Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Sociologists have long observed a gap between the religiosity of men and women.
- A recent study used data from several national surveys to compare religiosity, risk-taking preferences and demographic information among more than 20,000 American adolescents.
- The results suggest that risk-taking preferences might partly explain the gender differences in religiosity.
In virtually all countries in the world, women tend to be more religious than men. In the U.S., recent surveys show a sizeable 12-point difference between the genders in terms of religiosity. What explains the gap?
A new study published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion suggests one factor is that men are more likely to take risks. Here’s how study author John P. Hoffmann, a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, explained the connection between risk preferences and religiosity to Psy Post:
“…We recalled that, long ago, the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal had proposed that believing in God was a risk-avoidant strategy and not believing was risky [a proposition described by the philosophical argument Pascal’s Wager]. We then married the ideas that women are more religious than men, men are usually greater risk takers than women, and religious involvement may be a risk avoidant life strategy to hypothesize that risk preferences might account for at least some of the gender difference in religious beliefs and behaviors,” Hoffmann explained.
It’s a theory Hoffmann first put forth in 1995 with a paper titled ‘Risk and religion: An explanation of gender differences in religiosity‘, the key takeaway of which was that “once preferences for risk are considered, the well-known gap in religiousness between females and males dissipates.” However, subsequent studies had failed to replicate his results, likely due to errors in methodology, Hoffman said.
The new study on risk-preference theory was an…
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