The Effect of Religious Priming in Pro-social and Destructive Behavior

Jipeng Zhang, Elizabeth Brown and Huan Xie

CIRANO Working Papers from CIRANO

Abstract: In this paper, we study the behavioural impact of religious priming by showing participants religious words in a scrambled sentence task before a dictator game and a joy-of-destruction game. We also elicited data on individual religiosity and religious affiliation using a questionnaire. Priming religious words significantly increased pro-social behaviour in the dictator game, and the effect was especially striking among those reporting no religion, atheists and agnostics. The religious prime has no significant effect in mitigating destructive behaviour or own expectations of the other's destruction choice, but both destructive behaviour and expectations correlate positively with the multi-dimensional religiosity measure.

Keywords: Religious Priming; Pro-Social Behaviour; Dictator Game; Joy-of-Destruction Game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2019s-06.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Effect of religious priming in prosocial and destructive behaviour (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cir:cirwor:2019s-06

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