God Values the Lives of My Outgroup More Than I Do: Evidence from Fiji and Israel (original) (raw)
Related papers
Moralizing gods, impartiality and religious parochialism across 15 societies
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2019
The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behaviour toward geographically distant coreligionists. Furthermore, another hypothesis points to such mechanisms being constrained to the religious ingroup, possibly at the expense of religious outgroups. To test these hypotheses, we administered two behavioural experiments and a set of interviews to a sample of 2228 participants from 15 diverse populations. These populations included foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and wage labourers, practicing Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, but also forms of animism and ancestor worship. Using the Random Allocation Game (RAG) and the Dictator Game (DG) in which individuals allocated money between themselves, local and geographically distant co-religionists, and religious outgroups, we found that higher ratings of gods as monitoring and punishing predicted decreased local favouritism (RAGs) and increased resource-sharing with distant co-religionists (DGs). The effects of punishing and monitoring gods on outgroup allocations revealed between-site variability, suggesting that in the absence of intergroup hostility, moralizing gods may be implicated in cooperative behaviour toward outgroups. These results provide support for the hypothesis that beliefs in monitoring and punitive gods help expand the circle of sustainable social interaction, and open questions about the treatment of religious outgroups.
Thinking from God’s perspective decreases biased valuation of the life of a nonbeliever
Religious belief is often thought to motivate violence because it is said to promote norms that encourage tribalism and the devaluing of the lives of nonbelievers. If true, this should be visible in the multigenerational violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis which is marked by a religious divide. We conducted experiments with a representative sample of Muslim Palestinian youth (n = 555), examining whether thinking from the perspective of Allah (God), who is the ultimate arbitrator of religious belief, changes the relative value of Jewish Israelis’ lives (compared with Palestinian lives). Participants were presented with variants of the classic “trolley dilemma,” in the form of stories where a man can be killed to save the lives of five children who were either Jewish Israeli or Palestinian. They responded from their own perspective and from the perspective of Allah. We find that whereas a large proportion of participants were more likely to endorse saving Palestinian children than saving Jewish Israeli children, this proportion decreased when thinking from the perspective of Allah. This finding raises the possibility that beliefs about God can mitigate bias against other groups and reduce barriers to peace.
2019
The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behaviour toward geographically distant co-religionists. Furthermore, another hypothesis points to such mechanisms being constrained to the religious ingroup, possibly at the expense of religious outgroups. To test these hypotheses, we administered two behavioural experiments and a set of interviews to a sample of 2228 participants from 15 diverse populations. These populations included foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and wage labourers, practicing Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, but also forms of animism and ancestor worship. Using the Random Allocation Game (RAG) and the Dictator Game (DG) in which individuals allocated money between themselves, local and geographically distant co-religionists, and religious outgroups...
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2021
Most research on cognition behind religious belief assumes that understanding of other minds is culturally uniform and follows the Western model of mind, which posits that (a) others' thoughts can be known and (b) action is best explained by mental state inference. This is potentially problematic if, as a growing body of evidence suggests, other populations view minds differently. We recruit Indigenous iTaukei Fijians who hold (a) a model of mind that discourages mental state inference and (b) co-existing Christian (Western) and traditional supernatural agent beliefs. Study 1 (N = 108), uses free-listing to examine how Western and local models of mind relate to beliefs. The Christian God cares about internal states and traits (aligning with the Western model of mind). Study 2 tests whether evoking God triggers intent focus in moral reasoning. Instead, God appears to enforce cultural models of mind in iTaukei (N = 151) and North Americans (N = 561). Expected divine judgement mirrors human judgement; iTaukei (N = 90) expect God to emphasise outcome, while Indo-Fijians (N = 219) and North Americans (N = 412) expect God to emphasise intent. When reminded to think about thoughts, iTaukei (N = 72) expect God to judge outcomes less harshly. Results suggest cultural/cognitive co-evolution: introduced cultural forms can spread new cognitive approaches, while Indigenous beliefs can persist as a reflection of local institutions.
Understanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes including institutions, norms, and practices that contributes to this phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests that one such process involves certain components of religious systems that may have fostered the expansion of human cooperation in a variety of ways, including both certain forms of rituals and commitment to particular types of gods. Using an experimental economic game, our team specifically tested whether or not individually held mental models of moralistic, punishing, and knowledgeable gods curb biases in favor of the self and the local community, and increase impartiality toward geographically distant anonymous co-religionists. Our sample includes 591 participants from eight diverse societies – iTaukei (indigenous) Fijians who practice both Christianity and ancestor worship, the animist Hadza of Tanzania, Hindu Indo-Fijians, Hindu Mauritians, shamanist-Buddhist Tyvans of southern Siberia, traditional Inland and Christian Coastal Vanuatuans from Tanna, and Christian Brazilians from Pesqueiro. In this article, we present cross-cultural evidence that addresses this question and discuss the implications and limitations of our project. This volume also offers detailed, site-specific reports to provide further contextualization at the local level.
The Moralization Bias of Gods' Minds: A Cross-Cultural Test
There are compelling reasons to expect that representing any active, powerful god or spirit may contribute to cooperation. One possible mechanism underlying this effect is a system that infers that spiritual agents are morally concerned. If individuals cognitive represent deities as agents, and if agents are generally conceptualized as having moral concern, a broad tendency to attribute moral concern-a "moralization bias"-to supernatural deities follows. Using data from 2,229 individuals in 15 different field sites, we test for the existence of such a bias. We find that people are indeed more likely than not to indicate that supernatural deities are concerned with punishing immoral behavior in the form of theft, murder, and deceit, an effect that is stable even after holding constant the influence of explicitly moralistic deities. We also find that when deities are not associated with morality, communities socially sanction commitment to them. We posit that the moralization bias of gods' minds is part of a widespread but variable religious phenotype, and a candidate mechanism that contributes to the well-recognized association between religion and social harmony.
Different effects of God and religion on prosociality with the ingroup and outgroup.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1471 - 1483. , 2013
Recent studies have found that activating religious cognition by priming techniques can enhance prosocial behavior, arguably because religious concepts carry prosocial associations. But many of these studies have primed multiple concepts simultaneously related to the sacred. We argue here that religion and God are distinct concepts that activate distinct associations. In particular, we examine the effect of God and religion on prosociality toward the ingroup and outgroup. In three studies, we found that religion primes enhanced prosociality toward ingroup members, consistent with ingroup affiliation, whereas, God primes enhanced prosociality toward outgroup member, consistent with concerns of moral impression management. Implications for theory and methodology in religious cognition are discussed.
Thinking about God Discourages Dehumanization of Religious Outgroups
2021
In seven studies, six with American Christians and one with Israeli Jews (total N = 2,323), we systematically examine how and when belief in moralizing gods influences dehumanization of ethno-religious outgroups. We focus on dehumanization because it is a key feature of intergroup conflict. In Studies 1-6, participants completed measures of dehumanization from their own perspectives and also from the perspective of God, rating the groups’ humanity as they thought God would rate it, or wish for them to rate it. When participants completed measures from both their own and God’s perspectives, they reported believing that, compared with their own views, God would see (or prefer for them to see) outgroup members as more human. In Study 7, we extend these findings by demonstrating that thinking about God’s views reduces the extent to which religious believers personally dehumanize outgroup members. Collectively, results demonstrate that religious believers attribute universalizing moral a...
Religion, Parochialism and Intuitive Cooperation [Registered Report Stage 1 Protocol]
2020
ABSTRACT: Religions promote cooperation but they can also be divisive. Religious identity, while signaling trustworthiness, provides opportunities for out-group discrimination. Although implicit distrust of atheists is widespread, it remains to be studied whether religious prejudices induce intuitive discrimination in actual cooperation behavior. Evidence supporting the social heuristics hypothesis (SHH) finds intuitive cooperation to be independent of group identity. We test this prediction for religious group identity in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game, where practicing Christian believers are paired either with a coreligionist or an atheist and where time-limits are used to increase reliance on either intuitive or deliberated decisions. We also explore an alternative dual-process account of cooperation, the self-control account (SCA), which suggests that visceral reactions tend to be selfish and that cooperation requires cognitive effort. While support for SHH indicates that c...