The Relation between Religious Beliefs and Prosocial Behavior

In order to see how participants identify themselves on religious aspect, demographic questions would be included to the study with an additional question labeled as “Religious Belief”. This question would ask participants to indicate whether they identify themselves as a member of one of the major monotheistic religions (including the options “Muslim”, “Christian” and “Jewish”) or not (including the options “Atheist”, “Deist” and “Other”). Participants that selected the options that indicates being Muslim, Christian or Jewish would be considered as believers while those who selected the options that indicates being Atheist or Deist would be considered as non-believers. Participants who selected “Other” option would be excluded from the study as the main interest of this research project was to investigate the relation between major monotheistic religions and prosocial behavior.

Aside from this demographic question that classifies participants as a believers and non-believers, Hoge Religious Motivation Scale would be used in order to group religious participants based on the motives that lead them to be believers. According to the answers given to this scale; religious participants would be classified as autonomous believers and controlled believers. Participants who truly accept all principles of altruism and behave accordingly would be classified as autonomous believers while those who were fueled by internal or external psychological pressures were classified as controlled believers. Controlled believers would be considered within two subcategories referred as the inner type and outer type depending on the characteristics of their motives for being a believer. Participants who consider religion as a personality support and/or a source for help in crisis would be categorized into the inner type. On the other hand, participants who use religious membership for social purposes including forming social relationships, having a good reputation in society and being accepted by the community would be categorized into the outer type (Hoge, 1972).

Finally, sixteen vignettes that consist of various scenarios based on the characteristics of motives for prosocial behavior would be presented to participants. These vignettes are planned to be adapted from the original vignettes used in the study of Carlson and Zaki (2018) in order to meet the interest of this study. The motives that were measured through these vignettes would comprise four types: (i) altruistic motives without involving the expectation to receive any benefits in return, (ii) inner motives that involve emotional benefits such as feeling like a good person, being proud after helping an individual, avoiding guilt, etc., (iii) outer motives that involve forming and maintaining social relationships, gaining a good reputation, being praised by the members of a community, etc., and (iv) material motives that involve receiving a money prize, getting a raise, etc. Each four category would be measured through four vignettes. First category would be related to altruistic prosocial behaviors whereas other three categories would be related to instrumental prosocial behaviors. In addition, sixteen scenarios including various dilemmas would be presented to the participants. The dilemmas would comprise three categories: (i) inner dilemmas that involve acting prosocially for the sake of feeling like a bad person, being ashamed after helping an individual, feeling guilty, etc., (ii) outer dilemmas that involve acting prosocially for the sake of damaging social relationships, gaining a bad reputation, being criticized by the members of a community, etc., and (iii) material dilemmas that involve acting prosocially for the sake of losing money, getting fired, etc. These dilemmas are planned to contradict with the scenarios where the actor receives internal, external or material benefits through instrumental prosocial actions. Thus, they are expected to reveal participants’ tendency toward ingroup favoritism, discriminating outgroup members, social desirability and avoiding punishments while deciding whether or not to perform prosocial acts in order not to lose these benefits. Participants’ willingness to engage in the prosocial behaviors in each scenario would be measured on a Likert-type scale (from 1= not at all to 10= very much).