Thoughts related to God linked to altruism

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- People who have thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behavior and generosity to strangers, a University of British Columbia study found.

Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan found that people just having thoughts about "God concepts" increased altruism -- whether people declared themselves believers or not.

More than 100 study participants were randomly assigned to do a word game to unscramble sentences with words such as spirit, divine, God, sacred and prophet -- while a control group was given the same task with non-spiritual words. Afterward, all participants played an anonymous dictator game, whereby subjects were given $1 coins and asked to decide what to keep and what to share with an anonymous recipient.

The study, published in the September issue of Psychological Science, found 68 percent of subjects from the religious word game group allocated $5 or more to anonymous strangers, compared to 22 percent from those using neutral concepts.

"These are compelling findings that have substantial impact on the study of social behavior because they draw a causal relationship between religion and acting morally -- a topic of some debate," Shariff said in a statement. "They by no means indicate that religion is necessary for moral behavior, but it can make a substantial contribution."

United Press International

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