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Category: Project

Description: This study represents a preliminary step necessary in order to undertake a more ambitious experiment that simultaneously re-examines three major issues: 1) does religion increase generosity; 2) how effective are implicit vs. explicit priming procedures in generating an effect of religion upon generosity; and 3) is the effect of priming secular authority upon generosity similar to that of religious priming? The origins of this preliminary study lie in the recent attempt of Gomes and McCullough (2015) to replicate Shariff and Norenzayan’s landmark (2007) finding that an implicit religious prime leads to increased donations in the Dictator Game. Gomes and McCullough (2015) failed to replicate that finding. In their response to Gomes and McCullough’s (2015) failure to replicate, Shariff and Norenzayan noted that the replication found high levels of baseline generosity relative to the baseline (unprimed) generosity of their original studies, perhaps due to differences in perceived anonymity. Shariff and Norenzayan suggested that if levels of generosity were already high, then religious priming would be unable to exert a discernible effect. In an attempt to resolve these lingering questions, we plan to run an online study where anonymity will be assured. To address Shariff and Norenzayan’s potential concerns about sampling a population with pre-existing levels of generosity at an excessively high level, we will run this preliminary online study to verify that baseline levels of Dictator Game transfers in the Mechanical Turk population are sufficiently low to allow for a possible effect of religious priming. Such a baseline should be below the mean 43% of endowment found by Gomes and McCullough; prior MTurk studies conducted by David Rand suggest a mean donation of about 33% of endowment. Pilot Study Participants: We will collect data from 200 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Participants must be English-speaking adults at least eighteen years of age and must have at least a 90% approval rate for previously performed tasks on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The opportunity to take part in this study will be posted online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. Prospective participants will be made aware that they will earn $.50 for approximately 15-20 minutes’ work, that the work involves decisions in an economic task and may also involve filling out questionnaires, and that there is an additional opportunity to earn money based on the decisions they make. Pilot Study Procedures 1. The study will take place in a single online session which will take less than 20 minutes. 2. Participants will be asked to click “Agree” to indicate their agreement with the informed consent form. 3. Participants will be told that their participation is anonymous. 4. All participants will receive fifty cents ($.50) just for taking part, and will have an opportunity to earn additional funds depending on the decision they make in the economic task. 5. Participants will be given an additional $1.00 endowment and informed that as part of an economic decision-making task, they can choose to keep the money all for themselves or leave part of the money for another, unspecified participant in the study. 6. Participants are asked to complete a short anonymous demographic questionnaire with information on age, sex, annual income, religious tendencies (religious, spiritual, agnostic or atheist), religious group (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Other), overall religiosity (evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale) and race. Subjects will provide their Mechanical Turk ID, but otherwise no personal identifiable data will be collected (name, address, phone number, etc.). 7. The participant will be debriefed. Because no deception is involved, the debrief will simply thank participants and explain that they just took part in a one-shot dictator game, during which he/she was “the giver.” They will be informed that they may receive additional funds allocated to them by another participant. For exact measures used, please see attached files. Data Analysis: Data will be analyzed to determine central tendencies in Dictator Game transfers for this sample. Demographic data will be used to establish sample representativeness and to assess demographic differences in Dictator game offers.