Abstract
Though religion has been shown to have generally positive effects on normative ‘prosocial’ behavior, recent laboratory research suggests that these effects may be driven primarily by supernatural punishment. Supernatural benevolence, on the other hand, may actually be associated with less prosocial behavior. Here, we investigate these effects at the societal level, showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates. These effects remain after accounting for a host of covariates, and ultimately prove stronger predictors of national crime rates than economic variables such as GDP and income inequality. Expanding on laboratory research on religious prosociality, this is the first study to tie religious beliefs to large-scale cross-national trends in pro- and anti-social behavior.
Highlights
A growing program of research from across the social sciences supports the long-held claim that religion positively affects normative behavior
Though supernatural punishment is associated with increases in normative behavior, laboratory research reveals the concept of supernatural benevolence to be associated with decreases in normative behavior
We included two standard economic factors relevant to crime rates: income inequality
Summary
A growing program of research from across the social sciences supports the long-held claim that religion positively affects normative behavior (see [1] for a review). Experimental work has shown that religious priming increases ‘prosocial’ generosity and cooperation, and decreases cheating [4,5,6]. Though supernatural punishment is associated with increases in normative behavior, laboratory research reveals the concept of supernatural benevolence to be associated with decreases in normative behavior. University students with stronger beliefs in in God’s punitive and angry nature tended to be the least likely to cheat on an academic task, whereas stronger beliefs in God’s comforting and forgiving nature significantly predicted higher levels of cheating [7] These results remained robust after controlling for plausible third variable candidates
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