The Devil's in the deterrent

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話說昨天在《經濟學人》上看到了篇有趣的小文章，談犯罪率和信仰天堂或地獄的關聯。結果研究發現，一國人民越是深信罪惡能被寬恕，該國犯罪率也就越高。((果然人不能寬以待己啊~雖然我對這個研究有些存疑



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The Devil's in the deterrent
Sep 3rd 2012, 13:05 by The Economist online

Crime rates and religious beliefs

GOVERNMENTS laboring to deliver effective crime-prevention policies could do worse than consider divine deterrence. In a paper published this summer in PLoS ONE, Azim Shariff at the University of Oregon and Mijke Rhemtulla at the University of Kansas compared rates of crime with rates of belief in heaven and hell in 67 countries. Citizens of those countries were asked which of heaven and hell they believed in, and each country’s overall "rate of belief" was calculated by subtracting the percentage of hell-believers from that of heaven-believers. The researchers found that the degree to which each country’s citizens believed more strongly in heaven than in hell predicted higher national crime rates. It seems that believing more strongly in the forgiveness of sins than in punishment in the after-life may help pave the way for further transgressions. The researchers also noted that the proportion of people believing in heaven almost always outweighed the proportion believing in hell. So a little more preaching on the fiery furnace might be beneficial in this life, if not also the next.

Note: A number of commenters have queried the validity of the crime statistics shown in the chart. You might be interested in reading the authors' responses (here) to some similar points that were made when the research was first published. See particularly the paragrah entitled "Integrity of the crime data".


犯罪率與宗教信仰

政府大力推行預防犯罪的政策，其實不如用信仰來嚇阻。今年夏季發佈於PLoS ONE的一篇文章，比較了67個國家的犯罪率和該國人民信仰天堂或地獄的數值。該文章的作者為美國奧勒岡大學的Azim Shariff和堪薩斯大學的Mijke Rhemtulla。他們詢問受訪者相信天堂還是地獄，並將相信天堂的百分比減去相信地獄的百分比，也就是該國的「信仰比率」。研究發現，一國人民越是深信天堂，該國的犯罪率就越高。這似乎意味著，比起死後受罰，深信罪惡能被寬恕反而鋪了條通往犯罪的道路。此外研究人員也強調，他們發現信仰天堂的比例總是遠高於地獄(這也暗示著犯罪率為何居高不下)。因此，多宣揚地獄的殘酷可怕，也許有益於當今的社會，雖然對來世未必奏效。

附註：一些評論要求作者提供圖中犯罪統計的有效性。讀者如有興趣，可以參閱作者首次發表該研究時，提供的相關資訊(請點原文連結處)，尤其是「完整犯罪資料」一段。