Religious belief and atheism are not mutually exclusive (original) (raw)
Dogmatism and Religion: When the Need to Be Right Impedes Helping
2017
In two correlational studies, I examine the relationship between religious dogmatism and helping behaviors. I hypothesize that there is a negative relationship between people’s level of dogmatism and their likelihood of exhibiting helping behaviors toward other religious organizations and secular organizations. I also hypothesize that this negative relationship exists between nonreligious people’s level of dogmatism and their likelihood of exhibiting helping behaviors toward religious organizations. In Study 1 (N=190), I found a negative correlation between religious people’s level of dogmatism and their likelihood of donating to a secular organization. In Study 2 (N=300), I found a similar pattern of results among nonreligious dogmatists: atheist and agnostic participants’ level of dogmatism was negatively correlated with their likelihood of donating to a religious organization. The results indicate that religious dogmatism may impact helping behaviors in ways that previous social ...
Religions
This paper provides a meta-analysis of the intersection of (a) religiosity and spirituality with (b) generosity, philanthropy, nonprofits, and prosociality. The study is informed by three informational sources, chronologically: (1) informational interviews with scholars and practitioners based within and studying regions outside of the U.S. and Western Europe; (2) discovery search of purposefully selected extant publications, especially focusing on the last decade of contemporary scholarship; and (3) systematic search of relevant peer-reviewed publication outlets since 2010. Reviewed publications are categorized by level of analysis into macro, meso, and micro approaches. Across each level and source, publications are also geo-tagged for their geographic scope. Particular attention is paid to the under-studied world regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The results reveal that Asia is the most studied and Latin America the least studied, and that meso-level ap...
This paper investigates the key drivers of donations practices and offers insights into volunteerism behavior in order to help charities make better informed decisions when attempting to attract more volunteers as well as helping them to better manage fundraising activities/practices. A framework is presented to test if gender, age, religious affiliation, compassion, altruism, egoism, and religiosity impact on the level of volunteerism of the donor. By using an email survey-method, this study is informed by 612 respondents who donate regularly to charitable institutions. The study finds that religiosity, altruism, and compassion boost the volunteerism level of the donor. The findings suggest that religiosity and religious affiliation positively influence the volunteerism of a donor, and so organizations can successfully look for volunteers among religiously affiliated groups who actively participate in religious services. Altruism and compassion are also important drivers for donor volunteerism and, as a result, organizations can develop volunteering campaigns and messages by portraying them as related to altruistic values and compassionate behaviors.
Principles of Religious Prosociality: A Review and Reformulation
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2010
Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in others, and in some cases actually increasing antisocial behavior. In addition, different forms of religious belief are associated with different styles of co-operation. This body of evidence paints a somewhat messy picture of religious prosociality; however, recent examinations of the cognitive mechanisms of belief help to resolve apparent inconsistencies. In this article, we review evidence of two separate sources of religious prosociality: a religious principle associated with the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents. These two principles emphasize different prosocial goals, and so have different effects on prosocial behavior depending on the target and context. A re-examination of the literature illustrates the independent influences of religious and supernatural principles on moral action.
Cooperation, Religion and Faith: A Public Goods Experiment
Human cooperation is an evolutionary mystery. People tend to cooperate frequently with genetically unrelated strangers even when reputation gains are small or absent. Religion and/or faith could explain this cooperative behaviour. Therefore, this paper tried to find whether religious and/or faithful individual contribute relatively more than others. The cooperative behaviour creates the problem of free riding, as there are people who will not contribute and feed of others’ cooperation. The solution to this cooperative behaviour is punishment as suggested by previous literature. Therefore, this paper tried to find out whether punishment had any significant impact on increasing cooperation. Results from the experiment showed that religion did not have any significant impact on cooperation. But, there were significant relationship between faith and cooperation. Very faithful individuals seemed to contribute relatively more, whereas less faithful individuals contributed less. Additional...
Substitution or Symbiosis? Assessing the Relationship between Religious and Secular Giving
Research on philanthropy has not sufficiently examined whether charitable giving to religious causes impinges on giving to secular causes. Examining three waves of national panel data, we find that the relationship between religious and secular giving is generally not of a zero-sum nature; families that increase their religious giving also increase their secular giving. We argue that this finding is best accounted for by a practice theory of social action which emphasizes how religious congregations foster skills and practices related to charitable giving. We also argue that denominational variation in the influence of religious giving is best accounted for by the financial structuring of the denomination. We conclude with the implications for studies of religious causal influence more generally. at Calvin College on April 24, 2013 http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 158 • Social Forces 90(1)
Religious affiliation, religious attendance, and participation in social change organizations
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2013
How does religion affect an individual’s likelihood of volunteering for social change causes?This study reports on findings from an analysis of the 2005 wave of the COPPS supplement to the PSID to examine the effects of religious tradition (affiliation) and religious attendance (religiosity) on social change volunteering.We find that adherents to the more liberal Christian denominations—mainline Protestant and Catholic—are more likely to volunteer with social change organizations than are Evangelicals.We also find that adherents to other minority religions such as Judaism and Buddhism and individuals with no religious belief are all more likely to volunteer with social change organizations than are Evangelicals. We find a positive and significant relationship between religious attendance and social change volunteering, but find little difference in the effect of religious attendance on social change volunteering between Evangelicals and other religious traditions (except for Catholics).