Religion Helps Foster Trust, Say Psychologists

Religion makes people more helpful, honest and generous but only when they think it will enhance their reputation or when they think about the possibility of a god, according to a report by psychologists.

The study draws together evidence from anthropology, economics and psychology, and its authors say it supports the notion that in early societies religion helped foster social cohesion and larger groups by encouraging cooperation.

"One reason we now have large, cooperative societies may be that some aspects of religion, such as 'outsourcing' costly social policing duties to all-powerful gods, made societies work more cooperatively in the past," said Azim Shariff, at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver.

Religion appears to foster trust between people. "These findings are consistent with the idea that outward evidence of religious devotion may engender more trust," the authors wrote in Science.

The evidence also suggests that trust in other religious group members is higher when those groups involve a greater degree of commitment, for example in stricter forms of religious belief such as Mormonism.

But all this comes at a price, according to Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist magazine. "There's a trade-off there between the amount that you are encouraged to trust those that you share your kind of life view with ... and a diminishing amount of trust for everyone else. I find that worrying."

Religious people also profess to be more charitable than non-religious folk. But a "good Samaritan" experiment found religious and non-religious participants were equally likely to stop and offer help.