RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR

Religious proximity and misinformation: Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India

We investigate how religion concordance influences the effectiveness of preventive health campaigns. Conducted during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in two major Indian cities marked by Hindu-Muslim tensions, we randomly assigned a representative sample of slum residents to receive either a physician-delivered information campaign promoting health-related preventive practices, or uninformative control messages on their mobile phones. Messages, introduced by a local citizen (the sender), were cross-randomized to start with a greeting signaling either a Hindu or a Muslim identity, manipulating religion concordance between sender and receiver. We found that doctor messages increased compliance with recommended practices and beliefs in their efficacy. Our findings suggest that the campaign's impact is primarily driven by shared religion between sender and receiver, leading to increased message engagement and compliance with recommended practices. Additionally, we observe that religion concordance helps protect against misinformation.

"Sense for Gambling" Among Jewish Ultra-Orthodox Men With Gambling Disorder

Making sense of the social world is an intricate process heavily influenced by cultural elements. Gambling is a prevalent leisure-time activity characterized by risk-taking conduct. While some individuals who engage in it do so without experiencing any harm, others will develop gambling problems. Judaism tends to perceive gambling negatively since it contradicts fundamental Jewish principles. The current study focuses on the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel which is characterized as a cultural enclave with minimal interaction with the secular world. Hence, it provides a unique and novel socio-cultural context to inquire how individuals with gambling disorder (GD) from this community make sense of gambling. Following constructivist grounded theory guidelines, 22 Ultra-Orthodox men with GD were interviewed using a purposeful sampling design. Sixteen Rabbis were also interviewed, illuminating the socio-cultural context of Halachic regulations and norms regarding gambling in this community. An abductive analysis of the data, interwoven with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, yielded an overarching theme that we dub as "sense for gambling," encompassing matrices of Ultra-Orthodox external (e.g., a conservative cultural structure with numerous prohibitions and life marked by poverty) and internal (e.g., feelings of loneliness, dissatisfaction, and deviance) dispositions imprinted onto the body, creating diverse embodied reactions (emotional and sensory) to gambling, and leading to developing GD. We recommend placing the body, as the locus of internalized dispositions, at the core of examination when researching pathways to GD. We propose that this intricate interplay between external and internal dispositions shapes the decision-making regarding gambling, thus mitigating individual responsibility for GD.

Moral awareness polarizes people's fairness judgments

How does moral awareness affect people's fairness judgments? Using a simple model of identity utility, I predict that if individuals differ in their personal fairness ideals (equality versus efficiency), reflecting over what one thinks is right should not only make people's choices less selfish but also more polarized. On the other hand, people's desire for conforming with the behavior of their peers could help mitigate polarization. I test these conjectures in a laboratory experiment, in which participants can pursue different fairness ideals. I exogenously vary (i) whether participants are prompted to state their moral opinions behind the veil of ignorance, and (ii) whether they are informed about the behavior of their peers. I find that moral introspection makes choices more polarized, reflecting even more divergent moral opinions. The increase in polarization coincides largely with a widening of revealed gender differences as introspection makes men's choices more efficiency-oriented and women's more egalitarian. Disclosing the descriptive norm of the situation is not capable of mitigating the polarization.

Open people are more likely to trust their new team members under subliminal influence

The activation of subliminal stimuli plays an indispensable role in trust research. This study aimed to investigate the effect of subliminal stimuli on team trust and the moderating role of openness on the relationship between subliminal stimuli and team trust. A total of 155 participants were recruited to complete five tasks. The results suggested a significant influence of subliminal stimuli on team trust and the significant moderating role of openness. This study revealed the mechanism of the effect of subliminal stimuli on team trust, which lays an empirical foundation for individualized team trust improvement intervention. The current study provided novel insights that subliminal priming technology offers a new way to improve team trust.

Authority matters: propaganda and the coevolution of behaviour and attitudes

Human decision-making is controlled by various factors including material cost-benefit considerations, values and beliefs, social influences, cognitive factors and errors. Among social influences, those by external authorities (e.g. educational, cultural, religious, political, administrative, etc.) are particularly important owing to their potential reach and power. To better understand the effects of 'soft' power of authorities we develop a unifying theoretical framework integrating material, cognitive and social forces controlling the joint dynamics of individual actions and beliefs. We apply our approach to three different phenomena: evolution of food sharing in small-scale societies, participation in political protests and effects of priming social identity in behavioural experiments. For each of these applications, we show that our approach leads to different (or simpler) explanations of human behaviour than alternatives. We highlight the type of measurements which can be helpful in developing practical applications of our approach. We identify and explicitly characterise the degree of mismatch between individual actions and attitudes. We assert that the effects of external authorities, of changing beliefs and of differences between people must be studied empirically, included in mathematical models, and accounted for when developing different policies aiming to modify or sustain human behaviour.

Discrimination toward migrants during crises

How do crises shape native attitudes towards migrants? A common threat could produce an empathy channel among natives, but the perception of competition for scarce economic resources could just as easily spark prejudice through a resentment channel. Totally, 3,400 Colombian citizens were surveyed and randomly primed to consider the economic consequences of COVID-19 before eliciting their attitudes towards Venezuelan migrants. The findings suggest that native attitudes towards migrants are substantially more suggestive of the resentment channel in the treatment group. However, respondents in the so-called impressionable years—ages 18–25—showed more altruism towards migrants after priming. Interestingly, both effects disappear in response to positive news.

Evidence supporting a cultural evolutionary theory of prosocial religions in contemporary workplace safety data

A prominent line of cultural evolutionary theory hypothesizes that religiously inspired prosocial behavior enhances the fecundity of pious groups, causing them to outcompete non-religious communities and spread their prosocial values. We present evidence concerning contemporary workplace safety, in the United States, that unexpectedly tested implications of this cultural evolutionary hypothesis. Avoiding workplace injury requires cooperation and injury influences fitness, thus cultural evolutionary theory would anticipate that religious communities should exhibit fewer workplace injuries. Indeed, we find that the proportion of a community adhering to a religion correlates negatively with rates of workplace injury in its private-sector establishments. This correlation emerges primarily when secular workplace safety authorities are not prominent, thus echoing evidence that religiously inspired prosocial behavior mainly occurs absent “earthly” sanctioning authorities. Furthermore, the percent of religiously affiliated individuals in a community correlates with safety investments, suggesting that workplace injury reductions in religious communities result from individually costly, group-benefitting cooperation.

Religious Primes and Threat-Perceptions as Predictors of Attitudes toward Muslims in Israel

Three studies examined the influence of exposure to religious concepts on attitudes of Jews toward Muslims in Israel. Religious concepts were exposed by using either supraliminal (Study 1) or subliminal (Study 2) priming, hence tapping different levels of awareness. Comparable supraliminal and subliminal priming techniques were further employed to investigate the effects of participants' own religious content ("Jewish") and content representing the "other" religion ("Islamic") on attitudes of Jewish participants toward members of the Muslim group (Study 3). Findings indicated that exposure to religious concepts at a conscious level increased threat perceptions and negative attitudes, while lack of awareness of religious concepts had positive outcomes. Additionally, realistic and symbolic threats played a mediating role in understanding the impact of Jewish concepts on perceived social distance only under conditions of awareness of religious concepts. Our results convey the importance of investigating why religious diversity in society may not always have a positive impact on intergroup relations.

Local religious beliefs and insurance companies' risk-taking behaviour

We empirically examine the effect of local religious beliefs on the risk-taking behaviour of U.S. life insurers headquartered in that region. We distinguish between insurers that predominantly write annuities and insurers that predominantly write life insurance policies; the annuity business is relatively riskier than writing life insurance. Insurers headquartered in high-Catholic or low-Protestant areas are more likely to be annuity writers. Annuity writers located in high-Catholic or low-Protestant areas invest more in risky assets and exhibit higher investment return volatilities, as well as a higher volatility of their return on assets. Overall, our results suggest that local culture has significant influences on life insurers' behaviour.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41288-021-00211-z.

Religion and Labor Market Performance: Is It What You Believe or How Much?

A growing corpus of literature has explored the influence of religion on economic attitudes and behavior. The present paper investigates the effect of religion on labor market performance using a novel approach to control for the endogeneity of religion. It proposes contingency experience, individual experiences of existential insecurity, as an instrumental variable of a person’s religiosity. The empirical analysis uses data from a household survey in South Africa specifically designed for this study. The econometric approach is the estimation of instrumental variable ordered probit and linear probability models. Using the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS), the analysis differentiates between effects of individual religious intensity and of religious affiliation. The findings show that individual religiosity, measured in the CRS, has a robust and positive effect on labor market performance. Religious affiliation does not seem to affect labor market performance. The positive effect on religiosity is documented in a set of ordered and binary outcome models across different indicators of labor market performance. The study concludes that the intensity of belief exerts an influence on labor market attitudes and outcomes, while affiliation in religious communities (indicating different content of belief) does not seem to make a difference.

Single mothers' subjective well-being: empirical evidence from Malaysia

The authors' purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents of single mothers' subjective well-being. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted using a multi-stage random sampling technique. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling. The main findings are: (1) religiosity and locus of control positively influenced subjective well-being, (2) locus of control negatively influenced financial strain, (3) financial strain negatively influenced subjective well-being, and (4) age moderated the relationship between financial strain and subjective well-being. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.

Implicit and explicit influences of religious cognition on Dictator Game transfers

Does religion promote prosocial behaviour? Despite numerous publications that seem to answer this question affirmatively, divergent results from recent meta-analyses and pre-registered replication efforts suggest that the issue is not yet settled. Uncertainty lingers around (i) whether the effects of religious cognition on prosocial behaviour were obtained through implicit cognitive processes, explicit cognitive processes or both and (ii) whether religious cognition increases generosity only among people disinclined to share with anonymous strangers. Here, we report two experiments designed to address these concerns. In Experiment 1, we sought to replicate Shariff and Norenzayan's demonstration of the effects of implicit religious priming on Dictator Game transfers to anonymous strangers; unlike Shariff and Norenzayan, however, we used an online environment where anonymity was virtually assured. In Experiment 2, we introduced a 'taking' option to allow greater expression of baseline selfishness. In both experiments, we sought to activate religious cognition implicitly and explicitly, and we investigated the possibility that religious priming depends on the extent to which subjects view God as a punishing, authoritarian figure. Results indicated that in both experiments, religious subjects transferred more money on average than did non-religious subjects. Bayesian analyses supported the null hypothesis that implicit religious priming did not increase Dictator Game transfers in either experiment, even among religious subjects. Collectively, the two experiments furnished support for a small but reliable effect of explicit priming, though among religious subjects only. Neither experiment supported the hypothesis that the effect of religious priming depends on viewing God as a punishing figure. Finally, in a meta-analysis of relevant studies, we found that the overall effect of implicit religious priming on Dictator Game transfers was small and did not statistically differ from zero.

Justification bias in self-reported disability: New evidence from panel data

The relationship between health and work is frequently investigated using self-assessments of disability from social surveys. The complication is that respondents may overstate their level of disability to justify non-employment and welfare receipt. This study provides new evidence on the existence and magnitude of justification bias by exploiting a novel feature of a large longitudinal survey: each wave respondents are asked identical disability questions twice; near the beginning and end of the face-to-face interview. Prior to answering the second disability question, respondents are asked a series of questions that increase the salience of their employment and welfare circumstances. Justification bias is identified by comparing the variation between the two measures within-individuals over time, with the variation in employment status over time. Results indicate substantial and statistically significant justification bias; especially for men and women who receive disability pensions.

Failure to CAPTCHA Attention: Null Results from an Honesty Priming Experiment in Guatemala

We report results from a large online randomised tax experiment in Guatemala. The trial involves short messages and choices presented to taxpayers as part of a CAPTCHA pop-up window immediately before they file a tax return, with the aim of priming honest declarations. In total our sample includes 627,242 taxpayers and 3,232,430 tax declarations made over four months. Treatments include: honesty declaration; information about public goods; information about penalties for dishonesty, questions allowing a taxpayer to choose which public good they think tax money should be spent on; or questions allowing a taxpayer to state a view on the penalty for not declaring honestly. We find no impact of any of these treatments on the average amount of tax declared. We discuss potential causes for this null effect and implications for 'online nudges' around honesty priming.