outcomes with a large proportion of zero counts). After correcting for these Sharif et al conclude  most of the associations they observed with religious affiliation appear to be artifacts of between-country differences, driven primarily by low levels of generosity in Turkey and South Africa . I am really surprised that the original authors and the journal have not retracted the original paper, given the main findings have now been comprehensively undermined. , 
 Retracted on 5 August 2019. Copy pasted from https: www.sciencedirect.com science article pii S0960982215011677  In our paper, we reported cross-cultural differences in how the religious environment of a child negatively impacted their sharing, their judgments of the actions of others, and how their parents evaluated them. An error in this article, our incorrect inclusion of country of origin as a covariate in many analyses, was pointed out in a correspondence from Shariff, Willard, Muthukrishna, Kramer, and Henrich ( https: doi.org 10.1016 j.cub.2016.06.031 ). When we reanalyzed these data to correct this error, we found that country of origin, rather than religious affiliation, is the primary predictor of several of the outcomes. While our title finding that increased household religiousness predicts less sharing in children remains significant, we feel it necessary to explicitly correct the scientific record, and we are therefore retracting the article. We apologize to the scientific community for any inconvenience caused. See also https: www.psychologytoday.com us blog human-flourishing 201909 does-religious-upbringing-promote-generosity-or-not ,