Women More Religious Than Men

Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director, LiveScience.com

A new analysis of survey data finds women pray more

often then men, are more likely to believe in God, and are

more religious than men in a variety of other ways.

The reasons, analysts say, could range from traditional

mothering duties to the tendency of men to take risks - in

this case the chance they might not go to heaven.

The latest findings, released Friday, are no surprise, only

confirming what other studies have found for decades.

Still, the new numbers illustrate interesting and stark

differences. They come from a fresh review of data that

was collected in a 2007 survey and initially released last

year by the Pew Research Center. The percent of women

(and then men) who:

Are affiliated with a religion: 86 (79).

Have absolutely certain belief in a God or universal spirit: 77 (65).

Pray at least daily: 66 (49).

Have absolutely certain belief in a personal God: 58 (45).

The survey involved interviews with more than 35,000

U.S. adults by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

George H. Gallup, Jr., in an analysis for the Gallup polling

organization back in 2002, wrote that the differences in

religiosity between men and women have been shown

across the previous seven decades of polls.

"A mountain of Gallup survey data attests to the idea that

women are more religious than men, hold their beliefs

more firmly, practice their faith more consistently, and

work more vigorously for the congregation," Gallup wrote.

Among the reasons women tend to be more religious, he

says:

Mothers have tended to spend more time raising children,

which often means overseeing their involvement in church

activities.

Though two-income households are more common today,

in the past women often had more flexible daily schedules,

permitting more church involvement during the week.

Women tend to be more open about sharing personal

problems and are more relational than men. Other Gallup

research shows a higher proportion of women than men

say they have a "best friend" in their congregation, he

wrote.

Lastly, Gallup argued, "More so than men, women lean

toward an empirical [depending on experience or

observation] rather than a rational basis for faith."

There may be another reason. Rodney Stark, a professor

of sociology and comparative religion at the University of

Washington, flips the question around: Why are men less

religious? 

"Studies of biochemistry imply that both male

irreligiousness and male lawlessness are rooted in the

fact that far more males than females have an

underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses, especially

those involving immediate gratification and thrills," Stark

argued in a 2002 paper in the Journal for the Scientific

Study of Religion.

The upshot is that some men are shortsighted and don't

think ahead, Stark said, and so "going to prison or going

to hell just doesn't matter to these men."

Stark may have purposely overstated the case, but you

get the point. My wife suggested another reason: Life is

simply harder for women. While I can't argue with that, I

also can't find any research connecting that to prayer or

church attendance.

Spirituality, Not Religion, Makes Kids Happy 

People Said to Believe in Aliens and Ghosts More Than God 

God and Science: An Inner Conflict 

轉貼自︰

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090301/sc_livescience/womenmorereligiousthanmen;_ylt=Ap6ppuvEx5.jsu4bIWslgjkbr7sF

Men and Women Really Do Think Differently                   

Bjorn Carey, LiveScience Staff Writer, 01/20/05

Men and women do think differently, at least where the

anatomy of the brain is concerned, according to a new

study.

The brain is made primarily of two different types of

tissue, called gray matter and white matter. This new

research reveals that men think more with their gray

matter, and women think more with white. Researchers

stressed that just because the two sexes think differently,

this does not affect intellectual performance.

Psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of

California, Irvine led the research along with colleagues

from the University of New Mexico. Their findings show

that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of

gray matter related to general intelligence compared with

women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount

of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

"These findings suggest that human evolution has created 

two different types of brains designed for equally

intelligent behavior," said Haier, adding that, "by

pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the

study has the potential to aid research on dementia and

other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain."

The results are detailed in the online version of the journal

NeuroImage.

In human brains, gray matter represents information

processing centers, whereas white matter works to

network these processing centers.

The results from this study may help explain why men and

women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author

and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New

Mexico. For example, men tend to do better with tasks

requiring more localized processing, such as 

mathematics, Jung said, while women are better at 

integrating and assimilating information from distributed

gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language

skills.

Scientists find it very interesting that while men and

women use two very different activity centers and

neurological pathways, men and women perform equally

well on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as

intelligence tests.

This research also gives insight to why different types of

head injuries are more disastrous to one sex or the other.

For example, in women 84 percent of gray matter regions

and 86 percent of white matter regions involved in

intellectual performance were located in the frontal lobes,

whereas the percentages of these regions in a man's

frontal lobes are 45 percent and zero, respectively. This

matches up well with clinical data that shows frontal lobe

damage in women to be much more destructive than the

same type of damage in men.

Both Haier and Jung hope that this research will someday

help doctors diagnose brain disorders in men and women

earlier, as well as provide help designing more effective

and precise treatments for brain damage.

轉貼自︰

http://www.livescience.com/health/050120_brain_sex.html

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