The Seven Deadly Sins: A View from WVU

Humanities H02

April Kahn, Caleb Hutzler, Cameron Rowe,

Payton Roda and Seth Rader

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

THE STUDY OF HUMANITIES

The humanities can be defined as the study of the way in which people process and

document the human experience. We have used philosophy, literature, religion, art,

music, history and language to understand and record our existence.

OUR PROJECT

• As our final project for the Spring 2014 Honors Humanities class, in which we studied the Seven Deadly Sins, we decided to take a more modern approach to these historic and notorious sins.

• Individually, we embraced students from all across the campus of West Virginia University to ask them to complete a simple survey on the Seven Deadly Sins.

OUR PROJECT CONTINUED

• The participants were asked to associate the first word that came to mind when they heard the sin, as well as to rate the sin, and what was the most prevalent sin on campus at West Virginia University.

• These slides cover a range of the book cover, the sin, word association “wordles”, statistics taken by our group on the specific sin and finally the deadliest sin at WVU.

GLUTTONYExcessive eating or drinking.

Word Association with WVU Students

“I am not a glutton. I am an explorer of food.” - Erma Bombeck

GLUTTONY RATINGAVG:4.89 STD DEV:

1.87

GREEDExcessive or Rapacious desire, especially for

wealth or possessions.

Word Association with WVU Students

“It does seem as if the more one gets, the more one wants.” - Louisa May Alcott

GREED RATINGAVG: 6.57 STD DEV:

1.84

ANGERA strong feeling of displeasure.

Word Association with WVU Students

“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”

- Bruce Lee

ANGER RATINGAVG: 7.14 STD DEV:

1.68

ENVYA feeling of discontent or covetousness.

Word Association with WVU Students

“Envy is the ulcer of the soul.” - Socrates

ENVY RATINGAVG: 5.75 STD DEV:

2.32

SLOTHHabitual disinclination to exertion.

Word Association with WVU Students

“Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.” - Mason Cooley

SLOTH RATINGAVG: 6.17 STD DEV:

2.17

LUSTIntense sexual desire or appetite.

Word Association with WVU Students

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” - Thomas Hobbes

LUST RATINGAVG: 4.64 STD DEV:

2.39

PRIDEA high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity.

Word Association with WVU Students

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real”

- Thomas Merton

PRIDE RATINGAVG: 5.32 STD DEV:

2.63

RATING OF ALL SEVEN DEADLY SINS

AVG: 5.78 STD DEV: 2.31

WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL SIN?

PERSONAL SIN RATINGAVG: 5.10 STD DEV: 2.74

WHAT IS THE MOST PREVALENT SIN?

MOST PREVALENT SIN RATINGAVG: 5.28 STD DEV: 2.11

Gluttony Greed Anger Envy Sloth Lust Pride0

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Average Rating of Sins

Group 1Group 2Group 3

Sin

Scale

WHAT IS THE DEADLIEST SIN?

NOTE: NO ONE SURVEYED SELECTED GLUTTONY AS THE DEADLIEST SIN

CONCLUSION OF OUR SEVEN DEADLY SIN STUDY

• Most agreed upon sin: Anger

• Least agreed upon sin: Pride

• Statistically speaking, when a subject rates a sin as the most prevalent, they believe that this sin is seen more often than the others (>14%) Subjects believed that their own personal sin aligned with the most prevalent 25% of the time

• Less than 5% identified the most prevalent sin as also being the deadliest.(optimistic??)

• Roughly 10% of those surveyed identified their own sin as also being the deadliest.

CONCLUSION OF OUR SEVEN DEADLY SIN STUDY CONTINUED

• Subjects consistently ranked their own sin lower than average in severity.

• Subjects also ranked the most prevalent sin as lower than average, though not as low as their own.

CONCLUSION OF OUR SEVEN DEADLY SIN STUDY CONTINUED

SOURCES• http://www.google.com/imghp

• http://www.wordle.net/

• http://www.stanford.edu/

• http://www.youtube.com/

• http://www.slideshare.net/

• http://global.oup.com/academic/

• http://deadlysins.com/sins/gluttony.html

• http://dictionary.reference.com/

• Statistics on charts provided from surveys conducted by individual group members at West Virginia University