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Religious Solidarity: The Hand Grenade Experiment
Abstract
We describe the results of an experiment testing for the presence of strong altruism among Christians in New Zealand. The study examined anonymous participant generosity to cohort. We found that in modified dictator games, anonymous Christians in New Zealand gave significantly more to Canadian Christians than anonymous New Zealand citizens gave to their fellow citizens. The gifting opportunities occurred after anonymous benefactors observed recipients willingly undertake costly acts of group commitment. We found that mean gifting after witnessing a fellow group member metaphorically "fall on a hand grenade" to punish a member of an out-group was almost four times greater in the Christian group than it was in the New Zealand control. Our data support the hypothesis that religious altruism (here, anonymously rewarding the costly punishment of a religious out-grouper) exists and is especially strong among Christians in New Zealand. The data also weakly support a multi-level selection hypothesis for the evolution of religious altruism.
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New Zealand Christians were more altruistic toward Canadian Christians than were New Zealand citizens to other New Zealand citizens.
“Bulbulia and Mahoney (2008) demonstrated that New Zealand Christians were more altruistic toward Canadian Christians than were New Zealand citizens to other New Zealand citizens.”
From Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity (2012) · cites this paper as Bulbulia and Mahoney 2008
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Fincher, C. L., & Thornhill, R. (2012) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x11000021 · Cited by 530
Metadata
- Authors
- Bulbulia, J., & Mahoney, A.
- Affiliations
- Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
- ORCID
- Bulbulia, Joseph
- Venue
- Journal of Cognition and Culture
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2008
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 3-4
- Pages
- 295-320
- ISSN
- 1567-7095 (ISSN-L)
- 1568-5373
- OpenAlex
- W2029806185
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 5 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 16.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Cognition and Culture (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
- Keywords
- religious solidarity, dictator game, costly punishment, group commitment, multilevel selection, evolution of religion, intergroup relations
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