Australia is gearing up for what looks to be a mighty battle over freedom of speech. Recent commentary about what a sports star can and cannot post on social media platforms has reignited the controversy. Many people and organisations are concerned about whether religious belief can be a valid defence against charges of discrimination, including discrimination against sexual minorities.
This is a campaign to raise funds for scientific research, led by PhD student Francesca Luberti, into the deep roots of socio-political attitudes. Especially those concerning sex, sexuality, gender, and religion.
Why is it that religion seems so preoccupied with sexuality, gender, and sexual behaviour? One popular view is that religious views have failed to move with the times, imposing the morality of the early bronze-age societies in which religious texts were written. Religion, according to this view, imposes beliefs that sex should be precious, rare, and confined to marriages between one woman and one man.
Interestingly, however, evidence suggests that the arrow of causation may point the other way. Instead of religion causing people to become sexually restricted, it may be that sexually restricted people are more likely to become devoutly religious. Even more interesting, our own research shows that when cues in the environment about sex and relationships change, people shift their beliefs about how other people should behave.
A better understanding of how people’s beliefs about sex respond to cues (like media stories about big weddings) could help diffuse complex, heated controversies like those over Safe Schools, same-sex marriage, and whether an employer can take action against employees for certain kinds of social media postings.
Please contribute
If you are curious about the world and about human behaviour, and if you value high-quality evidence as a way to inform difficult but necessary discussions, then we would appreciate your support.
The funds we hope to raise will allow us to do some or all of the following:
- Rather than taking months to recruit unpaid participants, recruit research participants and compensate them modestly for their time spent completing our research experiments.
- Pay the charges associated with publishing in top international journals.
- Travel interstate to talk about the research with research and advocacy groups interested in reducing online hate and polarisation.
- Employ research assistants to conduct follow-up research on these questions.
- Travel to present our findings at relevant international conferences.
About the Research Team
This research will form part of Francesca Luberti’s PhD in evolutionary psychology. Francesca is based in the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre and the School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences at UNSW, supervised by Scientia Professor Rob Brooks and Dr Khandis Blake.
Francesca uses surveys, experiments, and social media data to better understand how people’s reproductive interests influence their broader socio-political beliefs. Through her research, Francesca aims to create a better understanding of what causes sexual conflicts between men and women, and cultural phenomena such as discrimination against sexual minorities. She hopes her research will contribute valuable knowledge to those interested in decreasing these conflicts, as well as reducing political polarization.
