Religiosity, Shared Identity, Trust, and Punishment of Norm Violations: No Evidence of Generalized Prosociality

Previous research has suggested that religion is associated not only with self-reported prosociality, but also with observable behaviors as manifested in standard economic game interactions. However, such studies have often left key elements uncontrolled, leading to incomplete interpretations of the influences of religiosity. The present article includes two studies in which prosocial behavior was assessed as a function of the religious identity (Christian or nonreligious) and intrinsic religiosity of the participant and the religious identity of the game partner (Christian or atheist). In Study 1, although participant religiosity and religious identity were related to greater self-reported agreeableness, they were inversely related to behavioral trust in a partner (i.e., amount forwarded) regardless of the partner's religious identity. In Study 2, a third-party paradigm allowed participants to address an unequal exchange between partners (either Christians or atheists) by either punishing the perpetrator or compensating the victim. There was no overall effect of participant religiosity on the tendency to punish or compensate unequal exchanges. However, religiosity was related to relatively greater fairness ratings of the objectively unequal exchange. In sum, religiosity was predictive of self-reported but not behavioral prosociality.