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In the back of your mind: Subliminal influences of religious concepts on prosocial behavior

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Author Info

  • Ahmed, Ali M.

    () (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Salas, Osvaldo

    () (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

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    Abstract

    Does religion enhance prosocial behavior? We investigate the ways in which implicit influences of religious concepts affect generosity and cooperation. In contrast to previous studies, we assess the direct impact of religion as an independent variable on prosocial behavior. We do so by subliminally priming participants with religious concepts in a scrambled sentence task before they play a dictator game and a prisoner’s dilemma game. We found that implicit priming of religious concepts significantly increased prosocial behavior in both games. This result was present among both religious and nonreligious participants. Selfreported measure of religiosity was related neither to generosity nor to cooperation.

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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/18838
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers in Economics with number 331.

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    Length: 27 pages
    Date of creation: 08 Dec 2008
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0331

    Contact details of provider:
    Postal: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
    Phone: 031-773 10 00
    Web page: http://www.handels.gu.se/econ/
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    Related research

    Keywords: religion; priming; dictator game; prisoner’s dilemma game;

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    1. The Adam Smith Institute, Business Ethics, and the Ayn Rand Lecture
      by andrewdsmith in The Past Speaks on 2012-06-23 20:01:30

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