The difference between 'nones' and 'dones'

 Does religious belief leave a residue?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Some psychologists think you can get at that question empirically and that the answer is “yes.” Religious belief does leave a residue when it’s gone.

I’ve been reading a paper by Daryl R. Van Tongeren and his colleagues and am trying to decide what to think.

Tongeren’s team is interested in the increasing secularization of some societies, particularly in the number of people who identify as nonreligious. These folks are known as “nones” in popular culture.

The researchers’ hypothesis was that nones are not a homogenous group — that those who are never religious are cognitively different from those who were once religious but are done with it — the “dones.”

Psychology is one of many glaring holes in my education. But I can see that the notion of identity is central to any notion of psyche, person or personality. We invest a lot in forming identities. Once an identity has been formed, changing it — “deidentifying,” as the researchers say — is a big deal.

According to the study, you can see the difference in self-reported levels of prosociality, that it, behaviors intended to benefit others beyond oneself and one’s family. 

People that self-identify as religious report that they donate more time and money than people who were never religious. People who were formerly religious fall in between.

The authors take this as a residual behavior. They found consistent differences in these behaviors that would allow you to predict whether someone identified as religious, never religious or formerly religious.

The authors also identified residual beliefs. You’d expect that people who identify as religious would report stronger positive associations with God than those who were never religious. People who were never religious don’t have anything to report at all. People who are formerly religious fall in the middle.

Predictably, people who are formerly religious report the highest negative associations with God. Again, people who have never been religious just don’t have anything to report, good or bad. So people who identify as religious fall in between. (The Bible has characters, like Jacob, who fight with God or his representatives. Even those who claim a relationship say it’s not always rosy.)

I found the report fascinating. I’m still thinking.

• Source: Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Hope College; C. Nathan DeWall, University of Kentucky; Zhansheng Chen, University of Hong Kong; and Chris G. Sibley and Joseph Bulbulia, University of Auckland, “Religious Residue: Cross-Cultural Evidence That Religious Psychology and Behavior Persist Following Deidentification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 2021, Vol. 120, No. 2, 484 –503.