Does religion affect prosocial behavior of the believers Evidence from a laboratory experiment

Background and Aim : Various studies have shown that religion has an effect on prosocial behavior such as charitable giving, and this effect can be measured by experimental design. Religious priming is used to measure the causal effect of religion on prosocial behavior and refers to a technique whereby the presentation of one stimulus passively and temporarily affects processing or response. However, due to many reasons such as using this technique in just economic games and not using real scenarios, using specific tasks such as the unscrambled sentence task and mere emphasize on cognitive processes without considering emotional processes, not paying enough attention to endowment effect and the anonymity of participants and finally using inappropriate analytical methods, there is much debate on the impact of religion on prosocial behavior.Methods : Two months before the experiment began, an online call was released at Sharif University of Technology. Participants filled out an online form to participate in the study. Of the 314 students, 150 identified themselves as theists and of 80 of them, who gave more than 4 (on a Likert scale from 1=not believe in god to 7=completely believe) to their commitment to religious behavior, had been chosen as the subjects in the main experiment. Of these 80 participants, 52 were randomly selected and individually invited to the laboratory and then were divided into one control and one experimental groups. We gave them 15000 Tomans at the beginning of the experimental section (endowment effect) as an appreciation, let them be alone in the room and gave them space to decide. After experiment was done, we checked the donation box (anonymity). Then they were seated in front of a computer, answered some biographical questions. We primed the treatment group with one invented religious text (they read one religious text about Ramadan month and the importance of this month in the views of Muslims) and one voice (they listened to Quran for 2 minutes) (new task) and gave all participants an opportunity to donate money to Mahak charity (real scenario). After participants decided how much they wanted to donate, they were prompted to answer a series of awareness probe questions that enabled us to assess their understanding of the study. After experiment, they were debriefed with email.Results : Since our dependent variable had no normal distribution (typically zero-inflated, with a large lump of participants who donated 50% of their endowment, and a smaller but still substantial lump of participants who donate 100% of their endowment), we used Mann Whitney test to compare median of money the participants donated. The results are in line with a common assumption of most theories of religion: religion has the effect of promoting prosocial behavior in believers (P < 0.000 and Mann Whitney = 137.500). Conclusion : Our study is the first study that investigates the effect of highlighting the religion on prosocial behavior in Iran. The difference between the treatment and control groups can be attributed to the content presented during the religious priming.

کلیدواژه ها:

Religious Priming ، Prosocial Behavior ، giving