Are those who believe in God really more prosocial?
Name
SSRN-id3160453.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
793.51 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
645f73037d842d213342f25587a67734
Author(s)
Stagnaro, Michael N
Arechar, Antonio A
Rand, David G
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Religion Brain and Behavior
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Whether those who believe in God are more prosocial has been a long debated topic. Here we shed new light on this question by examining giving in incentivized Dictator Games where no mention of religion was made, played online with anonymous strangers. Study 1 (N = 15,827) found a significant correlation between belief and giving, r =.122 (robust to demographics). Study 2 (N = 2334) included the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to examine whether this relationship could be explained by intuitive cognitive style driving both belief and prosociality. Study 2 replicated the correlation between belief and giving, r =.106, and found CRT to be negatively correlated with both belief, r = −.229, and giving, r = −.174. Critically, the relationship between belief and giving was reduced by 34% when controlling for CRT; and also adding basic demographics rendered the relationship non-significant. Our results suggest that—at least in this task and population—believers do show greater prosociality, but more due to intuitive cognitive style than belief per se.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1695656
