Situational religious reminders, not personal religiosity, drive prosocial behavior

Evidence

Second, an equally important reason why atheist distrust is ill-founded is the second principle of supernatural monitoring. This principle says that religious situations are more powerful than religious dispositions. In chapter 3, I discussed results from laboratory experiments and field studies in which religious reminders and situations increased actual prosocial behavior. In those same studies, however, the effect of self-reported religious devotion or lack thereof was null. Recall also the Sunday Effect in charitability, that Christians were no more charitable than non-Christians Monday through Saturday, only to become generous once they were reminded of their religious duties on Sundays. These new findings nicely complement a long line of studies from decades of research by psychologist Daniel Batson and colleagues, showing that in situations devoid of the opportunity to leave a good impression on others, religious and nonreligious individuals do not differ in their levels of altruism. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 251

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the analytical bridge on Big Gods: the situation-not-disposition principle explains why the fumi-e public trampling ritual in Silence would be so potent — it engineers the ‘situation’ away rather than relying on an internalized disposition.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the situation-over-disposition finding imply apostasy rituals work precisely by dismantling situational trust cues, not inner belief?