The Freakonomics e-mail inbox constantly produces interesting material. Like this one, from a reader we’ll call G.D.:
I loved your books! I have found my thoughts drifting to some of the subjects over the past few days, especially altruism and apathy. I was curious if any of the experiments took into account the subjects’ religious beliefs. I don’t know how one would logistically test that but it would be interesting to see how those claiming to follow a religious doctrine teaching altruism would do in the tests.
This thought led to another about myself. How would I do in the tests? We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.
It seemed silly but it’s all very serious business down here. We don’t go to church or teach or children one belief is “right” over another. We expose them to every kind of belief and trust that they will one day settle in to their very own spirituality. However, for the sake of friends and neighbors, we pretend we are Christians. We try not to lie but rather not to disclose unnecessary information. As the children are getting older, this isn’t so easy for them and an outing is probably eminent.
We are not the only ones. We have found a few other fakers out there. I would love it if you ever explored this subject in a future book. I should mention that the friend who recommended Freakonomics to me is the head of the bible study at her church. Interesting.
I am interested in hearing similar stories from readers. I would not be surprised if political ideology is another vibe that gets faked once in a while.
Also, while the altruism experiments we wrote about in SuperFreakonomics did not factor in the subjects’ religion, we did include a somewhat related endnote:
Along these same lines, consider another clever field experiment, this one conducted in thirty Dutch churches by a young economist named Adriaan R. Soetevent. In these churches, the collection was taken up in a closed bag that was passed along from person to person, row to row. Soetevent got the churches to let him switch things up, randomly substituting an open collection basket for the closed bags over a period of several months. He wanted to know if the added scrutiny changed the donation patterns. (An open basket lets you see how much money has already been collected as well as how much your neighbor puts in.) Indeed it did: with open baskets, the churchgoers gave more money, including fewer small-denomination coins, than with closed bags – although, interestingly, the effect petered out once the open baskets had been around for a while. See Soetevent, “Anonymity in Giving in a Natural Context – a Field Experiment in 30 Churches,” Journal of Public Economics 89 (2005).
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. You can also watch it on 
I’ve faked it. It’s better than listening to the lectures or being discriminated against by a religous boss.
I appreciated this article. I am an agnostic as well. But, I do a lot of community work. I’ve been a board member and volunteer for a local domestic violence shelter for 18 years, I’ve volunteered for the United Way for 7 years and other community efforts. Some years ago I worked with a person who was fully engaged in his religion (he is a mormon). He was telling me he was impressed and appreciated the efforts I made in the community. One day over lunch he asked about my motivation for doing this work and what religion led me to this life of service. I told him that I was not religious and was agnostic. I did this work because I was raised to give back, treat others well, and to do the right thing. He was quite shocked. He simply could not comprehend that I did it out of the goodness of my heart and not for religious salvation or guilt or teachings. He believed volunteerism only came from religious teaching. I found it pretty amusing and was glad I could open his world a little for him.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I would also venture to guess that across gender lines, women fake it more than men.
Are we still talking about religious beliefs?
My wife and I skew conservative politically, but live in a neighborhood (and have a social circle) that is more liberal. We are definitely guilty of non-disclosure – we’re never openly lie and say we’re liberal, but we’ve certainly avoided speaking up just to avoid having to debate our views.
I’m a moderate who faked a Republican political ideology throughout my undergraduate academic career in order to annoy the hardcore liberals in all my Poli Sci classes.
It’s definitely not tolerable to have conservative or libertarian beliefs where I work and live. You either fake it or shut up. They’d otherwise be looking for your horns. College was the same way for me in 80% of the classes.
OT but still about faking: I faked liking kids when I was younger. Before my mid-twenties, I really did not enjoy being around children. I quickly found out that society frowns upon women that are annoyed by kids in general. Mothers took personal offense if I didn’t interact and get all cutesy with her kids. So I kept my feelings to myself so I didn’t have to listen to the surprise and inevitable “every woman has a motherly instinct” lecture.
I now have a 4 year old boy and I think he’s awesome. I still don’t care for unruly or disrespectful kids. More importantly, I do not put any pressure on my friends to play with my kid and I certainly don’t get offended if they don’t show interest in everything he does. I also don’t try to persuade people who don’t want kids that they’ll eventually change their minds, which is another lecture I heard often.
Except that you changed your mind. Hmmmmm.
I am so tired of the anti-Christian bigotry in the mainstream media, especially the liberal media like the NYT.
How do I know it’s bigotry? Because I know for a fact that the NYT would NEVER do a story entitled “We Pretend We Are Jews/Muslims/InsertAnotherReligionHere”.
btw, I faked reading “Freakanomics” for a polsci class one year. Passed with flying colours.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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