UC Irvine

While there is a large literature exploring the association between religiosity and prosocial behavior, several limitations in this literature prevent a full understanding of how religiosity and prosocial behavior relate. Among these limitations are an over-reliance on self-report measures, a lack of focus on the importance of religious cognitions, and a lack of consideration about who the prospective recipient of prosocial action is. Across six pre-registered studies (N = 8,181), I attempted to address these limitations using dictator game paradigms. In Studies 1-3, participants completed two dictator games separated by an instruction to think about God. As a between-subject manipulation, the recipient was either a member of the participant’s religious ingroup or a member of a religious outgroup. In each dictator game, participants were granted a bonus monetary allotment and could give any amount to the recipient and keep the rest for themselves. In Studies 4-6, participants completed a single three-way dictator game in which they were paired with an ingroup member and an outgroup member. They were given a bonus monetary allotment and could disperse it among themselves and the two recipients as they saw fit. Half the participants were instructed to think about God and the other half were not. With these studies, I asked three primary questions: 1) Will participants be more generous when God is salient than when he is not? 2) Will participants be more generous to ingroup members than outgroup members? and 3) Will the God cue affect generosity to the ingroup or outgroup more strongly? Consensus of the six studies found 1) Participants were more generous in the God salience condition than in the control, as hypothesized, 2) Participants were more generous to ingroup members than outgroup members, as hypothesized, and 3) Consistent with a “Universality Hypothesis”, the God cue did not affect generosity to one group more strongly than it affected generosity to the other.