Although it is widely believed that religion can constrain egoistic behavior, this has not been tested with behavioral data. This article provides such a test, using prisoner's dilemma data collected in Logan, Utah, and in Eugene-Springfield, Oregon—contexts that differ sharply in both the incidence of religious affiliation and the extent to which one religious group dominates that context. There were three major findings: a widespread belief, shared equally by religious and nonreligious people, that religious people will cooperate more than nonreligious people; no relationship, in fact, between religious affiliation and cooperation; and an increase of cooperation with church attendance but only among Mormons in Logan. Consistent with standard experimental method, subjects in these experiments were assigned to experimental treatments randomly, meaning that the people they confronted were randomly met strangers. It is proposed that involvement with a religious institution will constrain behavior toward strangers only when the religious group dominates the ecology—and when there is, therefore, a high probability that such a randomly met stranger shares one's own religious affiliation.

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Four recent edited collections on new religions inspired this essay. As a group, the books are complementary to one another and relatively cohesive, summarizing recent research on new religious movements and offering clues for more directions for theory and research. They also raise a number of questions about the field and its future.The collections vary slightly in their foci, and each would be useful in undergraduate classes on religious movements in the United States, social movements, or the sociology of religion. In Cults and New Religious Movements, Dawson suggests that the sociological study of new religious movements has come of age, and this collection sometimes presents opposing views on topics such as controversies on brainwashing. James R. Lewis's Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements also includes core chapters on issues that have received the most sociological attention and pages in print over the past three decades. Lewis adds a specific emphasis on modernization and new technologies as they relate to cults.Lucas and Robbins's New Religious Movements in the 21st Century considers many of the same 20th century issues as the collections noted above, but adds an international element, with interesting chapters on globalization, Islamic sects, and developing nations. Only Davis and Hankins's New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America offers a unified thematic focus, examining controversial movements and their detractors over the past 200 years.These collections draw together chapters representing established research on new religions and much of the middle range theory currently grounding the field. All of the editors attempt to present major debates and areas of agreement about cults. It is also the case, however, that these books provide rather narrow interpretations of the sociology of new religious movements.

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The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was administered to followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in their commune in central Oregon. The Rajneeshee subjects had been high achievers (with advanced degrees and/or previous incomes greater than 30,000 dollars in 1984 dollars). Later, TATs were administered to persons matched for gender, age, education, and occupation but not involved in new religions. The final matched sample included 24 men and 20 women, half of whom were Rajneeshees. TATs were coded for a variety of formal variables as well as personality ratings. Though the analysis showed no between-group differences on most variables, significant mean differences occurred on ratings of unusual conditions, quest, and narcissism, with Rajneeshees higher than comparison subjects. Gender differences in personality variables were not conspicuous. Factor analysis established a strong productivity element. Card 16 (the blank card) provided the greatest number of differences.