Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Social Scientists

The headline says it all! If you are a religious parent and want your dear child to maintain your religiosity then you better not let them go to college to earn a degree in the social sciences such as psychology and sociology. A new study conducted by the University of Michigan explored correlations between college attendance, college majors, and religiosity. The study consisted of 26,000 participants who graduated from high school between 1976 and 1996. The study found that those majoring in educational, clerical, and business fields tended to be more religious by the time they graduated college than those majoring in the social sciences and humanities.

Here is a bar graph showing the results of the study:
If the above image is too small then you can view a full size image by clicking here!

Why would religious faith be connected with degrees that students earn in college? There could be a number of reasons why those majoring in education and business tend to become more religious than those in the social sciences by the time of their graduation. Firstly, it is highly likely that those who decided to major in educational and business fields were more religious in the first place than those who decided to major in the social sciences.

“Education majors are clearly safe havens for the religious,” said U-M economist Miles Kimball, who co-authored the study. “Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, tend to stay in that major, and tend to become more religious by the time they graduate.”

Secondly, the world views presented to students in educational and business fields is entirely different than that which is presented in the social science fields. These different world views may influence students to think in ways they never have before and question doctrines that they were taught as children.

The authors theorize that three powerful streams of thought interact with choice of college majors to amplify the impact on religiosity. These are science, developmentalism (the belief in progress), and postmodernism (the belief that everything is relative).

“There are important differences among the college majors in world views and overall philosophies of life,” Kimball said. “At the same time, students recognize to some degree the differences among majors and chose a major based, at least in part, on religiosity.

Another interesting finding in this study was that those majoring in physical sciences such as biology and chemistry did not show significant change in religiosity at the time of their graduation. The researchers posit that religion has had more time to combat the influence of evolution and therefore fields that focus on evolutionary aspects such as biology do not influence students as much as those which religion has not had time to combat.

Our results suggest that it is Postmodernism, not Science, that is the bête noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of Postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of Evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of Postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century.”

By the way, I graduated with a BA in psychology and I am currently on track to earn a Ph.D. in sociology. In this case I love being a statistic!

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