GETTY A study says non-religious kids are more generous and tolerant than religious children

FREE now SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Make the most of your money by signing up to our newsletter fornow We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Agnostic and atheist kids were significantly more likely to share than children whose parents were religious. But children who believe in God were more likely to be vengeful and back harsher punishments for those who hurt others. It was suggested this was because religious children feel as they are going to heaven they are less concerned about the consequences of being mean. The findings was in line with previous research in adults which showed that the more religious a person was the more intolerant they were.

Dr Jean Decety at the University of Chicago said: "Some past research had demonstrated that religious people aren't more likely to do good than their non-religious counterparts. "Our study goes beyond that by showing that religious people are less generous, and not only adults but children too." Dr Decety his colleagues asked more than 1,100 children between the ages of five and 12 from the US, Canada, Jordan, Turkey, South Africa, and China to play a game. In it they were asked to make decisions about how many stickers to share with an anonymous person from the same school and a similar ethnic group. Most of the children came from households that identified as Christian, Muslim, or not religious.

GETTY Agnostic and atheist kids were more likely to share than children whose parents were religous

GETTY But children who believe in God were more likely to be vengeful

Our study goes beyond that by showing that religious people are less generous, and not only adults but children too. Dr Jean Decety, University of Chicago

The study also included smaller numbers of children from Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and agnostic homes. The older the child, the more generous they tended to be. The more religious the child was, the less likely they were to share and those who were the most altruistic came from atheist or non-religious families. The results might be explained in part by "moral licensing," a phenomenon in which doing something "good", in this case practising a religion, can leave people less concerned about the consequences of immoral behaviour. "A common-sense notion is that religiosity has a positive association with self-control and moral behaviours," Dr Decety said. "This view is unfortunately so deeply embedded that individuals who are not religious can be considered morally suspect.