Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
- I am more comfortable being alone than most people I know.
- I do not need a large circle of friends to be happy.
- I prefer smaller gatherings to large parties or social events.
My hunch, based on little more than my personal experience and interactions with other atheists, is that the average atheist would score a bit lower on such a measure than the average Christian. That is, if we administered a valid measure of sociability to 100 atheists and 100 Christians, I would expect that the average score from the atheists would be somewhat lower than the average score from the Christians. Note that this in no way implies that some atheists would not score higher than many Christians or that some Christians would not score lower than many atheists.
Who cares? Well, I think that answering questions like this might have some interesting implications. Assume I'm right and atheists tend to score lower on sociability. What might that mean? Do less sociable people tend to gravitate toward atheism, or is there something about the experience of living as an atheist that leads people to become less sociable? We wouldn't know this simply by finding a group difference, but we'd probably be more motivated to pursue such questions. Findings from such studies might also inform efforts at organizing atheists.
Tags: