Religiousness and aggression in adolescents: The mediating roles of self-control and compassion

Although people have used religion to justify aggression, evidence suggests that greater religiousness corresponds with less aggression. We explored two explanations for the religion-aggression link. First, most major religions teach self-control (e.g., delaying gratification, resisting temptation), which diminishes aggression. Second, most major religions emphasize compassionate beliefs and behavior (i.e., perspective taking, forgiveness, a broader love of humanity) that are incompatible with aggression. We tested whether self-control and compassion mediated the relationship between religion and aggression (direct and indirect) in a longitudinal study of 1,040 adolescents in the United States. Structural equation analyses revealed that self-control and compassion together completely mediated the religion-aggression relationship for both types of aggression.