DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Religion and Cooperation across the Globe

20.500.12592/kxtpxb

DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Religion and Cooperation across the Globe

23 Mar 2023

Finally, we assess, whether population density is associated with the strength of the relationship between religion and prosociality, as postulated by the Big Gods theory of cooperation (Norenzayan 2013) and consistent with the model of Bidner and Francois (2011). [...] The GPS data allow for the assessment of the existence and quantification of differences in preferences between members of world religions and non-religious people at the global level. [...] 9 To benchmark the magnitude of the differences in preference between members of world religions and non-religious people, we compare the size of the estimated coefficient of the religion indicator with the size of the estimated coefficient for gender (Croson and Gneezy 2009; Falk and Hermle 2018), which is an important variable in economic and social research, and an important determinant of coop. [...] The estimated coefficients of religion and gender follow similar patterns with two main findings standing out: i) the estimated coefficients are significantly different compared to the reference group (non- religious, and males, respectively) except for religion and positive reciprocity and ii) the estimated coefficients of religion are larger (smaller) in size for altruism and trust (for negative. [...] The magnitudes of the estimated coefficients of religion and institutional quality are of considerable size and follow opposite directions, positive for religion and negative for institutions.
religion, prosociality, human cooperation, population, institutions

Authors

Felipe Valencia Caicedo, Thomas Dohmen, Andreas Pondorfer

Pages
102
Published in
Germany