Do religious contexts elicit more trust and altruism? An experiment on Facebook

Bradley Ruffle and Richard Sosis
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Richard Sosis: Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut

No 1002, Working Papers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics

Abstract: We design a decision-making scenario experiment on Facebook to measure subjects’ altruism and trust toward attendees of a religious service, a fitness class and a local music performance. Secular and religious subjects alike display significantly more altruism and trust toward the synagogue attendees than participants at the other two venues. By all measures of religiosity, even the most secular subjects behave more prosocially in the religious venue than in the comparable non-religious settings. We also find that secular subjects are just as altruistic toward synagogue and prayer group members as religious subjects are. These findings support recent theories that emphasize the pivotal role of religious context in arousing high levels of prosociality among those who are religious. Finally, our results offer startlingly little evidence for the widely documented religious-secular divide in Israel.

Keywords: religion; trust; altruism; religious context; religious-secular conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bgu:wpaper:1002

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