Religious Motivations for Cooperation: An Experimental Investigation Using Explicit Primes

Rand, David G.; Dreber, Anna; Haque, Omar Sultan; Kane, Rob; Nowak, Martin A.; Coakley, Sarah

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2123243

Cited by 13 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…23 Other priming studies largely confirm the generosity-enhancing effect in response to religious priming. Religious primes also foster cooperativeness (Rand et al 2014;Xygalatas 2013) and honesty (Mazar et al 2008). A recent meta-analysis of priming studies reveals that religious primes have a robust effect on prosocial behaviour, with a small but significant effect size (Shariff et al 2016).…”

Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ambivalent Role of Religion for Sustainable Development: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

2017

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Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ambivalent Role of Religion for Sustainable Development: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

2017

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“…However, these researchers were unable to replicate Shariff and Norenzayan's (2007) main result. Horton, Rand, and Zeckhauser (2011) and Rand et al (2014) used the Amazon Mechanical Turk population to test the effect of religious priming on the Prisoners Dilemma game (PD) rather than the dictator game, using $1 stakes. Both of these latter studies showed that participants primed with religious concepts were significantly more likely to cooperate with another participant (i.e., choose the cooperate option rather than the defect option in a PD, which causes the cooperator's partner to receive income while simultaneously causing the cooperator to also receive income, although less than he or she would have by playing the defect option) than participants not primed with religious concepts.…”

Section: Other Relevant Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of implicit religious primes on dictator game allocations: A preregistered replication experiment.

Gomes¹,

McCullough²

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

101

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Shariff and Norenzayan (2007) discovered that people allocate more money to anonymous strangers in a dictator game following a scrambled sentence task that involved words with religious meanings. We conducted a direct replication of key elements of Shariff and Norenzayan's (2007) Experiment 2, with some additional changes. Specifically, we (a) collected data from a much larger sample of participants (N = 650); (b) added a second religious priming condition that attempted to prime thoughts of religion less conspicuously; (c) modified the wording of some of their task explanations to avoid deceiving our participants; (d) added a more explicit awareness probe; (e) reduced prime-probe time; and (f) performed statistical analyses that are more appropriate for non-normal data. We did not find a statistically significant effect for religious priming. Additional tests for possible between-subjects moderators of the religious priming effect also yielded nonsignificant results. A small-scale meta-analysis, which included all known studies investigating the effect of religious priming on dictator game offers, suggested that the mean effect size is not different from zero, although the wide confidence intervals indicate that conclusions regarding this effect should be drawn with caution. Finally, we found some evidence of small-study effects: Studies with larger samples tended to produce smaller effects (a pattern consistent with publication bias). Overall, these results suggest that the effects of religious priming on dictator game allocations might be either not reliable or else quite sensitive to differences in methods or in the populations in which the effect has been examined.

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“…Since cooperation is individually costly, standard economic models predict that people should not cooperate (unless the game is repeated, in which case theoretical models predict 18 19 20 21 22 , and behavioural experiments demonstrate 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 , that cooperation can be favoured via ‘reciprocity'; in repeated games, even selfish players may cooperate in order to gain the benefits of reciprocal cooperation in future periods 30 ). Yet cooperation in one-time encounters with strangers is common outside the laboratory, and a substantial amount of cooperative behaviour is observed in one-shot PD experiments in the lab with anonymous players 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Heuristics guide the implementation of social preferences in one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma experiments

Capraro

Jordan

Rand

2014

Sci Rep

Self Cite

153

139

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Cooperation in one-shot anonymous interactions is a widely documented aspect of human behaviour. Here we shed light on the motivations behind this behaviour by experimentally exploring cooperation in a one-shot continuous-strategy Prisoner's Dilemma (i.e. one-shot two-player Public Goods Game). We examine the distribution of cooperation amounts, and how that distribution varies based on the benefit-to-cost ratio of cooperation (b/c). Interestingly, we find a trimodal distribution at all b/c values investigated. Increasing b/c decreases the fraction of participants engaging in zero cooperation and increases the fraction engaging in maximal cooperation, suggesting a role for efficiency concerns. However, a substantial fraction of participants consistently engage in 50% cooperation regardless of b/c. The presence of these persistent 50% cooperators is surprising, and not easily explained by standard models of social preferences. We present evidence that this behaviour is a result of social preferences guided by simple decision heuristics, rather than the rational examination of payoffs assumed by most social preference models. We also find a strong correlation between play in the Prisoner's Dilemma and in a subsequent Dictator Game, confirming previous findings suggesting a common prosocial motivation underlying altruism and cooperation.

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Religious Motivations for Cooperation: An Experimental Investigation Using Explicit Primes

Cited by 13 publications

References 72 publications

The Ambivalent Role of Religion for Sustainable Development: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

The Ambivalent Role of Religion for Sustainable Development: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

The effects of implicit religious primes on dictator game allocations: A preregistered replication experiment.

Heuristics guide the implementation of social preferences in one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma experiments

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