December 6, 2012

‘Releasing' people from Catholic guilt increases generosity towards church, research shows




People who recall being absolved of their sins are more likely to donate money to the church, according to research published today in the journal Religion, Brain and Behavior.

Researchers from Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford assigned participants two memory tasks. In the first, they were asked to privately recall a sin that they had committed in the past, while in the second, they recalled attending confession for this sin or imagined doing so, if they had not confessed in reality.