A Research Note on Religion and Morality: Are Religious People Nice People? Author(s): S. Philip Morgan Source: Social Forces, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Mar., 1983), pp. 683-692 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2578129 Accessed: 24/06/2010 07:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uncpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces. http://www.jstor.org

A Research Note on Religion and Morality: Are Religious People Nice People?* S. PH IL IP M O R G A N, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill At the institutional or individual level one can speak of religion as divorced from, separated from, or married to morality. In this paper, I examine this religion-morality link, at the individual level, in friendly or cooperative behavior in day-to-day American life. Using frequency of prayer to indicate the extent to which religious beliefs and symbols are internalized, and data from a 1974 representative national sample, findings indicate that people who are more religious do seem more friendly and cooperative than less religious ones. THE RELIGION-MORALITY LINK One might expect morality to be divorced from religion (Bull). The Bible contains violent and judgmental stories (an eye for an eye, for instance). Moreover, past and current inhumanity has been sanctioned by the insti- tutional church. Likewise, some empirical research has shown that per- sons who are more religious are more prejudiced (Allport) and intolerant (Stouffer) than less religious ones. A second view might be called morality separated from religion (i.e., the notion of secularization). This view holds that, given the modern, secular world in which we live, religious beliefs should have negligible effects on attitudes and behavior. This secularization notion has been de- bated elsewhere (Greeley). A third view maintains that religion is married to morality. Ad- mittedly, as members of society, religious people share current moral atti- tudes (which can be divorced from morality). Yet within these prevailing moral attitudes, there is "a golden thread of humanitarianism inspired by loving care, motivated by religion" (Bull 93-4). From this view then, moral attitudes and behavior flow from religious belief. Religion provides a set of values (supporting a larger set of norms) that are embedded in systems of meaning or world views (Geertz McCready and Greeley). Religious sym- *1 thank Andrew Greeley and anonymous Social Forces' referees for comments on earlier versions of this paper. ? 1983 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-77321831030683-92$01.00 683