Religion and prosocial behavior among the Indo-Fijians

Abstract

ABSTRACTPrevious research has claimed that world religions can extend the in-group beyond local and ethnic boundaries to form larger multi-ethnic groups, expanding human societies. Two experiments were run in Fiji to test religion’s ability to expand group boundaries. Experiment 1 employed a religious prime to increase prosocial behavior towards co-religionists among Hindu Indo-Fijians in an economic game. There were no overall effects of priming, but gender-specific effects were found. Priming reduced the amount women biased coin allocations to favor their preferred group. Men showed no bias in either condition. Experiment 2 employed the same economic game, without a prime, in a sample of indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian Christians. In this game, the monetary allocations were made between different religious and ethnic groups to test if preferences for religious in-groups were stronger than preferences for ethnic in-groups. Indo-Fijian Christians showed bias against their own ethnic group if they were from a different religion (Hindus or Muslims), but allocated fairly towards Christians from a different ethnic group (indigenous Fijians). Indigenous Fijians allocated less money to Muslims, but not Hindus. This evidence suggests that religious bonds can overcome the preference for one’s own ethnic group and expand in-groups to multi-ethnic religious groups.