Religious prosocial effects are muted where secular institutions already generate trust.

Evidence

Coming back to our puzzle, here is how the WEIRD problem may explain the seemingly confusing results regarding religious involvement and prosocial behavior. It turns out that virtually all the studies that have found weak or no reliable associations between religiosity and prosociality have been conducted in WEIRD societies. On the other hand, all the studies that have found reliable associations between religiosity and prosocial behavior have been conducted in non-WEIRD samples. Here is a key feature of WEIRD groups: these are societies characterized by strong secular institutions and rule of law, high levels of public trust, and low levels of corruption. We know that this is precisely the package of societal traits that encourages prosocial norms for everyone. This can also be demonstrated experimentally. In one experiment I conducted with Azim Shariff, secular reminders were as effective as reminders of God to increase prosocial behavior in the Dictator Game. In other words, there are strong secular incentives that promote high levels of prosociality for everyone, religious or not, leaving less room for religion to exert its effects. Therefore, experimental primes or situational salience brings out the effects of religion more than religious involvement in these WEIRD contexts. In non-WEIRD societies, in contrast, secular institutions (police, courts, juries, contracts) are either nonexistent, or if they exist at all, are unreliable and corrupt. People have little faith in them. Instead, they have faith in religion. For most of humanity, like in most of human history in most cultures, religion is, and has been, the main game in town—the primary motivator of prosociality among strangers. Therefore, the effect of religious involvement is muted in WEIRD societies. This insight helps us reconcile the findings on religious involvement and prosocial acts. It also gives us clues about the origins of secular societies. When secular institutions succeed in increasing trust and cooperation in a society, they encroach on religion’s job and precipitate its decline. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 190

Categorization

• XREF: Directly links to Baumard et al.’s partner-choice model and the reader’s project on the fumi-e: where secular rule of law already enforces morality, religion’s omniscient-gaze function is redundant.
• ADDENDUM: Strengthens the reader’s Big God argument: secular state substitutes for religious moral enforcement, contextualizing why early modern Japan’s shogunate co-opted rather than merely banned the gaze.