This paper examines the supernatural punishment theory. The theory postulates that religion increases cooperation because religious people fear the retributions that may follow if they do not follow the rules and norms provided by the religion. We report results for a public goods experiment...

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...

We investigate how implicit influences of Christian religious representations affect prosociality. We examine the direct impact of religion as an independent variable on prosocial behavior. We do so by priming participants with religious words in a scrambled sentence task before they make a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the supernatural punishment theory . The theory postulates that religion increases cooperation because religious people fear the retributions that may follow if they do not follow the rules and norms provided by the religion....