Principles of Religious Prosociality: A Review and Reformulation

Abstract

Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in others, and in some cases actually increasing antisocial behavior. In addition, different forms of religious belief are associated with different styles of co‐operation. This body of evidence paints a somewhat messy picture of religious prosociality; however, recent examinations of the cognitive mechanisms of belief help to resolve apparent inconsistencies. In this article, we review evidence of two separate sources of religious prosociality: a religious principle associated with the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents. These two principles emphasize different prosocial goals, and so have different effects on prosocial behavior depending on the target and context. A re‐examination of the literature illustrates the independent influences of religious and supernatural principles on moral action.

Why Are Protestants More Prosocial Than Catholics? A Comparative Study Among Orthodox Dutch Believers

“…In line with previous findings we found that Protestants scored higher on self-report measures of prosocial behavior (i.e., the total amount of money donated to charities) than Catholics (Bekkers & Schuyt, 2008;Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011b;Hoge & Yang, 1994;Zaleski & Zech, 1994)-also when looking selectively at donations to religious charities, in line with the parochial view of religious prosociality (Preston et al, 2010). Contrary to our initial hypothesis, we did not find evidence that denominational differences in prosocial behavior were related to our measures of self-esteem and self-signaling.…”

Religious song as a facilitator of prosocial behavior

“…Unscrambling sentences which contain God-related concepts increase willingness to volunteer for environmental cause (Sasaki et al, 2011). Priming with religious words also reduced cheating (Randolph-Seng & Nielsen, 2007), and increased donations (Hernandez & Preston, 2010 as cited in Preston, Ritter, & Hernandez, 2010). These religious priming studies indicate that activating religious representation through religion-related words may have semantically activated prosocial behaviors (Pichon et al, 2007;Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007).…”

“…A bulk of studies already have found consistent link between religiosity and prosocial behaviors (for a recent review, see Hernandez, 2010 andSaroglou, 2013). For example, religiosity facilitates everyday minimal-cost helping (Batara, 2015), cooperation and generosity (Ahmed, 2009), and even philanthropy (Lincoln, Morrissey, & Mundey, 2008).…”

On God-Belief and Feeling Clean

“…Prosociality is built into the tenants of most religions. In fact, some feel that religion is the source of morality, which leads to prosocial behavior (Preston, Ritter, & Hernandez, 2010). Indeed, religious people believe themselves to be prosocial (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993), most likely because this is seen as important to their god (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007).…”