Daily communal prayer predicts greater cooperation in public goods games

Evidence

Thus, unlike the Good Samaritan study and ones like it, religious involvement predicted greater contributions to the public good, and greater likelihood of cooperation. One key difference is that reminders of God are likely to be more chronically present in religious kibbutz, madrassahs, and Candomble communities, where religious prayer and attendance are a daily part of life. Another is that prosociality in these communities clearly benefited in-group members (despite being anonymous), whereas in the Good Samaritan study, the victim was a total stranger. It is also possible that regular, communal prayer involves public ritual participation, which, independent of devotion to a morally concerned deity, might also encourage more prosociality. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 183 (#expands, via linked claim)

Erik Duhaime approached shopkeepers in Marrakech, Morocco, and asked them to choose one of the following three options: (1) I give you 20 dirhams (about $2.50); (2) I give charity 60 dirhams; or (3) I give you 10 dirhams and charity 30 dirhams. (This is yet another version of the Dictator Game, discussed earlier.) Critically, sometimes he approached them during the Muslim call to prayer, sometimes not. When the call to prayer was being sounded out from minarets throughout the city, 100 percent of the shopkeepers chose option 2, the most charitable option, compared to only around 60 percent of shopkeepers when he asked at times when the call to prayer was not audible. … In another field experiment, Dimitris Xygalatas went further and compared the relative effects of religious situations and religious dispositions on selfish behavior. He randomly assigned Hindu participants in Mauritius to play an economic game either in a religious setting (a temple) or in a comparable secular setting (a restaurant). Participants were given the opportunity to withdraw from a shared pool of money that otherwise would benefit the entire group. He found that participants who played the game in the temple withdrew 170 rupees, compared to 231 rupees on average when playing in the restaurant. Prior to the field experiment, participants had rated their intensity of religiosity. How religiously involved participants said they were had little bearing on how much money they withdrew from the shared pool—only the situation where they played mattered. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 154 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Incidentally, the claim of Adam Seligman (1997) and Niklas Luhmann (1980) that trust is a modern phenomenon may be correct if turned into a claim that it arises in relatively large communities in which we must rely on particularized networks and need not arise in small communities in which norms of cooperativeness handle the problems that trust relationships might have handled. The transition from smaller communities to relatively urban communities has proceeded further in many societies than in others, and national differences in the vocabulary of trust may correlate with the differential development. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 823 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Frequent prayer reduces scapegoating once dogmatic exclusivity is controlled — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 521; Large-scale cooperation and religion’s endurance explain each other; Big God religion and large-scale cooperation co-evolved in feedback (+8 more)

Related

• Audible religious calls trigger generosity in non-Western settings (similarity 0.88)
• Prosocial religious groups outcompeted rivals through internal cooperation. (similarity 0.87)
• Witnessing an intense ritual boosts prosociality as much as participating in it (similarity 0.87)
• Religious participation, not belief, drives support for intergroup conflict (similarity 0.86)
• Religiosity predicts helping only when one can be seen doing it (similarity 0.85)
• Chronic, communal, in-group religious practice drives the prosociality effect (similarity 0.85)
• Big God religion and large-scale cooperation co-evolved in feedback (similarity 0.83)
• Costly religious requirements directly explain group longevity in communes (similarity 0.82)
• Religious identity alone does not make people more charitable (similarity 0.82)
• Religious situations boost prosociality more than personal devotion does (similarity 0.82)
• Religion is historically the primary motivator of prosociality among strangers. (similarity 0.82)
• Religious homogeneity increases cooperative behavior among strangers (similarity 0.81)
• Unconscious thoughts of God increase generosity in economic games (similarity 0.80)
• Religion drives intergroup conflict through three mutable pathways, not belief alone (similarity 0.80)
• Market integration and Big God religion independently predict prosocial generosity cross-culturally (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Chronic, communal, in-group religious practice drives the prosociality effect #expands (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 183
• Religious situations boost prosociality more than personal devotion does #corroborates (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 154
• Religious homogeneity increases cooperative behavior among strangers #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 215
• Religious behavior depends on situational context, observable action, and intergroup competition #qualifies (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 19
• Communal trustworthiness can seed willingness to trust in wider society #expands (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 823
• Signals of sincere belief identify trustworthy cooperation partners #expands (0.75)
• Cooperation has no single solution; motivations combine and overdetermine action #qualifies (0.75)