... and sometimes just about as long to produce a blog post.
About 9 months ago, good friend Kelly the Little Black Dog posted this set of reference links indicating that abstinence programs are ineffective in reducing teen pregnancies. I responded by claiming that the issue was more the popular culture than it was the education method. That is, abstinence isn't going to work if it's taught 2 hours a week and the rest of the time the kids are bombarded with messages about sex being wonderful no matter when or how or with whom.
Today, while noodling about for statistics on weekly church attendance and social pathologies, I came across this gem. It's an image of a document, so I can't cut and paste, but the gist of it is this.
Regular church attendance seems to bifurcate the population. Either you internalize the message and stay chaste or you become sanctimonious and go hog wild and have as much sex with as many people as you can.
I'm pressed for time right now, but this falls in line with a different study I read about recently, but whose link I don't have time to locate - that people who recycled and lived a hyper-green lifestyle were more likely to cheat and steal. What I think is going on is that you feel like you've banked some good karma and you can spend it on other things. You feel righteous and superior to your fellow humans and don't see a problem rewarding yourself for being such a swell person.
More later, maybe.
One other point to keep in mind, I think, is that some people are just more tempted than others. It seems to me that some fraction of the population[1] is simply not as tempted to behave immorally - they don't really *want* to drink, smoke, do drugs, have promiscuous sex, cheat, steal, commit violence, and/or lie. Meanwhile, another part of the population really does want to do any or all of these things, and only prevent themselves by a positive act of will - which means that any time they get distracted, they are likely to do horrible things, regardless of how high-minded of a moral code they may actually profess to hold.
ReplyDeleteSo, has anybody done a study to see if this bifurcation exists in the population in general, and not just in the people who go to church? I notice that the paper you are linked to is 20 years old, so there's been plenty of time for followups.
[1] That's pretty much the group I'm in. I just don't see the *attraction* of most of the popular sins. Which makes it hard for me to feel morally superior - where's the virtue in refraining from doing something that you don't want to do anyway?
Tim, there's no doubt that each of us have our different temptations. However, there is also no doubt that the overall rate of sin fluctuates. The threshold for giving into temptation is a function of the culture of the era. While it is comforting to assert that "this sort of thing has been going on forever," referring to whichever social pathology you like, that's not correct and gives the wrong impression.
ReplyDeleteData point: Incarceration rates. Our prison population is much larger than it used to be. No, this sort of thing has not been going on forever, at least not at the rates we see it now.
As for a study of the population as a whole, I'm going to continue to muddle about looking at the data. I thought this nugget was worth a post.
[Y]ou feel like you've banked some good karma and you can spend it on other things.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point. It would certainly explain the way Subaru drivers behave around here.
I'd say your comment on Church attendance kind of proves my point. If you're a regular church goer, then perhaps you are the kind of person where abstinence-only programs would work. (Although the evidence tends to disprove this since the bible belt has the greatest rate of teenage pregnancy.) That aside, if you are not a regular Church goer, then something other than abstinence-only education needs to be tried. There is a concept in teaching that not everyone learns in the same way, and that to reach everyone you need to try different approaches. I can't quite remember, but I believe I was trying to make the point that we need more than an abstinence-only approach, not that we need to eliminate it. What that approach is, I have no idea since little seems to work across the board. And through out history, this has always been a problem. It just that we've hidden it better in the past.
Well, regarding our obscene incarceration rates, a huge part of that is from the "war on drugs", not so much from a decay of general morals (non-drug-related violent crime and property crime have both been trending down since the 1990s).
ReplyDeleteTim re: blaming the war on drugs, that sounds like "other than the murder stuff, the Mansons were really pretty good." You can't take out the drugs from crime.
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't the point I was trying to make, though. My point was that when you have a common crime that was largely winked at for a long time, and then decide that you will start heavily enforcing the law with substantial mandatory prison sentences, then *of course* incarceration rates will go up.
ReplyDeleteWhile I realize this is anecdotal, the rates of drug use I remember seeing when I was a kid in the 1970s seem to me to be about the same as we are seeing now. It's just that a lot more people are going to jail for it these days.
Tim, sorry if that was too harsh. My family has been deeply damaged by drug use and I usually bristle at the suggestion that somehow a war on drugs is a bad idea.
ReplyDelete