Priming God-thoughts makes believers more generous only toward fellow believers.

Evidence

Azim Shariff and I tested this idea in the well-known Dictator Game. This time, we invited Christian Canadians to choose to transfer money to another player in an anonymous setting. In one condition, they were led to think the other player was Muslim. In a second condition, they thought the other player was a fellow Christian. And finally, in a third, control condition, no information was given about the other player. If Christian folk were good theologians, they would follow Christian doctrine and be “Good Samaritans,” being generous equally with everyone. But they were not. Christian participants primed with thoughts of God were most generous toward the Christian receiver, less generous toward a stranger with unknown religious affiliation, and least generous toward the Muslim receiver (playing with a Muslim receiver was the equivalent of not being primed with religious words). While this result is not exactly an indication of intense hostility toward religious outgroups, it does show that making supernatural monitoring salient does lead to a discriminant form of generosity that is sensitive to group boundaries. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 526

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Empirical anchor for the reader’s Baumard et al. partner-choice framing: primes shift generosity toward in-group partners, which is exactly what visible apostasy rituals destroy.
• SEED: A concrete experiment worth citing in any argument that religious moralizing is group-relative, not universalist — the data contradicts theological self-description.

Related

• Religious priming produces generosity biased toward ingroup members (similarity 0.92)
• God-priming shifted the dominant norm from selfishness to equal splitting. (similarity 0.87)
• Secular moral authority primes generosity as much as God does. (similarity 0.84)
• Secular authority primes increase stranger generosity as much as religious primes do. (similarity 0.84)
• Unconscious thoughts of God increase generosity in economic games (similarity 0.84)
• God priming increases both generosity and felt watching only in believers (similarity 0.83)
• Unconscious God-priming in word games raised Dictator Game giving. (similarity 0.83)
• Religiosity predicts helping only when one can be seen doing it (similarity 0.82)
• Priming reminders activate religious moral behavior; beliefs alone do not (similarity 0.81)
• Priming police and judge boosts generosity as much as God words do. (similarity 0.81)
• Audible religious calls trigger generosity in non-Western settings (similarity 0.81)
• Situation beats stated religiosity in predicting selfishness (similarity 0.80)
• Reminders of God may curb selfishness and increase generosity toward strangers. (similarity 0.80)
• Religious identity alone does not make people more charitable (similarity 0.79)
• Priming thoughts of God makes believers favor their own religious group (similarity 0.79)