God favors humility and humanism, or at least that is what we have been taught in a Judeo-Christian moral society, but ... how? What are the mechanisms?
At Columbia University, the effect of God on selfishness and prosocial behavior has been investigated.
The study has first provided the 50 participants with a test of disorganized sentences. For those who do not know what the test consists of, I summarize it: people are asked to put in a logical order the words they give to form a phrase that makes sense. But the words are given with a specific objective: that the person evoke certain concepts and be able to create a priming.
In the investigation half of the people were given words that evoked the concept of God: spirit, divine, God, sacred, prophet ... The other half of the participants were given neutral words.
After completing this first task each participant played a version of the Dictator Game, a game widely used in psychological investigations.
This game provides the following instructions: "You have been chosen as a consultant in this task of economic" decision-making ". You will find ten dollars in coins. You can take all the coins you want knowing that those you leave, in case you leave some, will take another participant that you do not know. "
To free people from possible social pressure they were assured that their decisions would be confidential and that their identity would be unknown to the person who could eventually receive the coins.
The results showed that those who had the priming of the concept of God left more coins for the benefit of strangers. Why?
The authors of the study propose two possible explanations:
- Activation of representations: in essence this theory asserts that the priming of a concept such as that of God activates a series of representations that increase the possibility of coherent planning and behavior with this representation. In other words: people associate the concept of God with benevolence, humanity ... and this would make them more charitable towards other people.
So I can not avoid an association with a previous study where the investigated also had to submit to a financial game. The people who performed the task in a room where a classic business briefcase was in view behaved more avidly and competitively than those who completed the task in a room where a backpack was left to be seen.
Thus, probably any object or entity could substantially change our behaviors as they activate diverse representations that mediate our decision-making, acting as a very effective priming.
- The divine eye: regardless of the power of priming, in the specific case of the figure of God, people would make an immediate association with an omnipresent presence that observes their actions. In simple words: with a pair of eyes on the back we all behave better.
Of course, the diverse behaviors among the participants of the investigation could also be due to a mixture of both explanations. We have a tendency to behave better because we have activated certain mental representations that induce us to opt for those more humanitarian decisions while at the same time imagine the divine control, acts as a very effective regulator of behavior
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