Religion and Social Behavior: Investigation of the impact of religiosity on cooperative behavior through an experimental study

Authors

1 Associate professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Mazandaran

2 Associate professor at the Faculty of Business Economics, University of Mazandaran

3 Faculty member at the Department of Economics, University of Yazd

4 PhD student at the University of Mazandaran

Abstract

Religion as system of values and norms can have a profound impact on human social life. Regarding that religious beliefs and attitudes are encouraging of social cooperation and collaboration; religious peoples’ behaviors are expected to be more social.  Since religion as set of values, beliefs and norms has special program and education system, it is likely to support community participation. This research was focused on this question that whether experimental observations verify the positive impact of religion on behavior. It has implemented a repetitive 5 stage Public Good Game with measuring religiosity of players. It was to examine the relationship between religion and cooperation behavior. The backward regression results show that religious people with higher scores of morality have more participation in the first stage of production of public goods. Changes in the Index of morality could explain 25% of the variation in the cooperative decision makings after the controlling of personality and demographic variables. High scores on neurosis index was an effective element for reducing participation in the next steps of the game. Individual positive reactions to community participation and the increase in the explanatory power of reactive variables at each step of the game and neutralizing the religious, psychological, and the demographic variables are other conclusions of this investigation. These results support the impact of the subtitle indices of religiosity on economic behavior.

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