God Is on Our Side. Does That Mean War?

March 27, 2007 — -- Does believing that "God is on our side" make it easier for us to inflict pain and suffering on those perceived to be our enemies? If we think God sanctions violence, are we more likely to engage in violent acts?

The answer to both those questions, according to new research, is a resounding "yes," even among those who do not consider themselves believers.

Social psychologist Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan led an international research effort to find answers to these questions, and said he is very "disturbed" by the results, though he found what he had expected. Bushman has spent 20 years studying aggression and violence, especially the impact on human behavior of violence in the media, but most previous research has focused on television and movie violence, not such things as scriptures and texts held sacred by many.

He wanted to take it a step further and see if simply exposing someone to a text that implies God sanctions violence would increase their level of aggression.

"I think many people use God as their justification for violent and aggressive actions," Bushman said. "Take the current conflict in Iraq as an example. Bush claims that God is on his side. Osama bin Laden claims that God, or Allah, is on his side."

History is replete with other examples of wars fought in the name of God, involving nearly every religion on the planet.

To find his answers, Bushman assembled teams of researchers at two very different universities, Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland, where he also holds a professorship, and Brigham Young University in Utah.

Only half of the students who participated in the study at Vrije reported that they believe in God, and only 27 percent believe in the Bible. At Brigham Young, 99 percent said they believe in God and the Bible.

Here's the fundamental issue the researchers addressed, as stated in their study published in the current issue of Psychological Science:

"We hypothesized that exposure to a biblical description of violence would increase aggression more than a secular description of the same violence. We also predicted that aggression would be greater when the violence was sanctioned by God than when it was not sanctioned by God."