The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality
A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., ‘God,’ ‘salvation,’ among many others) increas...
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| Format: | Online |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971023/ |
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pubmed-49710232016-08-17 The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality Saleam, James Moustafa, Ahmed A. Psychology A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., ‘God,’ ‘salvation,’ among many others) increases prosociality in religious people. However, the factors underlying such findings are less clear. In this review we discuss hypotheses (e.g., the supernatural punishment hypothesis) that explain the religion-prosociality link, and also how recent findings in the empirical literature converge to suggest that the divine rewards (e.g., heaven) and punishments (e.g., hell) promised by various religious traditions may play a significant role. In addition, we further discuss inconsistencies in the religion-prosociality literature, as well as existing and future psychological studies which could improve our understanding of whether, and how, concepts of divine rewards and punishments may influence prosociality. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4971023/ /pubmed/27536262 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01149 Text en Copyright © 2016 Saleam and Moustafa. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Saleam, James Moustafa, Ahmed A. |
| spellingShingle |
Saleam, James Moustafa, Ahmed A. The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| author_facet |
Saleam, James Moustafa, Ahmed A. |
| author_sort |
Saleam, James |
| title |
The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| title_short |
The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| title_full |
The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| title_fullStr |
The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| title_full_unstemmed |
The Influence of Divine Rewards and Punishments on Religious Prosociality |
| title_sort |
influence of divine rewards and punishments on religious prosociality |
| description |
A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., ‘God,’ ‘salvation,’ among many others) increases prosociality in religious people. However, the factors underlying such findings are less clear. In this review we discuss hypotheses (e.g., the supernatural punishment hypothesis) that explain the religion-prosociality link, and also how recent findings in the empirical literature converge to suggest that the divine rewards (e.g., heaven) and punishments (e.g., hell) promised by various religious traditions may play a significant role. In addition, we further discuss inconsistencies in the religion-prosociality literature, as well as existing and future psychological studies which could improve our understanding of whether, and how, concepts of divine rewards and punishments may influence prosociality. |
| publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971023/ |
| _version_ |
1613620042317955072 |