Summary: Across diverse faiths and regions, prompting people to think about their God made them more willing to share money with anonymous strangers. This boost in generosity applied equally to recipients from the same religion and to those from different religious groups.
Source: University of Illinois
Does belief in God encourage generosity only toward co-religionists, or can it also increase help extended to people of other faiths?
A large cross-cultural investigation led by University of Illinois Chicago social psychologist Michael Pasek addressed this question using field and online experiments with 4,753 adults drawn from Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish communities in the Middle East, Fiji and the United States. Participants were asked to divide real money between themselves and anonymous recipients who varied by religious background, providing a clear test of whether religiously prompted prosociality is parochial or broad in scope.
In the experiments, participants completed several rounds of an economic sharing game. During the early rounds they simply made their allocation decisions, while in later rounds researchers briefly prompted them to think about God before deciding. This subtle psychological cue was enough to change behavior: thinking about God produced an average increase of 11% in the amount given away (an increase equal to about 4.17% of the total stake).
Importantly, the rise in generosity was not confined to recipients who shared the participant’s religion. Across regions and religious groups, the increase applied equally to both religious ingroups and outgroups. The effect persisted even in contexts with elevated intergroup tensions or perceived threat, suggesting that activating thoughts of God can encourage cooperative norms that extend beyond one’s own faith community.
“Religion is often portrayed as a source of intergroup conflict,” said Michael Pasek, UIC assistant professor of psychology and a lead author of the study. “Our findings indicate that belief in God can, in many cases, promote positive interactions between people of different religious backgrounds.”
Jeremy Ginges, professor of psychology at The New School of Social Research and another lead author, noted that while supernatural beliefs may foster cooperation across group boundaries—helpful for economic exchange and cultural interaction—they do not guarantee harmony in every situation. The research team is following up to understand when and how moral and supernatural beliefs balance parochial tendencies with broader intergroup cooperation.
The study’s authors include Michael Pasek, Jeremy Ginges, John Michael Kelly, Crystal Shackleford, Cindel White, Allon Vishkin, Julia Smith, Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff. Funding came from the Templeton Religious Trust, the National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Author: Brian Flood
Source: University of Illinois
Contact: Brian Flood – University of Illinois
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: “Thinking About God Encourages Prosociality Toward Religious Outgroups: A Cross-Cultural Investigation” by Michael Pasek et al., published in Psychological Science. Closed access.
About this neurotheology and psychology research news
This study combines experimental economics and cross-cultural fieldwork to test how religious cognition influences real-world cooperative behavior. By using monetary allocations to anonymous recipients, the research isolates the effect of briefly activating thoughts of God on prosocial decisions. Because the sample included multiple faiths across three distinct cultural and political contexts, the findings speak to a broadly similar psychological mechanism rather than a phenomenon confined to one religion or one society.
Key implications:
- Priming thoughts of God can increase generosity in economic exchanges by a measurable margin.
- The increase in giving applies equally to members of the participant’s own religion and to religious outgroups.
- Religious belief may support intergroup cooperation in practical exchanges, though it does not eliminate parochialism in all contexts.
These results add nuance to debates about religion and social behavior: while religion can be a source of division, the cognitive activation of religious beliefs can also promote norms that encourage people to trade goods, share resources and cooperate across group boundaries. Ongoing research by the team aims to clarify the conditions under which supernatural and moral beliefs promote inclusive cooperation versus when they reinforce parochial preferences.
Abstract
Thinking About God Encourages Prosociality Toward Religious Outgroups: A Cross-Cultural Investigation
Most humans hold beliefs in a god or gods, and these beliefs can foster prosocial behavior toward coreligionists. This study tests whether such prosociality remains confined to one’s religious ingroup or extends to religious outgroups. Field and online experiments with Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish adults in the Middle East, Fiji and the United States (N = 4,753) employed a money-sharing task with anonymous recipients from different ethno-religious groups. Participants were randomly prompted to think about their god before making allocation decisions. Thinking about God increased giving by 11% (approximately 4.17% of the total stake), and this increase applied equally to ingroup and outgroup recipients, suggesting that beliefs in gods may support intergroup cooperation in economic contexts, even where intergroup tensions exist.