{"id":36,"date":"2013-07-05T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2013\/07\/regular-churchgoers-punish-those-who-share-their-donuts.html"},"modified":"2014-11-11T21:14:31","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T20:14:31","slug":"regular-churchgoers-punish-those-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2013\/07\/regular-churchgoers-punish-those-who.html","title":{"rendered":"Regular churchgoers punish those who share their donuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Anonymous games of reciprocity and trust are common devices used in the study of religion. Usually the games are set up so that, if you were ruthlessly logical, you shouldn\u2019t share anything. The fact that people often do is intriguing.<\/p>\n

Andreas Lechner<\/a>, at the University of Augsberg in Germany, has employed a more complex variant of this game that includes a third person \u2013 the punisher. You can download the working paper here<\/a>. The basic gist of games is shown in the figure.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Everyone starts of with 10 Euros. The investor can send as much as they want to the Trustee, and that amount is tripled. The trustee can send as much as they want back to the Investor. And watching over it all is the Punisher. The punisher can spend some of their own money to take money away from either the Investor or the Punisher.<\/p>\n

Except in this game, because they couldn\u2019t use real money\u00a0 (Lechner doesn\u2019t say why), it was played with pastries and candies<\/p>\n

Now, because this is all done anonymously, and only played once, the logical thing is that the Trustee will keep whatever is given, and the Punisher won\u2019t do anything no matter what. So the Investor, knowing this should invest nothing.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what happens in reality, of course. And what Lechner wanted to know is whether having religious punisher made any difference.<\/p>\n

So he ranthis experiment using 144 students, using a fairly cunning experimental design to maximise the amount of useable data<\/p>\n

And what he found, for the most part, was that it really didn\u2019t matter if the punisher was religious or not.<\/p>\n

Christians didn\u2019t punish those who were not trustworthy (i.e. did not return a reasonable amount of the investment). And there was no difference between Catholics or Protestants.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, knowing that the punisher had no effect on the investor or trustee. They acted in the same way. Apparently they instinctively believed that Christians would not punish any more or less than the non-religious. What\u2019s more, Christians weren\u2019t any more or less trustworthy.<\/p>\n

There was an interaction between religious punishers and the punishment meted out to\u00a0 those who weren\u2019t trustworthy (that is, trustees who did not reciprocate by\u00a0 the trustee did not reciprocate).But it\u2019s not what you would expect.<\/p>\n

Frequent attenders at religious services were more likely to punish those who were trusting.<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right. Those who investors sent over a large sum were more likely to be punished if the punisher was a Christian. What\u2019s more these churchgoers were themselves less trusting.<\/p>\n

Lechner says: <\/p>\n

it appears as religious service promotes distrust, so that trust is punished increasingly with higher attendance rates \u2026 This finding could be due to a lower trust in strangers by religious individuals<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Although he does go on to point out that scientific support for that idea is a bit mixed, it certainly seems plausible.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anonymous games of reciprocity and trust are common devices used in the study of religion. Usually the games are set up so that, if you were ruthlessly logical, you shouldn\u2019t share anything. The fact that people often do is intriguing. Andreas Lechner, at the University of Augsberg in Germany, has employed a more complex variant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRegular churchgoers punish those who share their donuts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anonymous games of reciprocity and trust are common devices used in the study of religion. 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