Do Religious Contexts Elicit More Trust and Altruism? Decision-Making Scenario Experiments

We design a decision-making scenario experiment on Facebook to measure subjects’ altruism and trust towards attendees of religious service, a fitness class and a local music performance. Secular and religious subjects alike display significantly more altruism and trust towards the synagogue attendees than attendees of the other two non-religious venues. We also find that secular subjects are just as altruistic towards synagogue and prayer group attendees as religious subjects are. These findings support recent theories that emphasize the pivotal role of religious context in arousing high levels of prosociality.