Make your own friends?
A new survey has found that Christians make the most friends among people who are not religious.
The study, published by the Pew Research Center, surveyed 5,000 adults from July 17 to 20 and found that among non-religious Christians, Christians make 77 percent of the friendships they make.
Among Christians, the rate is 83 percent.
“This is an interesting finding.
People who are religious have been known to be socially adept, which is not surprising given their belief in a divine creator and the need for social harmony.
The religious have shown greater social ability than the seculars,” Pew Research senior research fellow Robert J. Schulman said in a statement.
“But they also have demonstrated greater empathy for other people than most other groups.”
The study found that non-Christians made up about 63 percent of those who make friendships.
People of all faiths and none are more likely to make friends with someone of the same religion than they are with those of other faiths, Pew found.
The survey was conducted by the internet company Mixpanel and surveyed 1,068 adults from June 27 to July 3.
About 7 percent of respondents reported that they have friends who are Christian.
Of those, just over 6 percent said they have a friend who is a Muslim or a Sikh, while only 4 percent said that they do.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they are atheists, with 1 percent saying they are agnostic or a “nothing” about religion.
The poll also found that people of all religions are more trusting of their fellow humans.
People are more inclined to trust a stranger who is not of their own religion, as opposed to someone of their religion who is of the opposite religion, Pew said.
“There is a wide spectrum of religious identification in this survey, and the fact that people with different religious backgrounds tend to be more trusting is unsurprising,” Schulmann said.
The results come just two days after a Pew study revealed that people who identify as Christians have the highest rates of friendship among people of any religious group.
Pew found that in its survey, which was conducted in 2015, 57 percent of people who identified as Christians reported having at least one friend of their religious affiliation.
People were also asked about the friends of friends who had different religious affiliations.
Nearly 60 percent of Christians who identified themselves as Christian said that at least a few of their friends are Muslim, as compared to 36 percent of atheists and 32 percent of agnostics.
A majority of Christians, including more than 90 percent of Protestants, said that most or all of their close friends are non-believers.
Pew also found an alarming trend among Christians, who reported having the highest percentage of friendships with people of the non-Christian faith.
About 9 in 10 Christians who are unaffiliated have at least some friends of the Christian faith, compared to about 7 in 10 unaffiliated Christians.
