{"id":227,"date":"2010-11-27T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2010\/11\/religion-promotes-punishing-wrongdoers-but-is-that-a-good-thing.html"},"modified":"2014-11-12T04:48:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T03:48:59","slug":"religion-promotes-punishing-wrongdoers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2010\/11\/religion-promotes-punishing-wrongdoers.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion promotes punishing wrongdoers – but is that a good thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cCostly punishment\u201d is the term used to describe an interesting phenomenon in which people will punish wrongdoers even if it brings a cost to themselves. For example, you could imagine a situation where a vigilante attempts to beat up a criminal \u2013 risky, if the criminal gets the upper hand. It\u2019s an understandable reaction if you are going to have to deal with the individual again.<\/p>\n

Yet lab studies show that people will punish misbehaviour even if all the transactions are anonymous and \u201csingle-shot\u201d. That\u2019s generally considered to be a good thing, because society benefits (even if the individual doesn\u2019t). The mystery is why that kind of behaviour should persist. <\/p>\n

When tested in the lab, the typical set-up goes something like this. Person A gets given some money, which he can share with person B either fairly or unfairly (keeping most for himself). Person B then gets the option to spend some of her money to \u2018punish\u2019 person A (by taking some or all of their money away).<\/p>\n

Ryan McKay, at the University of London, along with colleagues at University of Zurich, set out to see how religion affects this kind of costly punishment.<\/p>\n

They tested a group of 300 Swiss students, mostly Christian (30% Protestant, 28% Catholic, 42% no affiliation). They all took part in round 1 (allocation of money) and all took part in round 2 (option to punish the person they were playing with). But, before round 2, they were subliminally exposed to 1 of 4 different sets of priming words:<\/p>\n