Religious motivations for cooperation: an experimental investigation using explicit primes

Abstract

The role of religion in human cooperation remains a highly contested topic. Recent studies using economic game experiments to explore this issue have been largely inconclusive, yielding a range of conflicting results. In this study, we investigate the ability of religion to promote cooperation by using explicit theological primes. In the first study, conducted in a church, we find that subjects who report a stronger connection with a Christian passage about charitable giving are subsequently more likely to cooperate in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game. In the second study, conducted over the Internet, we find that Christian subjects are more likely to cooperate after reading a Christian passage than a neutral one. However, in the same study, we find that Hindu and secular passages have no significant effect on Christians, and that none of the passages (Christian, Hindu, or secular) have an effect on non-Christians. Our results show the potential power of explicitly religious exhortations that promote cooperation, and also their selectivity.

Keywords:

• prisoner's dilemma
• prosociality
• religiosity
• theological priming

Acknowledgements

We thank Johan Almenberg, Nathan Lord, and Elizabeth Paci for invaluable help performing the church experiment; Xiaoqi Zhu and Ofra Amir for assistance with running the online experiment; and Julian De Freitas for assistance with manuscript preparation.