Christian doctrine considers mental states important in judging a person's moral status, whereas Jewish doctrine considers them less important. The authors provide evidence from 4 studies that American Jews and Protestants differ in the moral import they attribute to mental states (honoring one's parents, thinking about having a sexual affair, and thinking about harming an animal). Although Protestants and Jews rated the moral status of the actions equally. Protestants rated a target person with inappropriate mental states more negatively than did Jews. These differences in moral judgment were partially mediated by Protestants' beliefs that mental states are controllable and likely to lead to action and were strongly related to agreement with general statements claiming that thoughts are morally relevant. These religious differences were not related to differences in collectivistic (interdependent) and individualistic (independent) tendencies.

Religion and the morality of mentality

Meaning of Folklore

Previous research by Cohen and Rozin showed that Jews are much less moralizing of negative mental states than Protestants. Two alternative, theologically derived interpretations of this finding are that Jews, relative to Protestants: (a) are less attentive to both negative and positive mental states, or (b) are less attentive to negative mental states, but equally attentive to positive ones. In Studies 1 and 2, we presented Jewish and Protestant participants with vignettes about a person considering virtuous actions, and both groups gave a high degree of moral credit for such thoughts. In Study 3, we presented Jewish and Christian participants with 2 vignettes, 1 about a person considering a virtuous action and another about a different person considering an immoral action. Jews and Christians differed strongly in their moral evaluations of the person considering the immoral action, but were very similar in their moral evaluations of the person considering a virtuous action. Study 4 described an actor who...

Religion and the Morality of Positive Mentality

/pdf/the-meaning-of-folklore-4tfq2ea7mg.pdf

The meaning of folklore

One of the lexical items differentiating British English from American English is the word bugger. Popular in England as attested by numerous idioms and its frequent occurrence in limericks, it is rarely used in the United States and if it is, it is without reference to its original sense of sodomy. It is suggested that this marked contrast in usage may possibly be related to different attitudes towards homosexuality existing in England and the United States.

Much Ado About "Sweet Bugger All": Getting to the Bottom of a Puzzle in British Folk Speech

Exegese des versets de la Thora relatifs a la prohibition des relations homosexuelles. Interpretation rabbinique

Martin Samuel Cohen

Papers

The Biblical prohibition of homosexual intercourse.