Paper: "How Good Is the Samaritan, and Why?"

"How Good Is the Samaritan, and Why? An Experimental Investigation of the Extent and Nature of Religious Prosociality Using Economic Games"
Jim A.C Everett (University of Oxford), Omar S. Haque (Harvard University), David G. Rand (Yale University)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2484659

"What is the extent and nature of religious prosociality? If religious prosociality exists, is it parochial and extended selectively to co-religionists, or is it generalized regardless of the recipient? Further, is it driven by preferences to help others or by expectations of reciprocity? We examined how much of a $0.30 bonus Mechanical Turk workers would share with the other player whose religion was prominently displayed during two online resource allocation games. In one game (but not the other), the recipient could choose to reciprocate. Results from both games showed that the more central religion was in participants’ lives, the more of the bonus they shared, regardless of whether they were giving to atheists or Christians. Furthermore, this effect was most clearly related to self-reported frequency of “thinking about religious ideas”, rather than belief in God or religious practice/experience. Our findings provide evidence of generalized religious prosociality and illuminate its basis."

Personally, I'm tired of these investigations by Mechanical Turk. I find it hard to put too much credence in studies of anything "social," in such a non-social medium. Even so, an interesting effort, particular in the link to "thinking about religious ideas." Anyone want to suggest a better experiment of the same sort?

A touch of humour:

Jesus Teaches About "The Good Samaritan"