Love and Loving in Middle-Class Pakistan

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The article by Ammara Maqsood, Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at University College London, tells us the modern story of love in Pakistan and how modern urban women manage their desire for love in Pakistan.

Traditional marriages in Pakistan are arranged marriages. However, I previously talked about how love coexists with modern arranged marriages in Pakistan. I also explained the controversies surrounding love marriage in Pakistan.

Modern transformations in the notions of love, romantic love, intimacy, and conjugal relationships occur in Pakistan as well as in South Asia overall. The author challenges the traditional depiction of the transitional processes of love transformation in Pakistani culture as a straight lineal transition from the cultural values of ‘traditional’ (collective) obligations to the values of individual desires in modern individualistic societies.

Taking these ideas as a starting point, the author of this article examines how different types of intimacy coexist in a middle-class urban setting in Pakistan. The author does this by concentrating on the emotional experiences and modern relationships of young mobile women of the middle class in Lahore and Karachi, the two major cities in Pakistan.

“Within these families, like elsewhere in Pakistan in other South Asian contexts, arranged marriages are the norm, both in prevalence and in social approval. However, love unions, in the form of love-cum-arranged marriages – where partners engage in a pre-marital romance but then seek parental approval and follow typical marriage proceedings – and elopements that are on the rise.”

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 3).

How Different Ideas of Love in Pakistan Coexist

The article highlights the ways in which different ideals of love and intimacy coexist, the ways in which they are entangled in everyday practices, and the places, situations, and spaces in which they separate.

Young women, who live mostly in joint-family arrangements, need to negotiate between two values in their lives. On the one hand, they value their private desires for a life within a nuclear family and the associated forms of consumption. On the other hand, they respect the economic pressures and emotional obligations that necessitate their collective living in the nuclear family.

They live in a persistent presence of liminality, the psychological process of transitioning across the boundaries and borders of these two groups of values. In these conditions and contexts of their lives, the women make it possible for these competing desires to be experienced and managed in a certain way.

Love in Liminality

In this cultural context, their understanding of liminality opens their doors to experimentation and potentiality and provides a space in which they experience novel desires and behaviors.

However, at the same time, their “emotion work” to manage these situations and controversies bends and brings these new emotional paths into line with the moral codes that are culturally common in Pakistani society.

One young woman, who had married against her family’s wishes, commented on the hurt that she experienced when

“none of the women in the family did come to her wedding. Her husband’s family organised a small event, to mark the marriage, and invited her family members, in a bid to normalise relations. In response, her two brothers came but left without eating. She said, ‘more than anything, I felt bad .. still feel sad … that my younger sister in law did not come. My mother, I can understand, she was forbidden but she loves me, but my sister in law, she could have convinced my brother [her husband]’

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 7).

Professor Ammara Maqsood also tells in her article other dramatic stories of love and marriage in modern Pakistani urban cultures.

As the author concludes, these individual experiences are not gradual transformations from collective to individualistic ties and persona values. These young women do not disrupt pre-existing ethical codes. These emotional practices are rather the management of differing demands and desires that constitute ‘feeling’ middle-class.

A Study Shows How Modern Single People Can Be Happy

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Traditional cultural stereotypes have taught us for decades that marriage is the ultimate destiny for young men and women. They should find the right partner (as in love marriages), or someone should find them the right partner (as in arranged marriages) for a marital relationship.

Due to these cultural stereotypes, people told men and women they should marry to be happy. It appeared, however, that fewer and fewer young men and women believed in this myth. Many preferred to stay single rather than marry. Even though they stayed in a relationship, they started to postpone their marriage until later. Sometimes, they never married, preferring to live in a relationship without marital registration.

The overall decline in marriages was an alarming trend in the late twentieth century. In the late 1970s, divorce rates were high, and the number of people remarrying after divorce was decreasing. It became commonplace for couples to cohabit without registering their union. Between 1970 and 1999, the number of unmarried couples living together in the United States increased seven times.

I wrote about these tendencies in another article, What Happened with Marriage in the Late 20th Century and How Marriage Evolved Into Singlehood in recent several decades.

Does it mean that modern single men and women are less happy because they are not married?

Is it okay to be single? Another reasonable question researchers ask is whether marriage brings us happiness or whether we ourselves bring our happiness to make the relationship happy.

Singlehood in the 21st Century

In the 21st century, the number of people who are single continues to go up. While in 1990, 29% of adults in the U.S. did not have a partner, in 2019, the percentage increased to 38%.

The traditional cultural stereotypes, however, tell us that something is wrong with those single men and women. Many people believe that unmarried men and women are immature, self-centered, insecure, and unhappy. They believe that married people are more mature, kind, stable, and happy.

According to some research, people who are married or in a committed relationship tend to be happier overall than those who are single. But averages don’t tell the full truth because people are individuals.

Single People Differ from Each Other in How Happy They Feel

The findings of a recent study by Lisa Walsh, Victor Kaufman, and their colleagues from the University of California have demonstrated that single people have many individual differences in how they live and feel.

Researchers surveyed 4,835 single adults ranging in age from 18 to 65 who were single at the time of the survey. The results of the survey identified 10 distinct groups of single people, some of whom were happier than others.

The findings showed that 14% of single adults said that they were extremely happy. In fact, they felt just as happy as the happiest couples reported in other studies. Another 40% of singles were moderately satisfied, 36% were somewhat dissatisfied, and only 10% were extremely dissatisfied.

In contrast to popular stereotypes, the majority of singles (54%) were happy and satisfied with their lives. As a result, singles can experience happiness on par with couples, challenging the misguided stigmas often associated with singlehood.

What Makes Single People Happy

By focusing on typological groups of single people, researchers were able to learn more about what makes them happy.

The single people who were the happiest had strong relationships with their friends and family, a high sense of self-worth, and good personality traits. Besides, the happiest singles had a high level of extraversion, which means they were friendly and outgoing, and a low level of neuroticism, which is a tendency toward negative emotional instability.

On the other hand, the singles who were least happy had poor relationships with family and friends, low self-esteem, low extraversion, and high neuroticism.

Who Are Moderately Happy Singles?

We found interesting variations among moderately happy singles between these two extremes. They frequently keep an emotional balance between the good and bad sides of their lives. The happiest singles were those who had wonderful friends and family, but they did not have to have both to be content. Strong friendships but strained family ties characterized one happy group, while the other happy group displayed the opposite trend.

Another happy singles group had high neuroticism, but they overcame this challenge with high extraversion. To put it another way, there are numerous ways for single people to be content. One general stereotype cannot be used to describe all single people. There are several different kinds of single people, each with their own distinctive characteristics.

So, Living Single Is Not Necessarily Bad for You

What are the main conclusions the researchers came to?

We are not doomed to a life of misery if we remain single. In fact, a lot of single people are as content with their lives as their married counterparts. Additionally, there are numerous options for single people to live their own unique version of the good life. Some singles are lucky to have low neurotic traits, while others have a high sense of self. Some singles treasure their friendships. Others find comfort in their families.

So, it appears that the traditional gap between happy couples and unhappy singles is not as straight as previously believed. Currently, that gap may be narrowing as singlehood gains greater acceptance and prominence in modern societies.

We shall acknowledge that happiness doesn’t hinge on romantic or marital relationships. We shall cherish the diverse ways that we can find happiness in life, whether being married, in partnerships, or now.

How Doctors Can Be More Compassionate to Patients

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The lack of time, or “time famine,” is the major problem nowadays that deters us from being compassionate to others in our daily encounters. This problem also does not allow doctors to allot sufficient time to interact with patients compassionately in the manner in which they would like to do so. Many doctors regret that they do not have the time to treat patients with compassion, as they would like to.

The problem is specifically intractable in medicine. Healthcare providers in clinics often feel they cannot sufficiently care for their patients the way they would like.

It’s hard to think of something more serious than telling a patient bad medical news. Can medical educators teach physicians how to show real compassion for patients professionally?

How to Show Compassion Professionally

Let’s consider how the researchers from Johns Hopkins University taught cancer doctors the way to support their patient encounters.

Here is a script that doctors can use in their medical practice. Beginning the appointment, the oncologists say:

“I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, by the end of the appointment, the doctors say:

“I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

It appeared that when doctors shared these words with their patients, the patients perceived their doctors as warmer, more caring, and more compassionate care providers. These patients experienced less anxiety than other patients.

The study demonstrated not only how compassion matters but how quickly a doctor can display compassion to a patient, even in forty seconds and in 99 words, which eased a patient’s anxiety.

How Much Time Does It Take to Express Compassion?

Other studies have supported this discovery about how little time doctors need to express compassion.

Stephen Trzeciak and his colleagues conducted the study in the Netherlands that showed that it takes only 38 seconds for doctors to express compassion when they deliver bad news to patients to ease the patient’s anxiety.

The study of Rachel Weiss and her colleagues demonstrated that the longer compassionate statements, the better they reduce patient anxiety.

How to Express Compassion in Daily Social Communication

What about other daily situations involving social connections? Can we spare a few seconds to communicate with someone close to us, with our loved one or friend, or with our neighbor, expressing simple words of compassion?

  • Great job today. I know it’s been tough this past week. I see how hard you are working and I’m proud to be working alongside you.
  • I really admire how you are rolling with the punches. I want you to know you’re not in it alone. I’m here, too, and we’ll figure it out together.
How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed by Gabriella Kellerman (2023)

Keep in mind that even the brief moments of your time given compassionately to someone else can make a difference in their life as well as in yours.

Give Compassionate Love to Each Other!

We need to rely on each other. We must care about each other. We need compassion for each other to feel good, be good, live well, and do what we are doing well. We need compassionate love for each other to do well in our personal lives.

The modern way of life, with its daily rush and lack of time, presents increasing barriers to personal connections. Nevertheless, we can pursue compassionate social behavior and feel that we have time to spare for it.

How to Reduce “Time Famine” by Connecting with Others

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Nowadays, the “time famine” is one of the greatest obstacles to social connection and expressions of love. We believe we are suffering from a “time famine.” We always have too much to do, never enough time to complete it, and never enough time to love and connect with others.

The perennial struggle for work-life balance frequently boils down to a single issue:

“I simply do not have enough time to excel at both work and home.”

70% of Americans either eat lunch at their desks or skip lunch altogether. Our perception of time constraints prevents us from connecting with others and showing our compassion to them.

Time is the resource that is most precious today. Our minds treat time as a factor determining how to spend time by expressing our love, helping others, and how generous we are willing to be.

However, it’s often not an objective lack of time but rather our subjective perception of a “time famine” that drives this mindset. Unfortunately, we have a natural tendency to overestimate the amount of time we need to help. And therefore, we prefer not to help at all. Therefore, our ability to connect rapidly with others must address and overcome this faulty perception.

How to Overcome a Time Famine

It is normal to be in a hurry, and it is not necessarily bad. Actually, a never-ending “time famine” diminishes our quality of life and causes us to miss paying attention to others who are around us and who need our love and help. important opportunities. 

How can we disrupt this mental script and make compassionate connections with others?

We cannot add more hours to the day, but we can create the mindset that we have time. At least we have it to make interpersonal connections and help others.

American researchers Cassie Mogilner, Zoë Chance, and Michael Norton investigated strategies to reduce the sense of time famine. These strategies are as follows:

  • Giving people time back in their day that had previously been committed to a task
  • Asking people to spend that same amount of time on a task helping others
  • Asking people to waste the time
  • Asking people to spend that time on themselves

“Time Affluence” Instead of “Time Famine”

The authors proposed the term “time affluence” for the mindset when people have the feeling of having time to spare.

“Results of four experiments reveal a counterintuitive solution to the common problem of feeling that one does not have enough time: Give some of it away.”

Mogilner, Chance, & Norton, 2012, p.1233

This study shows that people can increase their subjective sense of time affluence: “Giving Time Gives You Time.” When we do something to help others, even for just 15 or 30 minutes, we feel that we have added time to our day rather than lost time. In comparison, when we help ourselves, we do not feel this way.

How can we adopt this mindset?

It makes sense to challenge yourself and give yourself time to connect with others when you feel time pressure. Please reflect on this experience by noticing the increased sense of time affluence. Fight the “hurry worry.” It is precisely when we feel the least capable of assisting others that we can do the most good by helping others.

Even compassionate “small love” can be valuable to others!

No Time for Love and Compassion? Really?

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We used to talk about big love and true love, yet we frequently forget that situational, compassionate, and caring love is also love, something like “small love” or a small action of love. This kind of love seems to be omnipotent in our lives, but it isn’t. However, it seems that we have no time for love and compassion.

The compassionate and caring thoughts and actions of small love help the well-being of another person. This kind of small love puts the other person’s well-being first, even in small, everyday situations.

“Small love” even means occasional actions of care and help to our neighbor or another person we encounter in everyday situations. “Small love” also means not being a “bystander” when another person is in need.

There Is No Time for Anything, even for Compassion

With life moving faster than ever, we have a lack of time for many things, sometimes even for love.

Nowadays, a lack of time is one of the biggest problems for our interpersonal connections, friendship, and love. We often experience a “time famine” because we often have too much to do and not enough time to do it.

We can’t connect because we don’t have time or because we think we don’t have time.

We strive to prioritize time when deciding what to do—one task or another. We try to select the value of a job, personal life, and relationships. Another dilemma is whether to accomplish a task well or spend time helping others. Hunger, fatigue, and injury are some of the other factors that influence how compassionate we are willing to be, but time is the most valuable resource today.

This is a particularly difficult problem in medicine: healthcare clinics are so understaffed that employees believe they cannot adequately care for even one patient, let alone all of them.

Compassion for a Patient

Modern medical doctors often complain that they do not have the time to interact compassionately with patients. In one study, 56% said that they lack the time to treat patients with compassion.

It’s important to note that our subjective experience of a “time famine” rather than an objective scarcity of time often motivates this mentality. If you want to establish a fast connection, you need to overcome that perception.

Teaching Medical Doctors “Small Love”

Can we teach physicians how to show compassion even with a shortage of time? A study conducted at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health showed that it is possible.

Here is a script that cancer doctors can use to bookend their patient encounters.

“At the start of the appointment, the oncologists say, “I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, at the end of the appointment, the doctors said: “I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

Patients whose doctors shared these words with them perceived their doctors as more friendly, compassionate, and caring. Perhaps more importantly, these patients have significantly lower anxiety levels than patients whose doctors did not say these words.

Does Compassion Matter?

The point of this study was not to show that kindness and compassion matter. It was to show how quickly you can show compassion and care for a patient. The average time it took to read the script was only forty seconds. However, each patient felt a lot less anxious after reading just 99 words.

When “Small Love” Is Compassionate

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Compassionate love is a benevolent emotion that involves giving as a way of loving. The compassionate feelings and actions of small love help another person’s well-being. This form of small love emphasizes the well-being of another person, even in occasional daily situations.

Men and women may exhibit compassionate love or the bystander effect in the daily circumstances they encounter. “Small love” means loving the neighbor or another person we occasionally encounter.

When Are People More Willing to Help in an Occasional Interpersonal Encounter?

Let’s look at the experimental situation that researchers set up to explore this question.

“At 10:00 a.m. on December 14, 1970, a sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey, the first batch of volunteers arrived for a psychology experiment. The participants were seminary students at Princeton Theological, studying religion in preparation for a life of spiritual service.”

When the participants arrived at the study, they were informed that the experiment would look into the career paths of seminarians. Researchers gave each participant reading material to help them prepare a short talk on the topic.

They gave half of the participants a sheet of paper with questions and suggestions for making the most of their seminary education. They gave the other half a copy of the well-known New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, who stops on the side of the road to assist someone in need.

The volunteers who participated in the experiments were unaware that all of this was just a prelude.

Then, the administrator of the experiment told each volunteer that, because there wasn’t enough room, they would have to walk to another building to give their talk. They gave the participants a map that showed how to get from one building to the next. The route went through an alley. One by one, the people took off. When participants walked into the alley, each of them encountered a startling sight:

“a pile of a man, slumped and motionless in a dark doorway, moaning in distress.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

The Critical Moment of the Experimental Situation to Show Small Love

Here was the critical moment of the experiment: “Who would stop to help, like the Good Samaritan, and who would pass him by?”

“The groaning man, a disguised member of the research team, noted the reactions of each seminarian. Some hurried past without noticing him. Others looked or nodded but didn’t stop. Some paused briefly to ask if the man was all right. And then there were a few “superhelpers” who guided the suffering man inside, refusing to leave until care had arrived.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

Who slowed down? Who was in a hurry? What made a person decide whether or not to help another person in need?

Researchers John Darley and C. Daniel Batson expected that priming the students’ minds to think about the Good Samaritan would make them more likely to help a person in need. The intention was to demonstrate scripture’s power to inspire moral behavior by showing “small love” to a stranger.

What the Results of the Study Revealed

However, the results of the study did not support the expected effect:

“Students who hadn’t read the parable helped (or neglected to help) in similar numbers to those that had. None of the other variables Darley and Batson tested—such as what type of religious beliefs the participants held—made a difference, either.”

How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

The only factor that affected the willingness to help was the time pressure.

“Students who were told to hurry to their destination were significantly less likely to stop to help a man in pain. Students who were told they had a bit of spare time to make the walk stopped more frequently and offered more substantial forms of help.”

Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). ” From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior

Surprisingly, seminary students who devote their lives to serving others are less likely to help someone in obvious need if they are short on time.

The feeling that we lack time to help others can be deceptive. And, actually, we can extend our time by connecting with others.

Our Posture Shapes Interpersonal Feelings

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We are wondering how our body posture expresses and affects our feelings towards other people. Many studies show that our body language, facial expressions, and posture say more about how we feel than what we say (Karandashev, 2021).

Both what we say and how we act show how we feel about each other and how much we love them. What we show with our faces and bodies is just as important as what we say. Even if we say, “I love you,” our body language can say something different. Sometimes the way we stand says more about us than what we say. Studies show that our body language, facial expressions, and posture say more about how we feel than what we say.

What a New Study Revealed

Recent research by Patty Van Cappellen at Duke University suggests that others can read our emotions from our body language. It might come as a surprise, but our body posture also conveys our emotions in addition to the way our faces do.

Researchers found that open postures with the arms held high showed positive feelings like warmth and extraversion. When people stood with their arms outstretched, it was a sign of power and anger. This backs up the idea that people use body language to figure out how other people feel.

Our Posture Affects Our Feelings

These findings raise an intriguing question: Do postures only communicate our feelings, or can adopting a specific posture change how we feel?

Van Cappellen and her colleagues conducted another study to find out whether expansive and upward posture facilitates the experience of positive affect.

Participants in the study were asked to adopt one of three poses:

  • hands raised and head lifted;
  • hands folded in front, head looking down; or
  • arms at sides and looking straight ahead.

During the study, participants wore sensors to measure their nervous system and cardiac function. Researchers told them that the experiment was about the physiological and emotional reactions people had to music. They listened to emotionally ambiguous music (by Enya) while holding their pose for two minutes to ensure that they didn’t know that the researchers were interested in posture.

The participants were then asked to describe their feelings after listening to the music, and their feelings were compared to the physiological markers being monitored. The findings demonstrated that participants in a posture with raised arms and heads tilted upward had a more positive overall feeling than participants in other poses.

What the Study Found

“This study shows that assuming particular postures can create or construct an emotion experience. A typical joy posture elicits more positive emotions than other postures.”

as Van Cappellen said.

It’s unclear why this effect is happening. In any case, this research suggests that our body posture aids in expressing our emotions and may also aid us in experiencing certain emotions. This could have a significant effect. It is obviously useful to know how we and others feel in a given situation.

“Emotion expression is what enables social relationships, and we’re showing that you could potentially rewire yourself using different postures. It’s critical that we get more information about what these postures look like and what they express. Otherwise, we can get this wrong.”

as Van Cappellen concluded.

How Body Posture Shows Interpersonal Emotions

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Both our verbal and nonverbal communication express our interpersonal emotions and love. What our facial and bodily expressions say is not less important than what we say. We can say, “I love you,” yet our posture can tell something else. Sometimes our postures show more than what we say. Studies reveal that our facial expression, body movement, and posture show our emotions more than what we say in words.

How Our Bodies and Posture Show Emotions

People frequently tell us that our emotions are “written all over our faces.” That’s because our facial expressions are a primary means of communicating emotions. All these nonverbal expressions show our emotions, whether we are happy by smiling and crinkling our eyes or angry by furrowing our brows and tensing our lips (Karandashev, 2021).

According to recent studies that Patty Van Cappellen conducted at Duke University, our body language can communicate our emotions to others. This may sound surprising, but not only our faces express our emotions, but our body posture does this too.

What the Study of Posture Shows

Van Cappellen and her colleagues investigated the role of body posture in emotional expression in a novel way. They asked a group of people to pose miniature, faceless mannequins in positions that represented four different emotions to them: dominance, joy, hope, and awe.

Some of these emotions are linked to “expansive” postures—where people take up more space by standing erect, opening up their torso, or extending their limbs away from their body. Additionally, the researchers were interested in what ideas people would come up with on their own without assistance from actors or others.

In the study, research assistants were unaware of the experiment’s purpose. The principal investigators asked them to examine photos of the mannequins that participants had created. They assessed their head positions, arm positions, and degrees of expansiveness, measured both horizontally and vertically. The researchers then compared these positions to the alleged feelings they expressed.

Van Cappellen discovered that people interpreted an expansive posture as denoting dominance. This finding was consistent with earlier studies. However, the researchers revealed that even more than dominance, expansive postures represented joy and awe.

As Van Cappellen noted,

“We’re looking at how people express their positive emotions in their full body, and it’s clear that how much space your body takes up is present in other emotions or effective states beyond dominance. We’re finding that positive emotions are also marked by expansiveness—especially joy, which is even more expansive than dominance.”

The Study Revealed that Posture Shows More than We Might Think

Moreover, researchers also observed differences in arm and head positions. For example, arms raised above the head and the head tilted upward represented joyful postures. Awe postures were represented by hands touching the face or hovering near the head. Dominant postures, on the other hand, displayed arms akimbo (hands on hips, elbows out) with the head forward.

This means that emotions are not only communicated in the face but rather fully embodied. The author noted that “the expression and production of emotions is a full-body experience,” and they found signature arm positions for each emotion.

Van Cappellen was also curious as to whether observers of the mannequins would be able to discern the emotions that the various postures represented. The authors used photographs of mannequins that were posed in various ways. The expansiveness remained constant while the arm and head positions varied. Then Van Cappellen asked participants to rate the mannequins based on how well they conveyed a variety of emotional traits, such as extraversion, dominance, energy, warmth, competence, and overall positive and negative feelings.

Participants discovered that expansive postures with arms held high represented positive emotions such as extraversion and warmth. The body position of arms akimbo represented dominance and negative emotion. This supports the notion that people rely on body language to interpret the emotions of others.

As Van Cappellen concludes,

“We’re constantly trying to know what another person is feeling and trying to infer what they’re going to do—and that comes [in part] from their body posture.”

Religious Kindness Leads to More Giving

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Love is one of the most valuable human attitudes and emotions. It is present in all religious teaching across many religions.

Religious Teachings of Love

God encourages people to love and be kind to others. Here are, for example, some examples of Christian teachings on love:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

Romans 12:9-10

Islam teaches people to love each other for the sake of Allah. Allah will ask on the Day of Judgment:

“Where are those who loved each other for the sake of My glory? Today, on a day when there is no shade but Mine, I shall shade them with My shade.”

Abu Hurairah, (Muslim)

Religious Kindness and Love for Others

Do religious people love only others who are of the same faith? Or can they be kind to others of any religion? Do their religious kindness and love cross religious borders?

According to the results of some studies, religious people can be prejudiced, and intergroup bias can decrease prosocial behavior and love for others of different religions.

A recent study, however, has shown that thinking about God encourages prosociality toward religious outgroups. This tendency spreads across cultures.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago investigated

  • whether members of specific religions engage in altruistic behavior that only benefits members of their religion, or
  • whether they are willing to treat members of other religions in the same manner.

It turns out that religious people, regardless of how they practice their faith, are more likely to be kind to others.

As Michael Pasek, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, states:

“Religion is often thought to promote intergroup conflict and fuel hostility between people who hold different beliefs. Quite to the contrary — our findings suggest that belief in God, which is an important aspect of most world religions, may sometimes promote more positive intergroup relations.”

The leading author of the study, Michael Pasek, and his team have conducted field and online studies in which more than 4,700 people participated. They were from different cultural and religious backgrounds: Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Middle Eastern, Fijian, and American Jewish people.

Participants had the opportunity to share money with anonymous people of various religions. The participants played multiple rounds of a real-world economic game. They needed to divide a sum of money among themselves and people from different backgrounds. During the first round, participants had to carefully consider their choices. Then, in the later rounds of this economic game, the researchers asked them to think about God before making a decision.

By the way, we should keep in mind that “Americans unsure about God are a fast-growing force in politics.“

Thinking of God Makes People More Generous

Nevertheless, when we think about God, we feel more kind and generous and give more to others.

The results of the study showed that thinking about God has a significant impact on decision-making. In the experimental situation, it resulted in an 11% increase in giving compared to the first rounds of the study.

As Jeremy Ginges, professor of psychology at The New School of Social Research, explains,

“Belief in gods may encourage cooperative norms that help us trade goods and ideas across group boundaries, which is essential to human flourishing. Of course, we are also a parochial species. Our team is now investigating how moral and supernatural beliefs help people balance their parochialism with their need for intergroup cooperation.”

Ginges then adds that there is a trend indicating that religion may prompt people to lend a helping hand more frequently. However, this is not always the case. Some members of a religion may believe that their faith requires them to support their own group more frequently than others.

Anyway, the results of this study demonstrate that religious faith is not responsible for as much intergroup violence, suffering, and distress. Contrary to this, religious faith actually helps strengthen interfaith connections.

People of the “Dark Triad” Tend to Be Manipulative in Relationships

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Many studies have shown what personality traits are attractive for a romantic relationship. However, love studies have paid much less attention to exploring personality traits that negatively affect relationships. According to recent studies, people with Dark Triad traits are more likely to act manipulatively when breaking up with a partner.

What Are the “Dark Triad” Traits?

The concept of the “Dark Triad” includes a set of three groups of personality traits. These are narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. These traits characterize individuals with a lack of sympathy, a deficiency of emotional experience, and a behavioral tendency toward exploitation in a relationship.

How Individuals with the “Dark Triad” Behave in a Relationship

Studies have shown that these personality traits significantly affect how men and women form and maintain friendships and romantic relationships.

A recent study published in the journal “Personality and Individual Differences” investigated how people with “Dark Triad” personality traits behave when breaking up with their partners. The study showed that individuals with the Dark Triad traits behave manipulatively during the breakup of their relationships. According to this research, people with Dark Triad traits are more likely to use manipulation to end a relationship. They tend to be less kind and compassionate when a relationship ends.

The “Dark Triad” and the Breakdown of Relationships

Relationship dissolution is a common and upsetting occurrence in life. This is why the new study by Gayle Brewer and colleagues set out to understand how the “Dark Triad” personality traits of men and women affect relationships.

According to this recent study, individuals who have the “Dark Triad” traits tend to experience lower relationship satisfaction and are more prone to breakdown. They feel less loyalty to a partner and therefore may be more willing to end romantic relationships.

The Two Studies of the “Dark Triad” Showed

In these two studies, researchers examined how partners’ “Dark Triad” personality traits affect the way they end friendships and romantic relationships, exploring break-up strategies.

According to the findings of the first study, individuals with the personality traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy tend to use manipulation, escalation, and distant communication when they approach the stage of ending a romantic relationship. In contrast to this, individuals with personality traits of narcissism tend to engage in open confrontation. As for the ending of friendship, individuals with high psychopathic traits tend to use distant communication during friendship dissolution.

The findings of the study suggest that people with the “Dark Triad” personality traits tend to use manipulative tactics during the breakup of a romantic relationship. They rarely experience and behave with empathy or kindness during their breakup.

Individuals with both Machiavellianism and psychopathy personality traits often employ aggressive confrontation, cost-escalation, and manipulation.