Modeling the Effects of Religious Belief and Affiliation on Prosociality

Abstract

To what extent do supernatural beliefs, group affiliation, and social interaction produce values and behaviors that benefit others, i.e., prosociality? Addressing this question involves multiple variables interacting within complex social networks that shape and constrain the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. We examine the relationships among some of these factors utilizing data from the World Values Survey to inform the construction of an Agent-Based Model. The latter was able to identify the conditions under which -and the mechanisms by which -the prosociality of simulated agents was increased or decreased within an "artificial society" designed to reflect real world parameters. The combined results indicated that prosociality was more related to agents' group affiliation and social networks than to their worldview beliefs. It also showed that prosociality changed as a function of agents' worldviews, group affiliation, and social network properties. Individuals with supernatural worldviews had higher levels of active prosociality, but this was primarily directed toward ingroup members. Naturalistic believers and the unaffiliated, on the other hand, tended to have higher levels of trust and tolerance. We describe the potential usefulness of such modeling techniques for addressing complex problems in the study of secularity and nonreligion.

Paying the Piper: History, Humanities, and the Scientific Study of Religion

“…Ambasciano also neglects the positive effects of our modeling approach, the results of which he fails to cite. MAAI models developed through our international collaborative efforts with humanities and social science scholars have aimed at discovering solutions to real-world challenges such as mitigating xenophobic anxiety and intergroup conflict , finding more progressive and culturally sensitive ways to solve immigration crises in Europe related to Refugee camps in Lesbos (Padilla, et al, 2018;Paloutzian, et al, 2021), analyzing the effectiveness of anti-childsex-trafficking policies (Alizada & Wildman, 2019), simulating processes that enhance minority integration in urban areas (Puga-Gonzalez, et al, 2019), addressing problems related to ethnocentrism (Lemos, et al, 2019), responding to global challenges related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Shults & Wildman, 2020b), reducing radicalization and violent extremism Ottman, et al 2022), uncovering ways to help change the Dutch immigration system to be more culturally compatible with Syrian Refugees (Boshuijzen-van Burken, et al, 2020), offering support for universities and other organizations struggling to set policies to slow the spread of COVID-19 (Wildman, et al, 2020), providing insight for therapeutic interventions for PTSD nightmares (McNamara, et al, 2021), illuminating the dynamics that promote prosocial attitudes and behaviors (Galen, et al, 2021), and preventing the spread of misinformation and anxiety in the wake of a pandemic (Antosz, et al, 2022). We welcome whatever assistance Ambasciano or other historians of religion, regardless of their previous participation in CSR 2.0, have to offer to help us address these critical social issues using the kinds of tools that policy makers are interested in engaging.…”

The Role of Values in Pandemic Management: An Agent-Based Model

“…These related lines of research show that shows how human behavior can only be adequately understood in light of the evolved moral equipment with which we are all born and the ways cultures and subcultures shape and deploy those in-built moral dispositions. Increasingly complex cognitive and emotional architectures have been employed to express this psychologically more accurate way of conceiving human behavior and decisions, including models of terror management theory (Shults et al 2018b), identity fusion theory and social identity theory (Shults et al 2018a), and prosociality (Galen et al 2021). From a scientific point of view, adequate simulation of humans will require accounting for "values," at least for many research questions and purposes.…”

Simulation, Science, and Stakeholders: Challenges and Opportunities for Modelling Solutions to Societal Problems

“…Te collaborative approach outlined and illustrated in Human Simulation: Perspectives, Insights, and Applications [8], is one way of addressing the challenges (and pursuing the opportunities) identifed briefy above. Tat volume describes several models developed using this approach, but it is important to note that the latter has been developed, tested, and expanded within the context of several interrelated research projects [9] that have produced a wide variety of policy-oriented computational models that provide platforms for exploring societal problems related to topics such as human terror management in response to threats such as contagion or natural hazards [10], the mutual escalation of xenophobic intergroup confict [11], the role of education and existential security in secularisation [12], the integration of minorities in western urban contexts [13], morality and (non)religious altruism [14], and social networks in pluralistic cultures [15]. Below I will spell out this approach in more detail, focusing particularly on the interaction of stakeholders and scientists in the process of analysing problems and designing solutions, but in the remainder of this section, I want to highlight some of the reasons for calling it "human" simulation.…”