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Support For Suicide Attacks Spurred By Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion In a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for Social Research along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationship between religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicide attacks. Suicide attacks are an extreme form of "parochial altruism" - they combine a parochial act (the attacker killing members from other groups) with altruism (the attacker sacrificing themselves for the group). [Read the rest of the report here: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2009/ginges.cfm]

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U-M Study Shows Devotion to Islam is Not Linked to Terror Islam is not to blame for suicide bombings, a University of Michigan study shows. Personal devotion to Islam is unrelated to support for suicide bombing among Palestinian Muslims, according to the study, which will be presented May 27 at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society in Los Angeles. But the more often Muslims attended mosques, the more likely they were to support suicide terrorism. ..."The way particular communities are situated within an ethno-political conflict and the leadership of specific congregations are important factors predicting support for suicide bombings beyond how often an individual attends a mosque," Ginges said. "Leaders of certain political groups use mosques to recruit supporters, but most people who attend mosques do not support suicide terrorism." [Read the rest of the article here: [url=http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2005/pr050618.cfm]http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2005/pr050618.cfm[/url]]