Religion and prosocial behaviour: a field test

Abstract

Religious people are thought to be more prosocial than nonreligious people. Laboratory studies of this using ultimatum, dictator, public goods and trust games have produced mixed results, which could be due to lack of context. This article examines the relationship between religion and prosocial behaviour using data from a context-rich, naturally occurring field experiment that closely resembles the dictator game - tipping in restaurants. Customers were surveyed as they left a set of restaurants in Richmond, Virginia, in the summers of 2002 and 2003. Our findings reveal no evidence of religious prosociality.

Negative Perceptions of Christian Tippers: How Widespread Are They?

“…One exit-survey of patrons leaving five restaurants in Virginia found that regular attendance at religious services did not predict tipping (Grossman & Parrett, 2011). A second Internet survey found that worship frequency was negatively related to the sizes of hypothetical restaurant tips after controlling for appropriate demographic variables (Lynn, Jabbour, & Kim, 2012).…”

Cooperation and coordination across cultures and contexts: Individual, sociocultural, and contextual factors jointly influence decision making in the volunteer's dilemma game

“…Although this finding may seem intuitive, it actually runs counter to most experimental studies exploring the relationship between religiosity and prosocial behavior (for reviews, see Galen, ; Hoffmann, ; Sablosky, ). The vast majority of these experiments (including those utilizing social dilemma games) have found no significant relationship between religiosity and prosocial behavior (Ahmed & Salas, , ; Akay et al, ; Anderson et al, ; Anderson & Mellor, ; Annis, , ; Batson et al, ; Chuah et al, ; Eckel & Grossman, ; Grossman & Parrett, ; Hunsberger & Platonow, ; Orbell et al, ; Paciotti et al, ; Tan, ). There has been very little experimental evidence significantly linking religiosity and prosocial choices in social dilemma games (Ahmed, ; Ben‐Ner et al, ; Brañas‐Garza et al, ; Sosis & Ruffle, ), and these studies either did not directly ask participants if they were religious (Ben‐Ner et al, ; Brañas‐Garza et al, ) or they confounded religious prosociality with favoritism toward members of the same religious community (Ahmed, ; Sosis & Ruffle, ; see Galen, ).…”

“…On the other hand, it turns out most prior experimental studies have found no significant relationship between religiosity and prosocial behavior in (other) social dilemma games (Ahmed & Salas, 2009Akay, Karabulut, & Martinsson, 2015;Anderson & Mellor, 2009;Anderson, Mellor, & Milyo, 2010;Annis, 1975Annis, , 1976Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993;Chuah, Hoffmann, Ramasamy, & Tan, 2014;Eckel & Grossman, 2004;Grossman & Parrett, 2011;Hunsberger & Platonow, 1987;Orbell, Goldman, Mulford, & Dawes, 1992;Paciotti et al, 2011;Tan, 2006). Moreover, the few studies that did find a significant relationship did not directly ask about religiosity (Ben-Ner, Putterman, Kong, & Magan, 2004;Brañas-Garza, Espín, & Neuman, 2014) or confounded prosociality with in-group favoritism (Ahmed, 2009;Sosis & Ruffle, 2003; see Galen, 2012).…”

Does Goal-Demotion Enhance Cooperation?

“…Religion has been seen as reinforcing solidarity (Durkheim, 1912(Durkheim, /1995, pro moting morality (James, 1902(James, /1985, and m aintaining social order (Turner, 1969). The association between religiosity and prosociality remains a matter of academic dispute, with researchers disagreeing w hether this association is positive (Saroglou et al, 2005;Soler, 2012), negative (Batson et al, 1989;Jackson and Esses, 1997;Goldfried and Miner, 2002), or simply non-existent (Batson et al, 1989;Orbell et al, 1992;Spilka et al, 2003;Eckel and Grossman, 2004;Tan, 2006;Anderson et al, 2010;Malhotra, 2010;Grossman and Parrett, 2011). Other studies have investigated specific religious institutions that might pro mote cooperation and generosity, such as extreme rituals .…”