Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Registered Report
  • Published:

Religion, parochialism and intuitive cooperation

Nature Human Behaviour volume 5, pages 512–521 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Religions promote cooperation, but they can also be divisive. Is religious cooperation intuitively parochial against atheists? Evidence supporting the social heuristics hypothesis (SHH) suggests that cooperation is intuitive, independent of religious group identity. We tested this prediction in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game, where 1,280 practising Christian believers were paired with either a coreligionist or an atheist and where time limits were used to increase reliance on either intuitive or deliberated decisions. We explored another dual-process account of cooperation, the self-control account (SCA), which suggests that visceral reactions tend to be selfish and that cooperation requires deliberation. We found evidence for religious parochialism but no support for SHH’s prediction of intuitive cooperation. Consistent with SCA but requiring confirmation in future studies, exploratory analyses showed that religious parochialism involves decision conflict and concern for strong reciprocity and that deliberation promotes cooperation independent of religious group identity.

Protocol registration

The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 28 January 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12086781.v1.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Group identity manipulations.
Fig. 2: Cooperation among believers across experimental conditions.
Fig. 3: Difference in cooperation among believers between time-limit conditions (TD − TP).

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data are available at the OSF study preregistration page (https://osf.io/kzwgn/).

Code availability

The analysis code is available at the OSF study preregistration page (https://osf.io/kzwgn/).

References

  1. Norenzayan, A. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013).

  2. Sosis, R. & Bressler, E. R. Cooperation and commune longevity: a test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-cultural Res. 37, 211–239 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Roes, F. L. & Raymond, M. Belief in moralizing gods. Evol. Hum. Behav. 24, 126–135 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Whitehouse, H. et al. Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history. Nature 568, 226–229 (2019).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Purzycki, B. G. et al. Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality. Nature 530, 327–330 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Sosis, R. & Alcorta, C. Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: the evolution of religious behavior. Evol. Anthropol. Issues News Rev. 12, 264–274 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Norenzayan, A. & Shariff, A. F. The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science 322, 58–62 (2008).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Boyer, P. & Bergstrom, B. Evolutionary perspectives on religion. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 37, 111–130 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Chuah, S. H., Gächter, S., Hoffmann, R. & Tan, J. H. W. Religion, discrimination and trust across three cultures. Eur. Econ. Rev. 90, 280–301 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Everett, J. A. C., Haque, O. S. & Rand, D. G. How good is the Samaritan, and why? An experimental investigation of the extent and nature of religious prosociality using economic games. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 7, 248–255 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F. & Norenzayan, A. Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 101, 1189 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Stagnaro, M., Arechar, A. & Rand, D. G. Are those who believe in God really more prosocial? Available at SSRN 3160453 (2019).

  13. O’Grady, S. France’s ban on veils violates human rights, a U.N. committee says. The Washington Post (24 October 2018).

  14. Karp, P. Sydney Catholic leader warns against secularism and threats to religious freedoms. The Guardian (22 December 2018).

  15. Johnson, K. A., Li, Y. J., Cohen, A. B. & Okun, M. A. Friends in high places: the influence of authoritarian and benevolent god-concepts on social attitudes and behaviors. Psychol. Relig. Spiritual. 5, 15–22 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Johnson, D. & Krüger, O. The good of wrath: supernatural punishment and the evolution of cooperation. Polit. Theol. 5, 159–176 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Yilmaz, O. & Bahçekapili, H. G. Supernatural and secular monitors promote human cooperation only if they remind of punishment. Evol. Hum. Behav. 37, 79–84 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Shariff, A. F. & Norenzayan, A. God is watching you: priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychol. Sci. 18, 803–809 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Shariff, A. F., Willard, A. K., Andersen, T. & Norenzayan, A. Religious priming: a meta-analysis with a focus on prosociality. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 20, 27–48 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Eckel, C. C. & Grossman, P. J. Rebate versus matching: does how we subsidize charitable contributions matter? J. Public Econ. 87, 681–701 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Kocher, M. G., Cherry, T., Kroll, S., Netzer, R. J. & Sutter, M. Conditional cooperation on three continents. Econ. Lett. 101, 175–178 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Thöni, C. & Volk, S. Conditional cooperation: review and refinement. Econ. Lett. 171, 37–40 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Fischbacher, U. & Gächter, S. Social preferences, beliefs, and the dynamics of free riding in public goods experiments. Am. Econ. Rev. 100, 541–556 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Fischbacher, U., Gächter, S. & Fehr, E. Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Econ. Lett. 71, 397–404 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Ahmed, A. M. & Salas, O. Implicit influences of Christian religious representations on dictator and prisoner’s dilemma game decisions. J. Socio-Econ. 40, 242–246 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Ruffle, B. J. & Sosis, R. Does it pay to pray? Costly ritual and cooperation. BE J. Econ. Anal. Policy https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.1629 (2007).

  27. Xygalatas, D. et al. Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychol. Sci. 24, 1602–1605 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Power, E. A. Social support networks and religiosity in rural South India. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1, 57 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Gervais, W. M. et al. Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1, 151 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Evans, J. S. B. T. Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59, 255–278 (2008).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Rand, D. G., Greene, J. D. & Nowak, M. A. Spontaneous giving and calculated greed. Nature 489, 427–430 (2012).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Rand, D. G. et al. Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation. Nat. Commun. 5, 3677 (2014).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Bear, A. & Rand, D. G. Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 113, 936–941 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  34. Everett, J. A. C., Ingbretsen, Z., Cushman, F. & Cikara, M. Deliberation erodes cooperative behavior—Even towards competitive out-groups, even when using a control condition, and even when eliminating selection bias. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 73, 76–81 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Isler, O., Maule, J. & Starmer, C. Is intuition really cooperative? Improved tests support the social heuristics hypothesis. PLoS ONE 13, e0190560 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Rand, D. G. Cooperation, fast and slow: meta-analytic evidence for a theory of social heuristics and self-interested deliberation. Psychol. Sci. 27, 1192–1206 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  37. Artavia-Mora, L., Bedi, A. S. & Rieger, M. Help, prejudice and headscarves. IZA Institute of Labor Economics https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3170249 (2018).

  38. Ten Velden, F. S., Daughters, K. & De Dreu, C. K. W. Oxytocin promotes intuitive rather than deliberated cooperation with the in-group. Horm. Behav. 92, 164–171 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Rand, D. G., Newman, G. E. & Wurzbacher, O. M. Social context and the dynamics of cooperative choice. J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 28, 159–166 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Rapoport, A., Chammah, A. M. & Orwant, C. J. Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation, p. 165 (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1965).

  41. Roberts, G. & Sherratt, T. N. Development of cooperative relationships through increasing investment. Nature 394, 175–179 (1998).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Bouwmeester, S. et al. Registered replication report: Rand, Greene, and Nowak (2012). Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 12, 527–542 (2017).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  43. Camerer, C. F. et al. Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nat. Hum. Behav. 2, 637–644 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  44. Peysakhovich, A. & Rand, D. G. Habits of virtue: creating norms of cooperation and defection in the laboratory. Manag. Sci. 62, 631–647 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Nishi, A., Christakis, N. A. & Rand, D. G. Cooperation, decision time, and culture: online experiments with American and Indian participants. PLoS ONE 12, e0171252 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  46. Santa, J. C., Exadaktylos, F. & Soto-Faraco, S. Beliefs about others’ intentions determine whether cooperation is the faster choice. Sci. Rep. 8, 7509 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Rand, D. G. Non-naïvety may reduce the effect of intuition manipulations. Nat. Hum. Behav. 2, 602 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  48. Martinsson, P., Myrseth, K. O. R. & Wollbrant, C. Social dilemmas: when self-control benefits cooperation. J. Econ. Psychol. 45, 213–236 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., Gailliot, M. T. & Maner, J. K. Depletion makes the heart grow less helpful: helping as a function of self-regulatory energy and genetic relatedness. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 34, 1653–1662 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Rand, D. G., Brescoll, V. L., Everett, J. A. C., Capraro, V. & Barcelo, H. Social heuristics and social roles: intuition favors altruism for women but not for men. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 145, 389–396 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  51. Yilmaz, O. & Saribay, S. A. Analytic thought training promotes liberalism on contextualized (but not stable) political opinions. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 8, 789–795 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Van Berkel, L., Crandall, C. S., Eidelman, S. & Blanchar, J. C. Hierarchy, dominance, and deliberation: egalitarian values require mental effort. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 41, 1207–1222 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Steinbeis, N., Bernhardt, B. C. & Singer, T. Impulse control and underlying functions of the left DLPFC mediate age-related and age-independent individual differences in strategic social behavior. Neuron 73, 1040–1051 (2012).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  54. Goeschl, T. & Lohse, J. Cooperation in public good games. Calculated or confused? Eur. Econ. Rev. 107, 185–203 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Kocher, M. G., Martinsson, P., Myrseth, K. O. R. & Wollbrant, C. E. Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas. Exp. Econ. 20, 44–69 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Dufwenberg, M., Gächter, S. & Hennig-Schmidt, H. The framing of games and the psychology of play. Games Econ. Behav. 73, 459–478 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Gintis, H. Strong reciprocity and human sociality. J. Theor. Biol. 206, 169–179 (2000).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  58. Kvarven, A. et al. The intuitive cooperation hypothesis revisited: a meta-analytic examination of effect size and between-study heterogeneity. J. Econ. Sci. Assoc. 6, 26–42 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Rand, D. G. Intuition, deliberation, and cooperation: further meta-analytic evidence from 91 experiments on pure cooperation. Preprint at SSRN https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3390018 (2019).

  60. Tinghög, G. et al. Intuition and cooperation reconsidered. Nature 498, E1–E3 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  61. Capraro, V. & Cococcioni, G. Rethinking spontaneous giving: extreme time pressure and ego-depletion favor self-regarding reactions. Sci. Rep. 6, 27219 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  62. Capraro, V. & Cococcioni, G. Social setting, intuition and experience in laboratory experiments interact to shape cooperative decision-making. Proc. R. Soc. B 282, 20150237 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  63. Liberman, V., Samuels, S. M. & Ross, L. The name of the game: predictive power of reputations versus situational labels in determining prisoner’s dilemma game moves. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 30, 1175–1185 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Recalde, M. P., Riedl, A. & Vesterlund, L. Error-prone inference from response time: the case of intuitive generosity in public-good games. J. Public Econ. 160, 132–147 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Lohse, J. Smart or selfish–When smart guys finish nice. J. Behav. Exp. Econ. 64, 28–40 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Stromland, E., Tjotta, S. & Torsvik, G. Cooperating, fast and slow: testing the social heuristics hypothesis. CESifo Working Paper https://ssrn.com/abstract=2780877 (2016).

  67. Gächter, S., Kölle, F. & Quercia, S. Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1, 650–656 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  68. Balliet, D., Wu, J. & De Dreu, C. K. W. Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: a meta-analysis. Psychol. Bull. 140, 1556–1581 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  69. Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A. & Lang, A.-G. Statistical power analyses using G* Power 3.1: tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behav. Res. Methods 41, 1149–1160 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  70. Campbell, H. & Lakens, D. Can we disregard the whole model? Omnibus non-inferiority testing for R2 in multivariable linear regression and eta2 in ANOVA. Br. J. Math. Stat. Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1111/bmsp.12201 (2020).

  71. Lakens, D., Scheel, A. M. & Isager, P. M. Equivalence testing for psychological research: a tutorial. Adv. Methods Pract. Psychol. Sci. 1, 259–269 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Wagenmakers, E.-J. et al. Bayesian inference for psychology. Part II: example applications with JASP. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 25, 58–76 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  73. Paolacci, G., Chandler, J. & Ipeirotis, P. G. Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgm. Decis. Mak. 5, 411–419 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  74. Peer, E., Brandimarte, L., Samat, S. & Acquisti, A. Beyond the Turk: alternative platforms for crowdsourcing behavioral research. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 70, 153–163 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Arechar, A. A., Gächter, S. & Molleman, L. Conducting interactive experiments online. Exp. Econ. 21, 99–131 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  76. Charness, G., Gneezy, U. & Halladay, B. Experimental methods: pay one or pay all. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 131, 141–150 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  77. Azrieli, Y., Chambers, C. P. & Healy, P. J. Incentives in experiments: a theoretical analysis. J. Polit. Econ. 126, 1472–1503 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  78. Starmer, C. & Sugden, R. Does the random-lottery incentive system elicit true preferences? An experimental investigation. Am. Econ. Rev. 81, 971–978 (1991).

    Google Scholar 

  79. Cubitt, R. P., Starmer, C. & Sugden, R. On the validity of the random lottery incentive system. Exp. Econ. 1, 115–131 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  80. Engel, C. Dictator games: a meta study. Exp. Econ. 14, 583–610 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  81. Amir, O. & Rand, D. G. Economic games on the internet: the effect of $1 stakes. PLoS One 7, e31461 (2012).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  82. Camerer, C. F. Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction (Russell Sage Foundation, 2003).

  83. Camerer, C. F. & Hogarth, R. M. The effects of financial incentives in experiments: a review and capital-labor-production framework. J. Risk Uncertain. 19, 7–42 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  84. Konow, J. Blind spots: the effects of information and stakes on fairness bias and dispersion. Soc. Justice Res. 18, 349–390 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  85. Raihani, N. J., Mace, R. & Lamba, S. The effect of $1, $5 and $10 stakes in an online dictator game. PLoS ONE 8, e73131 (2013).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  86. Billingsley, J., Gomes, C. & McCullough, M. Implicit and explicit influences of religious cognition on dictator game transfers. R. Soc. Open Sci. 5, 170238 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  87. Gächter, S., Starmer, C. & Tufano, F. Measuring the closeness of relationships: a comprehensive evaluation of the ‘Inclusion of the Other in the Self’ scale. PLoS ONE 10, e0129478 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  88. Hayashi, N., Ostrom, E., Walker, J. & Yamagishi, T. Reciprocity, trust, and the sense of control: a cross-societal study. Ration. Soc. 11, 27–46 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors received no specific funding for this work. The authors thank S. Gächter for comments on the manuscript and D. Lakens for feedback on equivalence testing. All errors are our own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Ozan Isler

  2. Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Ozan Isler

  3. Department of Psychology, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Onurcan Yilmaz

  4. Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    A. John Maule

Authors
  1. Ozan Isler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Onurcan Yilmaz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. A. John Maule
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

O.I. and O.Y. conceived the initial idea and design, which was improved with contributions by A.J.M. O.I. wrote the manuscript, which was revised by all three authors. O.I. collected and analysed the data. All authors had access to the data and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ozan Isler.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Primary handling editor: Aisha Bradshaw

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Isler, O., Yilmaz, O. & John Maule, A. Religion, parochialism and intuitive cooperation. Nat Hum Behav 5, 512–521 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01014-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01014-3

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing